EMPIRE MAKERS IN MID AFRICA.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 May 1924, Page 4

EMPIRE MAKERS IN MID AFRICA.

TEACHING NIGERIANS TO IIE CIVILISED. ' LONDON, March o. Of a hundred homo-dwelling Britons, taken at random from any town in the United Kingdom hardly ono would have more than a vague idea of the able, gallant, self-sncricing work carried on by British Colonial administrators. Often among the deadly swamps and jungles of the tropics, generally unrecognised and ill-rewarded, these men spend their lives in organising, building up, teaching, developing, and governing those distant parts of the Empire that are not yet ready to assume the full task of self-administra-tion on a Dominion basis. Seldom has a single document conveyed so concisely and powerfully a vivid revelation of this little-known branch of Imperial service as does the Address delivered by the Governor oi Nigeria, Sir Hugh Clifford, G.C.M.G., to the newly constituted Legislative Assembly of the Colony, published copies of which have just reached England.

•Sir Hugh Clifford, who was formerly Governor of the Gold Coast, was well known during the twenty years of his earlier service-in Malay as a writer on M/dayan subjects and of excellent fiction. The same gifts he has now devoted to clothing with picture-quo flesh the dry bones of an ollieial review of the affairs of his Colony. “This substantial fragment cf lhe British Empire,” as lie justly terms Nigeria, is larger than the combined areas of Germany, Holland, Belgium, and two-thirds of I'Tanco together: it has a population of 18. J millions, and it is administered by one white man to every 70,0(10 natives. In this vast area, half of it dense forest and the rest windy desert, in parts of which, as the Governor’s report slates, “human meat was sold openly in the markets in quite recent times,” the machinery of modern civilised government has been brought into effective operation within tile brie) space of 20 years. It was only in 1000 that the British Imperial Government bought out the Royal Niger Company, a trading association of gentleman-ad-venturers of London, wlm kept soldiers as well as sidesmen in their pay. Since then cannibalism, slave-trad-ing, obscure black-magic rites of almost incredible barbarity—till the cruelty and the terror and the vice that uncounted centuries of barbarism had bred among the densely packed populations of huge native towns hidden in the almost impenetrable ‘'bush”— have been lifted from the lives of these millions of human beings. This lias been done, as Sir Hugh Clifford records, “wholly by the manner in which the native system of government is living made to fiyietion, by the spirit in which the Chiefs are being gradually and patiently taught to discharge the responsibilities that nlwavs lheorelieallr devolve on them

under that system.” The value of such achievement cannot lie computed in terms of money, yet in his Address Sir Hugh C'liiford protests with energy against what lie ilex l ines as “fantastically distorted and misleading" criticism of the Adininstrution of Nigeria as being ‘■extravagant and niiiefHcicnt” and characterised by the worst features of our Colaui.-il Government syteni of two lentuiies ago."

These accusal ions, which the Governor quotes from reports of speeches delivered by Lord Leverliulnie to shareholders’ meeting :;f the Niger Company and of Lever Brothers, have, lie says “boon broadcast throughout the newspaper- of the Empire.'’ Sir Hugh Clifford point- out (bat only threw times in the last eleven years has Nigeria's expenditure exceeded its re veil it-*, the last lime being the year Rail-22. queied by l.ord Leverliulnie.

lie asserts liiat the export duties on Nigerian products which Lut’d LovorImliue vehemently condemns were rendered inevitable by the tael that from I’ebruary I. 1010, the imports of spirits into Nigeria, from which till per cent, of the revenues of ibr Colony had been derived, was suddenly suppressed “by a stroke l of the uen of the Imperial Om-cTiiniciit.’" **

Whatever limy be the virus of those who trade with Nigeria. Sir Hugh Clifford report t that the l*.»):Ml.(lilO natives .under his administration are. unlike their lellmv subjects in Rritain, "in the singularly fortunate position of being able to regard external trade as nothing more ilmii a useful and acceptable adjunct to a livelihood, which, uillioiii taking it into account is already amply assured." Imported nidifies are onlv necessary to the comfort of a small fraction of the lirjiiilnl ion in wlion prosperity lias bred new tastes, for ii is a fact that local Nigorin-i "kings" whose fathers had never seen a white man now mainlain whole garages full of motor-ears, which are kept in running order by native mechanics alone.