The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo, MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1900. FRESH TROUBLES IN AFRICA

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 131, 4 June 1900, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo,

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1900. FRESH TROUBLES IN AFRICA

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the -wrong that needs resistant, For the future in the distance, And the good that Tre oan do.

Life, of late, under war news, lias become very fast and exciting Like our own brave boys at the front, we expect a big fight with the; Boers daily before breakfast. The ( capture of Johannesburg and yielding up of Pretoria with . other .mighty forts and cannon without p rifle shot is disappointing. The splendid strategy of Lord Boberts in his victorious march though the Transvaal is growing common-place after the crowning rapture of the relief of Mafeking. We must beware. The fever of war is quite as catching and dangerous as the gold fever. It is more barbaric. We cannot m-days of Christian civilisation, with any feelings of decency desire to wash our feet, in the blood of the wicked. We must leave that style of revengeful life and poetry to the lowest types of the ancient. Hebrews, and to the saints of the' Transvaal. But fresh excitement is at hand. The trouble on.the West Coast of Africa, already commands national attention. It: cannot be altogether overshadowed by the campaign in the south. The ne*ws of the relief of Kumassi is cheering. The situation was alarming- ' A handful of British, with friendly natives, were shut up with hordes of black-faced warriors round them, thirsting for revenge. The relief column under Colonel Wilcock was far too small, and their achievement is therefore the more welcome. Still there may be a fresh cry for help from Africa. Memory may be enough to supply some history of past war in Ashanti. It was no child's play, as Sir Garnet Wolseley well knows. We hope he may remember this better than the demands of South Africa in his plans for immediate aid. He cannot forget his hard march through fever stricken regions, and his three days' fierce fighting before he captured and burned down Kumassi. The interesting relic? of barbaric splendour and human sacrifices, and unlimited monarchy, limited only to the exact number of 3333 wives, did not compensate for the many brave British hearts he left behind him in the burning dust of West Africa, Even the indemnity of 50,000 ounces of gold from "Afric's golden sand" did not go far in paying expenses. The promise of the king to renounce all claim on the British protectorate of. Gold Coast Colony could not be expected to be a9 sacred as the laws of the Medes and Persians. In this style of British conquest there can be- nothing permanent and: satisfactory. • The history, of the Soudan, and of the Transvaal is repeated m Ashanti. What a vast expenditure of life and money, and what a loss to • civilisation and commerce have been occasioned by the refusal in the past of the British Empire to accept the responsibilities of.African conquest? The climate of the West Coast of Africa may seem a bar to complete possession. The envious French colonial policy of late may put difficulties in the way. But we cannot afford another conquest of Ashanti without permanent results. ..It is a rich and fruitful land. Its climate could be improved by cultivation; maize and rice, and yarns, tobacco, sugar, and cocoa, can be grown in abundance It is famous for palm oil and gold dust. If the British people cannot be tempted to leave the ice caves of, the Old World by these considerations, through fear of tropical heat and malaria, the British nation might have wit enough to find some needy people in her vast foreign dominions to whom West Africa would be a perfect Goschen. The famine and -plague stricken people of India, for example. A colony of. these in Ashanti, under the care of some brave Goitrkas, would be an improvement on the present reign of cruelty and terror. Clearly our Imperial spirit in the future. rising above the parochial conceptions of Little Englanders, must exercise some new and original methods of rising to the demands of our. Imperial responsibilities. But if we have genuine facts without the colour of an alarmist or romancer, given in a recent number of the "Xineteenth Century" magazine, our greatest tribulation cometh neither from the south nor west of Africa, but from a threatened holy war in the north. It is very extraordinary indeed if millions of a new school of Mahome•danism have been, ed\icated and drilled by a new Mahdi—under the very nose of Europeans on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Algeria, Morocco, Tunis,, Egypt— without the alarming fact being

proclaimed and prepared for everywhere. If we take Mr Threlfali's estimate of this movement —under the most enlightened, moral and powerful of all the leaders of the hosts of Mahomet—the grand conflict between the crescent and the cross is yet to come. Sidi Senussi bears all the marks of the true Mahdi. He has one arm longer than another; he has blue eyes, and the genuine mark between his shoulders. This son of a holy man —and it is interesting to find an Algerian lawyer of a holy orderis a wonderful moral teacher and •reformer. He has taught 2000 students in the convent of Jerabub as missionaries of his new gospel. He has freed large numbers of slaves, and sent them forth as propagandists. When Senussi blows the trumpet for war and proclaims the Jehad, the whole of Europe, as well as the British Empire, may tremble. Some nine millions in Africa alone may rally to his standard. Improved weapons are stored at Jerabub and Joffo. His followers aro almost certain to possess the power of brain telegraphy, like the native^ tribes of South Africa. A formidable foe indeed, able to know all things and endure all things, and to escape if hard pressed at anytime into.the great Sahara, where no European army can follow. We regret to learn that the new Mahdi knows all'about the imperfections of the British Government, and of our Imperial difficulty over a handful of undisciplined "farmers. The blast' of the bugle or ramshorn therefore, proclaiming the holy war may be heard at any moment. We can only hope and pray that Mr Threlfali.has got Senussism on the brain. Some indications of this appear in His picture of this immediate African Armageddon. The gathering of the hosts of Mahomet is an old terror, far more difficult of accomplishment than people of vivid imaginations picture.