"military training of the natives for other than police purposes, and the defence of territory." The italicised words leave the door wide open to the very evils which the Covenant professes to guard against. No State ever acknowledges that its military establishment is for other than "defensive" purposes. The phraseology used in the Covenant would permit of the military training of the adult male population in the former German dependencies by the mandatory State. Given an equitable administrative policy all that is required to maintain order in the tropical regions of Africa is a mobile, well disciplined force of a few hundred, or a couple of thousand or so, native police, at the disposal of each local Government. The number would vary, of course, with the size of the particular territory, and with the character and density of the native population. And this brings us to a consideration of the problem of administration itself.
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At this point, I venture upon a digression in order that subsequent remarks may not be misapprehended. If the purport of this volume has been in any sense fulfilled, I have succeeded in imparting the conviction I myself hold that a tremendous moral liability is laid upon Europe to do justice to the peoples of Africa; that recognition of this moral obligation should find expression, and that it can find such expression at an early date in concrete acts of policy as regards, at least, that very considerable section of the Dark Continent where the racial problem in its acute forms is non-existent. I am bold enough to hope that a perusal of these pages will have established that the moral obligation of repairing wrongs done to, and preventing further wrongs upon, the peoples of Africa, is the basis of the whole case I have sought to put forward here in behalf of these peoples.
I shall not, then, I trust be misunderstood when I say that unless the public opinion which admits this moral obligation and is anxious that it should be a powerful stimulus in the formation of policy, is prepared to face and examine with open eyes the material factors which influence and direct the relations of Europe with tropical Africa, there is little or no expectation that moral considerations will be able, in any appreciable degree, to affect policy. Mere negative criticism is useless. To
