entails (a) the wholesale expropriation of the native population in favour of the British Crown, in defiance of right, and in violation of the plighted word inscribed upon hundreds of treaties between the representatives of the British Crown and the native rulers of the country; and (b) appropriation by the British Crown of the products of economic value which the land yields through the effort of native labour. Both these measures remain totally ineffective, of course, unless the native population can be coerced into working its own lands, no longer for its own benefits, but for the benefit of its despoilers.
In the British East Africa and Nyassaland protectorates, individuals and corporations have already been allowed to do, without the commercial co-operation of the British Crown, what the Empire Resources Development Committee desires the British Crown to besmirch itself by doing in West Africa in direct commercial association with such enterprises. Uprisings and partial famines have resulted, and if the policy is persisted in and extended, these will continue and they will increase, involving the partial massacre of the present European landowners, the usual sanguinary reprisals and the ultimate ruin of the country. But in British West Africa, upon which the committee casts its benevolent eye more particularly, such a policy would entail bloodshed on a large scale from one end of the protectorates to the other, the immediate collapse of the great existing export industries and in the long run complete economic disaster. The West African is not going to be made a slave of the British Crown without a fight, and the struggle would be bitter and prolonged.
Militarism works on different lines and with a different objective. When a few years before the war broke out the author paid a visit to West Africa, he had the opportunity of discussing with the Governor-General of French West Africa, at Dakar, the African Cherbourg, the scheme which was then being put into operation by that distinguished official to impose yearly levies for military purposes upon the male population of French West Africa. The scheme has made great headway since then. It is characteristic of the atmosphere of deceit and dishonesty which war generates that the potential militarisation of the inhabitants of the German African Dependencies in tropical Africa has been used as an
