Without doubt the advent of the late King Leopold as an Administrator in Central African affairs was a calamity almost impossible to exaggerate and had his influence continued it would sooner or later have overrun the surrounding territories administered respectively by Britain, France, and Germany. That they indeed suffered contamination was only too clearly demonstrated in the case of French Congo, while German Cameroons was not altogether free from the Leopoldian taint. On the Congo itself, the very name of white man was made to stink in the nostrils of the native tribes for all time, by reason of the enormities in which King Leopold figured as the chief actor. But even that wily monarch outwitted himself; by his protestations of Christianity and Philanthropy he was bound by the clauses of the Berlin and Brussels Acts to countenance and encourage missionary enterprise, and in practice to admit to the vast regions of the Congo Valley the Heralds of the Cross. And this was his undoing, for thereby came those exposures of almost incredible abuses, which shocked the civilized world, and branded the arch culprit for all time as a murderer of millions. The same fatal blunder in his diplomacy worked on the spot salvation for the remnant of the people. They flocked from all quarters to the protection of the missionary, who was to them the personification of justice.
THE “INGLEZA”
What wonder that the word “Ingleza” (English) became a passport to any native community, no matter how wild and how averse to the white man. It is recorded that the Belgian rubber merchants, recognizing this, have sought safety when travelling amongst hostile tribes in adopting the name and manner of the Englishman. A certain Belgian tells how two of his colleagues when travelling were attacked by infuriated natives whose relatives had suffered at the hands of the rubber-mongers, and on being told that it was the natives’ intention to first mutilate them, as they themselves had been mutilated, and then to put them to death, one of them in his extremity sought refuge in the reputation of the missionary and replied, “What, put Ingleza to death!” While stoutly repudiating the assertion that they were English, the natives requested them to sing a hymn, and, fortunately for the desperate men, one of them remembered and sang a verse of a hymn he had learnt somewhere, and so amazed the natives that they let them go unharmed.
“Ingleza nta fombaka” (the Englishman never lies), has passed into a proverb and is spreading not only throughout the Congo, but even into Portuguese Angola. Possessing the unbounded confidence of the native mind, the Christian missionary, reinforced by practical medical work, may, if he desires, possess the vast unoccupied fields of the continent and obtain there an ever firmer foothold.
PROTESTANT EXPENDITURE
Within recent years, however, Protestant missions have taken up with increasing zeal industrial and commercial enterprises in the interests of the natives. We were unfortunate in being unable to visit what I am told is one of the finest industrial enterprises in West Africa—the Scotch Calabar Mission, but apart from those of the Roman Catholics we inspected several Protestant establishments. The British Government, recognizing what is now becoming common ground, that a purely literary and spiritual education does not produce the most robust type of civilized African, is now combining technical training in industries with literary studies, and no longer gives grants of lump sums to missions, but so much per head for the “finished product,” e.g. a native attaining a given literary and technical standard. In the Gold Coast the maximum per annum is 27s. 6d. per capita. In a school at Christiansborg, the annual upkeep of which costs £500, over £170 was earned in one year by the ability of the scholars in this way. The Primitive Methodists have a very effective little Industrial Mission on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. Under the vigorous and enlightened leadership of the Rev. Jabez Bell the mission situated at Bottler Point is now so prosperous that the returns from the cocoa farms together with subscriptions from the native members, more than cover the expenditure. If in any forthcoming rearrangement of the Map of Africa Fernando Po should come under Germany the character of the Primitive Methodist Mission on that island is bound to appeal to the practical-minded Teuton.
The price which Christian missions have paid for religious work amongst the pagan tribes of West Central Africa can never be correctly estimated. In the Congo alone Protestant missions have spent nearly one and a quarter millions sterling within the last twenty-five years. Out of some 550 missionaries, over 170 have gone to an early grave, many not living six months, some only a few days. These men and women were not only the matured youth of their countries, but they were compelled to pass the most rigid medical examination prior to acceptance by the missionary boards. They were indeed the flower of the Christian Church; moreover, the very difficulties and dangers which were known to exist, served to attract none but the strongest characters. Some people, incapable of recognizing sterling qualities in any but themselves, have written and spoken of missionaries as those who could not have made their way in any other sphere of life. Whatever may be true of other mission fields, so far as the missionaries of West Africa are concerned, the majority resigned good and assured positions and accepted a comparative pittance in order that they might serve what surely is the greatest of all causes. I have failed to obtain statistics from the Roman Catholic Church, but the foregoing applies equally to the devoted men of that body. With them, as with the Protestants, it has been via crucis via lucis.
The following statistics, so far as they are a guide to Christian progress, show some of the results achieved by the missionary forces of Protestantism in West Africa:—
| Adherents. | Scholars. | Annual Native Contributions. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sierra Leone | |||
| Anglican | 12,700 | 3,283 | £7,267 |
| Methodists | 7,584 | 2,665 | — |
| Nigeria | |||
| Anglican | 40,700 | 15,089 | £11,676 |
| United Free Church | 6,431 | 3,675 | £2,834 |
| Methodists, including French Dahomey, German Togoland, and Fernando Po | 7,137 | 3,793 | — |
| Gambia | |||
| Methodists | 1,058 | 594 | — |
| Gold Coast | |||
| Society for the Propagation of the Gospel | 3,273 | — | £677 |
| Methodists | 61,481 | 7,821 | — |
| Basel Mission | 35,000 | — | £9,500 |
| Congo | |||
| Baptists | 4,536 | 11,637 | — |
| American Baptists | 5,230 | 7,500 (est.) | — |
| Presbyterian | 10,000 | 8,000 | — |
| Swedish | 1,821 | 5,721 | — |
| French Protestants | 1,800 | 1,000 | — |
| Angola | |||
| Methodists | 750 | 1,083 | £325 |
| Other Missions in West Africa Estimate | 15,000 | 8,000 | 400 |
| Totals | 214,501 | 79,861 | £32,679 |