into the preoccupations of many of us than ever before, as a result of the events of the war, and during the period of reconstruction and reshaping that the coming generation has to deal with, but because it is of essential importance and value to humanity on the highest grounds that the dominant European races should come to apprehend more than they do of the true humanity of such peoples, hitherto unrealized and largely passive, as the African and the Russian. What," as Mr. Harris asks in his Foreword, "is the seductive element in this continent and people which lures men and women on and ever on until at last they gladly lay themselves down in final sacrifice on the beloved altar of the African continent ? " Why do the white men who devote their lives to the welfare of African people do so? It is not because they are fascinated, against critical reason, by black skins, thick lips, and woolly hair, or other characteristics in which nature and evolution appear to European æsthetics to have played bad jokes with some African forms of humanity-the reason is simple and positive-it is that those who have to do, disinterestedly, with the negroid races come to love them-find them above the average rich and responsive and sympathetic in some of the most characteristic and delicate qualities of essential human nature. The negro is, of course, very far behind many other peoples in wide fields of human florescence, but in some of the qualities that are best to live with he is on the average far ahead of the average industrialized European. He is singularly patient and forgiving, very delicately sensitive in all matters of courtesy, acutely logical, warmly sociable, humorous and kindly; and in any physical difficulty or danger a most devoted, brave and unwearied comrade. Moreover, he is deeply and fundamentally religious, and his religious and affectional temperament responds exceptionally to the Christian formula. ́ Mr. Harris briefly surveys the controversy whether Islam or Christianity is the better faith for the negro world. Islam is a fine synthesis ; it is educational and usefully disciplinary; but it was not for nothing that Christian Europe threw itself into the Crusades. Armenian massacres are congenial to Islam: the negro has capacity enough for mad cruelty in his animal nature; but he knows quite well that his humane nature is better; and Christianity answers to this. As between Islam and Christianity, therefore, for the negroid African, I do not think that any intelligent man, who is himself religious and knows what religion is, can doubt for a moment which is the more suitable for proselytizing or encouragement. Many years ago, when I first joined the Colonial Office, my friend Sidney Webb, with whom, as a Resident Clerk, I shared the decoding of African telegrams, used to quote a text that has always stuck in my mind, and often recurs when I investigate things that are going on in Africa :-"The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty." No matter how high an opinion we may entertain of our fellow-subjects who colonize and govern these dark places, they are—they are at this moment" full of cruelty!" It is always cropping up; only light, such as this of Mr. Harris' book, can keep it in check. Wherever, in a mixed community, you have a privileged class in command of the government of people whom they employ as workers, you will have exploitation and oppressive laws to enforce it. Democracy is our remedy in Europe. Political Democracy of our form is not yet practicable for these Áfrican communities; though some are developing towards it. In the meantime the British Government alone can enforce just treatment of the subordinate races. And the British Government is sometimes a good deal embarrassed by the constitutional rights of responsible Governments or by the resistance of interests which have grown up under their sanction, and cannot always take a quite satisfactory line in such matters. One most unfortunate result of such impotence or nonchalance is that Bantu peoples, who are commonly reputed in England to be the finest of the negroid African races, and whose endowment of energy and ability are unquestionable, are being, under the authority of British power, steadily pressed into and bound down in a position less favourable for any development than that of negro or negroid races in West African Crown Colonies, in Nigeria, or in the French Possessions -and far less favourable than that of British or French West Indians of African race or descent. It is rapidly being made impossible for South African natives outside of the Cape Colony either to attain to any substantial position as stockfarmers or planters, to rise out of the ranks of common labourers into any skilled trade, or even as common labourers to maintain their wives and children in homes of their own. Mr. Harris calls attention particularly to the question of land policy in this aspect. I need not here do more than invite careful attention to the conditions which he points out as at present in operation and springing up. Important as land questions are in European and American communities, they are by far the most crucial matter in the future of African civilization. Labour, political and social problems loom dark in Africa, but at the base of the right solution lies secure native property in the land. It matters little whether the possession of the land be individual, communal, or collective everything depends upon security. I understand that one of the objects Mr. Harris has had in writing this book is that of laying before Missionary and other students the elementary conditions of Administration, Commerce, and Education in Africa, and I venture to repeat with confidence what Lord Cromer said in 1912: "It cannot but be an advantage, more especially now that attention is being more and more drawn to African affairs, that the Government, Parliament, and the general public should learn what one so eminently qualified as Mr. Harris to instruct them in the facts of the case has to say on this subject." SYDNEY OLIVIER. Dawn in Darkest Africa. By the same Author. Smith Elder. |