Their Military Force Are Composed Of Senegalese
Laptot, Very Fine, Fierce Fellows, Superior, I Believe, As Fighting
Men To Our Hausas, And Very Devoted To, And Well Treated By, Their
French Officers.
That the Frenchman does not know how to push trade in his
possessions, the trade returns, with the balance all on the wrong
side, clearly show; still he does know how to get possession of
Africa better than we do, and this means he knows how to deal with
the natives.
The building up of Congo Francais, for example, has
not cost one-third of the human lives, black or white, that an
equivalent quantity of Congo Belge has, nor one-third of the expense
of Uganda or Sierra Leone. It is customary in England to dwell on
the commercial failure, and deduce from it the erroneous conclusion
that France will soon leave it off when she finds it does not pay.
This is an error, because commercial success - the making the thing
pay - is not the French ideal in the affair. 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.
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