The meeting of the International Free Society at the Hague had, as the
reader will remember, conferred full executive power upon the committee for
the period of two years. This period expired on the 20th of October, when
the Society would have to give itself a new and definitive constitution,
and the powers hitherto exercised by the committee would have to be taken
over by an administrative body freely elected by the people of Freeland. On
the 15th of September, therefore, the committee called together a
constituent assembly; and, as the inhabitants were too numerous all to meet
together for consultation, they divided the country into 500 sections,
according to the number of the inhabitants, and directed each section to
elect a deputy. The committee declared this representative assembly to be
the provisional source of sovereign authority, and required it to make
arrangements for the future, leaving it to decide whether it would empower
the committee to continue to exercise its executive functions until a
constitution had been agreed upon, or would at once entrust the
administration of Freeland to some new authority. After a short debate, the
assembly not only decided unanimously to adopt the former course, but also
charged the committee with the task of preparing a draft constitution. As
such a draft had already been prepared in view of contingencies, the
committee at once accepted the duty imposed upon it. Dr. Strahl, in the
name of the committee, laid the draft constitution 'upon the table of the
House.' The assembly ordered it to be printed, and three days after
proceeded to discuss it. As the proposed fundamental law and detailed
regulations were extremely simple, the debate was not very long-winded;
and, on the 2nd of October, the laws and regulations were declared to be
unanimously approved, and the new constitution was put in force.
The fundamental laws were thus expressed:
1. Every inhabitant of Freeland has an equal and inalienable claim upon the
whole of the land, and upon the means of production accumulated by the
community.
2. Women, children, old men, and men incapable of work, have a right to a
competent maintenance, fairly proportionate to the level of the average
wealth of the community.
3. No one can be hindered from the active exercise of his own free
individual will, so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others.
4. Public affairs are to be administered as shall be determined by all the
adult (above twenty years of age) inhabitants of Freeland, without
distinction of sex, who shall all possess an equal active and passive right
of vote and of election in all matters that affect the commonwealth.
5. Both the legislative and the executive authority shall be divided into
departments, and in such a manner that the whole of the electors shall
choose special representatives for the principal public departments, who
shall give their decisions apart and watch over the action of the
administrative boards of the respective departments.
In these five points is contained the whole substance of the public law of
Freeland; everything else is merely the natural consequence or the more
detailed expression of these points. Thus the principles upon which the
associations were based--the right of the worker to the profit, the
division of the profit in proportion to the amount of work contributed, and
freedom of contract in view of special efficiency of labour--are naturally
and necessarily implied in the first and third fundamental laws. As the
whole of the means of labour were accessible to everyone, no one could be
compelled to forego the profit of his own labour; and as no one could be
forced to place his higher capabilities at the disposal of others, these
higher capabilities--so far as they were needed in the guidance and
direction of production--must find adequate recompense in the way of
freedom of contract.
With reference to the right of maintenance given to women, children, old
men, and men incapable of working, by the second section, it may be
remarked that this was regarded, in the spirit of our principles, as a
corollary from the truth that the wealth of the civilised man is not the
product of his own individual capabilities, but is the result of the
intellectual labour of numberless previous generations, _whose bequest
belongs as much to the weak and helpless as to the strong and capable_. All
that we enjoy we owe in an infinitely small degree to our own intelligence
and strength; thrown upon these as our only resources, we should be poor
savages vegetating in the deepest, most brutish misery; it is to the rich
inheritance received from our ancestors that we owe ninety-nine per cent.
of our enjoyments. If this is so--and no sane person has ever questioned
it--then all our brothers and sisters have a right to share in the common
heritage. That this heritage would be unproductive without the labour of us
who are strong is true, and it would be unfair--nay, foolish and
impracticable--for our weaker brethren to claim an _equal_ share. But they
have a right to claim a fraternal participation--not merely a charitable
one, but one based upon their right of inheritance--in the rich profits won
from the common heritage, even though it be by _our_ labour solely. They
stand towards us in the relation, not of medicant strangers, but of
co-heirs and members of our family. And of us, the stronger inheritors of a
clearly proved title, every member of the common family demands the
unreserved recognition of this good title. For we cannot prosper if we
dishonour and condemn to want and shame those who are our equals. A healthy
egoism forbids us to allow misery and its offspring--the vices--to harbour
anywhere among our fellows. Free, and 'of noble birth,' a king and lord of
this planet, must everyone be whose mother is a daughter of man, else will
his want grow to be a spreading ulcer which will consume even us--the
strong ones.
So much as to the right of maintenance in general. As to the provision for
women in particular, it was considered that woman was unfitted by her
physical and psychical characteristics for an active struggle for
existence; but was destined, on the one hand, to the function of
propagating the human race, and, on the other hand, to that of beautifying
and refining life. So long as we all, or at least the immense majority of
us, were painfully engaged in the unceasing and miserable struggle to
obtain the barest necessities of animal life, no regard could be paid to
the weakness and nobility of woman; her weakness, like that of every other
weak one, could not become a title to tender care, but became inevitably an
incitement to tyranny; the nobility of woman was dishonoured, as was all
purely human and genuine nobility. For unnumbered centuries woman was a
slave and a purchasable instrument of lust, and the much-vaunted
civilisation of the last few centuries has brought no real improvement.
Even among the so-called cultured nations of the present day, woman
remained without legal rights, and, what is worse, she was left, in order
to obtain subsistence, to sell herself to the first man she met who would
undertake to provide and 'care for' her for the sake of her attractions.
This prostitution, sanctioned by law and custom, is in its effects more
disastrous than that other, which stands forth undisguised and is
distinguished from the former only in the fact that here the shameful
bargain is made not for life, but only for years, weeks, hours. It is
common to both that the sweetest, most sacred treasure of humanity, woman's
heart, is made the subject of vulgar huckstering, a means of buying a
livelihood; and worse than the prostitution of the streets is that of the
marriage for a livelihood sanctioned by law and custom, because under its
pestilential poison-breath not only the dignity and happiness of the
living, but the sap and strength of future generations are blasted and
destroyed. As love, that sacred instinct which should lead the wife into
the arms of the husband, united with whom she might bequeath to the next
generation its worthiest members, had become the only means of gain within
her reach woman was compelled to dishonour herself, and in herself to
dishonour the future of the race.
Happiness and dignity, as well as the future salvation of humanity, equally
demanded that woman should be delivered from the dishonourable necessity of
seeing in her husband a provider, in marriage the only refuge from material
need. But neither should woman be consigned to common labour. This would be
in equal measure prejudicial both to the happiness of the living and to the
character and vigour of future generations. It is as useless as it is
injurious to wish to establish the equality of woman by allowing her to
compete with man in earning her bread--useless, because such a permission,
of which advantage could be taken only in exceptional cases, would afford
no help to the female sex as a whole; injurious, because woman cannot
compete with man and yet be true to her nobler and tenderer duties. And
those duties do not lie in the kitchen and the wardrobe, but in the
cultivation of the beautiful in the adult generation on the one hand, and
of the intellectual and physical development of the young on the other.
Therefore, in the interests not only of herself, but also of man, and in
particular of the future race, woman must be altogether withdrawn from the
struggle for the necessaries of life; she must be no wheel in the
bread-earning machinery, she must be a jewel in the heart of humanity. Only
one kind of 'work' is appropriate to woman--that of the education of
children and, at most, the care of the sick and infirm. In the school and
by the sick-bed can womanly tenderness and care find a suitable
apprenticeship for the duties of the future home, and in such work may the
single woman earn wages so far as she wishes to do so. At the same time,
our principles secured perfect liberty to woman. She was not forbidden to
engage in any occupation, and isolated instances have occurred of women
doing so, particularly in intellectual callings, but public opinion in
Freeland approved of this only in exceptional cases--that is, when special
gifts justified such action; and it was our women chiefly who upheld this
public opinion.
The fact that the maintenance allowance for women was fixed at one-fourth
less than that for men--and the constituent assembly confirmed not only the
principle, but the proposed ratio of the different maintenance
allowances--was not the expression of any lower estimate of the _claim_ of
woman, but was due simply to the consideration that the _requirements_ of
woman are less than those of man. We acted upon the calculation that a
woman with her thirty per cent. of the average labour-earnings of a
Freeland producer was as well provided for as a maintenance-receiving man
with his forty per cent.; and experience fully verified this calculation.
Not only had the single woman or the widow a right to a maintenance, but
the married woman also had a similar right, though only to one-half the
amount. This right was based upon the principle that even the wife ought
not to be thrown upon the husband for maintenance and made dependent upon
him. As in housekeeping the woman's activity is partly called forth by her
own personal needs, it was right that some of the burden of maintenance
should be taken from the husband, and only a part of it left as a common
charge to both. With the birth of children, the family burden is afresh
increased, and, as this is specially connected with the wife, we increase
her maintenance allowance until it reaches again the full allowance of a
single woman--that is, thirty per cent. The allowances would be as follows:
A childless family 15 per cent.
A family with one child 20 "
" " two children 25 "
" " three or more children 30 "
A working widow with a child 5 "
" " " two children 10 "
" " " three or more children 15 "
An independent woman 30 "
" " " with a child 35 "
" " " with two children 40 "
" " " with three or more children 45 "
Just as the women's and children's maintenance-claims accumulated according
to circumstances, so was it with those claims and the claims of men unable
to work, and old men. The maximum that could be drawn for maintenance was
not less than seventy per cent. of the average income, and this happened in
the cases--which were certainly rare--in which a married man who had a
claim had three or more children under age.
The fourth fundamental principle--the extension of the franchise to adult
women--calls for no special comment. It need only be remarked that this law
included the negroes residing in Freeland. This was conditioned, of course,
by the exclusion from the exercise of political rights of all who were
unable to read and write--an exclusion which was automatically secured by
requiring all votes to be given in the voter's own handwriting. We took
considerable pains not only to teach our negroes reading and writing, but
also to give them other kinds of knowledge; and as our efforts were in
general followed by good results, our black brethren gradually participated
in all our rights.
A more detailed explanation is, however, required by the fifth section of
the fundamental laws, according to which the community exercised their
control over all public affairs not through _one_, but through several
co-ordinated administrative boards, elected separately by the community. To
this regulation the administrative authorities of Freeland owed their
astonishing special knowledge of details, and the public life of Freeland
its equally unexampled quiet and the absence of any deeply felt, angry
party passions. In the States of Europe and America, only the executive
consists of men who are chosen--or are supposed to be thus chosen--on
account of their special knowledge and qualification for the branches of
the public service at the head of which they respectively stand. Even this
is subject to very important limitations; in fact, with respect to the
parliamentary constitutions of Europe and America, it can be truthfully
asserted that those who are placed at the head of the different branches of
the administration only too often know very little about the weighty
affairs which they have to superintend. The assemblies from which and by
whose choice parliamentary ministers are placed in office are, as a rule,
altogether incapable of choosing qualified men, for the reason that
frequently there are none such in their midst. It does not follow from this
that parliamentary orators and politicians by profession do not generally
understand the duties of their office better than those favourites of power
and of blind fortune who hold the helm in non-parliamentary countries; but
experts they are not, and cannot be. Yet, as has been said, the organs of
the executive at least _ought_, to be such, and by a current fiction they
are held to be such; and a man who specially distinguishes himself in any
department thereby earns a claim--though a subordinate one--to receive
further employment in that department of the public service. For the
legislative bodies outside of Freeland, on the other hand, special
knowledge is not even theoretically a qualification. The men who make laws
and control the administration of them, need, in theory, to have not the
least knowledge of the matters to which these laws refer. The support of
the electors is usually quite independent of the amount of such knowledge
possessed by the representatives, who are chosen not as men of special
knowledge, but as men of 'sound understanding.'
But this is followed by a twofold evil. In the first place, it converts the
public service into a private game of football, in which the players are
Ignorance and Incapacity. The words of Oxenstiern, 'You know not, my son,
with how little understanding the world is governed,' are true in a far
higher degree than is generally imagined. The average level of capacity and
special knowledge in many of the branches of public service in the
so-called civilised world is far below that to be found in the private
business of the same countries. In the second place, this centralised
organisation of the public administration, with an absence of persons of
special qualification, converts party spirit into an angry and bitter
struggle in which everything is risked, and the decision depends very
rarely upon practical considerations, but almost always upon already
accepted political opinions. Incessant conflict, continuous passionate
excitement, are therefore the second consequence of this preposterous
system.
An improvement is, however, simply impossible so long as the present social
system remains in force. For, so long as this is the case, the public
welfare is better looked after by ignorant persons who act independently of
professional knowledge than it would be if professional men had power to
further the interests of their own professions at the expense of the
general public. For the interests of specialists under an exploiting system
of society are not merely sometimes, but generally, opposed to those of the
great mass of the people. Imagine a European or American State in which the
manufacturers exercised legislative and executive control over
manufactures, agriculturists over agriculture, railway shareholders over
the means of transport, and so forth--the specialist representatives of
each separate interest making and administering the laws that particularly
concerned their own profession! As under the exploiting system of society
the struggle for existence is directed towards a mutual suppression and
supplanting, so must the consequences of such a 'constitution' as we have
just supposed be positively dreadful. In those cases which are grouped
together under the heading of 'political corruption,' where isolated
interests have succeeded in imposing their will upon the community, the
shamelessness of the exploitage has exceeded all bounds.
But it is different in Freeland. With us no separate interest is
antagonistic to or not in perfect harmony with the common interest.
Producers, for example, who in Freeland conceive the idea of increasing
their gains by laying an impost upon imports, must be idiotic. For, to
compel the consumers to pay more for their manufactures would not help
them, since the influx of labour would at once bring down their gains again
to the average level. On the other hand, to make it more difficult for
other producers to produce would certainly injure themselves, for the
average level of gain--above which their own cannot permanently rise--would
be thereby lowered. And exactly the same holds good for all our different
interests. In consequence of the arrangement whereby every interest is open
to everyone, and no one has either the right or the might to reserve any
advantage to himself alone, we are fortunately able to entrust the decision
of all questions affecting material interest to those who are the most
directly interested--therefore, to those who possess the most special
knowledge. Not merely do the legislature and the executive thereby acquire
in the highest degree a specialist character, but there disappears from
public life that passionate prepossession which elsewhere is the
characteristic note of party politics. As a well-understood public interest
and sound reason decide in all matters, we have no occasion to become
heated. At our elections our aim is not 'to get in one of our party,' but
the only thing about which opinions may differ is which of the candidates
happens to be the most experienced, the most apt for the post. And as, in
consequence of the organisation of our whole body of labour, the
capabilities of each one among us must in time be discovered, mistakes in
this determining point in our public life are scarcely possible.
As the constituent assembly retained the twelvefold division of the
governing authority, there were henceforth in Freeland, besides the twelve
different executive boards--which in their sphere of action were to some
extent analogous to the ministries of Western nations--twelve different
consultative, determining, and supervising assemblies, elected by the whole
people, in place of the single parliament of the Western nations. These
twelve assemblies were elected by the whole of the electors, each elector
having the right to give an equal vote in all the elections; but the
distribution of the constituencies was different, and the election for each
of the twelve representative bodies took place separately. Some of these
elections--those, namely, for the affairs of the chief executive and
finance, for maintenance, for education, for art and science, for
sanitation and justice--took place according to residence; the elections in
the other cases according to calling. For the latter purpose, the whole of
the inhabitants of Freeland were divided, according to their callings, into
larger or smaller constituencies, each of which elected one or more
deputies in proportion to its numbers. Of those callings which had but few
followers, several of the more nearly allied were united into one
constituency. Membership of the respective constituencies depended upon the
will of the elector--that is, every elector could get his or her name
entered in the list of any calling with which he or she preferred to vote,
and thus exercise the right of voting for the representative body elected
by the members of that calling.
The highest officers in the twelve branches of the executive were appointed
by the twelve representative bodies; the appointment of the other officers
was the business of the chiefs of the executive. In all the more important
matters all these had to consult together beforehand upon the measures that
were to be laid before the representative bodies.
The discussions of the different representative bodies, as a rule, took
place apart, and generally in sessions held at different periods. Several
of the bodies sat permanently, others met merely for a few days once a
year. The numerical strength of these specialist parliaments was different:
the smallest--that for statistics--consisted of no more than thirty
members, the four largest of a hundred and twenty members each. When
matters which interested equally several different representative bodies
had to be discussed, the bodies thus interested sat together. Disputes as
to the competency of the different bodies were impossible, as the mere wish
expressed by any representative body to take part in the debates of another
sufficed to make the subject under consideration a common one.
The natural result of this organisation was that every inhabitant of
Freeland confined his attention to those public affairs which he
understood, or thought he understood. In each branch of the administration
he gave his vote to that candidate who in his opinion was the best
qualified for a seat in that branch of the administration. And this, again,
had as a consequence a fact to Western ideas altogether incredible--namely,
that every branch of the public administration was in the hands of the most
expert specialists, and the best qualified men in all Freeland. Very soon
there was developed a highly remarkable kind of political honour,
altogether different from anything known in Western nations. Among the
latter, it is held to be a point of honour to stick to one's party
unconditionally through thick and thin, to support it by vote and influence
whether one understands the particular matter in question or not. The
political honour of a citizen of Freeland demands of him yet more
positively that he devote his attention and his energy to public affairs;
but public opinion condemns him severely if--from whatever motive--he
concerns himself with matters which he plainly does not understand. Thus it
is strictly required that the elector should have some professional
knowledge of that branch of the administration into which he throws the
weight of his vote. The elections, therefore, are in very good hands;
attempts to influence the electors by fallacious representations or by
promises would, even if they were to be made, prove resultless. There is no
elector who would vote in the elections of the whole twelve representative
bodies. The women, in particular, with very few exceptions, refrain from
voting in the elections in which the separate callings are specially
concerned; on the other hand, they take a lively interest in the elections
in which the electors vote according to residence; and in the elections for
the board of education their votes turn the scale. Their passive franchise
also comes into play, and in the representative bodies that have charge of
maintenance, of art and science, of sanitation and justice, women
frequently sit; and in that which has charge of education there are always
several women. They never take part in the executive. By way of completing
this description, it may be mentioned that the elected deputies are paid
for their work at the rate of an equivalent of eight labour-hours for each
day that they sit.
After the constituent assembly had passed the constitution it dissolved
itself, and the election of the twelve representative bodies was at once
proceeded with. Punctually on the 20th of October these bodies met, and the
committee handed its authority over into their hands. The members of the
committee were all re-elected as heads of the different branches of the
administration, except four who declined to take office afresh. The
government of Freeland was now definitively constituted.
In the meantime, the three expeditions sent to discover the best route for
a railway to the coast had returned. The expedition which had been
surveying the shortest route--that through the Dana valley to the Witu
coast--had met with no exceptional difficulty as to the land, and the
expectation that this, by far the shortest, would prove to be also
technically preferable had been verified. Nor in any other respect had any
serious difficulty been encountered within about 125 miles from Kenia. But
from thence to the coast the Galla tribes offered to the expedition such a
stubborn and vicious opposition that the hostilities had not ceased at the
end of two months, and several conflicts had taken place, in which the
Galla tribes had always been severely punished; but this did not prevent
the expedition from having to carry out its thoroughly peaceful mission in
perpetual readiness to fight. A railway through that region would have had
to be preceded by a formal campaign for the pacification or expulsion of
the Galla tribes, and could then have been constructed only in the midst of
a permanent preparedness for war. This route had therefore, provisionally
at least, to be rejected.
There were not less weighty reasons against the route over Ukumbani along
the Athi river. Along the river-valley the road could have been made
without special technical difficulty, but, particularly on the second half
of it, the route lay through unhealthy swamps and jungles, which could not
immediately be brought under cultivation. And if a route were chosen which
would leave the valley proper and pass among the adjoining hills, the
technical conditions would not be more favourable, nor the estimated cost
less, than a line along the third route following the old road to Mombasa.
This third route was therefore unanimously fixed upon. It had in its favour
the important circumstance that it passed through friendly districts, which
at no very distant future would most probably be settled by Freeland
colonists. That it was the longest and the most expensive of the three
could not, therefore, prevent us from giving it the preference, unless the
difference in cost proved to be too great--which, as the event showed, was
not the case.
The work was begun forthwith. Powerful and novel machines of all kinds
were, in the meantime, constructed in great number by our Freeland
machine-factories, and, furnished with these, 5,000 Freeland and 8,000
negro workers began the work at eighteen different points, not including
the eleven longer and the thirty-two shorter tunnels--with a total length
of twenty-four miles--each of which formed a separate part of tin work. The
rails, of the best Bessemer metal, were partly made by ourselves, and were
partly--those for the distance between Mombasa and Taveta--brought from
Europe. Two years after the turning of the first sod the part between Eden
Vale and Ngongo was ready for traffic; three months later the part between
Mombasa and Taveta; and nine months later still the middle portion between
Ngongo and Taveta. Thus exactly five years after our pioneers had first set
foot in Freeland, the first locomotive, which the day before had seen the
waves of the Indian Ocean breaking upon the shore at Mombasa, greeted the
glaciers of the Kenia with its shrill whistle.
That this extensive work could be completed in so short a time and with so
little expenditure of labour we owed to our machinery; which also enabled
us to keep the cost within comparatively moderate limits, despite the fact
that we had necessarily to pay our workers at a rate at which no railway
constructors were ever paid before. Our Freeland railway constructors, who
had at once formed themselves into a number of associations, earned in the
first year 22s. a day each, and in the third year 28s. a day, though they
worked only seven hours a day. Notwithstanding this, the whole 672 miles,
most of it tolerably difficult work through hills, cost only 9,500,000£, or
a little over 14,000£ per mile. Our 13,000 workers did more with their
magnificent labour-sparing machines than 100,000 ordinary workers could
have done with pick and barrow; and the employment of this colossal
'capital'--valued at 4,000,000£--was profitable because labour was paid at
so high a rate.
As a matter of course, a telegraph was laid between Eden Vale and Mombasa
together with this double-railed railway.
Whilst these works were in progress and the incessantly growing population
of Freeland was brought into closer connection with the old home, important
changes had been brought about in our relations with our native African
neighbours--changes in part pacific, in part warlike, and which exercised a
not less important influence upon the course of development of our
commonwealth.
In the first place, the Masai of Lykipia and the lake districts between
Naivasha and Baringo, had, at their own initiative and at their own cost,
though under the direction of some of our engineers, constructed a good
waggon-road, 230 miles long, through their whole district from the Naivasha
lake northwards, and then eastwards through Lykipia as far as Eden Vale.
They declared that their honour and their pride were offended by having to
pass through a foreign district when they wished to visit us, the only
practicable road having been one through the country of the Wa-Kikuyu. So
strong was their desire to be in immediate touch with our district that,
when a part of the hired Wa-Taveta road-makers, on account of some
misunderstanding, left them in the lurch, the Masai themselves took their
places, and, taking turns to the number of 3,000, they carried on the work
with an energy which no one could have supposed to be possible in a people
who not long before had been so averse to labour. We decided to reward this
proof of strong attachment and of great capacity by an equally striking act
of recognition. When the Masai road was finished, and a deputation of the
elders and leaders of all the tribes made a jubilant and triumphant entry
by it into Eden Vale, we received them with great honour, and gave them
presents for the whole Masai people which were worth about as much as the
new road had cost. In addition, the 6,500 Werndl rifles, which had hitherto
been only lent to the Masai, and 2,000 horses were given them as their own
property in token of our friendship and respect. It goes without saying
that the weapons were received by this still martial people with great
enthusiasm. And the horses were almost more valuable still in their eyes;
for riding was the one among all our arts which the Masai most admired, and
among all our possessions which they esteemed most highly were our horses.
But we had hitherto been very frugal with our horses, and we had given away
only a few to individual natives in Masailand and Taveta in recognition of
special services. The number of horses in Freeland had, partly by breeding,
but mainly by continuous systematic importation, increased during the first
two years to 26,000; but we expected at first to make more use of horses
than was afterwards found to be necessary, and that was the reason why this
noble animal, which we had been the first to establish in Equatorial
Africa, was still a much-admired rarity everywhere outside of Freeland,
particularly in Masailand, where the horse was regarded as the ideal of
martial valour.
In the second place, it should be mentioned that the civilisation of the
Masai, as well as of the other tribes in alliance with us, made rapid
progress. The _el-moran_, when once they had become accustomed to light
work, and had given up their inactive camp-life, allowed themselves to be
induced by us to enter early upon the married state. Our women succeeded in
uprooting the Ditto abuse. Several of the ladies, with Mrs. Ney at their
head, undertook a tour through Masailand, and offered to every Masai girl
who made a solemn promise of chastity until marriage, admission into a
Freeland family for a year, and instruction in our manners, customs, and
various forms of skilled labour. So great was the number who accepted this
offer, that they could not all be received into Freeland at once, but had
to be divided into three yearly groups. Yet even those who could not be
immediately received were decorated with the insignia of their new
honour--a complete dress after the Freeland pattern, their barbarian wire
neck-bands, leg-chains, and ear-stretchers, as well as their coating of
grease, being discarded--and they were solemnly pronounced to be 'friends
of the white women.' So permanent was the influence of this distinction
upon the Masai girls, who had not given up their ambition along with their
licentious habits, that not one of them proved to be unworthy of the
friendship of the virtuous white ladies. The Masai youth were so zealous in
their efforts to win the favour of the girls who were thus distinguished,
that the latter were all very soon married. That at the end of the year
there was an eager competition for the girls who were returning home is as
much a matter of course as that those who in the meantime had married, even
if they had had children, had not forfeited their right to a residence in
Freeland--a circumstance that led to not a few embarrassments. The ultimate
result was that in a very short time the once so licentious Masailand was
changed into a model country of good morals. The hitherto prevalent
polygamy died out, and several hundred good schools arose in different
parts of the country, which in that way made gigantic strides towards
complete civilisation.
In the meantime, in the north-west, among our Kavirondo friends on the
north shore of the Victoria Nyanza, events of another kind were preparing.
The Kavirondo, a very numerous and peaceable agricultural and pastoral
tribe, touched Uganda, where, during recent years, there had been many
internal struggles and revolutions. Unlike the other peoples whom we have
become acquainted with, and who lived in independent, loosely connected,
small tribes under freely elected chiefs with little influence, the
Wangwana (the name of the inhabitants of Uganda) have been for centuries
united into a great despotically governed State under a _kabaka_ or
emperor. Their kingdom, whose original part stretches along the north bank
of the Victoria Nyanza, has been of varying dimensions, according as the
fierce policy of conquest of the _kabaka_ for the time being was more or
less successful; but Uganda has always been a scourge to all its
neighbours, who have suffered from the ceaseless raids, extortions, and
cruelties of the Wangwana. Broad and fertile stretches of country became
desert under this plague; and as for many years the _kabaka_ had been able,
by means of Arab dealers, to get possession of a few thousand (though very
miserable) guns, and a few cannons (with which latter he had certainly not
been able to effect much for want of suitable ammunition), the dread of the
cruel robber State grew very great. Just at the time of our arrival at the
Kenia there was an epoch of temporary calm, because the Wangwana were too
much occupied with their own internal quarrels to pay much attention to
their neighbours. After the death of the last _kabaka_ his numerous sons
terribly devastated the country by their ferocious struggles for the rule,
until in the previous year one of the rivals who was named Suna (after an
ancestor renowned both for his cruelty and for his conquests) had got rid
of most of his brothers by treachery. The power was thenceforward
concentrated more and more in the hands of this _kabaka_, and the raids and
extortions among the neighbouring tribes at once recommenced. Suna's anger
was directed particularly against the Kavirondo, because these had allowed
one of his brothers, who had fled to them, to escape, instead of having
delivered him up. Repeatedly had several thousand Wangwana fallen upon the
Kavirondo, carried off men and cattle, burnt villages, cut down the
bananas, destroyed the harvests, and thus inflicted inhuman cruelty. In
their necessity the Kavirondo appealed to the northern Masai tribes for
help. They had heard that we had supplied the Masai with guns and horses;
and they now begged the Masai to send a troop of warriors with European
equipments to guard their Uganda frontier. As payment, they promised to
give to every Masai warrior who came to their aid a liberal maintenance and
an ox monthly, and to every horseman, two oxen.
Less on account of this offer than to gratify their love of adventure, the
Masai, having first consulted us in Freeland, consented. We saw no
sufficient reason to keep them from rendering this assistance, although we
were by no means so certain as to the result as were our neighbours, who
considered themselves invincible now they were in possession of their new
weapons. We offered to place several experienced white leaders at the head
of the troops they sent to Kavirondo; but as we saw that our martial
friends looked upon this as a sign of distrust and were a little displeased
at the offer, we simply warned them to be cautious, and particularly not to
be wasteful of the ammunition they took with them.
At first everything went well. Wherever the Wangwana marauders showed
themselves they were sent home with bleeding heads, even when they appeared
in large numbers; and after a few months it seemed almost as if these
severe lessons had induced the Wangwana to leave the Kavirondo alone in
future, for a long time passed without any further raids. But suddenly,
when we were busy getting in our October harvest, there reached us the
startling news of a dreadful catastrophe which had befallen our Masai
friends in Kavirondo. The _kabaka_ Suna had only taken time to prepare for
an annihilating blow. While the former raids had been made by bodies of
only a few thousand men, this time Suna had collected 30,000, of whom 5,000
bore muskets; and, placing himself at their head, he had with these fallen
upon the Kavirondo and Masai unexpectedly. He surprised a frontier-camp of
900 Masai with 300 horses when they were asleep, and cut them to pieces
before they had time to recover from their surprise. The Masai thus not
only lost more than a third of their number, but the remainder of them were
divided into two independent parts, for the surprised camp was in the
middle of the cordon. But, instead of hastily retreating and waiting until
the remaining force had been able to unite before taking the offensive, one
of the Masai leaders, as soon as he had hurriedly got some 500 men
together, was led by his rage at the overthrow of so many of his comrades
to make a foolhardy attack upon the enormously over-numbering force of the
enemy; he thereby fell into an ambush, and, after having too rashly shot
away all his cartridges, was, together with his men, so fearfully cut down
that, after a most heroic resistance, only a very few escaped. Our friend
Mdango, who now took the command, was able to collect only 1,100 or 1,200
Masai on the other wing; and with these he succeeded in making a tolerably
orderly retreat into the interior of Kavirondo, being but little molested
by Suna, whose eye was kept mainly fixed upon collecting the colossal
booty.
Our ultimatum was despatched to Suna on the very day on which we received
this sad news. We told the Masai, who offered to send the whole body of
their warriors against Uganda, that 1,000 men, in addition to the 1,200 at
present in Kavirondo, would be sufficient. We placed these 2,200 Masai
under our Freeland officers, chose from among ourselves 900 volunteers,
including 500 horsemen, and added twelve cannons and sixteen rockets,
together with thirty elephants. On the 24th of October Johnston, the leader
of this campaign, started for Kavirondo along the Masai road.
There he found, around the camp of the _el-moran_--now, when it was too
late, very carefully entrenched and guarded--unnumbered thousands of
Kavirondo and Nangi, armed with spear and bow. These he sent home as a
useless crowd. On the 10th of November he crossed the Uganda frontier; six
days later Suna was totally overthrown in a brief engagement near the Ripon
falls, his host of 110,000 men scattered to the winds, and he himself, with
a few thousand of his bodyguard armed with muskets and officered by Arabs
from the coast, taken prisoner.
On the second day after the fight our men occupied Rubaga, the capital of
Uganda. Thither came in rapid succession all the chief men of the country,
promising unconditional submission and ready to agree to any terms we might
offer. But Johnston offered to receive them into the great alliance between
us and the other native nations--an offer which the Wangwana naturally
accepted with the greatest joy. The conditions laid upon them were:
emancipation of all slaves, peaceful admission of Freeland colonists and
teachers, and reparation for all the injury they had done to the Kavirondo
and the Masai. In this last respect the Wangwana people suffered nothing,
for the countless herds of cattle belonging to their _kabaka_ which had
fallen into our hands as booty amply sufficed to replace what had been
stolen from the Kavirondo and as indemnity for the slain Kavirondo and
Masai warriors. Suna himself was carried away as prisoner, and interned on
the banks of the Naivasha lake.
The subsequent pacific relations were uninterrupted except by an isolated
attempt at resistance by the Arabs that had been left in the country; but
this was promptly and vigorously put down by the Wangwana themselves
without any need of our intervention. What contributed largely to inspire
respect in the breasts of the Wangwana were a military road which the
Kavirondo and Nangi constructed from the Victoria Nyanza to the Masai road
on the Baringo lake, and a Masai colony of 3,000 _el-moran_ on the
Kavirondo and Uganda frontier. But on the whole, after the battle at the
Ripon falls, the mere sound of our name was sufficient to secure peace and
quiet in this part also of the interior of Equatorial Africa. All round the
Victoria Nyanza, whose shores from time immemorial had been the theatre of
savage, merciless fighting, humane sentiments and habits gradually
prevailed; and as a consequence a considerable degree of material
prosperity was developed with comparative rapidity among what had
previously been the wildest tribes.
Even apart from its size, the Victoria Nyanza is the most important among
the enormous lakes of Central Africa. It covers an area of more than 20,000
square miles, and is therefore, with the exception of the Caspian, the Sea
of Aral, and the group of large lakes in North America, the largest piece
of inland water in the world. It is larger than the whole of the kingdom of
Bavaria, and its depth is proportionate to its size, for the plummet in
places does not touch the ground until it has sunk 250 fathoms; it lies
4,400 feet above the sea-level--more than 650 feet above the Brocken, the
highest hill in Middle Germany. This lake is nearly encircled by ranges of
hills which rise from 1,500 to 5,000 feet above its surface; so that the
climate of the immediately contiguous country, which is healthy without
exception and quite free from swamp, is everywhere temperate, and in some
districts positively Arcadian. And this magnificent, picturesque, and in
many places highly romantic lake is the basin source of the sacred Nile,
which, leaving it at the extreme northern end by the Ripon falls, flows
thence to the Albert Nyanza, which is 1,500 feet lower, and thence
continues its course as the White Nile.
Two months after we had established ourselves in Kavirondo and Uganda a
screw steamer of 500 tons burden was ploughing the sea-like waves of the
Victoria Nyanza, and before the end of the next year our lake flotilla
consisted of five ships. These were well received everywhere on the coast,
and the brisk commerce created by them proved to be one of the most
effective of civilising agencies. The fertility of the lands surrounding
this splendid lake is positively unbounded. A few hundred square yards of
well-watered ground are sufficient to supply the needs of a large family;
and when we had once instructed the natives in the use of agricultural
implements, the abundance of the choicest field and garden produce was
unexampled. But the growth of higher needs, particularly among the tribes
that dwelt on the western shores of the lake, remained for a long time
remarkably behind the improvement in the means of production. These simple
tribes produced more than sufficient to supply their wants, almost without
any expenditure of labour, and often out of mere curiosity to see the
results of the improved implements which had been furnished to them. As
they had no conception of property in land, and the non-utilisable
over-production could not, therefore, with them--as would unquestionably
have happened elsewhere--beget misery among the masses, here for years
together the fable of the Castle of Indolence became a reality. The idea of
property was almost lost, the necessities of life became valueless,
everyone could take as much of them as he wished to have; strangers
travelling through found everywhere a well-spread table; in short, the
Golden Age seemed about to come to the Victoria Nyanza. This absolute lack
of a sense of higher needs, however, proved to be a check to further
progress, and we took pains--not altogether without regret--so far to
disturb this paradisiacal condition as to endeavour to excite in the tribes
a taste for what they had not got. Our endeavours succeeded, but the
success was long in coming. With the advent of more strongly felt needs a
higher morality and intellectual culture at once took root in this corner
of the earth.