On May 17, 1914, Deputy Dove asserted in the Reichstag that the German colonial idea of justice was so primitive that government and the administration of justice was left in the same hands, so that it was impossible to protect right against the abuses of power.

In 1906, Erzberger of the Centre announced in the sessions of March 13 and 15 that the Colonial Department had consistently hid the truth, and Prince von Hohenlohe, on behalf of that Department, put up the defence that the officials of the Imperial Department were so overworked that documents might well have escaped their attention.

On May 6, 1906, Erzberger disclosed in the Reichstag the fact that the statistics of the importation of alcohol into the colonies showed a terrible increase. In three years they had risen in Togoland from 8,500 hectolitres to 18,000, and in one of the German West African colonies poisonous alcohol made up 27 per cent. of the total of the German import trade.

On March 7, 1914, Erzberger said:

"Without being mentioned by name, I have just been credited (a reference to Dittmann's speech) with the opinion that, if the Secretary of State for the Colonies did not manage to improve matters at the earliest possible moment, I should no longer be able to bear the responsibility for voting the Imperial money credits for our colonial policy. I most heartily endorse that opinion and am ready to face all consequences.

"From every page of the official reports from the Protectorate for the years 1912-1913 comes the heart-rending cry of black labourers toiling in the plantations. If these reports be studied carefully, one learns of things which could hardly have been thought possible. If some of our plantations in East Africa or the Cameroons cannot be worked profitably unless they are enriched by the natives' life-blood, surely a curse will fall on all our colonies and our German fatherland. Such plantations should not be allowed to exist.

"I have before me statements issued by the Cameroons Planters' Association. The mortality statistics are shocking. In the Victoria plantations, Cameroons, the death-rate among native

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labourers is 7.89 per cent. for 1909 and 9.11 per cent for 1913. In the Prince Albert plantation it reached 28.80 per cent in 1913."

On May 19, 1914, a deputy, Doctor Frank, drew the Reichstag's attention to an article in the Rhine and Westphalia Gazette (of May 10, 1914) in which it was proposed that German lawyers should combine in refusing their assistance to people of other races. In this way," exclaimed Frank, "the issue of the battle for right would be made entirely dependent on the nationality of the person wronged."

Doctor Frank then went on to explain that this ostracising policy of German lawyers originated in the affair of a certain native of the Cameroons, Din by name, who had just reached Berlin and been arrested at the Colonial Office's orders on the recommendation of a district magistrate named Roehm. The latter had sent a cablegram about an alleged plot by the chief Duala Manga, whom he had just had arrested for an attempt to separate off the German Protectorate of the Cameroons and transfer it to British protection. Roehm added: "Din is now in Berlin. There is reason to suspect that he went to Europe to work out the plans already referred to." On the strength of this telegram the Colonial Office at Berlin had Din arrested, and no stone was left unturned to prevent him finding a counsel to defend him among members of the German Bar.

Deputy Frank, in drawing attention to this case, added: "I am convinced that this business marks the beginning of a reign of terror in the Cameroons."

A few days earlier, Deputy Wels had told the Reichstag that Din, when arrested at Homburg immediately on his arrival there, wished to telegraph to his counsel at Berlin, Doctor Halpert, but that his telegram was cancelled. As for the memorandum which Din had entrusted to Doctor Halpert to be presented in the

Reichstag, the Colonial Office had confiscated it on the pretext that it contained passages which were regarded as insulting to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Deputy Wels considered these acts of suppression to be insulting to the Reichstag as imposing a censorship on its papers, seeing that the men elected by the people had the right to hear all complaints.

Din was not merely arrested on reaching Germany to prevent the disclosure of the sufferings and injustice inflicted on his brothers, the Dualas, but informed that he would be imprisoned again when he returned to Africa for violation of the German emigration laws by leaving the colony without permission from the Government—the very people against whom he meant to lodge a complaint.

One can hardly imagine a more complete combination of hypocrisy, bad faith and high-handedness, or a more thorough-going tyranny. We are not dealing

here with old history, or with doings of the early days of German colonisation, when mistakes were pardonable, but with things that happened in the spring of 1914.

The European war prevents us knowing what was the upshot of the Din affair. We are certain only of this-that he came to Berlin, not to engineer a transference of the Cameroons to England—a ridiculous fiction-but to acquaint the Reichstag with the colony's grievances. The matter is a fit sequel to the scandalous treatment of the Akwa chiefs, who were thrown into prison by von Puttkamer for daring to petition the Reichstag to redress their wrongs. District Officer Roehm, fearing Din's disclosures, had first imprisoned Duala Manga, then trumped up a grotesque and ridiculous plot, and cabled home to persuade a Ministry, which was only too glad to hush up the scandal, to sanction Din's imprisonment.

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A further examination of the parliamentary records concerning German colonial matters brings more and more evidence to light.

On November 29, 1906, Deputy Kopsch exclaimed in the Reichstag :

"The Imperial Chancellor has stated that the publicity given to these (colonial) scandals has injured Germany's reputation abroad. I agree with what my colleague, Schaedler, said—that it is not the publicity given to the scandals, but the scandals themselves which have injured Germany's name in other countries."

On March 20, 1906, Deputy Ledebour characterised these excesses committed by the Prussian system of administration as the complete negation of justice; and three days later he described how the Togoland natives had been robbed by the great German company which had just acquired their lands at a rate of 21 centimes per acre. On the 26th Ledebour ended his speech for the day (in which he showed how the Legation Counsel Rose had contradicted himself in the matter of Captain Brandeis, whose guilt he first denied and then admitted) as follows:

"The pitiful thing about it all is, that the administration, as conducted by German officials, does not spread Kultur, but merely breeds in the people a servile spirit. If this is a fact, all you have done is to destroy the people's spiritual life.”

On May 8, 1907, Ledebour revealed a fact which at that time seemed to disgust some of the deputies, though nowadays it apparently would not make any German turn a hair; namely, that out of 1,800 Hottentot prisoners incarcerated on Sharks Island (Luderitz Bay) 1,200 had died in less than nine months.

The Prussian prison-camp rule of 1914-1917 had nothing to learn, for the kraal-guards of William II. had served an apprenticeship in Africa and knew their business!

On March 17, 1908, Ledebour again criticised the

German colonial system, and gave some edifying facts about the way in which taxes were levied. In a single village 40 natives had been executed because they could not pay up a few marks' worth of taxes. Then,. turning to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Dernburg himself, he quoted the opinion of blacks employed as carriers for the journey made by Dernburg from Muansa to Tabora : "No! We won't go with him again; we were never so beaten in our lives as during Herr Dernburg's expedition."

On December 4, the deputy, Doctor Mueller, read out in the Reichstag a letter published in the Cologne Gazette. It described how the magistrate of one district, in order to civilise the natives and teach them to drink out of a glass instead of putting the soda-water bottles to their mouths, had the hardihood to issue in order which condemned to flogging, followed by imprisonment, any native caught drinking from a bottle, and to a heavy fine the retailer who sold him the bottle.

Does not this absurd and criminal way of looking at things reveal the real nature of the vaunted German Kultur? On April 30, 1912, Deputy Noske explained to the Reichstag the disquieting conclusions to be drawn from statistics of punishments in the German colonies. In East Africa the German judges had in one year passed no fewer than 10,144 sentences of imprisonment. These figures, which are enormous relatively to the population, show to what a state of anarchy and revolt German administration had reduced the colony.

In German South-West Africa floggings had increased from 928 in 1909 to 1,263 in 1910. German tribunals had sentenced 2,371 people in 1910, in this same colony, which has only 70,000 to 80,000 native inhabitants. In the Cameroons 52 persons were sentenced to death, 3,516 to imprisonment, 881 to fines,