German Colonies in Africa. THE following correspondence has taken place between the Society and the Colonial Office. July 6, 1915. TO THE RT. HON. ANDREW BONAR LAW, M.P., HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES. SIR, The Committee of this Society begs to draw your attention to certain allegations which have frequently been made with reference to the treatment of native races in territories until recently under the administration of the German Government. We do not here refer merely to the numerous and persistent allegations of harsh and brutal treatment of the native in German South-West Africa and Togoland, which we have no doubt will be reversed under the present British administration, but we desire primarily to bring to your notice the allegation commonly made that the labour supply for private plantation. enterprise has been forced by the administrative authorities, and thus many plantations have been, and presumably not a few still are, staffed by forced labour. We beg to remind you that this practice is totally alien to British Colonial tradition. Moreover, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Harcourt and the Earl of Cromer have all subscribed to the doctrine that forced labour for private profit is slavery. Our Committee trusts and believes that you will share with the members of this Society the opinion that British occupation of territories hitherto under foreign control should carry with it an early liberation of any labourers found to have been secured in the interests of private profit either by fraud or force. We have reason to fear that this system has found very full and definite expression in the Ambas Bay and Dualla regions of the Cameroons; to a lesser degree, probably, in German South-West Africa and Togoland. It is, we believe, within the knowledge of the Colonial Office that the system is widely prevalent in German East Africa. Our Committee greatly regrets that there appears now to be little. doubt that King Mango Bell and with him a large number of native chiefs. in the Cameroons have been executed by German authority, and, so far as we are aware, these executions have been deliberately carried out upon any flimsy pretext, in some cases none whatever beyond the whim of petty officials. It would also seem desirable to inquire into the treatment which has been extended to British native subjects in the territories under German control. His Majesty's Government is aware that considerable numbers of these have been encouraged to enter German Colonies, and we have only to mention the regrettable incident at Wilhelmsthal to demonstrate what may have happened to many of His Majesty's loyal subjects. Our Committee fully recognizes the large and heavy responsibility resting upon the officials of the Colonial Office at this time, but we are not without hope that His Majesty's Government may find it possible to institute some inquiry into these important questions. The Society would gladly render any assistance within its power in such an inquiry, feeling sure that the relief which such an inquiry would ultimately provide for some thousands of Africans could not fail to strengthen the existing loyalty to and affection for the British Crown by some millions of the African race. We have, etc. TRAVERS BUXTON, Secretary. JOHN H. HARRIS, Organising Secretary. DOWNING STREET, July 16, 1915. SIR,— I am directed by Mr. Secretary Bonar Law to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 6th of July, and to state that he has no doubt that, in the administration of German territories now in the military occupation of His Majesty's forces, any practices of internal administration which may be repugnant to British methods will not be allowed to continue. The Secretary, I am, etc., for the Under Secretary of State. Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. The new Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Bonar Law, made a highly interesting statement in the House of Commons on July 21 as to the Colonial possessions of Germany before the war, and the military operations which had taken place in regard to them. Mr. Law began by referring to the wireless stations held by the Germans both in the Pacific and in Africa, and the valuable help which they afforded to German cruisers in raiding British commerce, which made it of the utmost importance that British forces should obtain possession of these stations or destroy them. The chief German colonies were in Africa, and the Colonial Secretary described successively the operations in Togoland, where the Germans had an immense wireless station and direct communication with Berlin; the Cameroons, where British troops from Nigeria joined with large French forces in seizing Duala and its powerful wireless station, and where very great successes had been gained which rendered the hold of the Germans on the Cameroons very precarious; in German South-West Africa, and German East Africa. Mr. Bonar Law referred to the bad German record of cruelty to the natives in South-West Africa and the rebellion of 1903 which, though repressed with ruthless cruelty to the Herreros, was only ended after about five years by the total extermination of a great number of tribes at a cost to the German government of something like £25,000,000. Of the indecisive military operations which have taken place in German East Africa (the largest of their colonies, about twice as big as the whole German empire), Mr. Bonar Law remarked that the German colonies had, from the first, had a military organization, while our colonies have never been prepared for aggression from outside. It is true of Africa, as of Europe, that the Germans were much better prepared for war than we. After dwelling upon the admirable way in which British colonists had come forward to serve their country in its hour of great need, the Colonial Secretary turned to speak of the way in which the natives of our African colonies had helped us. His narrative was a striking one, and should be compared with the statement of Sir Harry Johnston in his recent pamphlet on Native Races and the Great War, that the loyalty to Great Britain of the African natives under our rule was in a great measure due to the work, and beliefs which underlie that work, of our Society. Mr. Bonar Law said: With the single exception of East Africa, to which some reinforcements have been sent, the whole of our fighting has been done by local forces. The bulk of it has been by native levies, the chief of which, and perhaps the only ones, are the West African Frontier Forces and the King's African Rifles. They have been faced for the first time with modern weapons, directed by people who thoroughly understand how to use them. They have fought in the bush, in country where it was impossible to exercise complete control over them, yet nowhere have there been any excesses, nowhere has there been any want of discipline, and everywhere they have acted with great gallantry. . . . It is not only those natives actually fighting for us to whom we have reason, I might almost say, to be grateful. One sometimes hears in this House complaints of the way in which our representatives abroad deal with subject races. This country has shown, on the whole, that we have a good record in that respect, and it is a record which is appreciated by the natives themselves. Throughout they have been thoroughly loyal. They have assisted us in every possible way, and perhaps I may add that nothing has done more to make the African natives appreciate the value of British rule than the experience they have had of German rule in Africa. That experience has made our course easier, and has made it comparatively easy to administer those parts of the German possessions which have been taken over by us. General Botha, speaking at Cape Town on July 24, is reported to have declared that the German attitude towards natives had constituted a grave menace to the Union. He laid great emphasis on the victory in German South-West Africa from the native point of view, asserting that the natives who had been under German rule regarded the advent of the Union Forces as a deliverance. The Lagos Auxiliary of the Anti-Slavery Society has recently collected and forwarded to the Government the sum of £166 3s. 6d., being the proceeds of a subscription for the relief of the widows and orphans of officers and soldiers killed during the operations in the Cameroons. Portuguese Slavery. PARLIAMENTARY PAPER.1 THE New White Book upon Portuguese Labour issued last July is in many respects the most important yet published and is a striking tribute to the persistent work of the Society. It also registers a greater increase of progress than any previous publication of its kind. That this is so is due primarily to the earnest and tactful activity which the British Minister in Lisbon and the British Consuls in Africa have shown in dealing with this question. The advocates of reform owe much to the British Minister in Lisbon, Mr. Lancelot Carnegie, and to Messrs. Hall Hall, Smallbones, Beak and Bernays, our Consuls in Africa. It will be remembered that the years 1912 and 1913 were critical periods in the agitation for reform. Those of us who fought for the liberty of the slaves on the Portuguese plantations advanced the following main propositions (a) That the natives of the mainland so abhorred the very names of the islands of San Thomé and Principe that it had only been possible to maintain the labour supply by the exercise of fraud or force upon the natives of the African hinterland. (b) That until 1908 none of the 70,000 or so labourers taken to the islands were ever allowed to return. (c) That from 1908 onwards repatriation, to which thousands of serviçaes were legally entitled, had been denied them upon various pretexts. (d) That the heavy death rates were gravely accentuated in the sleeping sickness island of Principe. (e) That the portion of wages deducted from the serviçaes which at the end of their contracts should amount to about £18 had frequently not been paid in full. 1 Cd. 79€0. It had all along been admitted that the Portuguese Colonial legislation left little to be desired, but it had been repeatedly affirmed that the administration exhibited the most deplorable slackness in applying its own regulations. The argument had been advanced that a firm application of existing legislation would not only lead to reforms which would satisfy European public opinion but that the change would so far remove the stigma from the islands and such a good impression be made upon the natives that a flow of free native labour would be set up from the mainland to the island plantations, and thus both Government and planter would reap not merely moral but large economic advantage. SIR EDWARD GREY'S SCHEME. It became known that soon after the debate in the House of Lords in July, 1913, Sir Edward Grey was able to give close personal attention to the question, and after some months of consideration and discussion, the British Minister in Lisbon was instructed to lay certain proposals before the Portuguese Government; the following passage contains the gist of these instructions:: "It is their (the British Government's) intention to appoint a consulgeneral for Portuguese West Africa, whose principal duty will be to superintend the consular posts already established on the mainland and in the islands. This officer's duties of superintendence will entail constant visits to San Thome, where the labourers are employed, as well as to those localities where they are recruited and contracted, and it will therefore be possible for him, if he is afforded the necessary facilities, to furnish His Majesty's Government with full information on the points to which I have referred, and thus enable them through the medium of their consular officers to assure labourers at the recruiting stations that they can safely contract for service on the plantations.” 1 In the following December (1913), the Portuguese Government notified the British Minister that, within certain natural limitations, they were prepared to accept Sir Edward Grey's scheme, and, in reporting this acceptance to the British Foreign Minister, Mr. Carnegie said :— "The Portuguese Government were most grateful to you for having suggested a scheme whereby you would receive trustworthy reports in regard to the islands, which would demonstrate the inaccuracy of the charges brought against the Portuguese authorities by the Anti-Slavery Society and others." THE BRITISH SCHEME IN OPERATION. Mr. Consul Hall Hall is in charge of this scheme and has had as his Vice-Consuls Messrs. Smallbones, Beak and Bernays. The only really satisfactory solution of this question has all along been that of securing a 1 Cd. 7279, p. 79. |