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in the broad issues which alone are decisive in such a question, not a righteous cause.

This is the faith in which we and our fathers have been nurtured; and this early teaching explains no small part of the friendly feeling which we have entertained for our American kinsfolk since we can remember anything at all. They never pardon who have done the wrong' is not an invariable rule of human history. Even the few text-books which have taken a different line have done so with very emphatic reservations, and have conceded that in George Washington the Americans possess one of the great men of all times. In truth,' concludes one of these books, 'the best laurels reaped in this unsatisfactory contest were those which adorned the brow of George Washington.' Washington has been, for generations, a hero of British as well as of American boyhood; and those of us who were children when the Civil War had recently closed were taught a not less reverent admiration for Lincoln. Many of us were brought up on the books which described the careers of Lincoln's great associates; and 'From Log Cabin to White House or From Tan Yard to White House' could be found in our small collections of treasured books.

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In 1831, Washington Irving received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford, the first American to be enrolled among Oxford doctors. In 1902, the will of Cecil Rhodes multiplied a thousandfold the already numerous links between Oxford and the United States, links which are pleasantly recorded by the periodical publication, The American Oxonian,' mentioned at the head of this paper. The foundation of the American Rhodes Scholarships, which in the last fifteen years have made so many Anglo-American friendships, was a happy celebration of the unbroken sympathy which has existed, through all the changes and chances of political affairs, between the men of letters of this country and our American kinsfolk, from the days of Scott and Irving to those of Lowell, Tom Hughes, Leslie Stephen, and Lord Bryce. ROBERT S. RAIT.

Art. 5.-HOW GERMANY TREATS THE NATIVE.

1. Reichstag: Stenographische Berichte. (Reports of Debates.) Norddeutsche Buchdruckerei.

2. Complaints of the Akwa Chiefs. (Reichstag, Aktenstücke, No. 323, vol. 241.) Norddeutsche Buchdruckerei. 3. Die Wahrheit über die Heidenmission und ihre Gegner. Von J. Scholze. Berlin: Süsserott, 1905.

4. Die Herero: ein Beitrag zur Landes- Volks- und Missions-Kunde. Von Missionär F. Irle. Gütersloh : Bortelsmann, 1906.

5. Elf Jahre Gouverneur in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Von Theodor Leutwein, General-Major und Gouverneur, 3. D. Berlin; Mittler, 1906.

6. Geschichtliche und kulturelle Entwickelung unserer Schutzgebiete. Von J. K. Vietor. Berlin: Reimer, 1913. 7. The Germans and Africa. By Evans Lewin. With an Introduction by Earl Grey. Cassell, 1915. 8. Germany's vanishing Colonies. By Gordon Le Sueur. London: Everett, 1915.

9. L'Expansion allemande hors d'Europe.

nelat. Paris: Armand Colin, 1908.

Par E. Ton

AFTER alluding, in the preface to his book on German South-West Africa, to the faults and mistakes of the past,' General Leutwein says significantly, 'Let us learn in the first instance from both that, despite the higher position of the colonising race, the aim of a colonial policy on large lines must be the incorporation of the original people found in the acquired lands, and not their forcible oppression, still less their annihilation.' Though expressed with inevitable reserve, it would be impossible to find a truer or more forcible impeachment of the German colonial policy. Leutwein saw things as they really were, but was hampered and thwarted by Prussian ruthlessness. He believed in conciliating the natives and treating them fairly, and was convinced that the Herero rising could have been stopped after Waterberg; and that, when sufficient punishment had been meted out, wisdom as well as humanity suggested proffering reconciliation. His military successor, General von Trotha, a typical Prussian, held

quite other views, as evinced in his cruel and bombastic proclamation of Oct. 2, 1904.

'The Herero nation must now leave the country. If the people do not leave, I will compel them with the big tube. Within the German frontier every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will not take over any more women or children, but I will either drive them back to your people or have them fired on. These are my words to the nation of the Hereros.

"The great General of the Mighty Emperor,

'VON TROTHA.'

Though Leutwein would never have issued so brutal a proclamation, he was sufficiently imbued with the Prussian spirit of unscrupulousness, which holds that the end justifies the means, to reiterate constantly that, as there lacked troops to subdue the natives by force, it was justifiable, indeed praiseworthy, to take advantage of racial jealousies and differences, in order to incite the tribes to mutual extermination. That such was the opinion of a comparatively humane man, makes it possible to believe what, though well authenticated, is an otherwise almost incredible record of butchery and atrocities. Every item of evidence produced in this article has been carefully sifted; and for every crime recorded further evidence could be produced. We prefer to let the Germans be in the main their own accusers.

The idea of colonisation was strange to most Germans thirty years ago, and almost universally unpopular. Economic prosperity had increased; no outlet for a surplus population was needed; military ambition suggested keeping the man-power at home; and Bismarck had expressed himself, in almost scathing terms, as opposed on patriotic grounds to emigration. Gradually, however, colonisation came to be officially recognised as necessary to a rapacious Weltpolitik. There was comparatively little thought of making the colonies homes for settlers. With the exception of certain parts of South-West Africa, the climate of the Protectorates was suited only for independent native labour or for coloured labour under the direction of white men; and a census of immigrants shows that, even after thirty years of colonisation, the percentage of Europeans was Vol. 229.-No. 455.

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small. Briefly, Germany's object in colonisation was to do good business. Had this been carried out justly and equitably, no one could have complained; but Schrecklichkeit was used persistently as the weapon to subjugate the natives, and the men sent to wield it were mostly failures, or worse- abgelebt' (men who have lived), as one of their countrymen has called them. It seems scarcely necessary to dwell on the infamy of sending such men as representatives of European civilisation and the Christian standard to peoples in the childhood of knowledge.

The Social Democrats were always outspoken in the Reichstag, but criticisms of the policy pursued were by no means limited to them. Prince Hohenlohe, speaking for the Colonial Department on March 13, 1906, said: 'Faults have been committed. The Governor of East Africa has directly acknowledged it. He has confessed that such faults have happened in East Africa under his administration. . . . He has expressed his doubts whether the hut tax as it stands, as also the so-called forced labour, are legitimate measures.'

On November 28, 1906, Dr Schaedler called the story of the colonies one of

embezzlements, falsifyings, sensual cruelties, assaults on women, horrible ill-treatment-things that do not serve to make a laurel wreath'; and he added that 'officials and officers who stink materially and morally are no good to us in the Colonies, not even if they were royal princes, but could only be suited to drag the German, and I would add the Christian, name in the dust.'

Many similar opinions could be cited. It was also proved that in East Africa and the Cameroons German officials taught the natives an immorality hitherto unknown to them, disregarded their feelings by taking their wives and fiancées to satisfy their own passions, and built houses at the expense of the State for the accommodation of their copious female retinue.

The cases of the notorious Dr Karl Peters, of Wehlan, and of Leist were commented on in their day by the press, and are therefore given here only in general outline. They are representative of the brutality, debauchery,

and sensuality which stain German colonial administration. Peters was lauded to the skies by his admirers as a progressive pioneer of colonial expansion; his own writings reveal him as unscrupulous, a plunderer and utterly inhuman-a self-revelation fully borne out by other testimony. The explorer Scavenius, after following in his steps near the Tana river, says:

'On every side I came on traces of war. In the neighbourhood of Obangi I found eleven villages that had been destroyed by fire, and everywhere skeletons of men, women and children,* those of women and children being especially numerous.'

The perpetrator was Peters,† while ostensibly conducting an expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha, but really intent on furthering German interests in Uganda and also on acquiring vast territories for himself as 'Supreme Lord. For his services he was sent in 1891 as Imperial Commissioner to East Africa, where his crimes were so heinous that the most daring official whitewashing could not hide their blackness. The climax was reached when Peters hanged his young servant Mabruk, ostensibly for stealing cigarettes, really because he had visited a native girl with whom Peters was himself on terms of intimacy. The girl was repeatedly flogged and finally hanged.

Peters was tried before a disciplinary court and dismissed the service, not for his atrocities, but for having lied to his superiors. He appealed to the Supreme Court at Leipzig, which confirmed the dismissal, condemning him to payment of all costs. Part of the trial was heard in camera, because of the nature of the self-revelations he had made to the Austrian Consul-General at Zanzibar, who offered his evidence. And yet Peters' partisans were not satisfied, but appealed to the Kaiser, with the result that he was partially rehabilitated and received back his title of Imperial Commissioner. It is only fair to say that honest men in Germany, of both the Centre and the Socialist parties, spoke out boldly and repeatedly on the Peters' case. Deputy Dr Lieber, the leader of the

* Peters owned to shooting every native he came across and pouring petroleum on every hut and setting fire to it.

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For other details see Lewin's Germans and Africa,' and Peters' own work: New Light on Dark Africa.'

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