It is difficult to imagine a tract of country more ideally suited to the cultivation of cocoa than that of Mayumbe. The hills and valleys abound in water-courses, the soil is good and the climate reminds the traveller very much of the Gold Coast territories. Some of the plantations run for miles along winding valleys, but the great trouble with Mayumbe is that perpetual nightmare—common to the whole of West Africa—scarcity of labour!
Within three days’ steam of the Congo, the British colony of the Gold Coast has solved the question of labour, has started an industry which gives the native producer a return of over a million and a half sterling per annum, has provided the European consumer with a great cocoa area which twenty-five years ago produced little beyond internecine warfare and jujus, and yet the Belgian Government has never even given a practical consideration to this unique example of colonial expansion which could so easily be applied to the Congo.
Rubber and cotton have but a small future in the Congo. Sisal, gold and copper have a possibility, but cocoa, the products of the palm tree, and any other vegetable oils, give promise of a real future, provided cheap transport and sound statesmanship are forthcoming.
An oppressive sense of hopelessness affects the traveller in the Congo as he speeds up and down those mighty rivers, across the numerous lakes, or tramps through the silent forests. He sees the possibilities of that land, the earth he treads gives forth an intoxicating odour of fertility. The tribes amongst whom he lives and moves are nature’s children and the little incidents of daily travel impress him with the fact that, given a chance, those sturdy bodies and stout limbs could turn Congoland into a paradise of affluence and luxury. Then, as he muses on these things and dreams of ideal homes and villages, and tropical plantations pouring forth exchange values of oil and cocoa for cotton goods and hardware, the practical mind, like Newton’s apple, comes down to earth again and weighs actualities and asks the pertinent question—“Can Belgium do it?”
The Congo demands large financial aid from the Mother country. This is a fact which has never been realized by the ordinary Belgian—and he might object if he knew. Even the British subject, whose colonial conception has grown with him from childhood, has very little idea of the large sums of money which are found by Great Britain towards aiding her Crown colonies along the path of progress. Belgium cannot expect to run the Congo successfully without large drafts from her home Exchequer; her colony, measuring nearly a million square miles, will require at the very least a million pounds sterling per annum for twenty years. Belgium can beyond question find that sum of money, providing her people are prepared to share the black man’s burden which their late Sovereign made so heavy. The difficulty, however, is that King Leopold and his entourage made such prodigious fortunes that the Belgian people have always regarded the Congo as a veritable El Dorado. The Belgian colonial authorities reiterated again and again, until quite a recent date, that the Congo would never involve the nation in financial sacrifices. Couple this impression, so wickedly fostered by politicians who should have known better, with the fact that the Belgian has no colonial conception, and the reader will agree that any statesman will have a difficult task in persuading the Belgian nation to make large and continuous grants from the Home Exchequer.
BRITISH COLONIAL CONCEPTION
The British conception rests upon a profound belief in the old scriptural paradox: “He that loseth his life will save it.” The Colonial Office in Downing Street does not, like its sister bureau—the Foreign Office—display texts of scripture on its ceilings, and the Colonial Secretaries might not in this material age admit scriptural guidance in Imperial affairs, but woven into the fibre of our administration is a basis of Christian philosophy which, though it admits occasional incidents of a regrettable nature, yet pursues in the long run the straight course of sacrificing men and money for backward nations and countries, quite regardless of consequences. The cynic will say, “Yes, with the certainty that the goose well cared for will lay golden eggs.” Certainly, but that is part of the Divine contract for pursuing that which is right. This, however, is what few Belgians understand—or any other colonial Power for that matter—but it is part and parcel of colonial statecraft without which tropical colonies at least can never be a success.
The financial problem, difficult though it may be, is the easiest of solution. That of finding the men is at present insoluble. This is, in part at least, due to another fatal error made by Belgium when she annexed the Congo—the retention in her service of all the old Congo officials. They are there to-day, many of them pressing on to higher positions in the colony. The fact that these men, trained to oppression by King Leopold and openly upholding the old Leopoldian conceptions, are still in high favour does not escape the quick-witted native, and of course tends to alienate still further the native and governing communities.
LACK OF MEN
There are, however, other dangers arising from this situation. These “old hands” are educating the juniors, and in the process are instilling into their young and inexperienced minds a dissatisfaction with present conditions and emphasizing to them that the older system of “teaching the natives the dignity of labour” was better all round. They are always careful to add “without atrocities, of course,” but what they cannot see is that the old Leopoldian system was impossible “without atrocities.” It will be readily agreed that when the burden of the Congo begins to make itself felt upon the Belgian nation these reactionaries—“Men from the spot,” “Men of long experience”—will find a ready echo throughout Belgium. Again, as in the financial position so also in the administrative future of the colony, the call comes for the really bold statesman, strong enough to break completely with the past and to clean out of the Congo these soi dísant administrators, who, incapable of appreciating colonial requirements, should return to their original employments of running music halls, tram driving, breaking stones on the highway, ’bus conductors, waiters, bricklayers, clerks, and so forth.