CHAPTEK IX 

 COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



TO avoid lengthy titles and adopt plain ones, I have headed this 

 chapter " Commercial Prospects." In reality, however, I cannot 

 help making it a kind of apologia on the whole question of recent 

 political enterprise in Africa. I am only too well aware that the British 

 taxpayer in every class, the earnest philanthropist who repudiates 

 commercial gain as a justification for j)lanting the British flag — the editor 

 of Truth, in short, whom the anxious advocate for extending British rule 

 always has in his mind's eye as the person to whom he mentally addresses 

 his justification — are asking now with renewed force whether the statesmen 

 of both ])arties between 1885 and 1894 did not gravely blunder when 

 they yielded to public sentiment and assumed for Great Britain heavv 

 responsibilities in tropical and unhealthy Africa. These critics point to 

 the wars which have occurred between the British forces and the natives 

 as a proof that our protection was not desired and had to be imposed by 

 force. They single out an individual atrocity as a sample of the white 

 man's daily conduct, and having thus shown the fallacy from the philan- 

 thropical point of view of our expensive efforts to administer an area in 

 tropical Africa which equals the united extent of Europe without Russia, 

 they brush aside the question of commercial gain either by declaring it 

 to be non-existent and not likely to come to pass, or by alleging that it 

 is no justification for that shedding of blood which seems to have been 

 inevitable in the founding of these Protectorates. I will deal later with 

 the commercial question. Let me say something on the philanthropic 

 aspect. There is, it is true, also a political justification for some of these 

 Protectorates. Their proximity to places like Aden and Egypt, or their 

 long connection with Indian commerce, might be considered some small 

 measure of justification for the expenditure of money in their acquirement. 

 But this alone would certainly not be sufficient to justify the lengths to 

 which we have gone. I will confine myself, therefore, to the })hilanthropic 

 and commercial results of this policy, and endeavour to show that they 

 have not been unworthy of the sacrifices made. 



277 



