SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE FOREST
WRITTEN WHILE ON THE RIVER, _July_ 30_th_--_Aug._ 2_nd_, 1914.
I am again fit for work, and the skipper of a small steamer, which
belongs to a trading firm at N'Djoli, has been kind enough to take us
with him to Lambarene, but our progress is only slow, as we have a
heavy cargo of kerosene. This comes in square tins, each holding four
gallons (eighteen litres), straight from the U.S.A. to the Ogowe, and
the natives are beginning to use it freely.
I am profiting by the long voyage to arrange and clear my ideas as to
the social problems which, to my astonishment, I have come across in
the forest. We talk freely in Europe about colonisation, and the
spread of civilisation in the colonies, but without making clear to
ourselves what these words mean.
But are there really social problems in the forest? Yes; one has only
to listen for ten minutes to conversation between any two white men,
and one will certainly hear them touch on the most difficult of them
all, viz., the labour problem. People imagine in Europe that as many
labourers as are wanted can always be found among the savages, and
secured for very small wages. The real fact is the very opposite.
Labourers are nowhere more difficult to find than {112} among primitive
races, and nowhere are they paid so well in proportion to the work they
do in return. This comes from their laziness, people say; but is the
negro really so lazy? Must we go a little deeper into the problem?
[Sidenote: The labour problem]
Any one who has seen the population of a native village at work, when
they have to clear a piece of virgin forest in order to make a new
plantation, knows that they are able to work enthusiastically, and with
all their might, for weeks together. This hardest of all work, I may
say in passing, is forced upon every village triennially. The banana
exhausts the soil with extraordinary rapidity, so that every three
years they must lay out a new plantation, manured by the ashes of the
jungle, which they cut down and burn. For my part I can no longer talk
ingenuously of the laziness of the negro after seeing fifteen of them
spend some thirty-six hours in almost uninterrupted rowing in order to
bring up the river to me a white man who was seriously ill.
The negro, then, under certain circumstances works well, but--only so
long as circumstances require it. The child of nature--here is the
answer to the puzzle--is always a casual worker.
[Illustration: A LITTLE PLANTATION OF BANANAS ON THE MARGIN OF THE
UNTOUCHED FOREST]
In return for very little work nature supplies the native with nearly
everything that he requires for his support in his village. The forest
gives him wood, bamboos, raffia leaves, and bast for the building of a
hut to shelter him from sun and rain. He has only to plant some
bananas and manioc, to do a little fishing and shooting, in order to
have by him all that he really needs, without having to hire himself
out as a labourer and to earn regular wages. If he does take a
situation, {113} it is because he needs money for some particular
object; he wishes to buy a wife, or his wife, or his wives, want some
fine dress material, or sugar, or tobacco; he himself wants a new axe,
or hankers after rum or cheap spirits, or would like to wear boots and
a suit of khaki. There are, then, various needs differing in number
with the individual, but all lying outside the regular struggle for
existence, which bring the child of nature to hire himself out for
work. If he has no definite object in view for which to earn money he
stays in his village. If he is at work anywhere and finds that he has
earned enough to supply his heart's desires, he has no reason for
troubling himself any further, and he returns to his village, where he
can always find board and lodging.
The negro, then, is not idle, but he is a free man; hence he is always
a casual worker, with whose labour no regular industry can be carried
on. This is what the missionary finds to be the case on the mission
station and in his own house on a small scale, and the planter or
merchant on a large one. When my cook has accumulated money enough to
let him gratify the wishes of his wife and his mother-in-law, he goes
off without any consideration of whether we still want his services or
not. The plantation owner is left in the lurch by his labourers just
at the critical time when he must wage war on the insects that damage
the cocoa plant. Just when there comes from Europe message after
message about timber, the timber merchant cannot find a soul to go and
fell it, because the village happens at the moment to be out on a
fishing expedition, or is laying out a new banana plot. So we are all
filled with righteous indignation at the lazy negroes, though the real
reason why we cannot get them is that they have {114} not yet learnt to
understand what we really mean by continuous work.
There is, therefore, a serious conflict between the needs of trade and
the fact that the child of nature is a free man. The wealth of the
country cannot be exploited because the native has so slight an
interest in the process. How train him to work? How compel him?
"Create in him as many needs as possible; only so can the utmost
possible be got out of him," say the State and commerce alike. The
former imposes on him involuntary needs in the shape of taxes. With us
every native above fourteen pays a poll tax of five francs a year, and
it is proposed to double it. If that is done, a man with two wives and
seven children will contribute £4 (100 francs) a year, and have to
provide a corresponding amount either of labour or of products of the
soil. The trader encourages voluntary needs in him by offering him
wares of all sorts, useful ones such as clothing material or tools,
unnecessary ones such as tobacco and toilet articles, and harmful ones
like alcohol. The useful ones would never be enough to produce an
amount of labour worth mentioning. Useless trifles and rum are almost
more effective. Just consider what sort of things are offered for sale
in the forest! Not long ago I got the negro who manages for a white
man a little shop close to a small lake, miles away from civilisation,
to show me all his stock. Behind the counter stood conspicuous the
beautiful white painted cask of cheap spirits. Next to it stood the
boxes of tobacco leaves and the tins of kerosene. Further on was a
collection of knives, axes, saws, nails, screws, sewing machines,
flat-irons, string for making fishing-nets, plates, glasses, enamelled
dishes of all sizes, {115} lamps, rice, tinned stuff of every variety,
salt, sugar, blankets, dress material, muslin for mosquitoes, Gillette
safety razors (!), collars and ties in rich variety, blouses and
chemises trimmed with lace, corsets, elegant shoes, openwork stockings,
gramophones, concertinas, and fancy articles of all sorts. Among the
last named was a plate, resting on a stand, of which there were several
dozen. "What is that?" I asked. The negro moved a lever in the bottom
part and a little musical box at once began to play. "This is my best
paying article," said he. "All the women in the neighbourhood want one
of these plates, and plague their husbands till they have earned enough
to buy one!"
It is true that taxes and new needs can make a negro work more than he
used to, but they do not train him to work, or only to a small extent.
They make him anxious for money and for enjoyment, but not reliable or
conscientious. If he does take service anywhere, he only thinks how he
can get most money for least work, and he works only so long as his
employer is near. Just recently I engaged some day labourers to build
a new hut for the hospital, but when I came in the evening to see the
work, nothing had been done. On the third or fourth day I got angry,
but one of the blacks--and one who was by no means the worst of
them--said to me: "Doctor, don't shout at us so! It is your own fault.
Stay here and we shall work, but if you are in the hospital with the
sick folk, we are alone and do nothing." Now I have adopted a plan,
and when I engage any day labourers I arrange to have two or three
hours free. During this time I make them work till their dark skins
glisten with sweat, and so I manage to get a certain amount done.
{116}
[Sidenote: The problem of compulsory labour]
Increasing their needs does effect something, but not much. The child
of nature becomes a steady worker only so far as he ceases to be free
and becomes unfree, and this can be brought about in several ways. The
first step to be taken is to prevent him for a certain time from
returning to his village. Planters and forest-owners never, on
principle, hire labourers from the neighbourhood, but engage for a year
young men from strange tribes who live at a distance, and then bring
them where they are wanted by water. The agreements are drawn up by
the Government, and, like many other things in French colonial
administration, are calculated to effect their object with due regard
to humanity. At the end of each week the labourer is paid half, but
only half, of his wages; the rest is put by and is handed over to him
at the end of the year when the white man has to send him home. He is
thus prevented from spending his money as quickly as he earns it, and
from going home with empty hands. Most of them hire themselves out in
this way to get money enough to buy a wife.
And what is the result? They have to hold out for the year, because
they cannot get back to their village, but very few of them are really
useful workers. Many get homesick. Others cannot put up with the
strange diet, for, as no fresh provisions are to be had, they must as a
rule live chiefly on rice. Most of them fall victims to the taste for
rum, and ulcers and diseases spread rapidly among them, living, as they
do, a kind of barrack life in overcrowded huts. In spite of all
precautions they mostly get through their pay as soon as the contract
time is up, and return home as poor as they went away.
{117}
The negro is worth something only so long as he is in his village and
under the moral control of intercourse with his family and other
relatives; away from these surroundings he easily goes to the bad, both
morally and physically. Colonies of negro labourers away from their
families are, in fact, centres of demoralisation, and yet such colonies
are required for trade and for the cultivation of the soil, both of
which would be impossible without them.
* * * * *
The tragic element in this question is that the interests of
civilisation and of colonisation do not coincide, but are largely
antagonistic to each other. The former would be promoted best by the
natives being left in their villages and there trained to various
industries, to lay out plantations, to grow a little coffee or cocoa
for themselves or even for sale, to build themselves houses of timber
or brick instead of huts of bamboo, and so to live a steady and worthy
life. Colonisation, however, demands that as much of the population as
possible shall be made available in every possible way for utilising to
the utmost the natural wealth of the country. Its watchword is
"Production," so that the capital invested in the colonies may pay its
interest, and that the motherland may get her needs supplied through
her connection with them. For the unsuspected incompatibilities which
show themselves here, no individual is responsible; they arise out of
the circumstances themselves, and the lower the level of the natives
and the thinner the population, the harder is the problem. In
Zululand, for example, agriculture and cattle raising are possible, and
the {118} natives develop naturally into a peasantry attached to the
land and practising home industries, while, at the same time, the
population is so thick that the labour requirements of European trade
can also be met; there, then, the problems of the condition of the
natives and the promotion of civilisation among them are far less
difficult than in the colonies where the country is mostly virgin
forest and the population is at a really primitive stage of culture.
Yet even there, too, it may come about that the economic progress aimed
at by colonisation is secured at the expense of civilisation and the
native standard of life.
What, then, is the real educational value of the much discussed
compulsory labour as enforced by the State? What is meant by labour
compulsion?
It means that every native who has not some permanent industry of his
own must, by order of the State, spend so many days in the year in the
service of either a trader or a planter. On the Ogowe we have no
labour compulsion. The French colonial administration tries, on
principle, to get on without any such measure. In German Africa, where
labour compulsion was enforced in a humane but effective manner, the
results were, according to some critics, good; according to others,
bad. I myself hold labour compulsion to be not wrong in principle, but
impossible to carry through in practice. The average colony cannot get
on without having it on a small scale. If I were an official and a
planter came to tell me that his labourers had left him just as the
cocoa crop had to be gathered, and that the men in the neighbouring
villages refused to come to his help at this critical time, I should
think I had a right, and that it was even my duty, to secure him the
labour {119} of these men so long as he needed it for the saving of his
crop, on payment, of course, of the wages usual in the locality. But
the enforcement of general labour compulsion is complicated by the fact
that under it men have practically always to leave their village and
their family and go to work many miles away. Who provides their food
on the journey? What becomes of them if they fall ill? Who will
guarantee that the white man does not call on them for their labour
just when their village has to set about its own planting, or when it
is the best time for fishing expeditions? Will he not, perhaps, keep
them longer than he is entitled to, on the plea that they have done no
work? Will he treat them properly? There is always the danger that
compulsory labour may become, secretly but really, a kind of slavery.
Connected to some extent with the question of compulsory labour is that
of the management of colonies by the method of "concessions." What is
meant by a "concession"? A company with plenty of capital has a large
stretch of territory assigned to it, which it is to manage for so many
years, and no other trader may establish himself there. Competition
being thus excluded, the natives become very seriously dependent on the
company and its employees. Even if the sovereign rights of the State
are reserved to it on paper, the trading company does in practice come
to exercise many of them more or less completely, especially if the
taxes which are owed to the State can be paid to the company in the
form of natural products or of labour, to be handed on by it to the
State in the form of cash. The question has been much discussed at
times, because the system of large concessions led {120} in the Belgian
Congo to great abuses, and I do not ignore its dangers; it can, if
taken advantage of wrongly, lead to the native belonging to the trader
or planter as a creature that has no rights. But it has also its good
points. The upper course of the Ogowe has been granted as a concession
to the "Company of the Upper Ogowe," and I have discussed the question
thoroughly with employees of this company who were with me for
considerable periods for medical treatment, thus getting to know the
arguments of both sides. When a company has not to fear competition,
it can--as the "Company of the Upper Ogowe" does--banish rum and cheap
spirits from its district, and provide for sale in its stores only
things that are worth buying, without any rubbish. Directed by men of
intelligence and wide views, it can exert much educational influence,
and since the land belongs wholly to it for a long period, it has a
real interest in seeing that it is managed properly; and it is little
tempted to exhaust the soil.
[Illustration: NEGRO VILLAGE AT LAMBARENE.]
On the whole, then, the general principle of labour compulsion, in the
sense that the State puts the natives at the disposal of private
individuals, is to be rejected. The State has to apply it to a quite
sufficient extent in the work it has to exact from the natives for
generally necessary public objects. It must have at its disposal
boatmen and carriers for its officials when they travel; it must have
men in its service for the construction and maintenance of roads, and
under certain circumstances it must exact contributions of foodstuffs
for the support of its troops and its staff generally.
There are two things which are terribly difficult in Africa: one is to
provide any place which has a large {121} population with fresh
provisions, and the other is to maintain roads through the forest; and
both of these become proportionately more difficult where the
population is thin and the distances great. I speak from experience.
What trouble I have to secure food for my two assistants and for those
of the sick in my hospital who live too far away to get what is
necessary sent to them regularly from home! There come times when I
have to resort to compulsory measures, and say that every one who comes
for treatment must bring a contribution of so many bananas or manioc
sticks. This leads to endless wranglings with the patients, who say
either that they do not know about the order or that they have not
enough for themselves. Of course, I do treat the serious cases and
those who come from long distances, even if they have not brought the
modest tribute demanded, but, however strongly I insist on this
contribution being made, it does sometimes happen that I have to send
sick people away because I no longer have the means of feeding them.
The head of the mission station, who has to provide food for the 100 or
150 children in the school, is sometimes in the same position, and the
school has to be closed, and the children sent home, because we cannot
feed them.
The labour levies and the food requisitions naturally affect chiefly
the villages which lie nearest the white settlements. However
considerate and just the action of the Government is, these natives
feel it, nevertheless, as a burden, and endeavour to migrate to more
distant parts, where they will be left in peace. Hence, in the
neighbourhoods where there are only primitive tribes, and these not in
great numbers, there comes into {122} existence round the settlements
of the whites a zone which is uninhabited. Then the compulsion has to
be applied in another way. The natives are forbidden to move their
villages, and those at a distance are ordered to come near the white
settlements, or to move to specified points on the caravan routes or on
the river. This must be done, but it is tragic that it should be
necessary, and the authorities have to take care that no change is
enforced beyond what is really needful. In the Cameroons the forest
has been pierced with a network of roads, which are kept in splendid
condition and are the admiration of all visitors from other colonies.
But has not this great achievement been brought about at the cost of
the native population and their vital interests? One is forced to ask
questions when things have gone so far that women are impressed for the
maintenance of the roads. It is impossible to acquiesce when, as is
often the case, the colony itself prospers, while the native population
diminishes year by year. Then the present is living at the expense of
the future, and the obvious fatal result is only a question of time.
The maintenance of the native population must be the first object of
any sound colonial policy.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The problem of the educated native]
Close on the problem of labour comes that of the educated native.
Taken by itself, a thorough school education is, in my opinion, by no
means necessary for these primitive peoples. The beginning of
civilisation with them is not knowledge, but industry and agriculture,
through which alone can be secured the economic conditions of higher
civilisation. But both Government and trade require natives with
extensive {123} knowledge whom they can employ in administration and in
the stores. The schools, therefore, must set their aims higher than is
natural, and produce people who understand complicated figures and can
write the white man's language perfectly. Many a native has such
ability that the results of this attempt are, so far as intellectual
knowledge goes, astounding. Not long ago there came to me a native
Government clerk, just at the time that there was also a missionary
staying with me. When the clerk went away, the missionary and I said
to each other: "Well, we could hardly compete with him in essay
writing!" His chief gives him documents of the most difficult sort to
draw up and most complicated statistics to work out, and he does it all
faultlessly.
But what becomes of these people? They have been uprooted from their
villages, just like those who go off to work for strangers. They live
at the store, continually exposed to the dangers which haunt every
native so closely, the temptations to defraud and to drink. They earn
good wages, indeed, but as they have to buy all their necessaries at
high prices, and are a prey to the black man's innate love of spending,
they often find themselves in financial difficulties and even in want.
They do not now belong to the ordinary negroes, nor do they belong to
the whites either; they are a _tertium quid_ between the two. Quite
recently the above-mentioned Government clerk said to the wife of a
missionary: "We negro intellectuals are in a very uncomfortable
position. The women in these parts are too uneducated to be good wives
for us. They should import wives for us from the higher tribes in
Madagascar." This loss of class position in an upwards {124} direction
is the misfortune which comes to many of the best of the natives.
Emancipation from the savage state produced by the accumulation of
wealth plays no part here, though it may do so in other colonies. It
is a still more dangerous method than that of intellectual education.
Social problems are also produced by imports from Europe. Formerly the
negroes practised a number of small industries; they carved good
household utensils out of wood; they manufactured excellent cord out of
bark fibre and similar substances; they got salt from the sea. But
these and other primitive industries have been destroyed by the goods
which European trade has introduced into the forest. The cheap
enamelled ware has driven out the solid, home-made wooden bucket, and
round every negro village there are heaps of such things rusting in the
grass. Many minor crafts which they once practised are now almost
forgotten; it is now only the old women who know how to make cord out
of bark, and sewing cotton out of the fibres of the pineapple leaves.
Even the art of canoe-making is dying out. Thus native industries are
going backwards instead of forwards, just when the rise of a solid
industrial class would be the first and surest step towards
civilisation.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The drink problem]
One first gets a clear idea of the real meaning of the social danger
produced by the importation of cheap spirits, when one reads how much
rum per head of the population comes every year to the port towns, and
when one has seen in the villages how the children drink with their
elders. Here on the Ogowe officials {125} and traders, missionaries
and chiefs are all unanimous that the importation of cheap spirits
should be stopped. Why, then, is it not stopped? Because it is so
profitable to the revenue. The import duty on rum produces one of the
biggest items in the receipts of the colony, and if it ceased there
would be a deficit. The financial position of the African colonies is
well known to be anything but brilliant, and the duty on spirits has a
second advantage, that it can be increased every year without
diminishing by a litre the quantity consumed. The position here, as in
other colonies, is that the Government says: "Abolish cheap spirits?
Willingly--to-day rather than to-morrow; but tell us first what we can
find to cover the deficit which that will cause in the budget." And
the strongest opponents of alcohol have not been able to make any
practicable proposal. When shall we find some way out of this idiotic
dilemma? The one hope is that some day a governor will come who will
put the future of the colony above the financial worries of the
present, and have the courage to banish rum at the price of having to
carry on for some years with a deficit.[1]
[1] In the year 1919 the Governor actually ventured to try this policy
to the great joy of the whole colony.
It is often asserted that alcoholism would prevail among the natives
even if there were no importation of spirits. This is mere talk. Of
alcoholic drinks produced in the country itself palm wine is the only
one which has to be considered in the forest, and that is no great
danger. It is simply the sap of the palm tree allowed to ferment, but
the boring of the trees and the taking the necessary vessels to them
needs a good deal of labour, for the work has to be done on the quiet
at a {126} distance from the village, the boring of the trees being
expressly forbidden. Moreover, palm wine will not keep. Its existence
makes it possible, therefore, for the people of a village to get drunk
several times a year, on the occasions of their festivals, but it is
not a continual danger like the cheap spirits sold in the stores.
Fresh palm wine tastes, when it is fermenting, very like the must of
grape wine, and by itself it is not any more intoxicating than the
latter; but the natives are accustomed to put various species of bark
into it, and then it can produce a terrible kind of drunkenness.
[Sidenote: Polygamy and wife-purchase]
Polygamy is another difficult social problem. We Europeans come here
with our ideal of monogamy, and missionaries contend with all their
resources against polygamy, in some places even urging the Government
to suppress it by law. On the other hand, all of us here must allow
that it is closely bound up with the existing economic and social
conditions. Where the population lives in bamboo huts, and society is
not so organised that a woman can earn her own living, there is no room
for the unmarried woman, and if all women are to be married, polygamy
is a necessary condition. Moreover, there are in the forest neither
cows nor nanny goats, so that a mother must suckle her child for a long
time if it is to be reared. Polygamy safeguards the claims of the
child, for after its birth the woman has the right, and the duty, of
living only for her child; she is now no longer a wife, but only a
mother, and she often spends the greater part of this time with her
parents. At the end of three years comes the weaning, which is marked
by a festival, and then she returns to her husband's hut to be a wife
once more. But this living for her child is not to be thought of
unless the man has another wife, {127} or other wives, to make a home
for him and look after his banana plots.
Here is another point for consideration. Among these nature-peoples
there are no widows unprovided for and no neglected orphans. The
nearest male relative inherits the dead man's widow, and must maintain
her and her children. She enters into enjoyment of all the rights of
his other wives, even though she can later, with his consent, take
another husband.
To agitate, therefore, against polygamy among primitive peoples, is to
undermine the whole structure of their society. Have we the right to
do this if we are not also in a position to give them a new social
order which suits their own circumstances? Were the agitation
successful, would not polygamy still continue to exist, with the single
difference that the later wives would be illegitimate ones? These
questions naturally cause missionaries much anxious thought.
But, as a matter of fact, the more developed the economic condition of
a people becomes, the easier becomes the contest with polygamy. When
men begin to live in permanent houses, and to practise the rearing of
cattle, and agriculture, it disappears of itself because it is no
longer demanded by their circumstances, and is no longer even
consistent with them. Among the Israelites, as their civilisation
advanced, monogamy peacefully drove out polygamy. During the prophetic
period they were both practised side by side; the teaching of Jesus
does not even hint at the existence of the latter.
Certainly mission teaching should put forward monogamy as the ideal and
as what Christianity demands, but it would be a mistake for the State
to {128} make it compulsory. It is also a mistake, so far as I can
judge, to identify the fight against immorality with that against
polygamy. Under this system the relation of the wives to each other is
usually good. A negress does not, in fact, like being the only wife,
because then she has the care of the banana plot, which always falls to
the wives, all to herself, and this is a laborious duty, as the plots
are usually at a distance from the village in some well-concealed part
of the forest.
What I have seen in my hospital of life with many wives has not shown
me, at any rate, the ugly side of the system. An elderly chief once
came as a patient and brought two young wives with him. When his
condition began to cause anxiety, a third appeared who was considerably
older than the first two; this was his first wife. From the day of her
arrival she sat continually on his bed, held his head in her lap, and
gave him what he wanted to drink. The two young ones behaved
respectfully to her, took orders from her, and looked after the cooking.
One can have the experience in this land of a fourteen-year-old boy
announcing himself as a _paterfamilias_. It comes about in the
following way. He has inherited from some deceased relative a wife
with children, and though the woman has contracted a marriage with
another man, that does not touch his rights over the children nor his
duty towards them. If they are boys, he will some day have to buy
wives for them; if they are girls, he will get the customary purchase
price from those who wish to marry them.
Should one declaim against the custom of wife-purchase, or tolerate it?
If it is a case of a young {129} woman being promised, without being
herself consulted, to the man who bids most for her, it is obviously
right to protest. If it merely means that in accordance with local
custom the man who is courting a girl must, if she is willing to marry
him, pay to the family a sum mutually agreed upon, there is no more
reason for objecting than there is in the matter of the dowry,
customary in Europe. Whether the man, if the marriage comes off, pays
money to the family or receives money from it, is in principle the same
thing; in either case there is a definite money transaction which has
its origin in the social views of the period. What has to be insisted
on, both among ourselves and among "natives," is that the money
transaction must remain subordinate, and not so influence the personal
choice that either the wife is bought, as in Africa, or the husband, as
in Europe. What we have to do, then, is not to fight against the
custom of wife-purchase, but to educate the natives up to seeing that
they must not give the girl to the highest bidder, but to the suitor
who can make her happy, and whom she is herself inclined to take. As a
rule, indeed, the negro girls are not so wanting in independence as to
let themselves be sold to any one who offers. Love, it is true, does
not play the same part in marriage here as with us, for the child of
nature knows nothing of the romantic, and marriages are usually decided
on in the family council; they do, however, as a rule, turn out happily.
Most girls are married when they are fifteen, even those in the girls'
schools. Those in our mission school are mostly already engaged to
some husband, and marry as soon as they leave school. They can even be
promised to a husband before they are born, as I learnt {130} through a
case of most unprincipled wife-purchase, which took place at Samkita,
and was related to me by a missionary. A man owed one of his
neighbours £16 (400 fr.), but, instead of repaying it, he bought a wife
and married her with the usual ceremonies. While they were at the
wedding feast, the creditor made his appearance, and overwhelmed the
bridegroom with abuse for having bought a wife instead of paying his
debt. A palaver began which ended in an agreement that the debtor
should give his creditor the first girl born of the marriage for a
wife, on which the latter joined the guests and took his part in the
festivities. Sixteen years later he came as a wooer, and so the debt
was paid!
My opinion is, and I have formed it after conversation with all the
best and most experienced of the white men in this district, that we
should accept, but try to improve and refine, the rights and customs
which we find in existence, and make no alterations which are not
absolutely necessary.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Relations between whites and blacks]
A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and the
blacks. What must be the general character of the intercourse between
them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or as my inferior? I
must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in
every one, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself;
but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of
brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the
sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The
negro is a child, and with children nothing can be {131} done without
the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances
of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With
regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: "I am your
brother, it is true, but your elder brother."
The combination of friendliness with authority is therefore the great
secret of successful intercourse. One of our missionaries, Mr. Robert,
left the staff some years ago to live among the negroes as their
brother absolutely. He built himself a small house near a village
between Lambarene and N'Gômô, and wished to be recognised as a member
of the village. From that day his life became a misery. With his
abandonment of the social interval between white and black he lost all
his influence; his word was no longer taken as the "white man's word,"
but he had to argue every point with them as if he were merely their
equal.
When, before coming to Africa, I heard missionaries and traders say
again and again that one must be very careful out here to maintain this
authoritative position of the white man, it seemed to me to be a hard
and unnatural position to take up, as it does to every one in Europe
who reads or hears the same. Now I have come to see that the deepest
sympathy and kindness can be combined with this insistence on certain
external forms, and indeed are only possible by means of them. One of
our unmarried missionaries at N'Gômô--the story belongs to a period
some years back--allowed his cook to be very free in his behaviour
towards him. One day the steamer put in with the Governor on board,
and the missionary went to pay his respects to the high official. He
was standing on deck in an elegant suit of white among a group of
officials and military men, {132} when a negro, with his cap on his
head and a pipe in his mouth, pushed himself into the group and said to
him: "Well, what are we to have for supper to-night?" The cook wanted
to show on what good terms he stood with his master!
The prevention of unsuitable freedom is, however, only the external and
technical part, so to say, of the problem of authority. A white man
can only have real authority if the native respects him. No one must
imagine that the child of nature looks up to us merely because we know
more, or can do more, than he can. This superiority is so obvious to
him that it ceases to be taken into account. It is by no means the
case that the white man is to the negro an imposing person because he
possesses railways and steamers, can fly in the air, or travel under
water. "White people are clever and can do anything they want to,"
says Joseph. The negro is not in a position to estimate what these
technical conquests of nature mean as proofs of mental and spiritual
superiority, but on one point he has an unerring intuition, and that is
on the question whether any particular white man is a real, moral
personality or not. If the native feels that he is this, moral
authority is possible; if not, it is simply impossible to create it.
The child of nature, not having been artificialised and spoilt as we
have been, has only elementary standards of judgment, and he measures
us by the most elementary of them all, the moral standard. Where he
finds goodness, justice, and genuineness of character, real worth and
dignity, that is, behind the external dignity given by social
circumstances, he bows and acknowledges his master; where he does not
find them he remains really defiant in spite of all appearance {133} of
submission, and says to himself: "This white is no more of a man than I
am, for he is not a better one than I am."
I am not thinking merely of the fact that many unsuitable, and not a
few quite unworthy men, go out into the colonies of all nations. I
wish to emphasise a further fact that even the morally best and the
idealists find it difficult out here to be what they wish to be. We
all get exhausted in the terrible contest between the European worker
who bears the responsibility and is always in a hurry, and the child of
nature who does not know what responsibility is and is never in a
hurry. The Government official has to record at the end of the year so
much work done by the native in building and in road-maintenance, in
service as carrier or boatman, and so much money paid in taxes; the
trader and the planter are expected by their companies to provide so
much profit for the capital invested in the enterprise. But in all
this they are for ever dependent on men who cannot share the
responsibility that weighs on them, who only give just so much return
of labour as the others can force out of them, and who if there is the
slightest failure in superintendence, do exactly as they like without
any regard for the loss that may be caused to their employers. In this
daily and hourly contest with the child of nature every white man is
continually in danger of gradual moral ruin.
My wife and I were once very much delighted with a newly-arrived
trader, because in the conversations we had with him he was always
insisting on kindness towards the natives, and would not allow the
slightest ill-treatment of them by his foremen. The next spring, {134}
however, he had the following experience. Lying in a pond some sixty
miles from here he had a large quantity of mahogany, but he was
summoned to Lambarene to clear off some urgent correspondence just as
the water began to rise. He ordered his foremen and labourers to be
sure to use the two or three days of high water to get all the timber,
if possible, into the river. When the water had fallen he went back to
the place and found that nothing whatever had been done! They had
smoked, and drunk, and danced; the timber which had already lain too
long in the pond was almost completely ruined, and he was responsible
to his company for the loss. His men had been thoughtless and
indifferent because they did not fear him enough. This experience
changed him entirely, and now he laughs at those who think it is
possible to do anything with the natives without employing relentless
severity.
Not long ago the termites, or white ants, got into a box which stood on
our verandah. I emptied the box and broke it up, and gave the pieces
to the negro who had been helping me. "Look," I said to him, "the ants
have got into it; you mustn't put the wood with the rest of the
firewood or the ants will get into the framework of the hospital
building. Go down to the river and throw it into the water. Do you
understand?" "Yes, yes, you need not worry." It was late in the day,
and being too tired to go down the hill again, I was inclined to break
my general rule and trust a black--one who was in fact on the whole
intelligent and handy. But about ten o'clock I felt so uneasy that I
took the lantern and went down to the hospital. There was the wood
with the ants in it lying with the rest of the firewood. To save
himself the trouble of going {135} the twenty yards down to the river
the negro had endangered all my buildings!
The greater the responsibility that rests on a white man, the greater
the danger of his becoming hard towards the natives. We on a mission
staff are too easily inclined to become self-righteous with regard to
the other whites. We have not got to obtain such and such results from
the natives by the end of the year, as officials and traders have, and
therefore this exhausting contest is not so hard a one for us as for
them. I no longer venture to judge my fellows after learning something
of the soul of the white man who is in business from those who lay as
patients under my roof, and whose talk has led me to suspect that those
who now speak savagely about the natives may have come out to Africa
full of idealism, but in the daily contest have become weary and
hopeless, losing little by little what they once possessed of
spirituality.
That it is so hard to keep oneself really humane, and so to be a
standard-bearer of civilisation, that is the tragic element in the
problem of the relations between white and coloured men in Equatorial
Africa.
{136}