Then Again In Commercial Competition Our Attitude Seems To Me Very
Lacking In Dignity.
We are now just beginning to know it is a
fight, and this commercial war has been going on since 1880 - since,
in fact, France and Germany have recovered from their war of 1870.
And if we are to carry on this commercial war with any hope of
success, we must abandon our "Oh! that's not fair; I won't play"
attitude - and above all we must have no more Government restrictions
on our foreign trade. In West Africa governmental restriction
settles, like dew in autumn, on the liquor traffic. It is a case of
give a dog a bad name and hang him. Moreover, raising the import
dues on liquor may bring into the Government a good revenue; but it
is a short-sighted policy - for the liquor is the thing there is the
best market for in West Africa. The natives have no enthusiasm
about cotton-goods, as they seem from some accounts to have in East
Central, and the supply of them they now get, and get cheap and
good, is as much as they require. And if the question of the
abstract morality of introducing clothes, or introducing liquor, to
native races, were fairly gone into, the results would be
interesting - for clothing native races in European clothes works
badly for them and kills them off. Indeed the whole of this
question of trade with the lower races is full of curious and
unexpected points. Speaking at large, the introduction of European
culture - governmental, religious, or mercantile - has a destructive
action on all the lower races; many of them the governmental and
religious sections have stamped right out; but trade has never
stamped a race out when dissociated from the other two, and it
certainly has had no bad effect in tropical Africa. With regard to
the liquor traffic, try and put yourself in the West African's
place. Imagine, for example, that you want a pair of boots. You go
into a shop, prepared to pay for them, but the man who keeps the
shop says, "My good friend, you must not have boots, they are
immoral. You can have a tin of sardines, or a pocket-handkerchief,
they are much better for you." Would you take the sardines or the
pocket-handkerchiefs? more particularly would you feel inclined to
take them instead of your desired boots if you knew there was a shop
in a neighbouring street where boots are to be had? And there is a
neighbouring shop-street to all our West Coast possessions which is
in the hands of either France or Germany.
I do not for a moment deny that the liquor traffic requires
regulation, but it requires more regulation in Europe than it does
in Africa, because Europe is more given to intoxication. In Africa
all that is wanted is that the spirit sent in should be wholesome,
and not sold at a strength over 45 degrees below proof.
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