MEN OF THE TREES 



point of view. Moreover, just as we were flattering our- 

 selves that with our advent inter-tribal warfare had van- 

 ished, the European war obtruded itself into the heart of 

 Africa and showed the Africans that what they had be- 

 fore regarded as war, was, in comparison, merely child's 

 play. If we stop to think seriously and take this — the war 

 factor — into consideration, we might find it difficult to 

 decide whether from the African point of view the ad- 

 vantages of our presence have not up till now been out- 

 weighed by the disadvantages. It is even open to argu- 

 ment whether the many privileges of Western civilization 

 justify our replacing simplicity by complexity, or en- 

 deavouring to substitute an industrial system which when 

 all is said and done, is not always effective. A return to 

 slavery would have less horrors for the African native 

 than the treadmill routine of factory wage-slaves who, 

 having sunk their individuality in a number or a letter, 

 ring on and off as if they were merely cogs in the wheel 

 of a great heartless machine. 



It is difficult to estimate the damage to European pres- 

 tige resulting from the Great War, in which many thou- 

 sands of Africans came into conflict with each other. 

 The exigencies of warfare necessitated the recruiting of 

 carriers from the African Highlands, who were taken 

 from their natural haunts and transplanted hundreds of 

 miles away, where they fought in low-lying lands for 

 which they were constitutionally unfitted. Again, sol- 

 diers were recruited from the tropical coast and subjected 



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