This, once more, is a question that concerns, primarily, European interests, not African interests. No doubt it is entirely satisfactory that in 700,000 square miles of African territory, the European "mandatories" should not erect fortifications and naval and military bases. But when one recalls that there are 10,800,000 square miles of African territory to which this preventive clause does not apply, and in which there are numbers of fortifications and military and naval bases, it is difficult to feel deliriously enthusiastic. The prevention of "military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defence of territory." In this connection the natural comment is the same as in the case of military and naval bases. There is no reality in a policy which prevents the militarising of one-sixteenth of the African Continent, and which allows of it in the remaining fifteen-sixteenths. "Equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League." This would be an excellent provision were it not for the fact that considerably more than half the population of Europe is excluded from the League. When, and if, that population is included, the excellence of the provision will be unquestioned. But the spectacle (for example) of French administrators governing the Kamerun as mandatories of the League on free trade principles, and of French administrators governing the coterminous French territory as agents of a protectionist French Government, will assuredly be entertaining.
It is obvious that none of these stipulations, except, indirectly, the last, go to the heart of the problem of African administration even in the restricted and scattered area to which it is proposed to apply them. Outside that area the great mass of Africa, including about five-sixths of the tropical and sub-tropical zone, is left unprotected and untouched by the Covenant.
Hence we may say of the Covenant that it entirely fails to provide the requisite machinery to deal with the African problem, even of that part of Africa—the tropical region—where it is possible for an international standard of administrative conduct and policy to be evolved. Some method will have to be found by which such a standard can be created and internationally supervised. How is this to be done?
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