86 How to Pay for the War 



even for his own benefit alone, so will the German policy, 

 by its severity and the persistent strenuous effort that it 

 demands of the native, either exterminate him altogether 

 or reduce him to a degree of hopeless, sullen, passiveness 

 that will cause future generations to do as little with him 

 as one can do to-day with the Indians around Titicaca or 

 elsewhere on the Montana of Peru. It is not only that the 

 German is so cruel, but that he is not in Africa for the 

 sake of the Africans, nor solely and purely for the sake of 

 the shareholders in Germany. He is there for political 

 and military reasons, and such a policy as they wish to 

 see in force is bound to crush and kill out the natives 

 altogether in time. 



If Equatorial Africa is to continue to pour out its 

 shiploads of raw material for European and American 

 factories, thereby enabling their people to be employed, 

 and to make and send to Africa manufactured goods in 

 return, there is one policy, and one only to follow, and 

 that is to let Africa be opened out and planted up by the 

 African for his own benefit, and not for the sake of share- 

 holders or individual holders in Europe. If the German, 

 Frenchman, or Belgian persists in any other policy, they 

 will find in a hundred years or less that the territories they 

 own will become as useless to them as the vine-rubber 

 areas, or even as the planted centres, rapidly dying out, 

 already are to Belgium. 



To work Indians or negroes as they must be worked 

 to put out the produce they do in certain areas, can only 

 be done by inflicting severe, if not downright cruel 

 punishments on them. Such a life quickly reduces their 

 numbers — first, because it removes the wish to breed, or 

 causes excessive mortality among the children that do come 

 along ; and, secondly, because the misery and suffering it 

 entails on the natives kills them off far more rapidly than 

 they can be replaced. 



We sincerely hope, therefore, that every one who wishes 

 to see the trade of the Tropics maintained and increased 

 will study all these books. With whatever object they 

 were written, they show that if the Tropics, especially 

 Africa, are to continue to put forth the increased exports 

 that Europe and America are certain to demand of them 

 twenty-five, fifty, and a hundred years hence, a radical 

 and immediate change must be effected in the way the 

 natives are being treated and exploited for the sole benefit 

 of others. We say this quite as much for the benefit of 



