Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/224

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS, AND LAND
207

we do not possess the requisite national faculties. For we are not what the French essentially are, a military people. The attempt to convert the land of the African Arab and of the Berber whether in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunis, into a military annexe of imperialist France can, of course, only have one ultimate ending—a general smash-up of the Frankish dominion in North Africa. But that particular Nemesis may take some time to work out, and if what is called "Bolshevism" invades France, if the French masses realise as some day no doubt they will, that national preservation involves the shedding of a nationalistic imperialism on the part of the governing bourgeoisie, the North African problem may settle itself without lighting a general Mohammedan conflagration from one end of North Africa to the other.

European policy in Mediterranean—i.e., Mohammedan—Africa is so closely concerned with Europe's rivalries that unless a League of Nations succeeds in entirely transforming the character of European inter-State intercourse, the notion of white "trusteeship" for the native races is not likely to make much headway in those parts of the Continent. But if one might precipitate oneself into the realms of imagination for the nonce, conjecture a Europe purged of its war system and governed by statesmen imbued with a lofty sense of responsibility towards these African peoples and devoid of sectarian prejudice, one could picture a great revival of letters and arts on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, carrying its message to every part of Mohammedan Africa. Such a policy would involve "support" of Mohammedanism! Horesco referens! But there are precedents. Does not the provincial government support by a grant-in-aid the Mohammedan College at Aligarth in the North-West provinces of India, founded by the late Sir Syad Ahmed Khan? It would be more accurate to say that such a policy would give to an African civilisation a chance of political and intellectual expression. True, it would be a civilisation, whose spiritual basis is the Koran. Is the civilisation of Western Europe, whose spiritual basis is alleged to be Christianity, so perfect that any but sectarians need find grounds of objection in such a policy? The great bulk of North-West Africa is Mohammedan, and Mohammedanism is steadily gaining ground over most of the tropical regions of the Continent. In the West it