BLACK ARMIES

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 27, 1 August 1917, Page 5

BLACK ARMIES

N.Z., LTD.

THE GERMAN DREAM

The other day General Smuts made the remarkable statement that "Central Africa is now light in the centre of worldpolitics." In the rush of current events far too little attention was paid to his pregnant and solemn warning.

Twenty years or so ago (writes Lovat Fraser in the Daily Mail) it was said that the Par East was "the seed-bed of new political issues," and in the following decade we all realised the.truth of the assertion. The same may be said of tropical Africa to-day. The African campaigns are almost over, but when the peace discussioiis begin the decisions about Africa will be as important as those concerning Belgium or Servia or Poland.

Why is General Smuts anxious about the future of Equatorial Africa? _ Becauss tlie war has brought the surprising revelation that the African negroes can be transformed into some of the finest fighting material in the world. General Smuts confesses that his eyes were opened by his East African experiences. He realised then for the first time that it would be possible to organise among the African blacks "one of the most powerful armies the -world has even seen." Commander Wedgwood said the sam« thing in Parliament. He declared that the Askaris in East Africa who fought under German leadership were "the most formidable forces of black troops that I have ever seen." [The term "Aekari" is tha East African equivalent for "sepoy," but has an Asiatic derivation.] For strength and brute courage, for insensibility to pain, for ability to endure fatigue and short commons, for docility under orders, for fearlessness of death, some of the black races of Central Africa are almost unequalled. Commander Wedgwood believes that a mighty black army could be created which would "walk through Africa." But why should such an army walk through Africa only? We dimly perceived the fighting qualities of African manhood when we raised tho King's African Rifles; but Germany made the discovery far more thoroughly and laid, her plans accordingly. Hhat she precipitated the war before her African schemes were ripe is only another example of her many blunders; but it must be remembered that when she drew the sword she calculated that Great Britain would remain neutral. In her view Africa could wait. Yet she did not neglect the African side of her plans, for she looked far ahead, according to her wont. "' The British public still fails to understand that six weeks before the war Viscount Grey of Fallodon and Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador, initialled in London a series of agreemente between Great Britain and Germany. Viscount Grey took tills extraordinary step, although his colleaguesj Mr. Asquith, Lord Haldans, and others, have since told us that they knew all the while that Germany was plotting the' destruction of the British Empire. These agreements idid not relate to the Bagdad railway alone, for they included certain conditional arrangements regarding the future of portions of tropical Africa which would have been of enormous benefit to Germany. Had they endured, -she would have been free to organise the Black Peril for her own purposes. Her aims are not in the least economic, except incidentally. They are summed up in the expression " Machtpolitik, Force-politics. She seeks world-dominion.

General Smuts told us the essence of the German plan, wOiich is to create " ai great Central Africa Empire" stretching from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic Ocean. Various German commentators and pamphleteers have sinoe expounded the scheme more fully, f«' these inflatuated people still dream of victory, and make no secret of their future intentions. The Germans continue to believe that they will so manipulate the peace as to^get their colonies back. They see visions of millions of black warriors marching northward through Egypt into Europe when they begin a modem version of the Second' Punic Wax. Not an extremist in Russia shouts " No annexations" more, fervently than the conspirators of the German Colonial Office. Their project, which was fhist disclosed in 1912 under the direct inspiration of the German Government, is to acquire Portuguese East and West Africa and the Belgian Congo, and to link these territories with Kamerun. In conjunction with a reinvigorated Turkey, they hope to seize Egypt and the Sudun, They will hold the Suez Canal, and by means of naval' bases on both sides of Africa they will command the .sea routes to the East and to Australasia. And their main instrument will be hordes of black troops trained and equipped in tropical Africa.

I do not for a moment beHeve that this foul scheme will ever be realised, unless the, Allies go mad at the conference table, which is always a possibility ; for there are some particularly fatuous and ignorant madmen in this country juet now of the "Don't humiliate Germany" type. But it would be a fatal error to regard the German scheme of African control as either remote or visionary. If General Smuts thought it worth while to devote the whole of a great speech to warning the people of this country of the risks which would ensue if Germany got a foothold in Africa again, lesser men had better think hard about the matter instead of scoffing. When General Smuts declares that an army could be raised in Africa which would be a danger to civilisation itself, when he insists that the German conception 1 of fashioning the Black Peril to serve German ends threatens the future not' only of Africa b'nt of the world, we should beware of listening to the doctrinaires who write and talk of the German colonies as mere pawns in a peace conference; I say nothing about the Pacific; but it must be manifest that the question of a possible re-entry of German influence into the Pacific is a matter of deep concern to the United States, to Japan, to Australia, and New Zealand, to France, 1 and to ourselves.

More than two decades ago, after reading Pearson's memorable book "National Life and Character," I began to ponder on the shores of China the problem of the Yellow Peril—an expression, be it remembered, which attaches to the Asiatic mainland alone. After the Boxer rebellion, Sir Robert Hart said to me in Peking in words he had previously written, that, "in fifty years' time there will be millions of Boxers in serried ranks and war's panoply at the call of the Chinese Government." It may be so, but my conviction was then, and has always been, that the real Tellow Peril is industrial, and that the prospect of an armed and militant China is very remote.

This Black Peril, on the other hand, may not be either impracticable or remote, if we are foolishly led astray by weak counsellors. We have been forewarned. Let us not forget the warning on the day when "peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of tho morning."