For this outspokenness M. Clozel was sharply rebuked, and broken. His successor, M. Van Hollenhoven, was another conspicuously able and honest official of Dutch extraction. But, invested with supreme control as Governor-General, he declined to countenance what he regarded as a scandalous policy, and resigned rather than carry it out, throwing up a salary of £4,000 a year, one of the highest-paid posts in the French Civil Service, and going back to the front as a simple captain. When recovering from his first wounds he said to a mutual friend, who visited him in hospital: "Not only is the Colony being emptied of its able-bodied men, but the whole population is being led to believe that the slave trade has begun again."
The war is now over. But the present rulers of France show no sign of relinquishing the militarist policy they pursued during the war. Quite the contrary. On July 30, 1919, conscription was decreed for all natives throughout the entire area of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa—an area over two million square miles in extent and containing a native population estimated at just under twenty million. A decree of December 12, 1919, applies the West African decree to Madagascar, which covers 228,000 miles and has a population of over three millions. The recruiting of a further 28,900 in West Africa is now proceeding in the following proportions: Senegal, 7,000; upper Senegal-Niger region, 5,600; upper Volta, 5,600; Guinea, 4,000; Ivory Coast, 4,200; Dahomey, 2,500. From 1922 onwards it is estimated that this negro army will consist of three classes and will total 100,000. It is anticipated that Madagascar, the French West Indian islands, the French Somali coast and the group of islands in the Pacific will furnish between them a further 100,000 men. This, of course, does not take into account the Arab and Berber contingents from Algeria, Tunis and Morocco, which may be reckoned at another 100,000 at least. The Negro conscripts will serve three years, and two out of the three will be spent, according to the French military and colonial newspapers, in France!
This new development of French action in Africa raises a number of distinct issues of the gravest international concern. There is the moral issue as it affect Africa. It is not surprising that the native peoples of West Africa
