Labour 85 



a negligible factor in international affairs, but the well- 

 educated young German who is being sent out to capture 

 South America commercially is a power to be reckoned 

 with. He is going to damage England more truly than 

 Dreadnoughts or gigantic airships." * 



Mr. Bingham was quite right when he made the above 

 statement and is doubly and trebly right to-day, but it is 

 not too late. If fathers and sons, be they Jingoes or 

 peace-at-any-price advocates, would only read and digest 

 Lord Bryce's book, they would at once see how true it is 

 that a country's greatest and most dangerous opponents 

 are not always those they encounter on the field of battle. 



Leaving Lord Bryce and South America, and coming to 

 Mr. Harris and Tropical Africa, the question of the preser- 

 vation from extermination of native labour supplies looms 

 prominent right through the book. When one thinks of 

 what the people of Europe, knowingly or unknowingly 

 have caused to be done in Equatorial Africa, it is almost 

 a relief to go back to Lord Bryce's book, and read about 

 Pizarro and the Spanish battues, the slaughter of 

 Atahuallpa, and the Peruvians in the square of Caxamarca, 

 under the sanctity of the Church in the person ofValverde, 

 who absolved the Spaniards and then urged them to 

 massacre the heretics, or to the atrocious slaughter of the 

 same Peruvian Indians when their miseries goaded them 

 to revolt under Tupac Amaru, in 1781 to 1783. Although 

 Tupac was torn to pieces by horses driven in opposite 

 directions, these murders were quickly passed over, whilst 

 the tortures of the red-rubber gatherers leave their mark 

 and their memory up to now. 



Two blacks, however, do not make one white, but we 

 cannot help owning that we closed Lord Bryce's book with 

 a far more hopeful feeling as regards the future of the 

 continent with which he deals, on account of the numbers 

 of Latin peasants and European commercial men who are 

 flocking there, than we could possibly own to experiencing 

 after reading Mr. Harris's views on re-marking the map of 

 Africa. The Germans may for a time put money into the 

 pockets of their friends at home, as Pizarro and the 

 conquistadores did for Spain ; but as surely as the Spanish 

 labour policy which killed off millions in the past, and (as 

 Lord Bryce shows) has rendered the South American 

 Indian practically useless to-day for development work. 



' Italics ours. — Ed., 7'. L 



