It Is Our Own, And I Am
The Last Person To Say Our Ideal Is Wrong; But It Is Not
The French
ideal, and I am the last person to say France is wrong either.
There may exist half a
Hundred or more right reasons for doing
anything, and the reasons France has for her energetic policy in
Africa are sound ones; for they are the employment of her martial
spirits where their activity will not endanger the State, the
stowing of these spirits in Paris having been found to be about as
advisable as stowing over-proof spirits and gunpowder in a living-
room with plenty of lighted lucifers blazing round; and her other
reason is the opportunity African enterprise affords for sound
military training. You will often hear in England regarding French
annexation in Africa, "Oh! let her have the deadly hole, and much
good may it do her." France knows very well what good it will do
her, and she will cheerfully take all she is allowed to get quietly,
as a sop for her quietness regarding Egypt, and she will cheerfully
fight you for the rest - small blame to her. She knows Africa is a
superb training ground for her officers. Sham fights and autumn
manoeuvres have a certain value in the formation of a fighting army,
but the whole of these parlour-games, put together in a ten-year
lump, are not to be compared to one month's work at real war, to fit
an army for its real work, and France knows well the real work will
come again some day - not far off - for her army. How soon it comes
she little cares, for she has no ideal of Peace before her, never
has had, never will have, and the next time she tries conclusions
with one of us Teutonic nations, she will be armed with men who have
learned their trade well on the burning sands of Senegal, and they
will take a lot of beating. We do not require Africa as a training
ground for our army; India is as magnificent a military academy as
any nation requires; but we do require all the Africa we can get,
West, East, and South, for a market, and it is here we clash with
France; for France not only does not develop the trade of her
colonies for her own profit, but stamps trade at large out by her
preferential tariffs, etc.; so that we cannot go into her colonies
and trade freely as she and Germany can come into ours. We can go
into her colonies and do business with French goods, and this is
done; but French goods are not so suitable, from their make, nor
capable of being sold at a sufficient profit to make a big trade.
But France throws few obstacles, if any, in the matter of plantation
enterprise. Still this enterprise being so hampered by the dearth
of good labour is not at the present time highly remunerative in
Africa.
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