In The Third Class The State
Is That Of Cumulative Poisoning; In The Fourth Of Acute Poisoning.
Let the new-comer who goes to the Coast take the most cheerful view
of these statements and let him regard himself as preordained to be
one of the two most favoured classes.
Let him take every care short
of getting frightened, which is as deadly as taking no care at all,
and he may - I sincerely hope he will - survive; for a man who has got
the grit in him to go and fight in West Africa for those things
worth fighting for - duty, honour and gold - is a man whose death is a
dead loss to his country.
The cargoes from West Africa truly may "wives and mithers maist
despairing ca' them lives o' men." Yet grievous as is the price
England pays for her West African possessions, to us who know the
men who risk their lives 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.
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