Press. They prove the wide extent of the recruiting area, for the units include representatives of tribes scattered throughout the Western Sudan, comprising, for example, among some thirty other tribes, Fulas, Soninkes, Mossis, Mandingoes, and Guransis. Altogether French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa (French Congo) produced 181,512 fighting men. On the day of the Armistice their numbers on the fronts, in camp in West Africa and in depots in North Africa, amounted to 136,500 (91 battalions averaging 1,500 to 2,000 rifles), without counting the Madagascar and Somali contingents.
Abominable abuses and bloody and extensive uprisings have attended these forcible recruitings in West Africa. Each district was marked down for a given number of recruits; chiefs were required to furnish the men, and bribed to do so, punished if they did not. Cash bonuses per man recruited were offered, and private kidnapping resulted necessarily—the days of the slave trade over again. There was a debate in the Chamber in July, 1917, all knowledge of which was kept from the British public. But the scandals which it brought to light did not lead to any substantial modification of the policy. Indeed, French West Africa produced more black cannon fodder for France in 1918 than in the preceding years, viz.: 63,208 men. The Acting-Governor-General, M. Clozel, an experienced and distinguished official, whose published works on Africa have long been familiar to students, viewed the whole scheme with the greatest aversion. He reported on November 10, 1916 :
My opinion is that the native peoples have no enthusiasm whatever for our cause, that their dislike to military and above all to foreign service cannot be overcome, and that any recruiting that would be really worth while can only be carried out through the operation of fear.
He followed this up by an even more vigorous protest on December 6 of the same year:
The political condition of the Colony—he wrote—is still a source of perpetual anxiety to us. The drafting of 50,000 men since the close of 1915 has been the pretext, as well as the occasion, for a rising which … has assumed considerable dimensions in the Niger region. Energetic and conscientious officials of the Government have strained every nerve to prevent this conflagration from overwhelming the entire Niger country. They have almost wholly succeeded in doing so, but the rising has only been mastered after six months' hard fighting by forces mainly sent up from the coast.
