I
When you take the train for the North at Capetown you start on the first
lap of what is in many respects the most picturesque journey in the
world. Other railways tunnel mighty mountains, cross seething rivers,
traverse scorching deserts, and invade the clouds, but none has so
romantic an interest or is bound up with such adventure and imagination
as this. The reason is that at Capetown begins the southern end of the
famous seven-thousand-mile Cape-to-Cairo Route, one of the greatest
dreams of England's prince of practical dreamers, Cecil Rhodes. Today,
after thirty years of conflict with grudging Governments, the project is
practically an accomplished fact.
Woven into its fabric is the story of a German conspiracy that was as
definite a cause of the Great War as the Balkan mess or any other phase
of Teutonic international meddling. Along its highway the American
mining engineer has registered a little known evidence of his
achievement abroad. The route taps civilization and crosses the last
frontiers of progress. The South African end discloses an illuminating
example of profitable nationalization. Over it still broods the
personality of the man who conceived it and who left his impress and his
name on an empire. Attention has been directed anew to the enterprise
from the fact that shortly before I reached Africa two aviators flew
from Cairo to the Cape and their actual flying time was exactly
sixty-eight hours.
The unbroken iron spine that was to link North and South Africa and
which Rhodes beheld in his vision of the future, will probably not be
built for some years. Traffic in Central Africa at the moment does not
justify it. Besides, the navigable rivers in the Belgian Congo, Egypt,
and the Soudan lend themselves to the rail and water route which, with
one short overland gap, now enables you to travel the whole way from
Cape to Cairo.
The very inception of the Cape-to-Cairo project gives you a glimpse of
the working of the Rhodes mind. He left the carrying out of details to
subordinates. When he looked at the map of Africa,--and he was forever
studying maps,--and ran that historic line through it from end to end
and said, "It must be all red," he took no cognizance of the
extraordinary difficulties that lay in the way. He saw, but he did not
heed, the rainbow of many national flags that spanned the continent. A
little thing like millions of square miles of jungle, successions of
great lakes, or wild and primitive regions peopled with cannibals, meant
nothing. Money and energy were to him merely means to an end.
When General "Chinese" Gordon, for example, told him that he had refused
a roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian
bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take
it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money
with which to carry them out?" Here you have the keynote of the whole
Rhodes business policy. A project had to be carried through regardless
of expense. It applied to the Cape-to-Cairo dream just as it applied to
every other enterprise with which he was associated.
The all-rail route would cost billions upon billions, although now that
German prestige in Africa is ended it would not be a physical and
political impossibility. A modification of the original plan into a
combination rail and river scheme permits the consummation of the vision
of thirty years ago. The southern end is all-rail mainly because the
Union of South Africa and Rhodesia are civilized and prosperous
countries. I made the entire journey by train from Capetown to the
rail-head at Bukama in the Belgian Congo, a distance of 2,700 miles, the
longest continuous link in the whole scheme. This trip can be made, if
desirable, in a through car in about nine days.
I then continued northward, down the Lualaba River,--Livingstone thought
it was the Nile--then by rail, and again on the Lualaba through the
posts of Kongolo, Kindu and Ponthierville to Stanleyville on the Congo
River. This is the second stage of the Cape-to-Cairo Route and knocks
off an additional 890 miles and another twelve days. Here I left the
highway to Egypt and went down the Congo and my actual contact with the
famous line ended. I could have gone on, however, and reached Cairo,
with luck, in less than eight weeks.
From Stanleyville you go to Mahagi, which is on the border between the
Congo and Uganda. This is the only overland gap in the whole route. It
covers roughly,--and the name is no misnomer I am told,--680 miles
through the jungle and skirts the principal Congo gold fields. A road
has been built and motor cars are available. The railway route from
Stanleyville to Mahagi, which will link the Congo and the Nile, is
surveyed and would have been finished by this time but for the outbreak
of the Great War. The Belgian Minister of the Colonies, with whom I
travelled in the Congo assured me that his Government would commence the
construction within the next two years, thus enabling the traveller to
forego any hiking on the long journey.
Mahagi is on the western side of Lake Albert and is destined to be the
lake terminus of the projected Congo-Nile Railway which will be an
extension of the Soudan Railways. Here you begin the journey that
enlists both railways and steamers and which gives practically a
straight ahead itinerary to Cairo. You journey on the Nile by way of
Rejaf, Kodok,--(the Fashoda that was)--to Kosti, where you reach the
southern rail-head of the Soudan Railways. Thence it is comparatively
easy, as most travellers know, to push on through Khartum, Berber, Wady
Halfa and Assuan to the Egyptian capital. The distance from Mahagi to
Cairo is something like 2,700 miles while the total mileage from
Capetown to Cairo, along the line that I have indicated, is 7,000 miles.
This, in brief, is the way you make the trip that Rhodes dreamed about,
but not the way he planned it. There are various suggestions for
alternate routes after you reach Bukama or, to be more exact, after you
start down the first stage of the journey on the Lualaba. At Kabalo,
where I stopped, a railroad runs eastward from the river to Albertville,
on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Rhodes wanted to use the 400-mile
waterway that this body of water provides to connect the railway that
came down from the North with the line that begins at the Cape. The idea
was to employ train ferries. King Leopold of Belgium granted Rhodes the
right to do this but Germany frustrated the scheme by refusing to
recognize the cession of the strip of Congo territory between Lake
Tanganyika and Lake Kivu, which was an essential link.
This incident is one evidence of the many attempts that the Germans made
to block the Cape-to-Cairo project. Germany knew that if Rhodes, and
through Rhodes the British Empire, could establish through communication
under the British flag, from one end of Africa to the other, it would
put a crimp into the Teutonic scheme to dominate the whole continent.
She went to every extreme to interfere with its advance.
This German opposition provided a reason why the consummation of the
project was so long delayed. Another was, that except for the explorer
and the big game hunter, there was no particular provocation for moving
about in certain portions of Central Africa until recently. But Germany
only afforded one obstacle. The British Government, after the fashion of
governments, turned a cold shoulder to the enterprise. History was only
repeating itself. If Disraeli had consulted his colleagues England would
never have acquired the Suez Canal. So it goes.
Most of the Rhodesian links of the Cape-to-Cairo Route were built by
Rhodes and the British South Africa Company, while the line from Broken
Hill to the Congo border was due entirely to the courage and tenacity of
Robert Williams, who is now constructing the so-called Benguella Railway
from Lobito Bay in Portuguese Angola to Bukama. It will be a feeder to
the Cape-to-Cairo road and constitute a sort of back door to Egypt. It
will also provide a shorter outlet to Europe for the copper in the
Katanga district of the Congo.
When you see equatorial Africa and more especially that part which lies
between the rail-head at Bukama and Mahagi, you understand why the
all-rail route is not profitable at the moment. It is for the most part
an uncultivated area principally jungle, with scattered white
settlements and hordes of untrained natives. The war set back the
development of the Congo many years. Now that the world is beginning to
understand the possibilities of Central Africa for palm oil, cotton,
rubber, and coffee, the traffic to justify the connecting railways will
eventually come.
II
Shortly after my return from Africa I was talking with a well-known
American business man who, after making the usual inquiries about lions,
cannibals and hair-breadth escapes, asked: "Is it dangerous to go about
in South Africa?" When I assured him that both my pocket-book and I were
safer there than on Broadway in New York or State Street in Chicago, he
was surprised. Yet his question is typical of a widespread ignorance
about all Africa and even its most developed area.
What people generally do not understand is that the lower part of that
one-time Dark Continent is one of the most prosperous regions in the
world, where the home currency is at a premium instead of a discount;
where the high cost of living remains a stranger and where you get
little suggestion of the commercial rack and ruin that are disturbing
the rest of the universe. While the war-ravaged nations and their
neighbors are feeling their dubious way towards economic reconstruction,
the Union of South Africa is on the wave of a striking expansion. It
affords an impressive contrast to the demoralized productivity of Europe
and for that matter the United States.
South Africa presents many economic features of distinct and unique
interest. A glance at its steam transportation discloses rich material.
Fundamentally the railroads of any country are the real measures of its
progress. In Africa particularly they are the mileposts of
civilization. In 1876 there were only 400 miles on the whole continent.
Today there are over 30,000 miles. Of this network of rails exactly
11,478 miles are in the Union of South Africa and they comprise the
second largest mileage in the world under one management.
More than this, they are Government owned and operated. Despite this
usual handicap they pay. No particular love of Government
control,--which is invariably an invitation for political influence to
do its worst,--animated the development of these railways. As in
Australia, where private capital refused to build, it was a case of
necessity. In South Africa there was practically no private enterprise
to sidestep the obligation that the need of adequate transportation
imposed. The country was new, hostile savages still swarmed the
frontiers, and the white man had to battle with Zulu and Kaffir for
every area he opened. In the absence of navigable rivers--there are none
in the Union--the steel rail had to do the pioneering. Besides, the
Boers had a strong prejudice against the railroads and regarded the iron
horse as a menace to their isolation.
The first steam road on the continent of Africa was constructed by
private enterprise from the suburb of Durban in Natal into the town. It
was a mile and three-quarters in length and was opened for traffic in
1860. Railway construction in the Cape Colony began about the same time.
The Government ownership of the lines was inaugurated in 1873 and it has
continued without interruption ever since. The real epoch of railway
building in South Africa started with the great mineral discoveries.
First came the uncovering of diamonds along the Orange River and the
opening up of the Kimberley region, which added nearly 2,000 miles of
railway. With the finding of gold in the Rand on what became the site
of Johannesburg, another 1,500 miles were added.
Since most nationalized railways do not pay it is interesting to take a
look at the African balance sheet. Almost without exception the South
African railways have been operated at a considerable net profit. These
profits some years have been as high as £2,590,917. During the
war, when there was a natural slump in traffic and when all soldiers and
Government supplies were carried free of cost, they aggregated in 1915,
for instance, £749,125.
One fiscal feature of these South African railroads is worth
emphasizing. Under the act of Union "all profits, after providing for
interest, depreciation and betterment, shall be utilized in the
reduction of tariffs, due regard being had to the agricultural and
industrial development within the Union and the promotion by means of
cheap transport of the settlement of an agricultural population in the
inland portions of the Union." The result is that the rates on
agricultural products, low-grade ores, and certain raw materials are
possibly the lowest in the world. In other countries rates had to be
increased during the war but in South Africa no change was made, so as
not to interfere with the agricultural, mineral and industrial
development of the country.
Nor is the Union behind in up-to-date transportation. A big program for
electrification has been blocked out and a section is under conversion.
Some of the power generated will be sold to the small manufacturer and
thus production will be increased.
Stimulating the railway system of South Africa is a single personality
which resembles the self-made American wizard of transportation more
than any other Britisher that I have met with the possible exception of
Sir Eric Geddes, at present Minister of Transport of Great Britain and
who left his impress on England's conduct of the war. He is Sir William
W. Hoy, whose official title is General Manager of the South African
Railways and Ports. Big, vigorous, and forward-looking, he sits in a
small office in the Railway Station at Capetown, with his finger
literally on the pulse of nearly 12,000 miles of traffic. During the war
Walker D. Hines, as Director General of the American Railways, was
steward of a vaster network of rails but his job was an emergency one
and terminated when that emergency subsided. Sir William Hoy, on the
other hand, is set to a task which is not equalled in extent, scope or
responsibility by any other similar official.
Like James J. Hill and Daniel Willard he rose from the ranks. At
Capetown he told me of his great admiration for American railways and
their influence in the system he dominates. Among other things he said:
"We are taking our whole cue for electrification from the railroads of
your country and more especially the admirable precedent established by
the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. I believe firmly in wide
electrification of present-day steam transport. The great practical
advantages are more uniform speed and the elimination of stops to take
water. It also affords improved acceleration, greater reliability as to
timing, especially on heavy grades, and stricter adherence to schedule.
There are enormous advantages to single lines like ours in South Africa.
Likewise, crossings and train movements can be arranged with greater
accuracy, thereby reducing delays. Perhaps the greatest saving is in
haulage, that is, in the employment of the heavy electric locomotive. It
all tends toward a denser traffic.
"Behind this whole process of electrification lies the need, created by
the Great War, for coal conservation and for a motive power that will
speed up production of all kinds. We have abundant coal in the Union of
South Africa and by consuming less of it on our railways we will be in a
stronger position to export it and thus strengthen our international
position and keep the value of our money up."
Since Sir William has touched upon the coal supply we at once get a
link,--and a typical one--with the ramified resource of the Union of
South Africa. No product, not even those precious stones that lie in the
bosom of Kimberley, or the glittering golden ore imbedded in the Rand,
has a larger political or economic significance just now. Nor does any
commodity figure quite so prominently in the march of world events.
In peace, as in war, coal spells life and power. It was the cudgel that
the one-time proud and arrogant Germany held menacingly over the head of
the unhappy neutral, and extorted special privilege. At the moment I
write, coal is the storm center of controversy that ranges from the Ruhr
Valley of Germany to the Welsh fields of Britain and affects the
destinies of statesmen and of countries. We are not without fuel
troubles, as our empty bins indicate. The nation, therefore, with cheap
and abundant coal has a bargaining asset that insures industrial peace
at home and trade prestige abroad.
South Africa not only has a low-priced and ample coal supply but it is
in a convenient point for distribution to the whole Southern
hemisphere,--in fact Europe and other sections. On past production the
Union ranked only eleventh in a list of coal-producing countries, the
output being about 8,000,000 tons a year before the war and something
over 10,000,000 tons in 1919. This output, however, is no guide to the
magnitude of its fields. Until comparatively recent times they have been
little exploited, not because of inferiority but because of the
restricted output prior to the new movement to develop a bunker and
export trade. Without an adequate geological survey the investigations
made during the last twelve months indicate a potential supply of over
60,000,000 tons and immense areas have not been touched at all.
The war changed the whole coal situation. Labour conflicts have reduced
the British output; a huge part of Germany's supply must go to France as
an indemnity, while our own fields are sadly under-worked, for a variety
of causes. All these conditions operate in favor of the South African
field, which is becoming increasingly important as a source of supply.
Despite her advantage the prices remain astonishingly low, when you
compare them with those prevailing elsewhere. English coal, which in
1912 cost about nine shillings a ton at pithead, costs considerably more
than thirty shillings today. The average pithead price of South African
coal in 1915 was five shillings twopence a ton and at the time of my
visit to South Africa in 1919 was still under seven shillings a ton.
Capetown and Durban, the two principal harbours of the Union, are
coaling stations of Empire importance. There you can see the flags of a
dozen nations flying from ships that have put in for fuel. Thanks to the
war these ports are in the center of the world's great trade routes and
thus, geographically and economically their position is unique for
bunkering and for export.
The price of bunker coal is a key to the increased overhead cost of
world trade, as a result of the war. The Belgian boat on which I
travelled from the shores of the Congo to Antwerp coaled at Teneriffe,
where the price per ton was seven pounds. It is interesting to compare
this with the bunker price at Capetown of a little more than two pounds
per ton, or at Durban where the rate is one pound ten shillings a ton.
In the face of these figures you can readily see what an economic
advantage is accruing to the Union of South Africa with reference to the
whole vexing question of coal supply.
We can now go into the larger matter of South Africa's business
situation in the light of peace and world reconstruction. I have already
shown how the war, and the social and industrial upheaval that followed
in its wake have enlarged and fortified the coal situation in the Union.
Practically all other interests are similarly affected. The outstanding
factor in the prosperity of the Union has been the development of
war-born self-sufficiency. I used to think during the conflict that
shook the world, that this gospel of self-containment would be one of
the compensations that Britain would gain for the years of blood and
slaughter. So far as Britain is concerned this hope has not been
realized. When I was last in England huge quantities of German dyes were
being dumped on her shores to the loss and dismay of a new coal-tar
industry that had been developed during the war. German wares like toys
and novelties were now pouring in. And yet England wondered why her
exchange was down!
In South Africa the situation has been entirely different. She alone of
all the British dominions is asserting an almost pugnacious
self-sufficiency. Cut off from outside supplies for over four years by
the relentless submarine warfare, and the additional fact that nearly
all the ships to and from the Cape had to carry war supplies or
essential products, she was forced to develop her internal resources.
The consequence is an expansion of agriculture, industry and
manufactures. Instead of being as she was often called, "a country of
samples," she has become a domain of active production, as is attested
by an industrial output valued at £62,000,000 in 1918. Before the
war the British and American manufacturer,--and there is a considerable
market for American goods in the Cape Colony,--could undersell the South
African article. That condition is changed and the home-made article
produced with much cheaper labour than obtains either in Europe or the
United States, has the field.
Let me emphasize another striking fact in connection with this South
African prosperity. During the war I had occasion to observe at
first-hand the economic conditions in every neutral country in Europe. I
was deeply impressed with the prosperity of Sweden, Spain and
Switzerland, and to a lesser extent Holland, who made hay while their
neighbors reaped the tares of war. Japan did likewise. These nations
were largely profiteers who capitalized a colossal misfortune. They got
much of the benefit and little of the horror of the upheaval.
Not so with South Africa. She played an active part in the war and at
the same time brought about a legitimate expansion of her resources. One
point in her favor is that while she sent tens of thousands of her sons
to fight, her own territory escaped the scar and ravage of battle. All
the fighting in Africa, so far as the Union was concerned, was in German
South-West Africa and German East Africa. After my years in
tempest-tossed Europe it was a pleasant change to catch the buoyant,
confident, unwearied spirit of South Africa.
I have dwelt upon coal because it happens to be a significant economic
asset. Coal is merely a phase of the South African resources. In 1919
the Union produced £35,000,000 in gold and £7,200,000 in
diamonds. The total mining production was, roughly, £50,000,000.
This mining treasure is surpassed by the agricultural output, of which
nearly one-third is exported. Land is the real measure of permanent
wealth. The hoard of gold and diamonds in time becomes exhausted but the
soil and its fruits go on forever.
The moment you touch South African agriculture you reach a real romance.
Nowhere, not even in the winning of the American West by the Mormons, do
you get a more dramatic spectacle of the triumph of the pioneer over
combative conditions. The Mormons made the Utah desert bloom, and the
Boers and their British colleagues wrested riches from the bare veldt.
The Mormons fought Indians and wrestled with drought, while the Dutch in
Africa and their English comrades battled with Kaffirs, Hottentots and
Zulus and endured a no less grilling exposure to sun.
The crops are diversified. One of the staples of South Africa, for
example, is the mealie, which is nothing more or less than our own
American corn, but not quite so good. It provides the principal food of
the natives and is eaten extensively by the European as well. On a dish
of mealie porridge the Kaffir can keep the human machine going for
twenty-four hours. Its prototype in the Congo is manice flour. In the
Union nearly five million acres are under maize cultivation, which is
exactly double the area in 1911. The value of the maize crop last year
was approximately a million six hundred thousand pounds. Similar
expansion has been the order in tobacco, wheat, fruit, sugar and half a
dozen other products.
South Africa is a huge cattle country. The Boers have always excelled in
the care of live stock and it is particularly due to their efforts that
the Union today has more than seven million head of cattle, which
represents another hundred per cent increase in less than ten years.
This matter of live stock leads me to one of the really picturesque
industries of the Union which is the breeding of ostriches, "the birds
with the golden feathers." Ask any man who raises these ungainly birds
and he will tell you that with luck they are far better than the
proverbial goose who laid the eighteen-karat eggs. The combination of
F's--femininity, fashion and feathers--has been productive of many
fortunes. The business is inclined to be fickle because it depends upon
the female temperament. The ostrich feather, however, is always more or
less in fashion. With the outbreak of the war there was a tremendous
slump in feathers, which was keenly felt in South Africa. With peace,
the plume again became the thing and the drooping industry expanded with
get-rich-quick proportions.
Port Elizabeth in the Cape Colony is the center of the ostrich feather
trade. It is the only place in the world, I believe, devoted entirely to
plumage. Not long before I arrived in South Africa £85,000 of
feathers were disposed of there in three days. It is no uncommon thing
for a pound of prime plumes to fetch £100. The demand has become
so keen that 350,000 ostriches in the Union can scarcely keep pace with
it. Before the war there were more than 800,000 of these birds but the
depression in feathers coupled with drought, flood and other causes,
thinned out the ranks. It takes three years for an ostrich chick to
become a feather producer.
America has a considerable part in shaping the ostrich feather market.
As with diamonds, we are the largest consumers. You can go to Port
Elizabeth any day and find a group of Yankees industriously bidding
against each other. On one occasion two New York buyers started a
competition that led to an eleven weeks orgy that registered a total net
sale of more than £100,000 of feathers. They are still talking
about it down there.
South Africa has not only expanded in output but her area is also
enlarged. The Peace Conference gave her the mandate for German
South-West Africa, which was the first section of the vanished Teutonic
Empire in Africa. It occupies more than a quarter of the whole area of
the continent south of the Zambesi River. While the word "mandate" as
construed by the peace sharks at Paris is supposed to mean the amiable
stewardship of a country, it really amounts to nothing more or less than
an actual and benevolent assimilation. This assimilation is very much
like the paternal interest that holding companies in the good old Wall
Street days felt for small and competitive concerns. In other words, it
is safe to assume that henceforth German South-West Africa will be a
permanent part of the Union.
The Colony's chief asset is comprised in the so-called German South-West
African Diamond Fields, which, with the Congo Diamond Fields, provide a
considerable portion of the small stones now on the market. These two
fields are alike in that they are alluvial which means that the diamonds
are easily gathered by a washing process. No shafts are sunk. It is
precisely like gold washing.
The German South-West mines have an American interest. In the
reorganization following the conquest of German South-West Africa by the
South African Army under General Botha the control had to become
Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-American Corporation which has extensive
interests in South Africa and which is financed by London and New York
capitalists, the latter including J. P. Morgan, Charles H. Sabin and W.
B. Thompson, acquired these fields. It is an interesting commentary on
post-war business readjustment to discover that there is still a German
interest in these mines. It makes one wonder if the German will ever be
eradicated from his world-wide contact with every point of commercial
activity.
It is not surprising, therefore, that South Africa, in the light of all
the facts that I have enumerated, should be prosperous. Take the money,
always a test of national economic health. At Capetown I used the first
golden sovereign that I had seen since early in 1914. This was not only
because the Union happens to be a great gold-producing country but
because she has an excess of exports over imports. Her money, despite
its intimate relation with that of Great Britain, which has so sadly
depreciated, is at a premium.
I got expensive evidence of this when I went to the bank at Capetown to
get some cash. I had a letter of credit in terms of English pounds. To
my surprise, I only got seventeen shillings and sixpence in African
money for every English pound, which is nominally worth twenty
shillings. Six months after I left, this penalty had increased to three
shillings. To such an extent has the proud English pound sterling
declined and in a British dominion too!
South Africa has put an embargo on the export of sovereigns. One reason
was that during the first three years of the war a steady stream of
these golden coins went surreptitiously to East India, where an
unusually high premium for gold rules, especially in the bazaars. The
goldsmiths find difficulty in getting material. The inevitable smuggling
has resulted. In order to put a check on illicit removal, all passengers
now leaving the Union are searched before they board their ships. Nor is
it a half-hearted procedure. It is as drastic as the war-time scrutiny
on frontiers.
To sum up the whole business situation in the Union of South Africa is
to find that the spirit of production,--the most sorely needed thing in
the world today--is that of persistent advance. I dwell on this because
it is in such sharp contrast with what is going on throughout the rest
of a universe that staggers under sloth, and where the will-to-work has
almost become a lost art. That older and more complacent order which is
represented for example by France, Italy and England may well seek
inspiration from this South African beehive.
III
With this economic setting for the whole South African picture and a
visualization of the Cape-to-Cairo Route let us start on the long
journey that eventually took me to the heart of equatorial Africa. The
immediate objectives, so far as this chapter is concerned, are
Kimberley, Johannesburg and Pretoria, names and towns that are
synonymous with thrilling chapters in the development of Africa and more
especially the Union.
You depart from Capetown in the morning and for hours you remain in the
friendly company of the mountains. Table Mountain has hovered over you
during the whole stay at the capital and you regretfully watch this
"Gray Father" fade away in the distance. In the evening you pass through
the Hex River country where the canyon is reminiscent of Colorado. Soon
there bursts upon you the famous Karoo country, so familiar to all
readers of South African novels and more especially those of Olive
Schreiner, Richard Dehan and Sir Percy Fitz Patrick. It is an almost
treeless plain dotted here and there with Boer homesteads. Their
isolation suggests battle with element and soil. The country immediately
around Capetown is a paradise of fruit and flowers, but as you travel
northward the whole character changes. There is less green and more
brown. After the Karoo comes the equally famous veldt, studded with
the _kopjes_ that became a part of the world vocabulary with the Boer
War. Behind these low, long hills,--they suggest flat, rocky
hummocks--the South African burghers made many a desperate stand against
the English.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by W. & D. Downey_
CECIL RHODES]
When you see the _kopjes_ you can readily understand why it took so long
to conquer the Boers. The Dutch knew every inch of the land and every
man was a crack shot from boyhood. In these hills a handful could hold a
small army at bay. All through this region you encounter places that
have become part of history. You pass the ruins of Kitchener's
blockhouses,--they really ended the Boer War--and almost before you
realize it, you cross the Modder River, where British military prestige
got a bloody repulse. Instinctively there come to mind the struggles of
Cronje, DeWet, Joubert, and the rest of those Boer leaders who made this
region a small Valhalla.
Late in the afternoon of the second day you suddenly get a "feel" of
industry. The veldt becomes populated and before long huge smokestacks
loom against the sky. You are at Kimberly. The average man associates
this place with a famous siege in the Boer War and the equally famous
diamond mines. But it is much more for it is packed with romance and
reality. Here came Cecil Rhodes in his early manhood and pulled off the
biggest business deal of his life; here you find the first milepost that
the American mining engineer set up in the mineral development of
Africa: here is produced in greater quantities than in any other place
in the world the glittering jewel that vanity and avarice set their
heart upon.
Kimberley is one of the most unique of all the treasure cities. It is
practically built on a diamond mine in the same way that Johannesburg
rests upon a gold excavation. When the great diamond rush of the
seventies overwhelmed the Vaal and Orange River regions, what is now the
Kimberley section was a rocky plain with a few Boer farms. The influx of
fortune-hunters dotted the area with tents and diggings. Today a
thriving city covers it and the wealth produced--the diamond output is
ninety per cent of the world supply--exceeds in value that of a big
manufacturing community in the United States.
At Kimberley you touch the intimate life of Rhodes. He arrived in 1872
from Natal, where he had gone to retrieve his health on a farm. The
moment he staked out a claim he began a remarkable career. In his early
Kimberley days he did a characteristic thing. He left his claims each
year to attend lectures at Oxford where he got his degree in 1881, after
almost continuous commuting between England and Africa. Hence the Rhodes
Scholarship at Oxford created by his remarkable will. History contains
no more striking contrast perhaps than the spectacle of this tall
curly-haired boy with the Caesar-like face studying a Greek book while
he managed a diamond-washing machine with his foot.
Rhodes developed the mines known as the DeBeers group. His great rival
was Barney Barnato, who gave African finance the same erratic and
picturesque tradition that the Pittsburgh millionaires brought to
American finance. His real name was Barnett Isaacs. After kicking about
the streets of the East End of London he became a music hall performer
under the name by which he is known to business history. The diamond
rush lured him to Kimberley, where he displayed the resource and
ingenuity that led to his organization of the Central mine interests
which grouped around the Kimberley Mine.
A bitter competition developed between the Rhodes and Barnato groups.
Kimberley alternated between boom and bankruptcy. The genius of diamond
mining lies in tempering output to demand. Rhodes realized that
indiscriminate production would ruin the market, so he framed up the
deal that made him the diamond dictator. He made Barnato an offer which
was refused. With the aid of the Rothschilds in London Rhodes secretly
bought out the French interests in the Barnato holdings for $6,000,000,
which got his foot, so to speak, in the doorway of the opposition. But
even this did not give him a working wedge. He was angling with other
big stockholders and required some weeks time to consummate the deal.
Meanwhile Barnato accumulated an immense stock of diamonds which he
threatened to dump on the market and demoralize the price. The release
of these stones before the completion of Rhodes' negotiations would have
upset his whole scheme and neutralized his work and expense.
He arranged a meeting with Barnato who confronted him with the pile of
diamonds that he was about to throw on the market. Rhodes, so the story
goes, took him by the arm and said: "Barney, have you ever seen a
bucketful of diamonds? I never have. I'll make a proposition to you. If
these diamonds will fill a bucket, I'll take them all from you at your
own price."
Without giving his rival time to answer, Rhodes swept the glittering
fortune into a bucket which happened to be standing nearby. It also
happened that the stones did not fill it. This incident shows the extent
of the Rhodes resource, for a man at Kimberly told me that Rhodes knew
beforehand exactly how many diamonds Barnato had and got the right
sized bucket. Rhodes immediately strode from the room, got the time he
wanted and consummated the consolidation which made the name DeBeers
synonymous with the diamond output of the world. One trifling feature of
this deal was the check for $26,000,000 which Rhodes gave for some of
the Barnato interests acquired.
The deal with Barnato illustrated the practical operation of one of the
rules which guided Rhodes' business life. He once said, "Never fight
with a man if you can deal with him." He lived up to this maxim even
with the savage Matabeles from whom he wrested Rhodesia.
Not long after the organization of the diamond trust Rhodes gave another
evidence of his business acumen. He saw that the disorganized marketing
of the output would lead to instability of price. He therefore formed
the Diamond Syndicate in London, composed of a small group of middlemen
who distribute the whole Kimberley output. In this way the available
supply is measured solely by the demand.
Rhodes had a peculiar affection for Kimberley. One reason perhaps was
that it represented the cornerstone of his fortune. He always referred
to the mines as his "bread and cheese." He made and lost vast sums
elsewhere and scattered his money about with a lavish hand. The diamond
mines did not belie their name and gave him a constant meal-ticket.
In Kimberley he made some of the friendships that influenced his life.
First and foremost among them was his association with Doctor,
afterwards Sir, Starr Jameson, the hero of the famous Raid and a
romantic character in African annals. Jameson came to Kimberley to
practice medicine in 1878. No less intimate was Rhodes' life-long
attachment for Alfred Beit, who arrived at the diamond fields from
Hamburg in 1875 as an obscure buyer. He became a magnate whose
operations extended to three continents. Beit was the balance wheel in
the Rhodes financial machine.
The diamond mines at Kimberley are familiar to most readers. They differ
from the mines in German South-West Africa and the Congo in that they
are deep level excavations. The Kimberley mine, for example, goes down
3,000 feet. To see this almost grotesque gash in the earth is to get the
impression of a very small Grand Canyon of the Colorado. It is an
awesome and terrifying spectacle for it is shot through with green and
brown and purple, is more than a thousand feet wide at the top, and
converges to a visible point a thousand feet below. You feel that out of
this color and depth has emerged something that itself incarnates lure
and mystery. Even in its source the diamond is not without its element
of elusiveness.
The diamonds at Kimberley are found in a blue earth, technically known
as kimberlite and commonly called "blue ground." This is exposed to sun
and rain for six months, after which it is shaken down, run over a
grease table where the vaseline catches the real diamonds, and allows
the other matter to escape. After a boiling process it is the "rough"
diamond.
I spent a day in the Dutoitspan Mine where I saw thousands of Kaffirs
digging away at the precious blue substance soon to be translated into
the gleaming stone that would dangle on the bosom or shine from the
finger of some woman ten thousand miles away. I got an evidence of
American cinema enterprise on this occasion for I suddenly debouched on
a wide level and under the flickering lights I saw a Yankee operator
turning the crank of a motion picture camera. He was part of a movie
outfit getting travel pictures. A hundred naked Zulus stared with
open-eyed wonder at the performance. When the flashlight was touched off
they ran for their lives.
This leads me to the conspicuous part that Americans have played at
Kimberley. Rhodes had great confidence in the Americans, and employed
them in various capacities that ranged from introducing California
fruits into South Africa and Rhodesia to handling his most important
mining interests. When someone asked him why he engaged so many he
answered, "They are so thorough."
First among the Americans that Rhodes brought to Kimberley was Gardner
F. Williams, a Michigander who became General Manager of the DeBeers
Company in 1887 and upon the consolidation, assumed the same post with
the united interests. He developed the mechanical side of diamond
production and for many years held what was perhaps the most conspicuous
technical and administrative post in the industry. He retired in favor
of his son, Alpheus Williams, who is the present General Manager of all
the diamond mines at Kimberley.
A little-known American had a vital part in the siege of Kimberley.
Among the American engineers who rallied round Gardner Williams was
George Labram. When the Boers invested the town they had the great
advantage of superiority in weight of metal. Thanks to Britain's lack of
preparedness, Kimberley only had a few seven pounders, while the Boers
had "Long Toms" that hurled hundred pounders. At Rhodes' suggestion
Labram manufactured a big gun capable of throwing a thirty-pound shell
and it gave the besiegers a big and destructive surprise. This gun,
which was called "Long Cecil," was built and booming in exactly
twenty-eight days. Tragically enough, Labram was killed by a Boer shell
while shaving in his room at the Grand Hotel exactly a week after the
first discharge of his gun.
IV
The part that Americans had in the development of Kimberley is slight
compared with their participation in the exploitation of the Rand gold
mines. Not only were they the real pioneers in opening up this greatest
of all gold fields but they loomed large in the drama of the Jameson
Raid. One of their number, John Hays Hammond, the best-known of the
group, was sentenced to death for his rôle in it. The entire technical
fabric of the Rand was devised and established by men born, and who had
the greater part of their experience, in the United States.
The capital of the Rand is Johannesburg. When you ride in a taxicab down
its broad, well-paved streets or are whirled to the top floor of one of
its skyscrapers, it is difficult to believe that thirty years ago this
thriving and metropolitan community was a rocky waste. We are accustomed
to swift civic transformations in America but Johannesburg surpasses any
exhibit that we can offer in this line. Once called "a tin town with a
gold cellar," it has the atmosphere of a continuous cabaret with a jazz
band going all the time.
No thoroughly acclimated person would ever think of calling Johannesburg
by its full and proper name. Just as San Francisco is contracted into
"'Frisco," so is this animated joytown called "Joburg." I made the
mistake of dignifying the place with its geographical title when I
innocently remarked, "Johannesburg is a live place." My companion looked
at me with pity--it was almost sorrow, and replied,
"We think that 'Joburg' (strong emphasis on 'Joburg') is one of the
hottest places in the world."
The word Rand is Dutch for ridge or reef. Toward the middle of the
eighties the first mine was discovered on what is the present site of
Johannesburg. The original excavation was on the historic place known as
_Witwatersrand_, which means White Water Reef. Kimberley history
repeated itself for the gold rush to the Transvaal was as noisy and
picturesque as the dash on the diamond fields. It exceeded the Klondike
movement because for one thing it was more accessible and in the second
place there were no really adverse climatic conditions. Thousands died
in the snow and ice of the Yukon trail while only a few hundred
succumbed to fever, exposure to rain, and inadequate food on the Rand.
It resembled the gold rush to California in 1849 more than any other
similar event.
The Rand gold fields, which in 1920 produced half of the world's gold,
are embodied in a reef about fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. All
the mines immediately in and about Johannesburg are practically
exhausted. The large development today is in the eastern section. People
do everything but eat gold in Johannesburg. Cooks, maids, waiters,
bootblacks--indeed the whole population--are interested, or at some time
have had an interest in a gold mine. Some historic shoestrings have
become golden cables. J. B. Robinson, for example, one of the well-known
magnates, and his associates converted an original interest of
£12,000 into £18,000,000. This Rand history sounds like an
Aladdin fairy tale.
What concerns us principally, however, is the American end of the whole
show. Hardly were the first Rand mines uncovered than they felt the
influence of the American technical touch. Among the first of our
engineers to go out were three unusual men, Hennen Jennings, H. C.
Perkins and Captain Thomas Mein. Together with Hamilton Smith, another
noted American engineer who joined them later, they had all worked in
the famous El Callao gold mine in Venezuela. Subsequently came John Hays
Hammond, Charles Butters, Victor M. Clement, J. S. Curtis, T. H.
Leggett, Pope Yeatman, Fred Hellman, George Webber, H. H. Webb, and
Louis Seymour. These men were the big fellows. They marshalled hundreds
of subordinate engineers, mechanics, electricians, mine managers and
others until there were more than a thousand in the field.
This was the group contemporaneous and identified with the Jameson Raid.
After the Boer War came what might be called the second generation of
American engineers, which included Sidney Jennings, a brother of Hennen,
W. L. Honnold, Samuel Thomson, Ruel C. Warriner, W. W. Mein, the son of
Capt. Thomas Mein, and H. C. Behr.
Why this American invasion? The reason was simple. The American mining
engineer of the eighties and the nineties stood in a class by himself.
Through the gold development of California we were the only people who
had produced gold mining engineers of large and varied practical
experience. When Rhodes and Barnato (they were both among the early nine
mine-owners in the Rand) cast about for capable men they naturally
picked out Americans. Hammond, for example, was brought to South America
in 1893 by Barnato and after six months with him went over to Rhodes,
with whom he was associated both in the Rand and Rhodesia until 1900.
Not only did Americans create the whole technical machine but one of
them--Hennen Jennings--really saved the field. The first mines were
"outcrop," that is, the ore literally cropped out at the surface. This
outcrop is oxidized, and being free, is easily amalgamated with mercury.
Deeper down in the earth comes the unoxidized zone which continues
indefinitely. The iron pyrites found here are not oxidized. They hold
the gold so tenaciously that they are not amalgamable. They must
therefore be abstracted by some other process than with mercury. At the
time that the outcrop in the Rand become exhausted, what is today known
as the "cyanide process" had never been used in that part of the world.
The mine-owners became discouraged and a slump followed. Jennings had
heard of the cyanide operation, insisted upon its introduction, and it
not only retrieved the situation but has become an accepted adjunct of
gold mining the world over. In the same way Hammond inaugurated
deep-level mining when many of the owners thought the field was
exhausted because the outcrop indications had disappeared.
These Americans in the Rand made the mines and they also made history as
their part in the Jameson Raid showed. Perhaps a word about the Reform
movement which ended in the Raid is permissible here. It grew out of the
oppression of the _Uitlander_--the alien--by the Transvaal Government
animated by Kruger, the President. Although these outsiders, principally
English and Americans, outnumbered the Boers three to one, they were
deprived of the rights of citizenship. The Reformers organized an armed
campaign to capture Kruger and hold him as a hostage until they could
obtain their rights. The guns and ammunition were smuggled in from
Kimberley as "hardware" under the supervision of Gardner Williams. It
was easy to bring the munitions as far as Kimberley. The Boers set up
such a careful watch on the Transvaal border, however, that every
subterfuge had to be employed to get them across.
Dr. Jameson, who at that time was Administrator of Southern Rhodesia,
had a force of Rhodesian police on the Transvaal border ready to come to
the assistance of the Committee if necessary. The understanding was that
Jameson should not invade the Transvaal until he was needed. His
impetuosity spoiled the scheme. Instead of waiting until the Committee
was properly armed and had seized Kruger, he suddenly crossed the border
with his forces. The Raid was a fizzle and the commander and all his men
were captured by the Boers. This abortive attempt was the real prelude
to the Boer War, which came four years later.
Most Americans who have read about this episode believe that John Hays
Hammond was the only countryman of theirs in it. This was because he had
a leading and spectacular part and was one of the four ringleaders
sentenced to death. He afterwards escaped by the payment of a fine of
$125,000. As a matter of fact, four other prominent American mining
engineers were up to their necks in the reform movement and got long
terms in prison. They were Capt. Thomas Mein, J. S. Curtis, Victor M.
Clement and Charles Butters. They obtained their freedom by the payment
of fines of $10,000 each. This whole enterprise netted Kruger something
like $2,000,000 in cash.
The Jameson Raid did more than enrich old Kruger's coffers and bring the
American engineers in the Rand to the fore. Indirectly it blocked a
German scheme that might have played havoc in Africa the moment the
inevitable Great War broke. If the Boer War had not developed in 1899 it
is altogether likely that, judging from her whole campaign of world-wide
interference, Germany would have arranged so that it should break out in
1914. In this unhappy event she could have struck a death blow at
England in South Africa because in the years between the Boer War and
1914 she created close-knit colonial organizations in South-West and
East Africa; built strategic railways; armed and drilled thousands of
natives, and could have invaded the Cape Colony and the Transvaal.
In connection with the Jameson Raid is a story not without interest.
Jameson and Rudyard Kipling happened to be together when the news of
Roosevelt's coup in Panama was published. The author read it first and
handed the paper to his friend with the question: "What do you think of
it?"
Jameson glanced at the article and then replied somewhat sadly, "This
makes the Raid look like thirty cents."
I cannot leave the Rand section of the Union of South Africa without a
word in passing about Pretoria, the administrative capital, which is
only an hour's journey from Johannesburg. Here you still see the old
house where Kruger lived. It was the throne of a copper-riveted
autocracy. No modern head of a country ever wielded such a despotic rule
as this psalm-singing old Boer whose favorite hour for receiving
visitors was at five o'clock in the morning, when he had his first cup
of strong coffee, a beverage which he continued to consume throughout
the day.
The most striking feature of the country around Pretoria is the Premier
diamond mine, twenty-five miles east of the town and the world's
greatest single treasure-trove. The mines at Kimberley together
constitute the largest of all diamond fields but the Premier Mine is the
biggest single mine anywhere. It produces as much as the four largest
Kimberley mines combined, and contributes eighteen per cent of the
yearly output allotted to the Diamond Syndicate.
It was discovered by Thomas M. Cullinan, who bought the site from a Boer
farmer for $250,000. The land originally cost this farmer $2,500. The
mine has already produced more than five hundred times what Cullinan
paid for it and the surface has scarcely been scraped. You can see the
natives working in its two huge holes which are not more than six
hundred feet deep. It is still an open mine. In the Premier Mine was
found the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever discovered and which made
the Koh-i-noor and all other fabled gems look like small pebbles. It
weighed 3,200 karats and was insured for $2,500,000 when it was sent to
England to be presented to King Edward. The Koh-i-noor, by the way,
which was found in India only weighs 186 karats.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by South African Railways_
THE PREMIER DIAMOND MINE]
V
No attempt at an analysis of South Africa would be complete without some
reference to the native problem, the one discordant note in the economic
and productive scheme. The race question, as the Smuts dilemma showed,
lies at the root of all South African trouble. But the racial conflict
between Briton and Boer is almost entirely political and in no way
threatens the commercial integrity. Both the Dutchman and the Englishman
agree on the whole larger proposition and the necessity of settling once
and for all a trouble that carries with it the danger of sporadic
outbreak or worse. Now we come to the whole irritating labor trouble
which has neither color, caste, nor creed, or geographical line.
First let me bring the South African color problem home to America. In
the United States the whites outnumber the blacks roughly ten to one.
Our coloured population represents the evolution of the one-time African
slave through various generations into a peaceful, law-abiding, and
useful social unit. The Southern "outrage" is the rare exception. We
have produced a Frederick Douglass and a Booker Washington. Our Negro is
a Christian, fills high posts, and invades the professions.
In South Africa the reverse is true. To begin with, the natives
outnumber the whites four and one-half to one--in Rhodesia they are
twenty to one--and they are increasing at a much greater rate than the
Europeans. Moreover, the native population draws on half a dozen races,
including the Zulus, Kaffirs, Hottentots and Basutos. These Negroes
represent an almost primitive stage of development. They are mainly
heathens and a prey to savagery and superstition. The Cape Colony is the
only one that permits the black man to go to school or become a skilled
artisan. Elsewhere the white retains his monopoly on the crafts and at
the same time refuses to do any labour that a Negro can perform. Hence
the great need of white immigration into the Union. The big task,
therefore, is to secure adequate work for the Negro without permitting
him to gain an advantage through it.
It follows that the moment the Kaffir becomes efficient and picks up a
smattering of education he begins to think about his position and unrest
is fomented. It makes him unstable as an employee, as the constant
desertions from work show. The only way that the gold and diamond mines
keep their thousands of recruited native workers is to confine them in
compounds. The ordinary labourer has no such restrictions and he is here
today and gone tomorrow.
It is not surprising to discover that in a country teeming with blacks
there are really no good servants, a condition with which the American
housewife can heartily sympathize. Before I went to Africa nearly every
woman I knew asked me to bring her back a diamond and a cook. They were
much more concerned about the cook than the diamond. Had I kept every
promise that I made affecting this human jewel, I would have had to
charter a ship to convey them. The only decent servant I had in Africa
was a near-savage in the Congo, a sad commentary on domestic service
conditions.
The one class of stable servants in the Colony are the "Cape Boys," as
they are called. They are the coloured offspring of a European and a
Hottentot or a Malay and are of all shades, from a darkish brown to a
mere tinge. They dislike being called "niggers." The first time I saw
these Cape Boys was in France during the war. South Africa sent over
thousands of them to recruit the labour battalions and they did
excellent work as teamsters and in other capacities. The Cape Boy,
however, is the exception to the native rule throughout the Union, which
means that most native labour is unstable and discontented.
Not only is the South African native a menace to economic expansion but
he is likewise something of a physical danger. In towns like Pretoria
and Johannesburg there is a considerable feeling of insecurity. Women
shrink from being left alone with their servants and are filled with
apprehension while their little ones are out under black custodianship.
The one native servant, aside from some of the Cape Boys, who has
demonstrated absolute fidelity, is the Zulu whom you see in largest
numbers in Natal. He is still a proud and kingly-looking person and he
carried with him a hint of the vanished greatness of his race. Perhaps
one reason why he is safe and sane reposes in his recollection of the
repeated bitter and bloody defeats at the hands of the white men. Yet
the Zulu was in armed insurrection in Natal in the nineties.
South Africa enjoys no guarantee of immunity from black uprising even
now in the twentieth century when the world uses the aeroplane and the
wireless. During the past thirty years there have been outbreaks
throughout the African continent. As recently as 1915 a fanatical form
of Ethiopianism broke out in Nyassaland which lies north-east of
Rhodesia, under the sponsorship of John Chilembwe, a negro preacher who
had been educated in the United States. The natives rose, killed a
number of white men and carried off the women. Of course, it was
summarily put down and the leaders executed. But the incident was
significant.
Prester John, whose story is familiar to readers of John Buchan's fine
romance of the same name, still has disciples. Like Chilembwe he was a
preacher who had acquired so-called European civilization. He dreamed of
an Africa for the blacks and took his inspiration from the old kings of
Abyssinia. He too met the fate of all his kind but his spirit goes
marching on. In 1919 a Pan-African Congress was held in Paris to discuss
some plan for what might be called Pan-Ethiopianism. The following year
a negro convention in New York City advocated that all Africa should be
converted into a black republic.
One example of African native unrest was brought strikingly to my
personal attention. At Capetown I met one of the heads of a large Cape
Colony school for Negroes which is conducted under religious auspices.
The occasion was a dinner given by J. X. Merriman, the Grand Old Man of
the Cape Colony. This particular educator spoke with glowing enthusiasm
about this institution and dwelt particularly upon the evolution that
was being accomplished. He gave me a pressing invitation to visit it. He
happened to be on the train that I took to Kimberley, which was also the
first stage of his journey home and he talked some more about the great
work the school was doing.
When I reached Kimberley the first item of news that I read in the
local paper was an account of an uprising in the school. Hundreds of
native students rebelled at the quality of food they were getting and
went on the rampage. They destroyed the power-plant and wrecked several
of the buildings. The constabulary had to be called out to restore
order.
In many respects most Central and South African Negroes never really
lose the primitive in them despite the claims of uplifters and
sentimentalists. Actual contact is a disillusioning thing. I heard of a
concrete case when I was in the Belgian Congo. A Belgian judge at a post
up the Kasai River acquired an intelligent Baluba boy. All personal
servants in Africa are called "boys." This particular native learned
French, acquired European clothes and became a model servant. When the
judge went home to Belgium on leave he took the boy along. He decided to
stay longer than he expected and sent the negro back to the Congo. No
sooner did the boy get back to his native heath than he sold his
European clothes, put on a loin cloth, and squatted on the ground when
he ate, precisely like his savage brethren. It is a typical case, and
merely shows that a great deal of so-called black-acquired civilization
in Africa falls away with the garb of civilization.
The only African blacks who have really assimilated the civilizing
influence so far as my personal observation goes are those of the West
Coast. Some of the inhabitants of Sierra Leone will illustrate what I
mean. Scores have gone to Oxford and Cambridge and have become doctors,
lawyers and competent civil servants. They resemble the American Negro
more than any others in Africa. This parallel even goes to their
fondness for using big words. I saw hundreds of them holding down
important clerical positions in the Belgian Congo where they are known
as "Coast-men," because they come from the West Coast.
I had an amusing experience with one when I was on my way out of the
Congo jungle. I sent a message by him to the captain of the little
steamboat that took me up and down the Kasai River. In this message I
asked that the vessel be made ready for immediate departure. The
Coast-man, whose name was Wilson--they all have English names and speak
English fluently--came back and said:
"I have conveyed your expressed desire to leave immediately to the
captain of your boat. He only returns a verbal acquiescence but I assure
you that he will leave nothing undone to facilitate your speedy
departure."
He said all this with such a solemn and sober face that you would have
thought the whole destiny of the British Empire depended upon the
elaborateness of his utterance.
To return to the matter of unrest, all the concrete happenings that I
have related show that the authority of the white man in Africa is still
resented by the natives. It serves to emphasize what Mr. Lothrop
Stoddard, an eminent authority on this subject, so aptly calls "the
rising tide of colour." We white people seldom stop to realize how
overwhelmingly we are outnumbered. Out of the world population of
approximately 1,700,000,000 persons (I am using Mr. Stoddard's figures),
only 550,000,000 are white.
A colour conflict is improbable but by no means impossible. We have only
to look at our own troubles with the Japanese to get an intimate glimpse
of what might lurk in a yellow tidal wave. The yellow man humbled Russia
in the Russo-Japanese War and he smashed the Germans at Kiao Chow in
the Great War. The fact that he was permitted to fight shoulder to
shoulder with the white man has only added to his cockiness as we have
discovered in California.
Remember too that the Germans stirred up all Islam in their mad attempt
to conquer the world. The Mohammedan has not forgotten what the Teutonic
propagandists told him when they laid the cunning train of bad feeling
that precipitated Turkey into the Great War. These seeds of discord are
bearing fruit in many Near Eastern quarters. One result is that a
British army is fighting in Mesopotamia now. A Holy War is merely the
full brother of the possible War of Colour. In East Africa the Germans
used thousands of native troops against the British and Belgians. The
blacks got a taste, figuratively, of the white man's blood and it did
his system no good.
Throughout the globe there are 150,000,000 blacks and all but 30,000,000
of them are south of the Sahara Desert in Africa. They lack the high
mental development of the yellow man as expressed in the Japanese, but
even brute force is not to be despised, especially where it outnumbers
the whites to the extent that they do in South Africa. I am no alarmist
and I do not presume to say that there will be serious trouble. I merely
present these facts to show that certainly so far as affecting
production and economic security in general is concerned, the native
still provides a vexing and irritating problem, not without danger.
The Union of South Africa is keenly alive to this perplexing native
situation. Its policy is what might be called the Direct Rule, in which
the whole administration of the country is in the hands of the Europeans
and which is the opposite of the Indirect Rule of India, for example,
which recognizes Rajahs and other potentates and which permits the brown
man to hold a variety of public posts.
The Government of the Cape Colony is becoming convinced that Booker
Washington's idea is the sole salvation of the race. That great leader
maintained that the hope for the Negro in the United States and
elsewhere lay in the training of his hands. Once those hands were
skilled they could be kept out of mischief. I recall having discussed
this theory one night with General Smuts at Capetown and he expressed
his hearty approval of it.
The lamented Botha died before he could put into operation a plan which
held out the promise of still another kind of solution. It lay in the
soil. He contended that an area of forty million acres should be set
aside for the natives, where many could work out their destinies
themselves. While this plan offered the opportunity for the
establishment of a compact and perhaps dangerous black entity, his
feeling was that by the avoidance of friction with the whites the
possibility of trouble would be minimized. This scheme is likely to be
carried out by Smuts.
Since the Union of South Africa profited by the whirligig of war to the
extent of acquiring German South-West Africa it only remains to speak of
the new map of Africa, made possible by the Great Conflict. Despite the
return of Alsace-Lorraine to France one fails to see concrete evidence
of Germany's defeat in Europe. Her people are still cocky and defiant.
There is no mistake about her altered condition in Africa. Her flag
there has gone into the discard along with the wreck of militarism. The
immense territory that she acquired principally by browbeating is lost,
down to the last square mile.
Up to 1884 Germany did not own an inch of African soil. Within two years
she was mistress of more than a million square miles. Analyze her whole
performance on the continent and a definite cause of the World War is
discovered. It is part of an international conspiracy studded with
astonishing details.
Africa was a definite means to world conquest. Germany knew of her vast
undeveloped wealth. It is now no secret that her plan was to annex the
greater part of French, Belgian, Italian and Portuguese Africa in the
event that she won. The Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway would have hitched up
the late Teutonic Empire with the Near East and made it easy to link the
African domain with this intermediary through the Turkish dominions.
Here was an imposing program with many advantages. For one thing it
would have given Germany an untold store of raw materials and it would
also have put her into a position to dictate to Southern Asia and even
South America.
The methods that Germany adopted to acquire her African possessions were
peculiarly typical. Like the madness that plunged her into a struggle
with civilization they were her own undoing. Into a continent whose
middle name, so far as colonization goes, is intrigue she fitted
perfectly. Practically every German colony in Africa represented the
triumph of "butting in" or intimidation. The Kaiser That Was regarded
himself as the mentor, and sought to recast continents in the same grand
way that he lectured his minions.
The first German colony in Africa was German South-West, as it was
called for short, and grew out of a deal made between a Bremen merchant
and a native chief. On the strength of this Bismarck pinched out an area
almost as big as British East Africa. Before twelve months had passed
the German flag flew over what came to be known as German East Africa,
and also over Togoland and the The Cameroons on the West Coast.
Germany really had no right to invade any of this country but she was
developing into a strong military power and rather than have trouble,
the other nations acquiesced. Once intrenched, she started her usual
interference. The prize mischief-maker of the universe, she began to
stir up trouble in every quarter. She embroiled the French at Agadir and
got into a snarl with Portugal over Angola.
The Kaiser's experience with Kruger is typical. When the Jameson Raid
petered out William Hohenzollern sent the dictator of the Transvaal a
telegram of congratulation. The old Boer immediately regarded him as an
ally and counted on his aid when the Boer War started. Instead, he got
the double-cross after he had sent his ultimatum to England. At that
time the Kaiser warily side-stepped an entanglement with Britain for the
reason that she was too useful.
It is now evident that a large part of the Congo atrocity was a German
scheme. The head and front of the exposé movement was Sir Roger Casement
of London. He sought to foment a German-financed revolution in Ireland
and was hanged as a traitor in the Tower.
Behind this atrocity crusade was just another evidence of the German
desire to control Africa. By rousing the world against Belgium, Germany
expected to bring another Berlin Congress, which would be expected to
give her the stewardship of the Belgian Congo. The result would have
been a German belt across Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans.
She could thus have had England and France at a disadvantage on the
north, and England and Portugal where she wanted them, to the south.
Hence the Great War was not so much a matter of German meddling in the
Balkans as it was her persistent manipulation of other nations' affairs
in Africa. She was playing "freeze-out" on a stupendous scale. You can
see why Germany was so much opposed to the Cape-to-Cairo Route. It
interfered with her ambitions and provided a constant irritant to her
"benevolent" plans.
So much for the war end. Turn to the peace aspect. With Germany
eliminated from the African scheme the whole region can enter upon a
harmonious development. More than this, the fact that she is now
deprived of colonies prevents her from recovering the world-wide
economic authority she commanded before the war. A congested population
allows her no more elbow room at home. Before she went mad her whole
hope of the future lay in a colonization where her flag could fly in
public, and in a penetration which cunningly masked the German hand. The
world is now wise to the latter procedure.
The new colour scheme of the African map may now be disclosed. The Union
of South Africa, as you have seen, has taken over German South-West
Africa; Great Britain has assumed the control of all German East Africa
with the exception of Ruanda and Urundu, which have become part of the
Belgian Congo. Togoland is divided between France and Britain, while the
greater part of The Cameroons is merged into the Lower French West
African possessions of which the French Congo is the principal one.
Britain gets the Cameroon Mountains.
The one-time Dark Continent remains dark only for Germany.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright British South Africa Co._
VICTORIA FALLS]