Bathurst
and Sierra Leone upon the West Coast and has all but completed the
same process round Ashantee and the Niger countries, not to speak of
elsewhere. Madagascar she had grabbed without a shadow of excuse, but
time and South African civilisation will make it a bigger Cuba.
Already her failures at government in that vast African island are
grievous. Less than five years ago, to use a phrase I have employed
elsewhere, property and life were ridiculously safe in that country.
But then the Hovas and Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony ruled the land.
Other changes predicted have come about there. The one native who
showed honesty and courage in successfully opposing them at Tamatave
the French subsequently executed. The Queen and Prime Minister were
banished. Speaking English, the chief foreign language spoken, has
been tabooed. Natives who are heard using it, or suspected of
employing our mother tongue, are thrust into prison and kept there,
_pour encourager les autres_, until they promise to discontinue
speaking it. Association of natives with English or Americans renders
them marked persons. The Protestant missions are regarded as centres
of treason and enmity to French authority. Quickly, as foretold, has
come about their reward(?) for non-interference politically in the
early days of French intrigue. Had they insisted, with the British
Government of a bygone day, in saving the island for the Malagasy,
they would have succeeded. Our commerce has also had to suffer, for
the French _instruct_ the natives that they must only buy articles of
French manufacture. The native who purchases British or American goods
soon discovers, from the severe handling he receives through the local
officials, that he has made a serious mistake. Robbery and
lawlessness are rife, and in many places neither life nor property is
safe beyond rifle-shot of the French garrisons. The facts are
notorious and are in possession of the Foreign Office in Downing
Street.

It had leaked out a day or two after the battle that the Sirdar
intended accompanying the expedition to Fashoda. The troops ordered to
proceed up the Nile with him were paraded outside Omdurman on the
morning of the 8th of September. These were 600 men of the 11th
Soudanese under Major Jackson, 600 men of the 13th Soudanese under
Major Smith Dorrian, 100 men of the Cameron Highlanders under Captain
the Hon. A. D. Murray, and Captain Peake's battery of 12 1/2-pounder
Maxim-Nordenfeldt g