ALCOHOL IN AFRICA.

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 285, 18 March 1919, Page 12

ALCOHOL IN AFRICA.

In the course of a statement in the “()ail> News," Sir Harry Johnston, G.C.M.g., Administrator in several parts of Africa, said: ‘T suppose in course of time 1 have becerme a fanatic in regard to the drinking of distilled spirits or of brandied wines, because I am intensely interested in the British islands and the British Umpire, and wish to see Ixrth prosperous, happy, healthy, and efficient, because in Central Africa l found alcohol far harder to fight than the Arabs; because in West Africa 1 found alcohol the main cause of the quarrels be # tween tin* natives and the white mcnjfl between the natives themselves, chief stimulant of horrors like < anni ■ balisin and “wcre-leopardry,” secret poisonings, and the foulest intricacies of fetish worship; the principal cause of laziness amongst the blacks, <>i deadly ill-health amongst the whites; because in South Africa I knew onl\ too well that the quarrels between British and Boers were almost entirely conflicts between Scotch or Irish whisky and Cape brandy, and that distilled alcohol was the one overmastering incitement to the native to rape, rob, revolt, and ravage; because I saw in India, and in the employment of the Sikh and Indian Mohammedans in Fast Africa, what serious damage the spread of alcoholic habits was causing among Oriental populations - the white man’s example being the ally of the distiller; because 1 have seen the same in Kgypt and in Algeria; because 1 know that just as the Jameson Raid was provoked, conceived, born, and miscarried in alcohol, so were the Ce> lon Riots, and mans a Kuli disturbance in Malaysia (according to the complaints of Planters’ Associations). I saw this mischievous traffic first in iSSj, when I certainly had an open mind and a horror of the goody-goody, when in my anxiety to be free from sentimental trammels, 1 was prone, rather than otherwise, to take the anti-mis-sionary point of view. I saw it some years later, as both Consul and Administrator, and never (eased to in veigh against the mis ( hief alcohol was working among the blacks and whites alike. My attacks on alcohol in \fiica have continued from 1885 without intermission. If the liquor traffic was prohibited, the loss of freight to the shipping

companies would soon be made up by a great increase in exports from a sober, industrious, and well-populated Africa.”