GERMANY'S MORAL RIGHT.

Taihape Daily Times, 12 September 1918, Page 5

GERMANY'S MORAL RIGHT.

TO RULE NATIVE RACES. A TEEEIBLE INDICTMENT. PROM GERMAN OFFCIAL DOCUMENTS. Received 10.25 a.m. LONDON, September 11. Mr Gorges, Administrator in South west Africa, has presented one of the most sensational reports issued in connection with German colonial methods. It constitutes a damning indictment of German fitness to rule the black native races, and is brimful of well authenticated instances of rapine, murder, lust, of chicanery, knavery and despoliation of the simple, harmless natives in South West Africa. The evidence whereon the report is drawn from official German documents at Windhoek, from sworn statements

•of native chiefs and Europeans who are familiar- with the country and from the writings of Dr. Leutwein, who was Governor from 1894 to 1905. and Dr. Karl Drove, and other unimpeachable German sources. Altogthcr the report constitutes a telling reply to Dr. Solf's recent claim that Germany's pre-war humane treatment of the native races had won for her a moral right to be a great colonial power. In view of this claim the statement by Mr Gorges is interesting. Native opinion here is unanimously against any idea of their ever being handed back to the tender mercies of the Germans. Any suggestion of the possibility of an act of this kind on the part of Britain produces the utmost consternation. The report shows that the! firfet twentjvifive years of German rule in South-West Africa were an unbroken record of official bad faith, private opposition, cruelty, barbarities, and robberies, the culmination being the Hottentot rebellions during the first seventeen years. There is no law for the native, and such protection as the law eventually provided indicated no consideration of humanity. In order to exploit the natives as labourers, when the German first arrived, they entered ifrto agreements with native chiefs, but these became scraps of paper. The natives were fraudulently deprived of the best land, traders and settlers robbed them of cattle, and the law subsequently prevented the natives possessing large stocks. The natives were thus driven to work for ridiculos and inadequate wages. They were often never paid, were treated like slaves, and the womenfolk habitually maltreated by the Germans, who took them, into fore/ cd concubinage. -These and similar things goaded the natives into rebellion, which was suppressed by ruthless cruelty, resulting in practical extermination in which three tribes were involved.

Received 10.55 a.m. LONDON, Sept 11. Mr Gorges adds: The Herreros were reduced from 80,000 •' to 15,00; Hottentots 20,000 to 9,800; Berg Damaras 30,000 to 12,800. How it was done was to supercede the lenient Governor Leutwein by the notorious Trotha, fresh from German East Africa, where he suppressed the Arab rebellion by a wholesale massacre-. Trotha issued an extermination order, the terms of which were that not a Herrero man, woman, child, or baby should receive mercy or quarter, but to kill everyone of them and take no .prisoners. These orders were only too faithfully carried dut. On one occasion German soldiers played ball witn a nine months' old babe. "When they got tired of this they finished the game by catching the wee mite on the point of the bayonet, transfixing its body. A reliable witness deposed he was two years with Trotha, and knew no instance of prisoners being spared. Even after the rebellions, the surviving natives fared but little better. One of the most significant documents in the report is a secret circular addressed in 1912 by the Governor Seitz to a magistrate wherein he refers to the desperate feeling becoming prevalent among the natives.

Mr. Gorges adds: Instances of cruelty, injustice, and barbarism might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Instances of gros bestial conduct, which for sheer depravity and immorality are well nigh unbelievable, are also contained Tn the file of affidavits, hut they are hardly fit for publication. The ordinance governing criminal jurisdiction over the natives contained provisions repugnant to every conception of jusTice. The natives were not tried in the ordinary courts, but by officers, who also did police duties, and had authority to delegate judicial powers to subordinate officials. Employment in chains and flogging were allowed as disciplinary measures on the appiic a ti 0n of an employer or for offence? against a master arid servants' law, as, for example, insubordination or continued idleness or neglect of duty.