GERMANS AND ARABS.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15486, 13 January 1916, Page 8

GERMANS AND ARABS.

UNHOLY ALLIANCE. ECHOES OF THE SLAVE-RAIDING DAYS. The effects of the world-war in Central Africa are describes! in a letter from Mr Dan Crawford, of the Luanza Mission, who will be remembered as having visited and lectured in New Zealand some months ago. The letter, which is dated August 20th last, reached civilisation, via the Belgian Congo. Mr Crawford writes : — "The war has brought lots of troubie on us, even far in the middle of Africa. ( lt Jhas stirred up a lot of bad blood here. Not long ago when I was coming north, a Belgian and a German were the actors in a dark drama of death. Bad news had reached the Belgian from home—mother killed, wife killed, child killed —yes, killed by the Germans in Europe. The pain and passion of the news hit the bereaved man hard, for he first lost heart, then he lost hi s head, and then iinally the German lost his life. For what do you think? Drawing his revolver, the Belgian gave him three Browning bullets in the body—three tragic bullets, each ringing out to accompany names of the far-off dead in Belgium, who were thus so damnably avenged. But law can neither extenuate nor exaggerate, so the half-mad, wholly sad Belgian must stand his trial.

"if tou cross this great lake to the far-off British side, then through Itabwaland till you strike Lake Tanganyika, there it is the battle-line ia drawn. And the blackest bit of all infamy is found in the incredible fact that the Arab s have joined with the Germans —yes, the very Arabs who devastated our land in the old slaveraiding days. Ever since that great victory for freedom. and faith when they were swept out of the interior, they have had the inflammation of a devouring ambition to regain their old ascendancy over their lost Central Africa. Little wonder they have rallied as one man round the Germans, making common cause with them, as their Turkish brethren have done in the Dardanelles. Because we fought their slavery crusade day and night, raih and shine, they tried to get us out of the country, but I have outlived them all and swept far East. And no\y my God has humbled me, for I have lived to see. a Christian civilised Power ally itself with the ancient enemies of the Faith. In all my missipnarv career I have never lived under the British flag,, but under Portuguese and Belgian, so I am not biased. But this German-Arab alliance is a deeper thing than the mere incidental phase of a shoulder-to-shoulder campaign. Dr. Schlunck, a great German missionary leader, goes the whole hog and- boasts that the missionary activity after the war will be a new and healthy form of Christianity which will commend itself to the heathen and the Mohammedan especially! Healthy is his own word, and the proof of its health-giving virtue will be ' found in the alacrity , with which these debased natives will acclaim its ear-tickling, soul-destroying virus."