Page:The league of nations and primitive peoples (IA leagueofnationsp00oliviala).pdf/12

 Englishmen nevertheless had cause for chagrin at her failure to follow that humane impulse more boldly. Had England so willed, she could have done, not only far more than was done, but far more than any other nation could possibly do to save native races from the cruelties that have befallen them. At a period when she could, by an understanding with France, have taken almost any step she chose in tropical and southern Africa, she both refused herself to assume either sovereignty or protectorate over many African tribes that begged her to do so, and later abandoned to the ruthless Colonial inexperience of Germany Namaqualand and Damaraland. which Bismarck had twice almost invited her to claim, and the Cameroons, which had asked her protection and where British missionaries had established Christianity and education.

It was, however, perhaps healthier for the future of the world that England refused to live up to her reputation by becoming the paramount patron and protector of African peoples. She did refuse to do so, forswearing, in 1865, future annexations; and later, when she was forced out of inaction, she accepted in good faith the principle of concerted European participation. That, so far as it went, was a further-looking ideal. But it did not go far enough. It did not go so far as to secure proper treatment for natives, which the fearless extension, at the time when it might have been possible, of British sovereignty probably would have done, or even to stipulate for it.

The fact, however, that acquisitions in Africa were divided, on something like a basis of give and take,