NEVER AGAIN!
GERMANY AND THE AFRICAN, COLONIES. (By Sydney Brooks, in the "Daily Mail.") Tho papers recently have contained three references to the future of the German colonies, Ono was Mr. Gokhale's suggestion that' German East Africa Ehould bo reserved for Indian colonisation and administered by the Government of India. Another was tho Pope's ingenuous proposal that the German colonics should be handed back in return for the restoration of Belgium and Northern France. Tho third was Mr. Walter Long's plain intimation that the universal feeling, popular and official, throughout the British Dominions is dead against any surrender of the conquered German possessions. But the feeling in the Dominions on that point cannot be one whit stronger than the feeling in Great Britain. An Allied victory means the blotting out of Greater Germany. It means that all of Germany's oversea dependencies' will be treated as the spoils of war. Why ? Not because the British Empire neeils more territory. Wo have enough of it alrendy, and the German additions will not bo particularly valuable. The reason why Germany can never be allowed to regain control of her oolonies in the Pacific or in Africa is that she cannot be trusted to govern them in n civilised mannor. Wherever she lias effectfcd a lodgment she has used it as she lias used her position in Europe—to build up a formidable power and to- intrigue against her neighbours. The German oolonies have never been oolonies. in any real sense. They have been nests of machineguns and of plotting officials. It is doubtwhether the whole of Greater Germany ever contained 10,000 genuine German settlers. The German colonies have simply been so many parade grounds on which German officers drilled the natives to carry out schemes of conquest, and General Smuts has warned us that if Germany could tap the man-power of Central Africa she might renew on an evor greater scale her present attempt to subdue the world.
Therefore if there is to be security in Africa or anywhere else Germany must once and for all be eliminated. But there is another reason why Germany's colonies are lost to her for ever. It is that the natives would rather be exterminated than pass again under German
vule. Even if we were to restore her possessions to her unconditionally she would havejo reconquer them one by one. Her bullying insensitiveness has. earned for her the unanimous hatred of the 12,000,000 natives who were once under her sway. There aro blaoK spots on the record of all European peoples in their dealings with Africans and Asiatics, but there is none so black as the damning tale of Germany's treatment of the Hereros. All the crassuess and all the cruelty of which the German mind and character are capable were summed v. in that horrible episode. Germany's rule in Africa was a role of terror, and t: enthusiasm with which the natives every, whero welcomod the French and British deliverers set the seal of utter condemnation on the whole spirit and system of her government. Bitter as is the European hatred of Germany it is as nothing compared with the passion of loathing and revulsion she inspired in her African subjects. To force them'baclc under her rule would be an act of unmitigated betrayal.
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Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 24, 23 October 1917, Page 6
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547NEVER AGAIN! Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 24, 23 October 1917, Page 6
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