There seems to be a general impression that the British administrations are the worst in this respect, and that their record is not without fault few would deny, but I am confident that the moral sentiment of the British Government and people will save them from falling so low as the French administration—an easy first in almost all that is retrograde in Equatorial Africa. France to-day recognizes the terrible evils which follow in the train of Absinthe-drinking in the homeland, yet she can calmly look on whilst natives stream into the little drink stores of French Congo with their 25 cent pieces to purchase “nips” of what I was assured by the vendor was the worst form of drink in the whole of the African continent. When we were at Gaboon, an official informed me that quite recently two young Europeans had taken to drinking trade Absinthe, and in each case had died in a manner which called for a post-mortem examination, the results of which horrified the examining doctors.
The Portuguese have long been regarded as by far the worst sinners, but it is the fashion in West Africa to place every sin at the door of that not unkindly nation, yet however deeply they may have sinned in the past, there are happily signs of repentance and reform. In Angola the Government has recently decreed the abolition of distilleries throughout the colony, providing, out of their extreme poverty, considerable sums as compensation for the manufacturers.
The Belgians lead the way among the colonizing nations in West Africa, for in their colony they are bringing the prohibition line ever nearer the coast and it is now impossible even in the “open” areas for a native to purchase any intoxicating liquor between Friday night and Monday morning.
“BANKING” SPIRITS
If the natives as a rule dislike alcohol, if the natives of West Africa are less drunken than Europeans, what happens to this ceaseless and increasing flow of spirits into the West African colonies? “Over one million cases of Hamburg spirit are retailed to the natives here by a single firm within a year.” Such was the remark passed by a dispassionate Government official to me when in Southern Nigeria. There are twenty or thirty big merchants in Lagos alone, who handle huge consignments of this spirit by every steamer. Sitting on the banks of the Lagoon, one sees an endless stream of small craft passing to and fro with their loads of gin, going to a hundred different centres, some with only six cases, others with fifty and even one hundred. I visited a farmer up country, who admitted to me that he retailed over £1000 worth of gin and rum every year. The same story met us at Abeokuta, where something like thirty-three per cent. of the imports are spirituous liquors, and the returns published show that in the month of January, 1911, out of a customs revenue of £2644, no less than £2450 came from duty on spirits.
None deny, because they cannot, this prodigious importation of spirits into the Gold Coast and Southern Nigerian territories; but one thing baffles every observer—where does it go? The Egba and Yoruba people of Southern Nigeria are not drunken. We could find very few white people who had seen any appreciable degree of drunkenness; generally it was suggested that drinking took place at night. In order to test this theory, I went several times, at a late hour, quietly through the lowest parts of Lagos town. I saw many things, some of an appalling nature, but no single drunken man or woman could I find, and the statistics for convictions barely show one per thousand of the population.
Yet we cannot escape from the official figures. Over six and a half million gallons of spirituous liquor of European manufacture were imported last year into the British colonies of Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gold Coast.
What happens to this increasing stream of spirits? No one has ever been able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Some say that being a currency, millions of bottles of gin are “banked,” i.e., stored; some say that large quantities are consumed at festivals; others assert that it disappears in secret drinking. I am inclined to think, however, from visits paid at all hours to the people’s homes, that spirit drinking is spread over a much wider area than has hitherto been thought; that is to say, moderate drinking prevails widely, but that at present few of the natives drink to excess. If the moderate drinking of to-day is leading the people to drunkenness to-morrow, then a catastrophe of first magnitude will fall upon West Africa. Drunkenness is admittedly on the increase in the Gold Coast, and this is so obvious that three years ago the Governor sounded a warning by saying that he recognized drunkenness was becoming one of the most dangerous enemies to Christianity.
What is to be done? Everyone admits that the sale of intoxicating liquor to natives (many would also add—and to whites) in Africa is an evil; all are agreed that the danger is potential rather than actual. But very few seem to have any other remedy than—repression, prohibition, high licenses, heavy duties; these are the methods which find greatest favour to-day.
Prohibition is an extremely difficult proposition for any African colony, and it is well-nigh impossible where the French and German boundary lines march with that of another colony. If, for example, Great Britain proclaimed prohibition for the Gold Coast, what guarantee have we that German native traders would not smuggle spirits across the Volta into the Gold Coast, or the French traders carry it over the Dahomean border into Southern Nigeria?