UNDER GERMAN RULE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 281, 16 August 1918, Page 6

UNDER GERMAN RULE

FATE OF NATIVE RACES I PROBLEM FOR PACIFISTS If Germany's record as a colonial' Powor dealing with savJigo and semisavago races is not good it is her own fault. For her career in this capacity has run its whole course within tho tboastedly civilised alid enlightoned times of the last 40 years. We shudder at tho doings of somo of tho Spanish conquistadorcs in America or of certain early Portuguese adventurers in Africa and in the East, but they wandered forth from a Europe where barbarous, and brutal things wero a normal part of the life of the day. The lack of communications, too, freed them almost wholly from any control or restraint that might have been exercised by the Governments cr the public opini.on of their countri.es With somo modifications these conditions hold good of the earlier 'chapters of the history of British rotations with savage races. Tho record of German ''colonisation" Teaches back, for practical purposes, but one gen'eration. l r et how black and damning that record is can be seen in an article entitled "How Germany Treats the Native," 'by Evans Levin and M. Mont-gomcry-Cainpbell, which appears in the April number of the "Quarterly Review." The writers have relied almost wholly on German evidence, a fact which ought to disarm the captious criticisms of those curious persons who object to finding any country in tho wrong except their own, and expend so much pervewe ingenuity in finding excuses for the enemy when they do not flatly refuse to believe things which tell against him.

Without this precaution, indeed, ii would bo hard, even after tho revelations of German methods which tho experience of Belgium and of Northern France and of other unhappy regions have given to the world, to avoid some ; ingering scepticism as to tho atrocities carried out m Afrioa within tho last few years by the agonts and officials of a great "Christian, cultured, and civilised" Power—atrocities that would havo made Pizazzo blush, As a keynote wo find Genernl von Trotha, self-styled "Tho Great General of tho Highly Emperor," issuing this proclamation to the Hereros on October 2, 1904:-— "Within the German frontier overy Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. 1 will not tako over any more women or children, but,l will cither drive thera back to your people or have them fired on." The deeds fitted the words. It is reckoned that out of 60,000 Hereros 60,000 perished. Dernburg, ;i former Minister for tho Colonies, admitted that 75,000 natives were killed during tho rebellion in German East Africa, and Professor Schillings, at one time an official ill the Colonial Department, stated that within a few years 200,000 persons were shot down m the German colonies. Of the way in which German officers carried on war against women and children many revolting examples are quoted on German testimony. Lieutenant Dominik attacked a village in tho Cfimeroons which declined to accept German "protection." The whole adult population was massacred, and 52 children, according to figures quoted in the Reichstag, were thrown into the river. This same Dominik ordered his black troops to mutilate tho bodies of their ' reprimanded"—and had a statue erected to him at Jaunde. ~ The case of another officer, Captain Kannenberg, is vouched for by Herr Erzberger, a leader of the Centre Party, of whom a good deal has been heard lately. Annoyed by tho crying of a child, he fired into a native hut and injured the child and its mother. An inquiry was ordered, but nothing was done. In Togolaud the Fathers of i German Roman Catholic mission sent in a written statement netting forth -he hideously immoral acts of an official stationed ot Atakramo. As a result the Fathers were arrested and kept in prison for three weeks, while tho official went scot free. Some of the more revolting crimes ot German officials are not fit for publication. But the most hideous part of it is that when their, crimes, were exposed these officials received at most a merely nominal punishment. Flogging was a chosen instrument ot German "kultur." Hero we have evidence nearer home thai Africa, in those very Pacific Islands which some amongst us desire to see handed back to the tender mercies of the tiermans under the pretext.,- ot no annexations." Iff the Marshall Islands Landeshauptmann Brandeis ordered floggings in many cases where his action, even under the elastic German law on tho subject, was not legally permissible. Ho was given a mild reprimand and eventually a decoration. But Hot Knappe, German Consul-General . at Shanghai, stated in an official letter that he had witnessed tho floggings botii at Samoa and in the Marshall Islands, and that "the impression was a die-, giisting one both for the white men and the black." Herr Erzberger, in one of his speeches, stated that the missionaries had told him .repeatedly that if a South Sea Island native received 25 blows with a stick (thp maximum allowed by law, but often exceeded in practice), he was thoroughly ruined in body and mind, and that madness often resulted from a second flogging. Of tho brutal flogging of women and children ninny African cases arc quoted, while instances of men being flogged to death for the most trifling offences a/e recorded. Tn the faco of all these horrors what reality is there in all the fine .humanitarian "brotherhood of man" sentiments ■professed bv those pacifists and pro-Ger-mans who "desire to hand back to Germany her old colonics in Africa and in the Pacific with their millions of native inhabitants? Are the native tribes of Africa, full of gratitude for their liberation from intolerable oppression, to ho forced back under the yoke with the help of those who claim to speak for democracy and for humanity? Are our neighbours in the Pacific Islands again to be broken in body and mind, ,as Herr Erzberger put-i- it, and driven mad by tho brutal floggings ordered by German officials? Tho self-styled lovers of liberty who work to bring theso things about may perhaps console themselves by tho reflection that not all tho natives in German Africa at least were under the same crushing weight of» tyranny. Some were chosen as the agonts and tools of tho tyrants, and were rewarded by being allowed to act as petty tyrants towards their weaker brethren. One of Germany's dreams was, and is, a great Central African empire, stretching from tho Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, xl-om its more warlike natives she hopes, as General Smuts lias clearly • explained, to form a great anny which would enable lier to dominato't'he rest of Africa and to further her schemes of world-power. 11l her schemes the true interests of the inhabitants, whether of Africa or of tho South Sea Islands, have no part, as her past colonial record, full of deeds of biond and "frightfulness," denounced by individual Germans but condoned by officialdom, shows plainly to all but those who will not see.