A GERMAN COLONY

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17949, 16 November 1918, Page 6

A GERMAN COLONY

Ik the future of the German colonies is settled on the principle that tho interests of the inhabitants must bo considered then the colonies will never go back to Germany. Take the caso of German South-West Africa, lately the subject of a report from Mr E. H. M. Gorges, the Administrator. The evidence used by Mr Gorges consisted of German documents, mostly official, found at Windhuk, with sworn state, ments by Europeans and by native chiefs. It is said that there is no instance of moment in which the native testimony is not fully supported by German documentary evidence. Tho immediate conclusion that a perusal of this damning evidence imposes is that tho Germans are in the highest degree unsuitable to control natives, and tho report irrefutably shows what may bo expected if the unfortunate races of this part of Africa are ever again handed\ over to tho tender mercies of their former masters. " Native opinion here,' - ' says the Administrator, "is unanimously against any idea of ever being handed back to the tender mercies of Germany, and any suggestion of the possibility of an act of that kind on the part of Great Britain produces tho utmost consternation." The report shows that for the native there was, in effect, during the first seventeen years after the formal annexation of the country by Germnny, no law, and that such protection as the law eventually provided was granted not out of motives of humanity, but because it was at length recognised that tho native was a useful asset in the country, and that, without his labour, cattle-ranching, for which large areas of the country are well suited, and diamond and copper mining were impossible. It is pointed out how the German writer Rohrbach condemned the extermination of the Herero tribe in 1905 because the cattle and sheep of the Hereros shared the fate of their native masters. There was not then a word of sympathy for tho unfortunate Herero people, or any recognition of their value in the economic scheme of things in the colony. That came later, when the mischief had been done. The only regret expressed at the time was that the flocks and herds of the natives, on which tho Germans had cast greedv eyes, were sent, in tho blind fury »>f von Troth a, to, the same fate as .their owners. The fruit.,of- thisinsane policy was tp. be-witnessed in the spectacle of the Luderitz Bay Diamond Mining Companies from 1908 to .1914 importing thousands of coloured labourers from the Cape of Good Hope, at great expense and at a high rate of wages, because the protectorate could not supply sufficient labour from within its own borders, whero but a few years earlier over 90,000 native lives had been ruthleMly sacrificed. The official German returns give the following as the numbers of native's in the protectorate before the big rebellion and in 1911:

1904. IWI. Hareros . . • 80.000 16,100 Sotten-tot* . • 20,000 9,500 Berg Damaraa . . 30,000 12,800 The meaning of these figures is simply that when the Germans entered on tho suppressmn of the rebellion they adopted the policy of extermination. As a matter of fact extermination orders, directing the murder of men, women and childroh"Tn~certain villages, are on record. The rebellion, of course, was directly the result of the awful brutality of the German settlers towards the natives, and Mr Gorges has a very convincing record of German achievements

in that direction. The Imperial Government has rendered the oause of civilisation a manifest service by having this report issued in a form readily accessible, so that the world may read what kind of a coloniser the German really is.