THE HEREROS' REVOLT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12555, 22 April 1904, Page 5

THE HEREROS' REVOLT.

COMPENSATION FOR

SETTLERS.

By Telegraph.— Association.—Copyright. Berlin, April 20. Estimating that the Hereros' revolt: has already cost the settlers seven million marks (£350,000), the Government is asking the Reichstag to compensate them to the extent of two million marks (£100,000). *

UNDESIRABLE RECRIMINATIONS. . The Morning Post of February 29, states —" We have ourselves, in our recently-ac-quired African possessions, been so frequently compelled to undertake punitive expeditions against the native papulations subject to our rule that there will be no undue disposition in this country to attribute the necessity for punitive expeditions in German Southnest Africa and the Cameroons to any special defects in the German methods of dealing with the natives. In all cases of trouble with natives in Africa the individual circumstances must be carefully investigated before it can be determined whether any particular rising is merely a symptom of that inevitable friction which arises in the attempt to adjust the relations of the natives and line Europeans or whether it is due te preventable causes, arising from the ignorance or folly of the Europeans in dealing with the ' inferior race.' At present there is not sufficient direct evidence to enable even a tentative judgment to be formed as tc the category to which the disturbances in the Cameroons are to bo attributed; but there is apparently a good deal of evidence that the Germans have themselves to thank very largely for the Hereros' rebellion in SouthWest Africa. »If reports are not greatly exaggerated, the methods employed in dealing with the Hereros, based on too strict an, adhesion to the jdeas of military discipline imbibed in the barracks of the Fatherland, were but ill-calculated to reconcile the tribe to German rule. That the Hereros should take what appeared to them to be a favourable opportunity of seeking to regain their lost freedom is in no way surprising; but it seems to have come with rll the effect of a. surprise, not merely on Dublin opinion in Germany, but on the local administration. This does not, however, furnish the slightest excuse for the ridiculous and childish charges which appeal to nave been made, that the rebellion was instigated from the British side of the Anglo-German frontier, or by British subjects resident in the German-colony. We hesitate to believe the report that a number ot British residents have been arrested on suspicion of instigating the rebellion. But the reported arrest? of British subjects, and th a insults alleged to have been offered by German officials to a Cape lady, have naturally excited keen resentment in South Africa. It is peculiarly unfortunate that charges calculated to arouse national susceptibilities, and to accentuate national antipathies, should be launched pt a moment when international relations are so delicately poised that a. movement of little intrinsio importance may easily upset the balance. It may serve the purpose of the moment to attribute to British instigation the results of German incompetence, but the game is a dangerous one to play, and arouses neither sympathy nor respect for the nation that condescends to play it."