CHAPTER XIV.
What a League of Nations could do to protect
Tropical Africa from the eveils of Capitalistic
Exploitation and Militarism.
Whether a League of Nations can do anything within a measurable distance of time for colonisable and semi-colonisable Africa depends upon a great many considerations closely associated with the European settlement, which it would be out of place to discuss here. But a League of Nations could perform a great work for tropical Africa and perform it, or at least lay the basis for its execution, within a comparatively short period, if it were so minded.
In so far as the problem of the government of Africa by the white race is one which lends itself to international consideration, it is the non-colonisable tropical regions of the Continent which are susceptible of international treatment and decisions. Policy can there proceed, in the main, on simple and predetermined courses, provided that foresight, sagacity, humanity, and some imagination and knowledge are present at the European end. Policy is not there entangled in the ramified complexities of racial relationships. It is comparatively simple.
The task with which the white races are confronted in tropical Africa is that of undertaking for the first time in the history of mankind the direct government of the African in an immense region [by far the largest portion of the Continent] where, with a few isolated and restricted exceptions, the European cannot settle and perpetuate his race. Europe has barely crossed the threshold of that endeavour. There has been exploitation by European adventurers of certain parts of this immense area. Wicked systems of pillage and enslavement have been set up within it, and have perished. Others, less odious but nevertheless containing within them the seeds of deadly ills, have been introduced, and
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