WHITE MAN’S GRAVE

Hokitika Guardian, 11 July 1925, Page 4

WHITE MAN’S GRAVE

TiIULD I P A M'iTI.K. itl. W'iinl I’lit'o iu Lht* " Onily .Mail.”) Nickiua. In tin* entile globe tin*ro Is no region oL worst* reputation tlinii ihe West Const of Africa. Willi Devil’s Islnml mill Botany liny it slinres proverbial infamy, and I>y the majority of Knglishincii lias always lieen regarded as our national Silieria. liven now, when growing trade returns, displays at \\ embley, and successful royal visits are revealing to British eyes the economic value of this notorious Coast, the menial picture of West Africa to which most men still i lin;; is that of pestilential mangrove swamps and fever-stricken forests. The craves of ymins lOnglisliineti sealtered everywhere ahout West Africa remind one that lint a l’.-w years have passed siine filth, lever, and drink were the living eomlilions of Kuropeans out here, and death within two icars their almost inevitable end. I have met one or two men still on l lie ( oast who are the rare survivors of Mint host of vanished victims among uliii-e dust tie foundations of modern British West. Africa were laid. Twice in his early days, one of them related, did lie see two-thirds of the population of Accra die within a month. That was the sort of thill" that happened before l.avernu identified 11k* miliaria parasite or Sir Honald Moss made the supreme life-savin** discovery tluit. it. was carried Item man to man by ihe mosipiito. I ll K .M At,Altl A .SCorif (IK. I’m though West Africa has been nepi'ovej beyond all rerog nit ion Iron*. deadly eo m! 11 in 11 of even t wentylive Mail's at*,), it is wrong |o suppose Iltal its elililuLc has Inst its old power lor evil. The while 'population supports life only at the price of Constant (are, ami behind the protection of a never casing barrage of quinine. Ilul for the regular consumption of that powerful drug death would still take as large a toll of Mrilish lives on the West Coast as it did in the* days when this was calleil the "White .Han's Crave, and the stretch of sea between I'Ti'Ctowtt and the Canaries, where many invalided home found burial in weighted hamnioeks , earned the grim nickname of "The Bonevard.” 11l the lour West Coast Colonies that' we have visited I found among all classes of wlifto residents—and especially among the wives who have lately taken to sharing their husbands' lours of service—a strong feeling el exasperation at the spread of the new theory that West Africa is really a bracing residential area only distinguished I roni Brighton by being farther away I roin Town. It is on the strength of the official view, that Ihe sinister reputation of the country is undeserved, , Unit eighteen mouths of continuous service on the Coast, instead of twelve, is now required before officials are entitled. to home leave. But everywhere down the West ■ ’oast l have heard, from doctors as veil as laymen, the pronounced and inpromodilatod conviction that a while nan’s physical and mental fitness he- - tins steadily to .decline after eight inmths in West Africa, and that alter w'elve months the loss of eftieieiicv is 'apiil.

I MISLEADING DEATH STATISTIC S. II do not myself believe that a lazy liankering for leave lies behind this lieI 1 lief. The tendency of the Briton abroad—and his wife—is rather to make a home where l ate stations him. and soon in In- hoa>ling its advantages over the elinnile ami conditions of England. Hut in the atmosphere of West Atnh a there js something which "bite people iu-tini lively feel to he doing subtle harm not oitlv to their bodies hut to i heir minds. I ' •’ I ... .. i t if y . , 1

I •yienders of jin' West Coast almost ii I ways quote mortality returns. These death-rate figures arc misleading. European officials dying on service in Nigeria, for instanee, have averaged only 12 per thousand in oath of the past ten vonrs. Hut one should remember how many things contrive that European officials who die shall do so outside the scope ol Nigerian statistics. Directly a man sickens seriously he is invalided home, or even out of the service, anti his » subsequent demise, if it occurs, leave l no blot on Nigeria’s reputation. The harm, too, which this malevolent. climate does to white men is not necessarily immediately or even ultimately fatal. Its principal effect is the slow and stealthy sapping of a man's vitality, a process of wastage and decay directed not only against the body hilt The Train. NOT a" WHITE .MAN’S COFXTJIY. The consequences of this debilitation may int manifest themselves oven until a West African official’s career is over, and then—a commonplace chill caught at home in England, a touch of intlueu/.a. some mild internal disorder such, as a European who has nc-ver left the temneratc rone throws off unlieedngly. claims at long last from the on'eobled body another life for the un•elenting Coast. There have been distinguished visit-

ors to Nigeria who, visiting Kano when the cold northern “ harmattan ” is blowing, have carried away the sincere impression that the West Coast of Africa is as bating as Skegness. Hut these unobservant optimists failed to recognise around them the strained, uncanny look that twelve months nut here puts into a man's eyes, or ihe drawn faces of the women, who seldom stay more than six. Despite the deceptive Hi’.derail proltine.ss of Lagos. Kttmasi. and Accra, there can he no doubt that the doctors out here are right in holding firmly that this is no country for the white man. There is a price to be paid for Empire in those unwholesome haunts of death. In that grim reckoning the main items are malaria, bluckwutor—which even yet the doctors do not completely understand—and yellow fever that kills nine out of ten of its white victims. These are the deadly adversaries of the llritish men and women who tight our Imperial campaign on the West Coast of Africa—and in that war there is no discharge. asgaagaaggswaa nna aeaeganaa