Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1919. DR. SOLF'S ADVOCACY

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 31, 5 February 1919, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1919. DR. SOLF'S ADVOCACY

Apologising at the beginning of December for the retention of Dr. Solf in the then German Government, Herr Scheidemann explained that it was necessary on the ground that Dr. Solf " has the confidence of Great Britain and America." Upon this convincing explanation, the Springfield Republican observed that "it is time for Dr. Solf to give Scheidemann a. testimonial on the same grounds." Both these gentlemen are equally competent to give- one another »-certificate of character which will carry conviction to the people of Britain and America, but neither of them is equal"to the heroic task which Dr. Solf now essays. This task is. nothing less than the .giving of the Germans a character —a good character —in respect of iheir colonial administration, and especially' of their treatment of the African natives. " The charges that Germany ill-treated the natives in Africa are unfounded," says Dr. Solf. " Germany will publish a White Book disproving the allegation." Those who jeered at Dr. Solf s retention of the Colonial Secretaryship for years after the naval and military power of the British Empire had reduced the office to a sinecure should now be ready to-admit that if Dr. Solf can carry out the contract which he has undertaken he will .have amply redeemed the enforced leisure of more than four years, and justified whatever salary he has been drawing during that period for doing nothing.

Like a brave man, Dr. Solf is tackling the case against his countrymen at its strongest point. Though in his address to the Peace Conference Mi*. Massey is said to have contrasted the treatment of tho Samoans by Germany with New Zealand's attitude to her own Native population, the case against, Germany's colonial administration rests mainly upon her performances in Africa. For some reason or other her record in the Pacific is nothing like so bad, and we may be sure that Mr. Massey did not rest his case upon bloodshed and brutality to the same extent as General Botha and Gene»l Stnatß -runted timirs, Th« 6tup«ndtau» difficulty-of Dr, Soli's tuk ii the feet

that humanity's indictment against Germany in respect of her African administration can be proved to demonstration without'relying upon the pitiful narratives of the Natives themselves, or upon the sworn statements of British eyewitnesses, or upon British official reports, of which that of Mr. Gorges, the Administrator of South-West Africa, is the most detailed and therefore the most damning. It i s open to a devil's advocate to suggest that all this testimony is that of biased witnesses, but the same defence is not open when German witnesses are put into the box. In Africa, as in Belgium, the Germans are best condemned out of their own mouths. In Africa, as in Belgium, brutality was not the outcome of individual passion or caprice, or the stress of a special emergency. It was an essential, permanent, carefully considered, and deliberately adopted instrument of the official system. And in Africa, even more than in Belgium, the devilish policy must be considered to have had the popular approval, mnce it persisted year after year without the protection of the same veil of secrecy by which the exigencies of war enabled the perpetrators of the Belgian atrocities, to screen them to some extent from the public

"It is impossible," said General yon Liebert, Governor of, German East Africa, "to get on in Africa without cruelty." Herr Dernburg, who, like Dr. Solf, has a reputation in Germany for moderation and humanity, gave striking testimony to the fact without approving of it when he was Colonial Secretary:

On the-coast it m*Ees a very unfavourable impression on one to see so many white men go about with negro whips. I even found one on the table of the principal pay office in Dar-es-Salaam. The State is always asked to carry a whip in its hand. ■

But this humanitarian German's mild admission that the brutal system made "a very unfavourable impression" upon him was supplemented in a manner which brought him under the same condemnation as the humbler instruments whose methods he deprecated. " No," said a native who had accompanied the Colonial Secretary on his journey from Muansa to Tabora, "we shall not travel with him again. We were never in our lives beaten as in Herr Dernburg's expedition." If so, the speaker was lucky to have escaped alive and unmaimed. Crippling for life and even immediate death are frequent results of flogging with the rhinoceros whip of three thongs and the rope's end steeped in tar and stiffened with wire, which are two of the approved instruments of German rule in Africa.

But, after all, it is upon the humaner and mote expeditious operation of gunpowder, and the more economical method of starvation, that the Germans have placed greater" reliance in their dealings with natives. Where the whip has failed these tilings have succeeded. After the traditional fashion of the classic scourges of humanity, these weapons have enabled the Germans to make a desert and call it peace. General yon Trotha, " the Great General of the Mighty Emperor," issued the following warning to recalcitrant German subjects: .

The Herero nation must now leave the country. If the people do it not, I will compel them with_ the big tube. Within the G.erman frontier every , Herero, with or. without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will not take over any more women or children, but I will either drive them back to your people, or have them fired on.

This proclamation was no empty threat. It meant business just as much as the order subsequently issued: "Kill every one of them, and take no prisoners." Men, women, and children were slaughtered promiscuously or promiscuously driven to die of starvation in the desert. The German official figures testify to the faithfulness with which the work was carried out. In seven years the native population of German South-West Africa was reduced as follows :

It is with official figures of this kind, and with such official utterances as those already quoted, that Dr. Solf will have to wrestle. It is therefore rather as a dialectical and psychological curiosity than on any more solid ground that the publication of his White Book will bo awaited with interest. . It is really not a White Book but a. white sheet that the German nation needs, and there is no evidence yet that anything of the kind is in preparation.

ETereros 80,000 Hottentots 20,000 3org Damaras .... 30,000 15,100 9,800 12,800 ■^