AFRICAN COLONIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 134, 9 June 1939, Page 22

AFRICAN COLONIES

RETURN TO GERMANY

NAZIS NOT FIT TO RULE

The case against restoring to Germany her former African colonies under existing conditions, though not under any conditions, is presented in a cogent and comprehensive survey of all the relevant factors by Mr. George L. Steer, in a book published under the title "Judgment on. German Africa," says the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post." Mr. Steer, who is a South African with an intimate knowledge of his Continent, recently made a special tour of all the ex-German territories on behalf of the "Daily Telegraph." He recorded his; impressions in a series of articles which appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" in March. In his newi volume he elaborates the argument of those articles. Mr. Steer's method is to devote a section of his book to each of the three territories concerned—Southwest Africa, the Cameroons, and Tanganyika—and to examine systematically in each case the pre-war German administration, the post-war administration under the mandates, and the strategic consequences which would follow from their restoration. It is no part of Mr. Steer's contenition that any colonising race in Africa has been free from reproach in its dealings with the natives, but he submits that none has acted with such ruthless system as pre-war Germany. A STORM OF RESISTANCE. "Whatever the reason," he says in his summing up, "there is no African colonial Power that has ever stirred such a storm of resistance as Germany in East and South-west Africa. "There is also no civilised Power which, so late in the history of colonial expansion as the twentieth century, used such gross i and criminal violence in the suppression of * native revolt as Germany did in the Maji-Maji'and the Herero wars; except Italy in Libya and Ethiopia"—regions of which the author speaks with direct personal knowledge. Mr. Steer does not suggest that what he calls her "beginner's errors" by any means permanently disqualify Germany from the title to rule in Africa. He renders full justice to the public criticism which was exerted in prewar Germany by the Press, the missionaries, and the Catholic and Socialist Parties in the Reichstag, and to the results of this criticism in securing the abatement of the worst excesses and the suppression of offending gov-J ernors. But he points out the, absence of these safety-valves in present-day totalitarian Germany, and indicates that the Nazis' attitude on native policy conforms rather to the more ruthless than the more humanitarian of their predecessors. The mandatory system, he gives reasons for believing, has brought "immeasurable" improvements. He would not, however, restore to Germany her lost colonies even as mandates until she "abandons the theory that colonies exist only to be exploited, and the race fantasy which, displacing science, supports the view that the black man is the serf and the comedian of the white." THE STRATEGIC ASPECT. In his analysis of the strategic issues involved, Mr. Steer contends that to surrender the colonies to Germany would be to surrender the means of breaking us as a world Power. He foresees that it would be impossible to reinforce the Sudan against an Italian invasion from Abyssinia except by air transport from British West Africa across the Sahara. The cession of the Cameroons to Germany would sever this vital line of communication; it would also intercept the western air route between Great Britain and South Africa, the French air link with Equatorial Africa and the Belgian- with the Congo, and threaten the British sea route to' the East. A Germany reinstalled in Southwest Africa would soon dominate the union of South Africa from the air, while the pressure she would be able to exert from Tanganyika would constitute a threat sufficient "to bring England to heel m any issue where Germany wished her to be meek." Mr. Steer concludes that "the reasons why Germany should not today be admitted to Africa are not absolute. They refer to a Germany which may pass away; whose own fantastic expenditure on armaments may be her downfall."