The Shadow Of Belgium

There is a little black man in Belgium, whose name is Mfumu Paul Panda. He is
filled with a certain resentment against me and American Negroes. He writes me
now and then, but fairly spits his letters at me – and they are always filled with some
defense of Belgium in Africa, or rather with some accusation against England,
France and Portugal there. I do not blame Panda, although I do not agree with his
reasoning. Unwittingly, summer before last I tore his soul in two. His reason knows
that I am right, but his heart denies his reason. He was nephew and therefore by
African custom heir of a great chief who for thirty years, back to the time of Stanley,
has co-operated with white Belgium. As a child of five, young Panda was brought
home from the Belgian Congo by a Belgian official and given to his maiden sister.
This sister reared the little black boy as her own, nursed him, dressed him, schooled
him and defended against the criticism of her friends his right to university training.
She was his mother, his friend. He loved her and revered her. She guided and loved
him. When the second Pan-African Congress came to Brussels it found Panda leader
of the small black colony there and spokesman for black Belgium. He had revisited
the Congo and was full of plans for reform. And he thought of the uplift of his
black compatriots in terms of reform. All this the Pan-African Congress changed.
First it brought on his head a storm of unmerited abuse from the industrial press:
we were enemies of Belgium; we were pensioners of the Bolshevists; we were partisans
of England. Panda hotly defended us until he heard our speeches and read
our resolutions.

The Pan-African Congress revealed itself to him with a new and inexplicable
program. It talked of Africans as intelligent, thinking, self-directing and voting
men. It envisaged an Africa for the Africans and governed by and for Africans, and
it arraigned white Europe, including Belgium, for nameless and deliberate wrong
in Africa. Panda was perplexed and astonished; and then his white friends and
white mother rushed to the defense of Belgium and blamed him for consorting
with persons with ideas so dangerous and unfair to Belgium. He turned upon
us black folk in complaining wrath. He felt in a sense deceived and betrayed. He
considered us foolishly radical. Belgium was not perfect, but was far less blood
guilty than other European powers. Panda continues to send me clippings and
facts to prove this.

In this last matter he is in a sense right. England and France and Germany deliberately
laid their shadow across Africa. Belgium had Africa thrust upon her. Bismarck
intended the Congo Free State for Germany and he cynically made vain and foolish
Leopold temporary custodian; and even after Bismarck’s fall, Germany dreamed of an Africa which should include Congo, half the Portuguese territory and all the French, making Germany the great and dominant African power. For this she fought the Great War.

Meantime, and slowly, Belgium became dazzled by the dream of empire. Africa is
but a small part of Britain; Africa is but a half of larger France. But the Congo is eightytwo
times the size of little Belgium, and at Tervuren, wily Leopold laid a magic mirror
– an intriguing flash of light, a museum set in rare beauty and approached by magnificent
vistas – a flash of revealing knowledge such as no other modern land possesses of
its colonial possessions. The rank and file of the Belgians were impressed. They
dreamed of wealth and glory. They received the Congo from Leopold as a royal gift –
shyly, but with secret pride. What nation of the world had so wonderful a colony! and
Belgium started to plan its development.

Meantime the same power that exploited the Congo and made red rubber under
Leopold – these same great merchants and bankers – still ruled and guided the vast
territory. Moreover, Belgium, impoverished by war and conquest, needed revenue as
never before. The only difference then between the new Congo and the old was that a
Belgian liberal public opinion had a right to ask questions and must be informed.
Propaganda intimating that this criticism of Belgium was mainly international jealousy
and that the exploitation of black Belgium would eventually lower taxes for the
whites – this was nearly enough to leave the old taskmasters and methods in control in
spite of wide plans for eventual education and reform.

I remember my interview with the socialist Minister for Colonies. He hesitated to
talk with me. He knew what socialism had promised the worker and what it was
unable to do for the African worker, but he told me his plans for education and
uplift. They were fine plans, but they remain plans even to-day, and the Belgian
Congo is still a land of silence and ignorance, with few schools, with forced industry,
with all the land and natural resources taken from the people and handed over to the
State, and the State, so far as Congo is concerned, ruled well-nigh absolutely by
profitable industry. Thus the African shadow of Belgium gravely and dangerously
overshadows that little land.

I know two black men in France. One is Candace, black West Indian deputy, an out-and-out defender of the nation and more French than the French. The other is René Maran, black Goncourt prize-man and author of Batouala. Maran’s attack on France and on the black French deputy from Senegal has gone into the courts and marks an era. Never before have Negroes criticized the work of the French in Africa.

France’s attitude toward black and colored folk is peculiar. England knows Negroes chiefly as colonial “natives” or as occasional curiosities on London streets.
America knows Negroes mainly as freedmen and servants. But for nearly two centuries
France has known educated and well-bred persons of Negro descent; they filtered
in from the French West Indies, sons and relatives of French families and recognized as such under the Code Napoleon, while under English law similar folk were but nameless bastards. All the great French schools have had black students here and there; the professions have known many and the fine arts a few scattered over decades; but all this was enough to make it impossible to say in France as elsewhere that Negroes cannot be educated. That is an absurd statement to a Frenchman.
It was not that the French loved or hated Negroes as such; they simply grew to regard them as men with the possibilities and shortcomings of men, added to an unusual natural personal appearance.

Then came the war and France needed black men. She recruited them by every method, by appeal, by deceit, by half-concealed force. She threw them ruthlessly into horrible slaughter. She made them “shock” troops. They walked from the tall palms of Guinea and looked into the mouths of Krupp guns without hesitation, with scarcely a tremor. France watched them offer the blood sacrifice for their adopted motherland with splendid sang-froid, often with utter abandon.

But for Black Africa, Germany would have overwhelmed France before American
help was in sight. A tremendous wave of sentiment toward black folk welled up in
the French heart. And back of this sentiment came fear for the future, not simply
fear of Germany reborn but fear of changing English interests, fear of unstable
America. What Africa did for France in military protection she could easily repeat on
a vaster scale; wherefore France proposes to protect herself in future from military
aggression by using half a million or more of trained troops from yellow, brown and
black Africa. France has 40,000,000 Frenchmen and 60,000,000 Colonials. Of these
Colonials, 845,000 served in France during the war, of whom 535,000 were soldiers
and 310,000 in labor contingents. Of the soldiers, 440,000 came from North and West
Africa. The peace footing of the French army is now 660,000, to whom must be
added 189,000 Colonial troops. With three years’ service and seven years’ reserve,
France hopes in ten years’ time to have 400,000 trained Colonial troops and 450,000
more ready to be trained. These Colonial troops will serve part of their time
in France.

This program brings France face to face with the problem of democratic rule in her
colonies. French industry has had wide experience in the manipulation of democracy
at home, but her colonial experience is negligible. Legally, of course, the colonies are
part of France. Theoretically colonials are French citizens and already the blacks of the
French West Indies and the yellows and browns of North Africa are so recognized and
represented in Parliament. Four towns of Senegal have similar representation; but
beyond this matters hesitate.

All this brings, however, both political and economic difficulties. Diagne,10 a black
deputy from Senegal, was expelled from the Socialist party because he had made no
attempt to organize a branch of the party in his district. And the whole colonial bloc
stand outside the interests of home political parties, while these parties know little of
the particular local demands of the colonies. As this situation develops there will come
the question of the practicality of ruling a world nation with one law-making body.
And if devolution of power takes place what will be the relation of self-governing colonies
to the mother country?

But beyond this more or less nebulous theory looms the immediately practical
problem of French industry. The French nation and French private industry have
invested huge sums in African colonies, considering black Africa alone. Dakar is a modern city superimposed on a native market place. Its public buildings, its vast harbor, its traffic are imposing. Conakry has miles of warehouses beneath its beautiful palms. No
European country is so rapidly extending its African railways – one may ride from
St. Louis over halfway to Timbuktu and from Dakar 1,500 miles to the Gulf of Guinea.
The question is, then, will France be able to make her colonies paying industrial
investments and at the same time centers for such a new birth of Negro civilization
and freedom as will attach to France the mass of black folk in unswerving loyalty and
will to sacrifice. Such a double possibility is to-day by no means clear. French industry
is fighting to-day a terrific battle in Europe for the hegemony of reborn Central
Europe. The present probabilities are that the future spread of the industrial imperialism
of the West will be largely under French leadership. French and Latin imperialism
in industry will depend on alliance with western Asia, northern and central Africa,
with the Congo rather than the Mediterranean as the southern boundary. Suppose
that this new Latin imperialism emerging from the Great War developed a new antithesis
to English imperialism where blacks and browns and yellows, subdued, cajoled
and governed by white men, form a laboring proletariat subject to a European white
democracy which industry controls; suppose that, contrary to this, Latin Europe
should evolve political control with black men and the Asiatics having a real voice in
Colonial government, while both at home and in the colonies democracy in industry
continued to progress; what would this cost? It would mean, of course, nothing less
than the giving up of the idea of an exclusive White Man’s World. It would be a revolt
and a tremendous revolt against the solidarity of the West in opposition to the South
and East. France moving along this line would perforce carry Italy, Portugal and Spain
with it, and it is the fear of such a possible idea that explains the deep-seated resentment
against France on the part of England and America. It is not so much the attitude
of France toward Germany that frightens white Europe, as her apparent flaunting of
the white fetish. The plans of those who would build a world of white men have
always assumed the ultimate acquiescence of the colored world in the face of their
military power and industrial efficiency, because of the darker world’s lack of unity
and babel of tongues and wide cleft of religious differences. If now one part of the
white world bids for dark support by gifts of at least partial manhood rights, the
remainder of the white world scents treason and remains grim and unyielding in its
heart. But is it certain that France is going to follow this program?

I walked through the native market at St. Louis in French Senegal – a busy, colorful
scene. There was wonderful work in gold filigree and in leather, all kinds of beads and
bracelets and fish and foods. Mohammedans salaamed at sunset, black-veiled Moorish
women glided like somber ghosts with living eyes; mighty black men in pale burnooses
strode by – it was all curious, exotic, alluring. And yet I could not see quite the
new thing that I was looking for. There was no color line particularly visible and yet
there was all the raw material for it. Most of the white people were in command holding
government office and getting large incomes. Most of the colored and black folk
were laborers with small incomes. In the fashionable cafés you seldom saw colored
folk, but you did see them now and then and no one seemed to object. There were
schools, good schools, but they fell short of anything like universal education for the
natives. White and colored school children ran and played together, but the great mass
of children were not in school.

As I looked more narrowly, what seemed to be happening was this: the white
Frenchmen were exploiting black Africans in practically the same way as white
Englishmen, but they had not yet erected or tried to erect caste lines. Consequently,
into the ranks of the exploiters there arose continually black men and mulattoes, but
these dark men were also exploiters. They had the psychology of the exploiters. They
looked upon the mass of people as means of wealth. The mass therefore had no leadership.

There was no one in the colony except the unrisen and undeveloped blacks
who thought of the colony as developing and being developed for its own sake and for
the sake of the mass of the people there. Everyone of intelligence thought that Senegal
was being developed for the sake of France and inevitably they tended to measure its
development by the amount of profit.

If this sort of thing goes on will not France find herself in the same profit-taking
colonial industry as England? Indeed, unless she follows English methods in African
colonies can she compete with England in the amount of profit made, and if she does
not make profit out of her colonies how long will her industrial masters submit without
tremendous industrial returns? Or if these industrial returns come, what will be
the plight of black French Africa? Batouala voices it. In the depths of the French Congo
one finds the same exploitation of black folk as in the Belgian Congo or British West
Africa. The only mitigation is that here and there in the Civil Service are black
Frenchmen like René Maran who can speak out; but they seldom do.
For the most part, as I have said, in French Africa, educated Africans are Europeans.
But if education goes far and develops in Africa a change in this respect must come. For
this, France has a complete theoretical system of education beginning with the African
village and going up to the colleges and technical schools at Gorée. But at present it
is, of course, only a plan and the merest skeleton of accomplishment. On the picturesque
island of Gorée whose ancient ramparts face modern and commercial Dakar
I saw two or three hundred fine black boys of high school rank gathered in from all
Senegal by competitive tests and taught thoroughly by excellent French teachers in
accordance with a curriculum which, as far as it went, was equal to that of any
European school; its graduates could enter the higher schools of France. A few hundred
students out of a black population of nineteen millions is certainly but a start.
This development will call for money and trained guidance and will interfere with industry. It is not likely that the path will be followed and followed fast unless black
French leaders encourage and push France, unless they see the pitfalls of American
and English race leadership and bring the black apostle to devote himself to race uplift
not by the compulsion of outer hate but by the lure of inner vision.

As yet I see few signs of this. I have walked in Paris with Diagne who represents
Senegal – all Senegal, white and black – in the French parliament. But Diagne is a
Frenchman who is accidentally black. I suspect Diagne rather despises his own black
Wolofs. I have talked with Candace, black deputy of Guadaloupe. Candace is virulently
French. He has no conception of Negro uplift, as apart from French development.
One black deputy alone, Boisneuf of Martinique, has the vision. His voice rings
in parliament. He made the American soldiers keep their hands off the Senegalese. He
made the governor of Congo apologize and explain; he made Poincaré issue that
extraordinary warning against American prejudice. Is Boisneuf an exception or a
prophecy?

One looks on present France and her African shadow, then, as standing at the parting
of tremendous ways; one way leads toward democracy for black as well as white – a
thorny way made more difficult by the organized greed of the imperial profit-takers
within and without the nation; the other road is the way of the white world, and of its
contradictions and dangers, English colonies may tell.