ancient unvarying customs
whereby the rights and duties of individual tribesmen were enforced,
and the primitive societies held together, were often inconsistent with
Western ideas, and tended to break down altogether on contact with
Western industrial methods. How were the needs of industry to be
reconciled with justice to the subject peoples? How were their customs
to be reconciled with the legal ideas of their new masters? How were
these simple folk to be taught the habits of labour? How were the
resources of their land to be developed without interference with their
rights of property and with the traditional usages arising from them?
These were problems of extreme difficulty, which faced the rulers of
all the new European empires. The attempt to solve them in a
high-handed way, and with a view solely to the interests of the ruling
race, led to many evils: it produced the atrocities of the Congo; it
produced in the German colonies the practical revival of slavery, the
total disregard of native customs, and the horrible sequence of wars
and slaughters of which we have already spoken. In the British
dominions a long tradition and a long experience saved the subject
peoples from these iniquities. We dare not claim that there were no
abuses in the British lands; but at least it can be claimed that
government has always held it to be its duty to safeguard native
rights, and to prevent the total break-up of the tribal system which
could alone hold these communities together. The problem was not fully
solved; perhaps it is insoluble. But at least the native populations
were not driven to despair, and were generally able to feel that they
were justly treated. 'Let me tell you,' a Herero is recorded to have
written from British South Africa to his kinsmen under German rule,
'Let me tell you that the land of the English is a good land, since
there is no ill-treatment. White and black stand on the same level.
There is much work and much money, and your overseer does not beat you,
or if he does he breaks the law and is punished.' There was a very
striking contrast between the steady peace which has on the whole
reigned in all the British dominions, and the incessant warfare which
forms the history of the German colonies. The tradition of protection
of native rights, established during the period 1815-78, and the
experience then acquired, stood the British in good stead. During the
ordeal of the Great War it has been noteworthy t