Boers, and with the views of imperialists such as Rhodes, who considered the negroes lazy folk created by God to render compulsory labor in the mines. But the consequence of such policies was to aggravate the race problem. Instead of learning improved methods of agriculture, and becoming prosperous small farmers, as in Gold Coast, the South African negroes were divorced from the soil, and those employed in industry formed a dangerously discontented industrial proletariat. Moreover, the fact that negroes could vote in Cape Colony but not in the other three colonies, added a political grievance to economic unrest. Such inequalities were most acutely resented by "Cape Boys" (mulattoes) and negroes who obtained education in mission schools and entered into the skilled trades and professions. One has only to talk with educated South African negroes to realize that the ruthless exercise of white supremacy, under the aegis of British imperialism, has created a negro reaction of grave character, withal the bulk of the black population is still inert and impotent.1

By way of contrast, the other British possessions in South Africa, outside the Union, claim passing notice. Rhodesia has already been considered. There is also the vast semi-desert Bechuanaland Protectorate, with its scant population of 150,000 negro herdsmen; and the small protectorate of Swaziland, and Basutoland. The last-named has been called the Switzerland of South Africa; it is a beautiful mountain country, a third smaller than the Switzerland of Europe, and inhabited entirely by blacks. Here the land is owned entirely by the natives, under a communal system which they understand better than individual proprietorship, and neither mining nor industry has made inroads on rural simplicity. The native population, tilling its fields and tending its cattle in peace, has quadrupled since British annexation (1868) and prospered in a most remarkable degree, thanks to the exclusion of concession-hunters and white settlers. British imperialism has here been far more benevolent and beneficent than in the Union, partly for historical reasons, but chiefly because there was no great mineral wealth.

See the semi-annual Report of the Select Committee on Native Affairs of the Union of South Africa (Cape Town, Cape Times, Ltd., Government Printers) and, for comparison, Native Life in South Africa (London, King), by Sol. T. Plaatje, a Baralong (negro) journalist of Kimberley; and T. J. Jones, Education in Africa, ch. ix.

Taken all together, the Union, Rhodesia, and the former German South West Africa, and the other British colonies in South. Africa, constitute a rich and extensive empire almost half as large as the continent of Europe, wonderfully suited, by climate, for white population, and richly endowed with minerals precious and utilitarian. Yet in all its history it has not attracted as many European immigrants as the United States received in the single year 1913, nor is it rapidly becoming a white man's country. The negroes still form four-fifths of the population. The dream of Cecil Rhodes, and of other British imperialists, that upon the healthful high veldt would some day live a sturdy British people, is not yet realized, or even near fulfilment. But the Transvaal alone had produced four billions of dollars' worth of gold since 1868, over a billion dollars' worth of diamonds have been exported, and the trade of South Africa, in which England has the largest share, is gradually rising toward the billiondollar level which it exceeded in the boom year 1920. Here, if anywhere, is to be found the justification of the blood and treasure so freely poured out to make South Africa, in the words of Cecil Rhodes, "all red."

CHAPTER X

NORTH AFRICA AND THE GREAT POWERS

FROM the dark jungles of equatorial Africa, from the monotonous veldt of the South, the scene shifts to the smiling and temperate coastlands of the north. The most valuable parts of the Dark Continent for commerce, investment, and white colonization are the northern and southern extremities, and while Britain was appropriating the latter, France was endeavoring to make of the former a new and greater France.

Nowhere was the game of imperialist world politics played with greater abandon, or more vicious international consequences, than in the African lands north of the tropic of Cancer. Here France and England grimly played for Egyptian stakes; here Italy found reason to join, then later to desert, the Triple Alliance; here Germany and France desperately bid against each other for Morocco, until Europe was brought within a hair's breadth of war.

AVENGING AN INSULT-ALGERIA

White sails swelling full against blue water and bluer sky, a gallant French fleet coursed from Toulon through the Mediterranean, five hundred miles to the African shore, where among green palms gleamed the white mosques of Algiers. The Arab King or Dey of Algiers, so history relates, had recklessly struck a French envoy in the face with a fly-whisk or fan, and to clear the escutcheon of France there was but one conventional method. To be sure, three years had intervened since the Dey's indiscretion, and France during these years had diplomatically considered various projects of international intervention; but the lapse of years does not clear away an indignity to national honor. The French fleet, therefore, sailed in May, 1830, to punish Algiers. Furthermore, the French government announced its purpose to stop the attacks of piratical Algerian corsairs (then

called "Barbary pirates") on European shipping in the Mediterranean. Still more important, though not publicly proclaimed, was the desire of Charles X and his ministers to achieve some brilliant feat of arms and diplomacy which would not only restore the lustre of French prestige, dimmed since Waterloo, but also revive the declining popularity of the tottering Bourbon monarchy. In vain British statesmen, fearful of anything which might destroy the quasi-sacred "status quo" or the still more sacrosanct "balance of power," argued and threatened and demanded a promise that the punitive expedition would withdraw from Algiers as soon as a brief lesson in good behavior had been administered to the Dey. The bulldog's bark was worse than his bite, in this case. With impunity the French expedition occupied Algiers and the neighboring coast district, and prepared to stay. The Dey was shipped to Naples. Though the exploit failed of its principal purpose, namely, saving the throne of Charles X, it established France permanently in Algiers.

To extend their power from the seaport of Algiers until it embraced the whole country of Algeria, larger than France itself, the French had to expend thousands of lives and millions of treasure, during three decades of almost incessant fighting after 1830. Little did they realize, at the outset, to how costly an enterprise the caprice of Charles X's cabinet had committed them. Particularly serious was the protracted warfare required to subdue Abd-el-Kader, a valiant Arab emir, who again and again roused the Mohammedan tribes to wage a "holy war" against the Christian invader. Not until 1847 was the emir taken prisoner and sent to France and not until 1871 was the last important rebellion in Algeria crushed.1

Conquered more or less by chance, before the age of deliberate imperialism had dawned, Algeria aroused relatively little enthusiasm in France until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Then French imperialists found in Algeria not only a reason for new North-African conquests, but a colony valuable in itself. Much larger than the mother-country, Algeria was

'E. LeMarchand, L'Europe et la Conquête d'Alger (Paris, 1913); J. Darcy, Cent Années de Rivalité Coloniale (Paris, 1904); chs. 2-4; M. Dubois et A. Terrier, Un Siècle d'Expansion Coloniale (Paris, 1902), 154 ff., 203 ff., 262 ff.; C. Rousset, La Conquête de l'Algérie.

See R. Vâlet, L'Afrique du Nord devant le Parlement au XIXme Siècle (Alger, 1924), part 1; P. Leroy-Beaulieu, La Colonisation (Paris, 1886); livre deuxième, ch. V.; Dubois et Terrier, loc. cit.

almost ideally suited for French colonization. Along its fertile coast plains the olive tree grew in abundance; on the mountains back of the coast were rich forests, and between the mountain ranges lay plains and valleys, fertile of soil and healthful of climate, where cattle and grain could be raised. The native population was small-even to-day there are but five million natives, and a generation or two ago there were less than four million. Unlike the negroes of equatorial jungles, the Algerians

are industrious, accustomed to agriculture, handicrafts and trade. Some of the Arabs, who form the largest element in the population, were tent-dwellers and herdsmen wandering through the deserts and steppes of the back-country; but in the more fertile regions the Arabs had settled down, before French conquest, to live in villages of stone and to gain their livelihood. by trade, tillage, or artistic handwork. Racially different, but culturally much influenced by the Arabs, were the Berbers, white but sun-tanned. Along the coast, where they lived in stone houses with red-tiled roofs, and tilled their fields with