The first, and perhaps the greatest, difficulty which confronts the European Socialist is the choosing of Governors to whom the positively awful powers indispensable to a communistic society are to be entrusted. If a race of beings could be obtained when and as required from a neighbouring planet, whose practical superiority in virtue, science, wisdom, and strength was so manifest as to be universally acclaimed, this difficulty would disappear, and we might with composure await the decision of popular elections with all their defects and advantages. But in the absence of this dispensation the problem of how rulers are to be selected, and how, having been selected, they are to be controlled or changed, remains the first question of politics, even in days when the functions of government are, in general, restricted to the modest limits of laissez-faire.
In Uganda, however, this difficulty does not exist. A class of rulers is provided by an outside power as remote from and, in all that constitutes fitness to direct, as superior to the Baganda as Mr. Wells's Martians would have been to us. The British administration is in its personnel absolutely disinterested. The officials draw their salaries, and that is all. They have no end to serve, except the improvement of the country and the contentment of its people. By that test and that test alone are they judged. In no other way can they win approbation or fame. They are furthermore controlled in the exercise of their functions by a superior authority, specially instructed in this class of administration, and itself answerable to a Parliament elected on a democratic franchise. At no point in the whole chain of command is there any room for corruption, usurpation, or gross inefficiency.
It is clear that larger powers could be entrusted to the State in regard to the labour of its citizens than would ever be accorded to private employers. The subjects of every European Power have accepted the obligation of military service to defend their respective countries from external attack. The Baganda, relieved from this harsh obsession, have no higher duty than to cultivate and develop the beautiful land they live in. And if it were desired to organize scientifically, upon a humane and honourable basis, the industry of an entire population, and to apply the whole fruits of their labour to their own enrichment and elevation, no better conditions are likely to be discovered than those which now exist in Uganda.
It might at any rate be worth while to make such an experiment, if only as a prelude to those more general applications of the principles of Socialism which are held in some quarters to be so necessary.
CHAPTER VII
'ON SAFARI'
Now the reader must really look at the map. To this point we have proceeded by train and steamer with all the power and swiftness of modern communication. If we have traversed wild and lonely lands, it has been in a railway carriage. We have disturbed the lion with the locomotive, and all our excursions have but led back to the iron road. But at Ripon Falls we are to let go our hold upon machinery. Steam and all it means is to be shut off. We are "to cut the painter," and, losing the impulsion of the great ship, are for a while to paddle about upon a vast expanse in a little cock-boat of our own. Back towards Mombasa, three days' journey will cover nine hundred miles. Forward, you will be lucky to make forty in the same time. Return at this moment is swift and easy. In a week it will be perhaps impossible. Going on means going through.
Everywhere great pathways are being cut into Africa. We have followed for nearly a thousand miles one leading from the East towards the centre. Far away from the North another line has been thrust forward by British efforts in peace and war. From Alexandria to Cairo, from Cairo to Wady Halfa, from Halfa to Berber, from Berber to Khartoum, from Khartoum to Fashoda, from Fashoda to Gondokoro, over a distance of nearly three thousand miles, stretches an uninterrupted service of trains and steamers. But between the landing-stage at Jinja and the landing-stage at Gondokoro there opens a wide gulf of yet unbridged, unconquered wilderness and jungle, across which and through which the traveller must crawl painfully and at a foot's pace, always amid difficulty and never wholly without danger. It is this gulf which we are now to traverse.
Between Nimule and Gondokoro.
Capt. Read. Mr. Marsh. Dr. Goldie. Mr. Ormsby.
Col. Wilson. Mr. Churchill. Capt. Dickinson. Lieut. Fishbourne, R.E.