And die for them, England gets a good
equivalent value for it; for she is the greatest manufacturing
country in the world, and as such requires markets. Nowadays she
requires them more than new colonies. A colony drains annually
thousands of the most enterprising and energetic of her children
from her, leaving behind them their aged and incapable relations.
Moreover, a colony gradually becomes a rival manufacturing centre to
the mother country, whereas West Africa will remain for hundreds of
years a region that will supply the manufacturer with his raw
material, and take in exchange for it his manufactured articles,
giving him a good margin of profit. And the holding of our West
African markets drains annually a few score of men only - only too
often for ever - but the trade they carry on and develop there - a
trade, according to Sir George Baden-Powell, of the annual value of
nine millions sterling - enables thousands of men, women and children
to remain safely in England, in comfort and pleasure, owing to the
wages and profits arising from the manufacture and export of the
articles used in that trade.
So I trust that those at home in England will give all honour to the
men still working in West Africa, or rotting in the weed-grown,
snake-infested cemeteries and the forest swamps - men whose battles
have been fought out on lonely beaches far away from home and
friends and often from another white man's help, sometimes with
savages, but more often with a more deadly foe, with none of the
anodyne to death and danger given by the companionship of hundreds
of fellow soldiers in a fight with a foe you can see, but with a foe
you can see only incarnate in the dreams of your delirium, which
runs as a poison in burning veins and aching brain - the dread West
Coast fever. And may England never again dream of forfeiting, or
playing with, the conquests won for her by those heroes of commerce,
the West Coast traders; for of them, as well as of such men as Sir
Gerald Portal, truly it may be said - of such is the Kingdom of
England.
APPENDIX. THE INVENTION OF THE CLOTH LOOM.
This story is taken down from an Eboe, but practically the same
story can be found among all the cloth-making tribes in West Africa.
In the old times there was a man who was a great hunter; but he had
a bad wife, and when he made medicine to put on his spear, she made
medicine against his spear, but he knew nothing of this thing and
went out after bush cow.
By and by he found a big bush cow, and threw his spear at it, but
the bush cow came on, and drove its horns through his thigh, so the
man crept home, and lay in his house very sick, and the witch doctor
found out which of his wives had witched the spear, and they killed
her, and for many days the man could not go out hunting.
