PAST ACHIEVEMENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 244, 15 October 1932, Page 7

PAST ACHIEVEMENTS

WHAT LEAGUE HAS DONE. Estimates of the number of slaves in the world place tho total at from 30,000.000 to 6,000,000. Beginning in 1922, the League of Nations gave centralised force and form to the various spasmodic movements for the abolition of slavery. In tho next year a commission of eight men was appointed to go thoroughly into the subject. Two years later the Temporary Slavery Commission made its report in a document which shocked the world. The members of the commission were men with wide colonial experience. Their report stated that slave raiding, slave trading, and slave owning, together with border-line systems scarcely if at all distinguished from slavery, were widespread, and that, these evils or the kindred evils of debt-bondage, domestic slavery, forced labour, or “simpler acts.” existed in nineteen political areas. While individual evidence and cases were withheld, tho nineteen regions were specified as follows:

Abyssinia. Algeria, China. Egypt. Eritrea. the “Far East,” the Hodjaz. Kufra, Liberia, Morocco. South Morocco, Rio de Oro, East Sahara. West Sahara. British Somaliland. French Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, the Sudan, and South Tripoli. Suppressing the Evil. Most of these signatories to the League Slavery Convention whose territories were involved in the report began immediately to take ' ,n rion looking toward the eventful eradication of slavery from their Dominions and the immediate mitigation of the attendant evils. Learning that the Arabian slave traders carried cargoes of human freight across the Rod Sea in their dhows, the British Government undertook a patrol with armed vessels to discourage the traffic, capture offenders, and break up the supply. French. Italian, and British troops in other places kept watch on tho routes used by slave-raiders and slave-smugglers. Tn Burma, British administrative officials followed up the release of slaves bv inquiries about them on periodic visits. The Hodjaz and Abyssinia were led to outlaw the traffic and to co-op-with tho League jn suppressive measures. American influence was brought to bear in Liberia. The Gov-ernor-Genera] of tho Sudan in 1930 reported that of 13.000 slaves in the White Nile Province 3000 had been freed and the other 10,000 advanced to “a state of semi-independence needing no further st"-'-*"” ’”' Y ” at the time. Conditions in China.

In China, where unsettled conditions and lack of a strong central Government have been stumbling blocks, repression is another problem. Slavery flourishes there chiefly in the western part, although no less a dignitary than the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in the House of Lords in 1925, said that an eminent Chinese asserted that slaves, chiefly girls, were bought and sold in Shanghai in the midst of the European zones of influence. Both President King and Vice-Pre-sident Yancey, of Liberia, resigned last year, it is believed, because of foreknowledge of a Note from Secretary Stimson that failure of the Liberian Government to undertake “comprehensive forms” in ending slavery and repression would result in the “final alienation of the friendly feeling which the American Government anil people have entertained for Liberia.” The report of the International Commission of Inquiry on conditions in Liberia was termed “a shocking indictment of the Liberian Government’s policy of suppression of natives, permitted, if not indulged in, by nearly all the high officials of Liberia, including the VicePresident of the Republic.”