Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/236

 argument for depriving Germany of them in the good old-fashioned way, while the actual militarisation of the inhabitants of the French Dependencies in tropical Africa has been conveniently ignored. The idea of utilising Africa as a military recruiting ground is as old as Hannibal. It had long been favoured, and so far as Algeria was concerned acted upon, by the French general staff. Algerian troops fought in the Franco-Prussian war, and the German literature of the day is full of accounts of alleged atrocities perpetrated by the Turcos upon German wounded. By one of those bitter ironies with which war is ever providing us, the fiercest engagement in the struggle between the France of Napoleon III. and the Prussia of Bismarck, was fought between Polish regiments under Prussian command and North African regiments under French command.

During the Great War of 1914–18, the French have used hundreds of thousands of North and West African troops on the Western and Macedonian fronts. They quartered a large number of West African troops in Morocco. They occupied the enemy Consulates in Greece with these black troops. They have employed them in Russia. They actually garrison German towns with them. The atrocities perpetualed by these savage auxiliaries on the Western front are known to every soldier. They have been found in possession of eyeballs, fingers, and heads of Germans in their haversacks. Mr. Chesterton's pious hope of seeing "Asiatics and Africans upon the verge of savagery," let loose against the Germans has been more than fulfilled.

Up to October 30, 1918, the French Government employed 695,000 fighting men and 238,000 coloured labourers in the war. Of the former the largest proportion came from Africa, and a large proportion of the latter. The official report of the troops from West Africa describes them as "regular athletes and formidable adversaries for the Germans." M. Diagne's report to the Colonial Minister, published in September of last year, records a total of 60,000 troops recruited under that gentleman's auspices in French West Africa proper, and 15,000 in the French Congo. Documents found upon prisoners attached to the so-called "Senegalese" battalion, No. 70, consisting of 840 men, are of peculiar interest. They have been published in the neutral, as well as in the German