Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/197

 finest and most unselfish tasks which remain for white men to fulfil in the world: a task requiring in its performance the utmost patience, much self-repression, ull the high moral qualities indeed. These races cannot escape being sucked into the vortex of white economic expansion. Steam, electricity, aviation, industrial development combine to make it impossible. If to-morrow the Governments washed their hands of them and retired from the country, these races would become the prey of international freebooters far more numerous and infinitely more powerful than the adventurers who fought for supremacy in the Slave trade up and down the West Coast of Africa, ravaged the Carnatic and pillaged the Americas. Such a withdrawal would deprive these races of their only present safeguard—public opinion. But the government of these races can be transformed, from the noble human mission it ought always to be, into an agency of oppression and injustice. This transformation cannot take place without degrading all parties directly affected by it, whether as victims or beneficiaries, and the public opinion which tolerates it.

I oppose, then, the persons and the interests that make themselves responsible for the promulgation of these views and practices for the reason stated, and for the kindred reason that I hold these African races to have as great a right to happiness, peace and security as our own people at home. It is, to my way of thinking, utterly intolerable that they should be exploited, made miserable, dragged down, ill-used, their home and social life broken up, themselves enslaved or destroyed. That is a purely instinctive sentiment for which I am no more responsible than the man who instinctively approaches all questions connected with coloured peoples from the standpoint that the coloured man—the black man—especially is little better than an animal. It is not, I admit, capable of rationalistic defence, whereas the other reason I have advanced is. But such as it is, I hold it and minister to it.

I quite understand, however, that the humanistic appeal is not sufficient to defeat the purposes of those whom I oppose. This became clear to me in the course of the twelve years' agitation against the misgovernment of the Congo. That is why I invariably