GERMAN TERROR IN AFRICA

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 209, 15 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

GERMAN TERROR IN AFRICA

NATIVE KING WHO WAS BURIED ALIVE IX CEMENT. MURDER AS A SPORT. He Is a native trader, dealing in ,'t miscellaneous assortment of everything readily saleable and from salts and senna to saws and door handles; a we.l-cdueated man, a graduate of an English college of music, and, rightly, very proud of the fact; with a mind and voice as rotund as his body. He is travelled, too; was educated in Lagos, has lived in Siena Leone, and was a school teacher in a Gorman colony until —well, until he could stand it no longer.

We met. as we often do, in the cool of the evening, and I accepted his invitation to his " upstairs," over his little shop for a chat. The conversation turned at length and inevitably on the war.

" Shall I tell you master what we Africans think? Me I see plenty natives every day from the bush, and I talk with them, and we say, 'God Almighty let this war come on Europe to show them what the Germans are!" L tell you, s : r, them not men—them dev. ils! Now Belgium and France and England know for true what we Africans tell them years before the war. The Germans too cruel! too deceitful! Want they have been doing this wartime in Belgium and France they did all time here! Me, I saw it myself.

SHOT FOR FUN, " Suppose some Germans sitting hero and a black man pass along that beach —poof! They shoot him one time (at once) for nothing at all, and laugh to see him dead! We hear they hurt women and kill small children in B.e'gium. Well, tbey do the same her?. f hey tie a man up in his own house m his chair and do so—oh long before the war! Suppose black man is owed some money by German merchants and ho beg for it—they no pay him. Suppose he 'carry them to court'—no good. First, they give black man twenty-five lashes for coming, and then merchants send letter to court, and they give hLr. twenty-five more! Nobody to appeal tc —all is Government, merchants, railway, missionaries too —all Government —no good-for African! You know that old Mamnr'e FabwagS who lives near your bungalow? Ask her what they did to her brother!"

I did, subsequently, and this wa6 the storv told me by that weeping woman. The' brother had been clerk to a German firm in Kepi for nine years. He and his family jointly owned some coconut plantations, and he was induced fo sell the copra to Ins firm. The money had to be divided among many, and after waiting for months he asked his master to settle the account. The reply was a revolver shot which k-lled him on the spot. The German then went round to the dead man's house and shot his w ife—an exp;ctant mother—and buried them both "in one box." This was two years before the war. About the same time the King or the Kamerucs, merely on suspicion ot having "written letters to the English." was put into a hole in the ground, cement was poured in up to his neck, and he was left to die. TO BE BI'RNT ALIVE.

Dugadoo and Gaga, Kings of Panau and Anecho respectvely were accused of writing articles in the "Gold Coast Leader" against the German Government on the strength of a copy of that paper being found in their houses. There were also copies of the " Christian Herald" and some German papers, but it wis in vain they protested that the\ might as well be accused of writing for those papers too on the same kind of evidence. They were arrested and sentenced to death- burning alive witn petrol was the fate prepared for them, and everything was ready when they escaped—being rescued by the Pre-sh, as war had broken out meanwhv-* " The people could not leave tho German colonics: they were turnel l-ark and flogged if they tried to do so. Every man, woman, and child had a ' umw. and all had to work for the Gmrnment for nothing for two weeks at a time. No chop (food), no nothing • But they are cunning, these Germam ; Look at that boundary palaver! The Ungl'sh Government sent out a chief man from the Colonial Office to set le rh ? boundary. He went to Lome. :»u4 '.ho Germans fooled him. They ke x it bun there and made a big fuss of him three or four days, and then they take him and shaw him where boundary s W'.;.dd be not call our eh ; efs to show him as well ? No! he listened to the Germans, and they took in all the big vil lage-s to be for them. When the people living there knew this they left—thousands of them—and went far away t. the mines rather than let Germans catch them. "I'll tell you a secret. s ; r. Many )f we Africans" fear that when the war is over the Germans will come back here. Some of the nat : ves are keeping lists of people's names who 'talk bad' against the Germans, to give to them *f they come back, so that they can be 'good men' to the Germans. THE NATIVES' FEAR.

"We are afraid England will be too kir.d and give back some Germau colonies—land if so, which? Australia won't let them have the Pacific Islands. South Africa won't give up South-West Africa or East Africa, but here on the west coast what can we say if oar Government says yes?

"I tefi you, sir, and moreover, though every African prays to God that the Allies may win, som.e of the hush people—not wa scholars, of course— toTl me they think Germany must be winning, because the price of everything keeps on going up. Everything—runi. tobacco, sugar, flour, everything ton (bar now! And ther are stupid, too. I say to them, Do you sec any German ..hips com-' here now?' And they say. 'No, but those Germans are too cunning; they hide their sh'ps till the war is over."

"Above all. sir, do you know what puzzles and alarms us Africans most of all? It s that fighting in Ireland: we can't understand it at all!"

I assured him it was only a few people led astray by German influence and money, and pointed to the splendid Irishmen who were fighting at the front.

The millons of our fellow-subjects in Africa may he inarticulate, but they are loyal—and watching! "Why don't the English Government take half .1 million or so of our young men to help them?" 1 have been asked many t mi s. Why not ? They would be proud to be asked, and quick to respond. NEMO.