RELATIONS BETWEEN WHITES AND BLACKS 133 
of submission, and says to himself : “ This white is no 
more of a man than I am, for he is not a better one than 
I am.” 
I am not thinking merely of the fact that many un- 
suitable, and not a few quite unworthy men, go out 
into the colonies of all nations. I wish to emphasise 
a further fact that even the morally best and the 
idealists find it difficult out here to be what they wish 
to be. We all get exhausted in the terrible contest 
between the European worker who bears the responsi- 
bility and is always in a hurry, and the child of nature 
who does not know what responsibility is and is never 
in a hurry. The Government official has to record at 
the end of the year so much work done by the native 
in building and in road-maintenance, in service as 
carrier or boatman, and so much money paid in taxes ; 
the trader and the planter are expected by their com- 
panies to provide so much profit for the capital invested 
in the enterprise. But in all this they are for ever 
dependent on men who cannot share the responsibility 
that weighs on them, who only give just so much return 
of labour as the others can force out of them, and who, 
if there is the slightest failure in superintendence, do 
exactly as they like without any regard for the loss 
that may be caused to their employers. In this daily 
and hourly contest with the child of nature every 
white man is continually in danger of gradual moral 
ruin. 
My wife and I were once very much delighted with a 
newly-arrived trader, because in the conversations we 
had with him he was always insisting on kindness to- 
wards the natives, and would not allow the slightest 
ill-treatment of them by his foremen. The next springi 
