West African Studies/Chapter 12

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Lack of space, not lack of interest, prevents me from sketching the careers of other nations in West Africa even so poorly as I have that of France; but the truth is, the material for the history of the other nations is so enormous that in order to present it with anything approaching clearness or fairness, folio volumes are required. I have a theory of the proper way to write the history of all European West African enterprises—a theory I shall endeavour to put into practice if I am ever cast ashore on an uninhabited island, with a suitable library, a hogshead of ink, a few tons of writing paper, accompanied by pens, and at least a quarter of a century of uninterrupted calm at my disposal. The theory itself is short, so I can state it here. Pay no attention to the nasty things they say about each other—it's the climate.

The history of the Portuguese occupation of West Africa is the great one. The material for its early geographico-historical side is in our hands, owing to the ability of Mr. Major and his devotion to the memory of Prince Henry ​the Navigator. But the history of Portugal in West Africa from the days of the Navigator onwards wants writing. Sir A. B. Ellis fortunately gives us, in his history of the Gold Coast, an account of the part that Portugal played there, but, except for this region, you must hunt it up second-hand in the references made to it by prejudiced rivals, or in scattered Portuguese books and manuscripts. While as for the commercial history of Portugal in West Africa, although it has been an unbroken one from the fifteenth century to our own time, it has so far not been written at all. This seems to me all the more deplorable, because it is full of important lessons for those nations who are now attempting to exploit the regions she first brought them into contact with.

It must be noted, for one thing, that Portugal was the first European nation to tackle Africa in what is now by many people considered the legitimate way, namely, by direct governmental control. Other nations left West African affairs in the hands of companies of merchant adventurers and private individuals for centuries. Nevertheless, Portugal is nowadays unpopular among the other nations engaged in exploiting Africa. I shrink from embroiling myself in controversy, but I am bound to say I think she has become unpopular on account of prejudice, coupled with that strange moral phenomenon that makes men desirous of persuading themselves that a person they have treated badly deserves such treatment.

The more powerful European nations have dealt scandalously, from a moral standpoint, with Portugal in Africa. This one could regard calmly, it being in the nature of powerful nations to do this sort of thing, were it not for the airs they give themselves; and to hear them ​talking nowadays about Portugal's part in African history is enough to make the uninitiated imagine that the sweet innocent things have no past of their own, and never knew the price of black ivory.

"Oh, but that is all forgiven and forgotten, and Portugal is just what she always was at heart," you say. Well, Portugal at heart was never bad, as nations go. Her slaving record is, in the point of humanity to the cargo, the best that any European nation can show who has a slaving West African past at all.

The thing she is taxed with nowadays mainly is that she does not develope her possessions. Developing African possessions is the fashion, so naturally Portugal, who persists on going about in crinoline and poke bonnet style, gets jeered at. This is right in a way, so long as we don't call it the high moral view and add to it libel. I own that my own knowledge of Portuguese possessions forces me to regard those possessions as in an unsatisfactory state from an imperialistic standpoint; a grant made by the home government for improvements, say roads, has a tendency to—well, not appear as a road. Some one—several people possibly—is all the better and happier for that grant; and after all if you do not pay your officials regularly, and they are not Englishmen, you must take the consequences. Even when an honest endeavour is made to tidy things up, a certain malign influence seems to dodge its footsteps in a Portuguese possession. For example, when I was out in '93, Portugal had been severely reminded by other nations that this was the Nineteenth Century. Bom Dios—Bother it, I suppose it is—says Portugal—must do something to smarten up dear Angola.

She is over 400 now, and hasn't had any new frocks since ​the slave trade days; perhaps they are right, and it's time this dear child came out. So Loanda, Angola, was ordered street lamps—stylish things street lamps!—a telephone, and a water supply. Now, say what you please, Loanda is not only the finest, but the only, city in West Africa. "Lagos! you ejaculate—you don't know Lagos." I know I have not been ashore there; nevertheless I have contemplated that spot from the point of view of Lagos bar for more than thirty solid hours, to say nothing of seeing photographs of its details galore, and I repeat the above statement. Yet for all that, Loanda had no laid-on water supply nor public street lamps until she was well on in her 400th year, which was just before I first met her. During the past she had had her water brought daily in boats from the Bengo River, and for street lighting she relied on the private enterprise of her citizens.^[1] The reports given me on these endeavours to develope were as follows. As for the water in its laid-on state, it was held by the more aristocratic citizens to be unduly expensive (500 reis per cubic metre), and they grumbled. The general public, though holding the same opinion, did not confine their attention to grumbling. Stand-pipes had been put up in suitable places and an official told off to each stand-pipe to make a charge for water drawn. Water in West Africa is woman's palaver, and you may say what you please about the down-troddenness of African ladies elsewhere, but I maintain that the West African lady in the matter of getting what she wants is no discredit to the rest of the sex, black, white, or yellow. In this case the ladies wanted that water, but did not go so far as wanting ​

​to pay for it. In the history given to me it was evident to an unprejudiced observer that they first tried kindness to the guardian officials of the stand-pipes, but these men were of the St. Anthony breed, and it was no good. Checked, but not foiled, in their admirable purpose of domestic economy, those dear ladies laid about in their minds for other methods, and finally arranged that one of a party visiting a stand-pipe every morning should devote her time to scratching the official while the rest filled their water pots and hers. This ingenious plan was in working order when I was in Loanda, but since leaving it I do not know what modification it may have undergone, only I am sure that ultimately those ladies will win, for the African lady—at any rate the West coast variety—is irresistible; as Livingstone truly remarked, they are worse than the men." In the street lamp matter I grieve to say that the story as given to me does not leave my own country blameless. Portugal ordered for Loanda a set of street lamps from England. She sent out a set of old gas lamp standards. There being no gas in Loanda there was a pause until oil lamps to put on them came out. They ultimately arrived, but the P.W.D. failed to provide a ladder for the lamplighter. Hence that worthy had to swarm each individual lamp-post, a time-taking performance which normally landed him in the arms of Aurora before Loanda was lit for the night; but however this may be, I must own that Loanda's lights at night are a truly lovely sight, and its P.W.D.'s chimney a credit to the whole West Coast of Africa, to say nothing of its Observatory and the weather reports it so faithfully issues, so faithfully and so scientifically that it makes one deeply regret that Loanda has not got a climate that ​deserves them, but only one she might write down as dry and have done with it.

The present position of the Angola trade is interesting, instructive, and typical. I only venture to speak on it in so far as I can appeal to the statements of Mr. Nightingale, who is an excellent authority, having been long resident in Angola, and heir to the traditions of English enterprise there, so ably represented by the firm of Newton, Carnegie and Co. The trade of Ka Kongo, the dependent province on Angola, I need not mention, because its trade is conditioned by that of its neighbours Congo Français and the Congo Belge.

The interesting point—painfully interesting—is the supplanting of English manufactures, and the way in which the English shipping interest^[2] at present suffers from the differential duties favouring the Portuguese line, the Empreza Nacional de Navigacão a Vapor. This line, on which I have had the honour of travelling, and consuming in lieu of other foods enough oil and olives for the rest of my natural life, is an admirable line. It shows a calm acquiescence in the ordinances of Fate, a general courteous gentleness, combined with strong smells and the strain of stringed instruments, not to be found on other West Coast boats. It runs two steamers a month (6th and 23rd) from Lisbon, and they call at Madeira, St. Vincent, Santiago, Principe and San Thome Islands, Kabinda, San Antonio (Kongo), Ambriz, Loanda, Ambrizzette, Novo Redondo, Benguella, Mossamedes and Port Alexander, every ​

​alternate steamer calling at Liverpool. The other steamboat lines that visit Loanda are the African and British-African of Liverpool, which run monthly, in connection with the other South-west African ports; and the Woermann line from Hamburg. The French Chargeurs-Reunis started a line of steamers from Havre via Lisbon to Loanda, Madagascar, Delagoa Bay, touching at Capetown, when so disposed, but this line has discontinued calling in on Loanda. The other navigation for Angola is done by the Rio Quanza Company, which runs two steamers up that river as far as Dondo; but this industry, Dondo included, Mr. Nightingale states to be in a parlous state since the extension of the Royal Trans-African Railway Company^[3] to Cazengo, "as all the coffee which previously came via Dondo by means of carriers, now comes by rail, the town of Dondo is almost deserted; the house property which a few years ago was valued at £200,000 sterling, to-day would not realise £10,000." I may remark in this connection, however, not to raise the British railway-material makers' feelings unduly, that all this railway's rolling stock and material is Belgian in origin. This seems to be the fate of African railways. I am told it is on account, for one thing, of the way in which the boilers of the English locomotives are set in, namely, too stiffly, whereby they suffer more over rough roads than the more loosely hung together foreign-made locomotives; and, for another, that English-made rolling stock is too heavy for rough roads, and that roads under the conditions in Africa cannot be otherwise than rough, &c. It is not, however, Belgian stuff alone ​that is competing and ousting our own from the markets of Angola. American machinery, owing to the personal enterprise of several American engineering firms, is supplying steam-engines and centrifugal pumps for working salt at Cucuaco, and machinery for dealing with sugarcane. Mr. Nightingale says the cultivation of the sugarcane is rapidly extending, for the sole purpose of making rum. The ambition of every small trader, after he has put a few hundreds of milreis together, is to become a fazendeiro (planter) and make rum, for which there is ever a ready sale. But regarding the machinery, Mr. Nightingale says: "Up to the present time no British firm has sent out a representative to this province. There is a fair demand for cane-crushing mills, steam engines and turbines. A representative of an American firm is out here for the third time within four years, and has done good business; and there is no reason why the British manufacturers should not do as well. The American machinery is inferior to British makes, and cheaper; but it sells well, which is the principal thing."

It is the same story throughout the Angola trade. No English matches come into its market. The Companhia de Mossemedes, which is only nominally Portuguese, and is worked by German capital, has obtained from the Government an enormous tract of country stretching to the Zambesi, with rights to cure fish and explore mines. Cartridges made in Holland, and an iron pier made in Belgium, an extinct trade in soap and a failing one in Manchester goods,^[4] and gunpowder, are all sad items in Mr. ​

​Nightingale's lament. Small matters in themselves, you may think, but straws show which way the wind blows, and it blows against England's trade in every part of Africa not under England's flag. It would not, however, be fair to put down to differential tariffs alone our failing trade in Angola, because our successful competitors in hardware and gunpowder are other nations who have to face the same disadvantages—Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Portugal herself is now competing with the Manchester goods. She does so with well-made stuffs, but she is undoubtedly aided by her tariff. The consular report (1949) says: "The falling off in Manchester cotton since 1891 shows a diminution of 1,665,710 kilos. Cotton, if coming from Manchester via Lisbon, 1,665,710, duties 80 per cent, or 250 reis per kilo, equal 333,144 milreis (about £51,250); cotton coming from Portugal, 1,665,710 kilos, duties 25 reis per kilo, equal to 41,642 dollars, 750 reis (about £6,400, showing a difference in the receipts for one year of £44,850."

There is in this statement, I own, a certain obscurity, which has probably got into it from the editing of the home officials. I do not know if the 1,665,710 kilos, representing the difference between what England shipped to Angola in 1891 and what she shipped in 1896, was supplied in the latter years from Portugal of Portuguese manufacture; but assuming such to have been the case, the position from a tariff point of view would work out as follows: 1,665,710 kilos of cottons from Manchester would pay duty, at 250 reis per kilo, 416,427 1/2 milreis. Taking the exchange at 3s. sterling per milreis, this amounts to £62,464. If this quantity of Manchester-made cottons had gone to Lisbon, and there become nationalised, and sent forward to Angola in Portuguese steamers, the duty would ​have been 80 per cent. of 250 reis per kilo, or say 333,142 milreis, equal to £49,971; but if this quantity were manufactured in Portugal, and shipped by Portuguese steamers, the duty would be 25 reis per kilo, equal to £6,246. The premium in favour of Portuguese production on this quantity is therefore £56,218, a terrific tax on the Portuguese subjects of Angola, for one year, in one class of manufactures only.

The deductions, however, that Mr. Nightingale draws from his figures in regard to Portugal and her province are quite clear. He says, "There is no doubt that the province of Angola is a very rich one. No advantages are held out for merchants to establish here, and thus bring capital into the place, which means more business, the opening up of roads, and the development of industries and agriculture. Generally the colony exists for the benefit of a few manufacturers in Portugal, who reap all the profit." Again, he says, "The merchants are much too highly taxed, a good fourth part of their capital is paid out in duties, with no certainty when it will be realised again. Angola, with plenty of capital, moderate taxes and low duties, might in a few years become a most flourishing colony."

Now here we come to the general problem of the fiscal arrangements suitable for an African colony; and as this is a subject of great importance to England in the administration of her colonies, and errors committed in it are serious errors, as demonstrated by the late war in Sierra Leone,—the most serious even we have had for many years to deal with in West Africa,—I must beg to be allowed to become diffuse, humbly stating that I do not wish to dogmatise on the matter, but merely to ​

​attract the attention of busy practical men to the question of the proper system to employ in the administration of tropical possessions. This seems to me a most important affair to England, now that she has taken up great territories and the responsibilities appertaining to them in that great tropical continent, Africa. There are other parts of the world where the suitability of the system of government to the conditions of the governed country is not so important.

It seems to me that the deeper down from the surface we can go the greater is our chance of understanding any matter; and I humbly ask you to make a dive and consider what reason European nations have for interfering with Africa at all. There are two distinct classes of reasons that justify one race of human beings interfering with another race. These classes are pretty nearly inextricably mixed; but if, like Mark Twain's horse and myself, you will lean against a wall and think, I fancy you will see that primarily two classes of reasons exist—(a), the religious reason, the rescue of souls—a reason that is a duty to the religious man as keen as the rescue of a drowning man is to a brave one; (b), pressure reasons. These pressure reasons are divisible into two sub-classes—(1) external; (2) internal. Now of external pressure reasons primarily we have none in Africa. The African hive has so far only swarmed on its own continent; it has not sent off swarms to settle down in the middle of Civilisation, and terrify, inconvenience, and sting it in a way that would justify Civilisation not only in destroying the invading swarm, but in hunting up the original hive and smoking it out to prevent a recurrence of the nuisance, as the Roman Empire was bound to try and do with its Barbarians. ​Such being the case,^[5] we can leave this first pressure reason—the war justification—for interfering with the African—on one side, and turn to the other reason,—the internal pressure reasons acting from within on the European nations. These are roughly divisible into three sub-classes:—(1) the necessity of supplying restless and ambitious spirits with a field for enterprise during such times as they are not wanted for the defence of their nation in Europe—France's reason for acquiring Africa; (2) population pressure; (3) commercial pressure. The two latter have been the chief reason for the Teutonic nations, England and Germany, overrunning the lands of other men. This Teutonic race is a strong one, with the habit, when in the least encouraged by Peace and Prosperity, of producing more men to the acre than the acre can keep. Being among themselves a kindly, common-sense race, it seems to them more reasonable to go and get more acres elsewhere than to kill themselves off down to a level which their own acres could support. The essential point about the "elsewhere" is that it should have a climate suited to the family. These migrations to other countries made under the pressure of population usually take place along the line of least resistance, namely, into countries where the resident population is least able to resist the invasion, as in America and Australia; but occasionally, as in the case of Canada and the Cape, they follow the conquest of an European rival who was the pioneer in rescuing the country from savagery.

​I am aware that this hardly bears out my statement that the Teutonic races are kindly, but as I have said "among themselves," we will leave it; and to other people, the original inhabitants of the countries they overflow, they are on the whole as kindly as you can expect family men to be. A distinguished Frenchman has stated that the father of a family is capable of anything; and it certainly looks as if he thought no more of stamping out the native than of stamping out any other kind of vermin that the country possessed to the detriment of his wife and children. I do not feel called upon to judge him and condemn, for no doubt the father of a family has his feelings; and as it must have been irritating to an ancestor of modern America to come home from an afternoon's fishing and find merely the remains of his homestead and bits of his family, it was more natural for him to go for the murderers than strive to start an Aborigines' Protection Society. Though why, caring for wife and child so much as he does, the Teuton should have gone and planted them, for example, in places reeking with Red Indians is a mystery to me. I am inclined to accept my French friend's explanation on this point, namely, that it arose from the Teuton being a little thick in the head and incapable of considering other factors beyond climate. But this may be merely thickness in my own head—a hopelessly Teutonic one.

However, the occupation of territory from population pressure in Europe we need not consider here; for it is not this reason that has led Europe to take an active interest in tropical Africa. It is a reason that comes into African affairs only—if really at all—in the extreme north and extreme south of the continent—Algeria and the ​Cape. The vast regions of Africa from 30° N. to 20° S., have long been known not to possess a climate suitable for colonising in. "Men's blood rapidly putrifies under the tropic zone." "Tropical conditions favour the growth of pathogenic bacteria"—a rose called by another name. Anyhow, not the sort of country attractive to the father of a family to found a home in. Yet, as in spite of this, European nations are possessing themselves of this country with as much ardour as if it were a health resort and a gold mine in one, it is plain they must have another reason, and this reason is in the case of Germany and England primarily commercial pressure.

These two Teutonic nations have the same habit in their commercial production that they have in their human production, the habit of overdoing it for their own country; and just as Lancashire, for example, turns out more human beings than can comfortably exist there, so does she turn out more manufactured articles than can be consumed there; and just as the surplus population created by a strong race must find other lands to live in, so must the surplus manufactures of a strong race find other markets; both forms of surplus are to a strong race wealth.

The main difference between these things is that the surplus manufactured article is in no need of considering climate in the matter of its expansion. It stands in a relation to the man who goes out into the world with it akin to that of the wife and family to the colonist; the trader will no more meekly stand having his trade damaged than the colonist will stand having his family damaged; but at the same time, the mere fact that the climate destroys trade-stuff is, well, all the better for trade, and trade, moreover, leads the trader to view the native population from ​a different standpoint to that of the colonist. To that family man the native is a nuisance, sometimes a dangerous one, at the best an indifferent servant, who does not do his work half so well as in a decent climate he can do it himself. To the trader the native is quite a different thing, a customer. A dense native population is what the trader wants; and on their wealth, prosperity, peace and industry, the success of his endeavours depends.

Now it seems to me that there are in this world two classes of regions attractive to the great European manufacturing nations, England and Germany, wherein they can foster and expand their surplus production of manufactured articles. (1) Such regions as India and China. (2) Such regions as Africa. The necessity of making this division comes from the difference between the native populations. In the first case you are dealing with a people who are manufacturers themselves, and you are selling your goods mainly against gold. In the second the people are not manufacturers themselves except in a very small degree, and you are selling your goods against raw material. In a bustling age like this there seems to be a tendency here and in Germany to value the first form of market above the second. I fail to see that this is a sound valuation. The education our commerce gives will in a comparatively short time transform the people of the first class of markets into rival producers of manufactured articles wherewith to supply the world's markets. We by our pacification of India have already made India a greater exporter than she was before our rule there. If China is opened up, things will be even worse for England and Germany; for the Chinese, with their great power of production, will produce ​manufactured articles which will fairly swamp the world's markets; for, sad to say, there is little doubt but they can take out of our hands all textile trade, and probably several other lines of trade that England, Germany, and America now hold. India and China being populated, the one by a set of people at sixes and sevens with each other, and the other by a set of people who, to put it mildly, are not born warriors, cannot, except under the dominion and protection of a powerful European nation, commercially prosper. But England and Germany are not everybody. There is France. I could quite imagine France, for example, in possession of China, managing it on similar lines to those on which she is now managing West Africa, but with enormously different results to herself and the rest of the world. Her system of differential tariffs, be it granted, keeps her African possessions poor, and involves her in heavy imperial expenditure; but the Chinaman's industry would support the French system, and thrive under her jealous championship. This being the case, it is of value to England and Germany to hold as close a grip as possible over such regions as India and China, even though by so doing they are nourishing vipers in their commercial bosoms.

The case of the second class of markets—the tropical African—is different. Such markets are of enormous value to us; they are, especially the West African ones, regions of great natural riches in rubber, oil, timber, ivory, and minerals from gold to coal. They are in most places densely populated with customers for England's manufactured goods. The advantages of such a region to a manufacturing nation like ourselves are enormous; for not only do we get rid there of our manufactured goods, but we ​

​get, what is of equal value to our manufacturing classes, raw material at a cheap enough rate to enable the English manufacturers to turn out into the markets of the civilised world articles sufficiently cheap themselves to compete with those of other manufacturing nations.

The importance to us of such markets as Africa affords us seems to me to give us one sufficient reason for taking over these tropical African regions. I do not use the word justification in the matter, it is a word one has no right to use until we have demonstrated that our interference with the native population and our endeavours for our own population have ended in unmixed good; but it is a sound reason, as good a reason as we had in overrunning Australia and America. Indeed, I venture to think it is a better one, for the possession of a great market enables thousands of men, women and children to live in comfort and safety in England, instead of going away from home and all that home means; and this commercial reason,—for all its not having a high falutin sound in it,—is the one and only expansion reason we have that in itself desires the national peace and prosperity of the native races with whom it deals.

It seems to me no disgrace to England that her traders are the expanding force for her in Africa. There are three classes of men who are powers to a State—the soldier, the trader, and the scientist. Their efforts, when co-ordinated and directed by the true statesman—the religious man in the guise of philosopher and poet—make a great State. Being English, of course modesty prevents my saying that England is a great State. I content myself by saying that she is a truly great people, and will become a great State when she is led by a line of great statesmen—​statesmen who are not only capable, as indeed most of our statesmen have been, of seeing the importance of India and the colonies, but also capable of seeing the equal importance to us of markets.

England's democracy must learn the true value of the markets that our fellow-countrymen have so long been striving to give her, and must appreciate the heroism those men have displayed, only too often unrequited, never half appreciated by the sea-wife, who "breeds a breed of rovin' men and casts them over sea." Those who go to make new homes for the old country in Australia and America do not feel her want of interest keenly; but those heroes of commerce who go to fight and die in fever-stricken lands for the sake of the old homes at home, do feel her want of interest.

I am not speaking hastily, nor have I only West Africa in my mind in this matter; there are other regions where we could have succeeded better, with advantage to all concerned Malaya, British Guiana, New Guinea, the West Indies, as well as West Africa. If you examine the matter I think you will see that all these regions we have failed in are possessed of unhealthy climates, while the regions we have succeeded with are those possessed of healthy climates. The reason for this difference in our success seems to me to lie mainly in our deficiency of statesmanship at home. We really want the humid tropic zone more than other nations do; a climate that eats up steel and hardware as a rabbit eats lettuces is an excellent customer to a hardware manufacturing town, &c. A region densely populated by native populations willing to give raw trade stuffs in exchange for cotton goods, which they bury or bang out on stones in the course of washing ​or otherwise actively help their local climate to consume, is invaluable to a textile manufacturing town. Yet it would be idle to pretend that our Government has realised these things. Our superior ability as manufacturers, and the great enterprise of our men who have gone out to conquer the markets of the tropics, have given us all the advantages we now enjoy from those markets, but they could do no more; and now, when we are confronted by the expansion of other European nations, those men and their work are being lost to England. Our fellow-countrymen will go anywhere and win anywhere to-day just as well as yesterday, where the climate of the region allows England to throw enough of them in at a time to hold it independent of the home government; but in places where we cannot do this, in the unhealthy tropical regions where those men want backing up against the aggression on their interests of foreign governments, well, up to the present they have not had that backing up, and hence we have lost to England in England the advantages we so easily might have secured.

An American magazine the other day announced in a shocked way that I could evidently "swear like a trooper!" I cannot think where it got the idea from; but really!—well, of course I don't naturally wish to, but I cannot help feeling that if I could it would be a comfort to me; for when I am up in the great manufacturing towns, England properly so called, their looms and forges seem to me to sing the same song to the great maker of Fate—we must prosper or England dies. And there is but one thing they can prosper on—for there is but one feeding ground for them and all the thousands of English men, women and children dependent on them—​the open market of the World. To me the life blood of England is her trade. Her soul, her brain is made of other things, but they should not neglect or spurn the thing that feeds them—Commerce—any more than they should undervalue the thing that guards them—the warrior.

But, you will say, we will not be tied down to this commercial reason as England's reason for taking over the administration of tropical Africa. My friend, I really think on the whole you had better—it's reasonable. I grant that it has not been the reason why English missionaries and travellers have risked their lives for the good of Africa, or of human knowledge, but as a ground from which to develop a policy of administering the country this commercial one is good, because it requires as aforesaid the prosperity of the African population; and your laudable vanities in the matter I cannot respect, when I observe right in the middle of the map of Africa an enormous region called the Congo Free State. I have reason to believe that that region was opened up by Englishmen―Livingstone, Stanley, Speke, Grant and Burton. If you had been so truly keen on suppressing Arab slavery and native cannibalism, there was a paradise for you! Yet, you hand it over to some one else. Was it because you thought some one else could do it better? or—but we will leave that affair and turn to the consideration of the possibility of administering tropical Africa, governmentally, to the benefit of all concerned.