Wherever British trade finds native custom standing in its way, we shall find cruelty. Why was King Ja Ja deported? I have heard an interesting incident connected with his case. One who for many years has voyaged up and down the western coast of Africa tells me that while Ja Ja was still at his height of power the natives of his district, paddling near the shores in their canoes, were always happy and joyous. Ja Ja stood in the way of the British traders gaining so much money as they wanted, and so he was exiled and taken a prisoner to distant lands. From the day of his departure the happiness of life was gone from all the country. Few natives put out in their canoes, and those who did were silent; the song and laughter of former days were hushed. Until the day when he was brought home, a corpse, for burial, somberness and sadness settled down upon his people, before so gay and light hearted. What was it caused the trouble at Benin but British greed insisting on opening up a territory which its natives desired to keep closed? The Benin massacre that followed was dreadful, but it did not begin to compare in frightful bloodshed with the punitive expedition which followed—a feat scarce worthy of British arms. What was the cause of hut-tax wars? What is the matter now in Natal? Do we know all that goes on in Nigeria? Wherein is excellence in the expropriation of lands and products in Uganda for the benefit of concession companies of the same kind exactly as those in Congo? Why is it worse to cut off the hands of dead men for purposes of tally than to cut off the heads of dead chiefs for purposes of identification? But let it pass—we are not undertaking an assault on Britain.
XIV.
February 2, 1907.
RETURNED from the Congo country and a year and more of contact with the dark natives, I find a curious and most disagreeable sensation has possession of me. I had often read and heard that other peoples regularly find the faces of white men terrifying and cruel. The Chinese, the Japanese, other peoples of Asia, all tell the same story.
The white man’s face is fierce and terrible. His great and prominent nose suggests the tearing beak of some bird of prey. His fierce face causes babes to cry, children to run in terror, grown folk to tremble. I had always been inclined to think that this feeling was individual and trifling; that it was solely due to strangeness and lack of contact. To-day I know better. Contrasted with the other faces of the world, the face of the fair white is terrible, fierce, and cruel. No doubt our intensity of purpose, our firmness and dislike of interference, our manner in walk and action, and in speech, all add to the effect. However that may be, both in Europe and our own land, after my visit to the blacks, I see the cruelty and fierceness of the white man’s face as I never would have believed was possible. For the first time, I can appreciate fully the feeling of the natives. The white man’s dreadful face is a prediction; where the fair white goes he devastates, destroys, depopulates. Witness America, Australia, and Van Diemen’s Land.
Morel’s “Red Rubber” contains an introductory chapter by Sir Harry Johnston. In it the ex-ruler of British Central Africa says the following: “A few words as to the logic of my own position as a critic of King Leopold’s rule on the Congo. I have been reminded, in some of the publications issued by the Congo government; that I have instituted a hut-tax in regions intrusted to my administration; that I have created crown lands which have become the property of the government; that as an agent of the government I have sold and leased portions of African soil to European traders; that I have favored, or at any rate have not condemned, the assumption by an African state of control over natural sources of wealth; that I have advocated measures which have installed Europeans as the master—for the time being—over the uncivilized negro or the semicivilized Somali, Arab, or Berber.”
It is true that Sir Harry Johnston has done all these things. They are things which, done by Belgium, are heinous in English eyes. He proceeds to justify them by their motive and their end. He aims to show a notable difference between these things as Belgian and as English. He seems to feel that the fact of a portion of the product of these acts being used to benefit the native is an ample excuse. But so long as (a) the judge of the value of the return made to the sufferer is the usurper, and not the recipient, there is no difference between a well-meaning overlord and a bloody-minded tyrant; and (b) as long as the taxed is not consulted and his permission is not gained for taxation, there is only injustice in its infliction, no matter for what end. Sir Harry uses the word “logic.” A logical argument leaves him and Leopold in precisely the same position with reference to the native.
Sir Harry closes his introduction with a strange and interesting statement. He says:
“The danger in this state of affairs lies in the ferment of hatred which is being created against the white race in general, by the agents of the king of Belgium, in the minds of the Congo negroes. The negro has a remarkably keen sense of justice. He recognizes in British Central Africa, in East Africa, in Nigeria, in South Africa, in Togoland, Dahomey, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Senegambia that, on the whole, though the white men ruling in those regions have made some mistakes and committed some crimes, have been guilty of some injustice, yet that the state of affairs they have brought into existence as regards the black man is one infinitely superior to that which preceded the arrival of the white man as a temporary ruler. Therefore, though there may be a rising here or a partial tumult there, the mass of the people increase and multiply with content and acquiesce in our tutelary position.
“Were it otherwise, any attempt at combination on their part would soon overwhelm us and extinguish our rule. Why, in the majority of cases, the soldiers with whom we keep them in subjection are of their own race. But unless some stop can be put to the misgovernment of the Congo region, I venture to warn those who are interested in African politics that a movement is already begun and is spreading fast which will unite the negroes against the white race, a movement which will prematurely stamp out the beginnings of the new civilization we are trying to implant, and against which movement, except so far as the actual coast line is concerned, the resources of men and money which Europe can put into the field will be powerless.”