METHODS OF COLONISATION

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1601, 22 August 1916, Page 4

METHODS OF COLONISATION

Describing a visit to Tanga, a port in German East Africa, Air C. F. G. Mastcrman says: Street aflor street, all at right angles to each other, all paved, ail macadamised, all planted and all named, did we cross until we happened on the station. This in its turn was huge and solid and permanent, with half-a-dozen railway lines. There was no one about, not even an official, which, perhaps, was not surprising, as few railwayman in Africa trouble to be at the station unless a train is expected. But what seemed more surprising for a terminus at a port, there was no sign that there had been any trains —no trucks, no engines, no heaps of glowing cinders, nothing. It was

as orderly and lifeless as a cemetery. Of course macadam and avenues and solidity are admirable things; only they are not colonisation. But the ratio of officials to settles* in Tanga must have been aw about 25 to 1.. I knew little of subsidised colonies or the chronic insolvency of the German colonial system.. But one could see it for oneself; it lay open to every eye. Tanga would have had to “boom” abnormally to repay all that nonreproduetive expenditure, and in those days at any rate Tanga was not “booming” at nil. The contrast with an English colony, Momhassa which we saw a day or two later, was unmistakable. At Momhassa corrugated iron ruled supremo. The station, for example, was a big shanty in obvious need of repairs. Momhassa was plainly not planned at all; it would probably have done with a little more planning, it was extremely untidy. But it wav “booming,” it was very enormously alive. We dined with one of the officials, a charming man with a mild eye and a slow melancholy voice, wiio was plainly adored by the natives, A gang of them who wore working at the station when we w r ere (here Hocked after him with beaming faces, like children after a favourite teacher. He stood on the verandah, and in a level tone explained that “we hope to have the dry dock down there open next year—and up there is the site for the cathedral. Oh, yes; if things go ahead we shall he competing with tile Argentine in frozen meat soon..’’ And there were white women, there, the wives of settlers and officials. That spelt more permanency than all the stone and avenues of Tanga.