lO 
LAND dc WATER 
September 7, 1916 
made plain to even so bungling a politician as the War 
I.ord, how the wind would blow in i(U4 — forced the 
Kaiser to withdraw from the extreme position he had 
taken, but how far his backdown was rated from being 
even a diplomatic defeat by the (Icrnians, may be 
gathered from the words of an officer of the (icrman 
South-West African forces whom 1 encountered in 
Damaraland a couple of years before the war. His 
remarks were occasioned by my rather warm com- 
mendation of the work I had recently obscrv ed the I'rench 
doing in North Africa, in the course of which I had implied 
that France's problems in Algeria and Morocco had been 
simpHficd by the settlement of the Agadir incident. 
A German Bargain 
" I suppose you think that Germany suffered a setback 
in the Alorocco affair," he sneered. " That's what most 
of the world appears to think. But what did Germany 
have in Morocco ? Not a kilometre of territory, not a 
special right. So. Well, we renounce what we have in 
Morocco — nothing— and receive in return many thou- 
sands of kilometres of the French Kameruns. That was 
I bargain of which even j'ou Yankees might be proud. 
Moreover, when the time conies for Germany to take 
ivhat she wants in Morocco — or in any other part of 
French Africa— we \vill take it— in Paris." 
One can readily see how a nation which regards treaties 
IS scraps of paper, primarily designed to blind their 
rivals and mask their owii machinations, would hold 
that it had really received "something for nothing " ; 
that in gi\ing promises —which could at any time be 
broken— for real territory', it was actually winning a 
clean-cut diplomatic victory. Thus this German 
" officer and gentleman," in assuring me that his country 
had really gi\en " nothing " in Morocco, fully prepared 
me— two years before the mask was tinally- thrown aside 
at the invasion of Belgium— for the way this pariah 
among governments would treat international obhgations 
at the first occasion that suited its purposes. 
Still Britain and France continued to manifest an 
unexampled tolerance in the face of the Kaiser's now fully 
revealed ambitions, and it is a thoroughly established fact 
that they were willing to allow Germany— by purchase 
and exchange from Belgium and Portugal— to increase 
its African holdings to nearly as much again as was 
already held, or something like 2,000,000 square miles. 
Sir Harry Johnston stated this fact unequivocally at an 
address before the Roj'al (ieographical Society last year. 
" From iqio to the outset of the present war," said this 
African authority, " we viewed with actual fa\-our a 
much enlarged German Africa provided only that Germany 
left the Mediterranean regions alone." 
Few outsiders knew very much of what was going on 
in Germany's African colonies during the last ten years ; 
few had any chance to find out, even had they desired. 
I visited Dar-es-Salaam in 1005, and, in the lirnited time 
at my disposal, was unable to secure permission from the 
authorities to hunt in the regions I desired to. Seven 
years later — in the course of an extended tour of Africa, 
I made to collect data bearing on railways and railway 
building— I crossed both German East and German 
South-west Africa. My feet were entangled in red tape 
at every turn, however, and as for getting facts about the 
railways, it was ahnost out of the question. 
It is no exaggeration to say that the alien visitor was 
more carefully watched in (iermany's African colonies 
in peace time than he is in lingland to-day, with a war 
going on. The reason for all this I fully understood when 
I found several of the railways built through deserts of 
no commercial possibilities whatever — purely strategic 
lines— and saw the fortified bridge-heads, magazine , and 
block-houses with fartillery emplacements. 
Practically all news from Germany's African colonies 
underwent a censorship scarcely less strict than that 
which is in force in England at the present moment. 
From what I saw and was told, I learned that the treat- 
ment of the natives at certain regions of East and South- 
west Africa transcended, on the score of bnitality, anj'- 
thing that went on in Belgian territory, and yet— thanks 
to the freedom with which a certain band of senti- 
mentalists were allowed to gather data in the latter 
region, while no chance was given for similar investiga- 
tion in the former— the world heard much of " Congo 
Atrocities," and nothing whatever of the indescribable 
inhmnanitics practised by the Germans. Even the details 
of Gennany's unspeakable campaign against the Hereros 
did not find their way to the' outside world until Botha 
discovered archives bearing on them when he captured 
NN'indhoek, and the worst revealed here is said not to 
have been published yet. 
But even had this latter data never come to light, von 
Trotha's terrible proclamation against the Hereros — 
which somehow managed to escape the censorship — 
would brand the nation which was responsible for it with 
infamy till the end of time. " Within German borders," 
read the manifesto of this precursor of von Bissing. " every 
Herero, with or without ritle, with or without cattle, 
will be shot. I will take no more women or children. 
I will drive them back or have them fired on." 
The total lack of friction between the British authorities 
and the natives in occupied regions of German South-west 
and East Africa — details of most abhorrent atrocities 
during German rule in the latter colony, have been pre- 
vented from reaching the outer world by the censorship 
— is the best evidence of where the true responsibility 
for these troubles should be placed. 
Perhaps I cannot give a better summary of the way 
the respective efforts of Germany, France and Great 
Britain impressed me — two years before the war, and at 
the conclusion of 25,000 miles of travel in all parts of 
Africa — than by quoting these paragraphs which I wrote 
shortly afterwards in an American magazine : 
Nine-tenths of the railway mileage of Africa is included in 
the British systems of the Nile Valley and South Africa, 
and the French systems of Algeria andTunisia. The work 
of the Germans, which ranks third in magnitude, is con- 
fined to ambitious beginnings in the jungles of the east 
and west coasts of the tropics. The energies of each 
nation have been characteristic. The Briton, respond- 
ing to the present need and ever zealous for the material 
uplift of his subject races, has built railways to help him 
carry The White Man's Burden. The Frenchman, 
eager, imaginative, his eyes alight with dreams, has pushed 
his railway projects in order to rivet together with bands 
of steel an African empire which dwarfs in size the area laid 
under tribute by the first Napoleon. The German, stolid, 
confident, one-purposed, sword in one hand and theodolite 
in the otiier, fights his way and runs his levels through the 
pestilential jungles of the tropics as a part of the day's work 
in winning the Fatherland its implacably-rcsolved-upon 
" place in the sun." 
Present results of these widely diverse policies are about 
what one would expect. The British lines— even the 
most impossibly located of them—are paying handsomely 
the P'rench systems are paving in spots, and the German 
beginnings not at all. This is to-day's •' balance sheet,' 
and, if commercial considerations only are to be taken 
into account, to-morrow's will hardly show great changes. 
Invents in Europe will have much to do in determining 
to what extent the various policies will be vindicated 
on political grounds. 
" Events in Europe " have indeed given the answer. 
What the British and French have built— not only rail- 
ways and other physical things, but ethical and spiritual 
things as well— have stood the acid test, while what the 
Germans built— both railways and other things— have 
failed in the very work for which they were primarily 
designed. •' 
As to the future of what were once German African 
colonies, every consideration, both of humanity and 
expediency, would seem to dictate their retention by the 
Powers that have conquered them. The state of the 
native in the British and French colonies, on the one 
hand, contrasted with that of those in the once German 
colonies, on the other, is sufficient to weigh down the 
humanity scale. As for expediency, no one— after seeing 
what Germany will do with her submarines if given the 
chance— can seriously believe that it would do to allow 
that nation to establish a strong naval base at a point 
dominating the trade routes to South-east Africa, Aus- 
tralia and even India. Another consideration to throw 
into the material scale is the fact that the clearing out of 
he Germans will not only make it possible to realise 
Rhodes dream of an " All Red Cape-to-Cairo " 
Railway, but will also make practicable the building of a 
me across Prcmch North Africa, by way of Lake Tchad 
to the region of Victoria Nyanza, that would cut down by 
several days the time between South Africa and Europe 
even over the " Cape-to-Cairo " itself ' 
