Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/214



The preservation of the land of Africa for its peoples is thus, broadly speaking, the "acid" test of trusteeship. We have seen that the land question assumes varying aspects in connection with the government of Africans by white men, as the temperate or tropical regions of the Continent are involved. But the main principle holds good in either case. The welfare of the African peoples may be gravely impaired by European policy in a multiplicity of ways. But if they are dispossessed of the land, and prevented thereby from using it for their own account, the injury done to them, and the resulting mischief, are incalculable. From free men, they sink to virtual slaves: the shackles are lacking—that is all. Recognition of this truth should inspire the land legislation of white Governments in the temperate regions of the Continent, and should form the basis of white policy in the tropical regions. How far white policy has turned in the opposite direction in South Africa, in British East Africa, in Algeria, in Morocco, in German South-West Africa and elsewhere, is only too patent. In pursuing that course the white man is raising up for himself the most formidable of future difficulties. So far as South Africa is concerned, an opportunity presents itself for an examination of the whole problem in the demand on the part of the Union Government of South Africa for the incorporation within the Union of the native Protectorates—Basutoland, Swaziland and Bechuanaland—over which the Colonial Office still retains supervision and ultimate control; and also of the Rhodesias. That demand, which can hardly be refused, places the British Government under the moral obligation of securing definite guarantees for the native population in regard to their land rights. The occasion is an excellent one for a joint Commission of investigation into the whole land problem south of the Zambesi.