Catholic mission gave out in church that no girl desirous of becoming a Christian might attend such dances. Schmidt launched a counterblast by forbidding all complaints to the Catholic missionaries; and it may here be stated that von Puttkamer was doing the same in the Cameroons as regards the Evangelical Missions. There may have been, here and there, political agents amongst the missionaries, but, in the main, they were honest Christian men, who, if they ventured to point to the handwriting on the wall, were promptly suppressed and not infrequently driven out of the Colony. Schmidt, however, was determined to revenge himself on the Fathers; and an opportunity was found in connexion with his forcible detention of a young girl named Adjaro, not over fourteen years of age, whom he also flogged. A Catholic Father laid the facts before the District Judge, Lieut. Preyl, who said a written statement must be made to the Chief of the Bureau. This was done, showing that Schmidt had been guilty of repeated crimes of a nature which the natives held in peculiar abhorrence and punished with death. We give the sequence in Deputy Rören's words to the Reichstag, founded on the legal depositions:

'In the dark, at four in the morning, when it is still absolutely dark in tropical countries, District-Judge von Rothberg, who had returned meanwhile, came on horseback, as did also his assistant Lang, who had been quite irregularly appointed as public prosecutor, together with two more, and nineteen black soldiers-came, Gentlemen, not to the station building to arrest the criminal, but to the Mission. They forced their way into the Mission, dragged all the Fathers, just as they were, out of bed, and declared them arrested, without having a warrant or without even answering the questions as to why they were arrested. They hunted through the mission buildings, even through the chapel, uncovered the altar, rummaged through the vestments cupboard, and took away all papers, including receipts and the wills of some of the Fathers. After that, the Fathers were surrounded by the nineteen soldiers with loaded rifles, and led off to prison, with Rothberg and his assistant Lang, on horseback, at their head.'

Rören goes on to relate how these good priests were kept imprisoned for twenty-one days, all their

correspondence, and even that for the Sisters of a distant mission, being seized. The Fathers were forbidden to make or hear confessions according to Catholic practice, unless they undertook first to put the confessions in writing to be submitted to the Governor or else to speak so loudly that the official could hear what they said. Furthermore, difficulties were made in the preparation of these innocent victims' defence, and would-be witnesses were interfered with or got out of the way. The girl Adjaro and her sister and mother were summoned, no doubt for purposes of intimidation, before Schmidt and his friend Kersting, whose character we may estimate by the fact that he had distinguished himself by first shooting a chief with a revolver and then ordering a soldier to cut off the man's head, which, it is averred, he kept as a trophy. The condemnation of Father Schmitz, the leading actor in the quest for redress, was a foregone conclusion; he was sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment for giving false evidence. Yet, on appeal, though no fresh evidence on his behalf was offered, he was acquitted. Deputy Rören, at the close of his remarkable speech, told how Schmidt distinguished himself yet further, by formally and officially proclaiming a black woman of ill-repute as 'Jenusia' (Queen), ordering the people to obey her, giving her power to collect legal dues up to fifteen marks and to decide judicially in any legal quarrel, and finally presenting her with a sword to wear as a mark of royalty. 'Gentlemen,' the deputy concluded, 'one would think that the man had tropical frenzy!' In spite of these facts Schmidt was sent back to Togoland by the Colonial Department; and the Secretary of State, speaking in the Reichstag, on Dec. 3, 1906, said that such campaigns against officials must cease, or no one would enter the Colonial Service.*

One of the darkest blots on the pages of German colonial administration was undoubtedly the ever-recurring and indiscriminate flogging of natives. Notorious

* At the same time Dernburg threatened the Chapter of Cologne cathedral that he would remove certain of their missionaries from Togoland if they continued their charges against the local officials.

cases of this punishment-as inflicted by the Germansblacken the name of Landeshauptmann Brandeis, who, when acting in the Marshall Islands, ordered constant floggings and did not enter them in the punishment book. When his delinquencies were mentioned in the Reichstag, the usual official excuses were made for him. He was in a difficult position, it was said; he acted boná fide; he even flogged for educative reasons. Dernburg, in apologising for him, could not get over the fact that, in some eleven cases, he had been proved to have ordered floggings not legally permissible. Brandeis received a mild reprimand, and eventually a decoration; and this, though no less an authority than Consul-General Knappe of Shanghai, whom Erzberger called 'one of our most experienced politicians,' wrote in an official letter that he had witnessed the floggings both in the Marshall Islands and Samoa, and that the impression was a disgusting one, both for white men and black.' He added, that it caused great excitement, a public meeting of indignation on account of the flogging in the Marshall Islands being only suppressed by the accidental presence of a squadron.' Erzberger took up the Brandeis case with great vigour, referring to it in more than one speech, and strongly reprehending the practice of the authorities, who sought to throw dust in the eyes of the public regarding the way in which colonial officials exceeded their powers.

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That even chiefs, as in the Akwa case, were not exempt from the indignity of public flogging, is a signal proof of the inability of their taskmasters to understand native psychology. Flogging their leaders caused outbreaks of anger and indignation among the natives; or, where the chiefs were not beloved, it lowered them still further in the respect of their tribes. Where influential chiefs were bribed to do whatever was wanted of them, lesser chiefs were beaten severely to attain similar ends. A missionary working in German East Africa in pre-war days refers to the treatment of the natives as being in inverse ratio to the power of the tribes, and adds that the treatment of the lesser chiefs was very severe and no better than that of ordinary natives, a chief seldom getting through a month without being flogged. In the Jaunde district in the Cameroons chiefs were tied up and flogged if they could not supply sufficient carriers,

and after their punishment they were made to carry loads themselves.

In March 1906 Deputy Erzberger, quoting from colonial statistics, said that in East Africa 2293 natives had been sentenced to floggings and birchings in the space of one year, while 2994 natives received floggings as additional punishment; and in April 1912 Deputy Noske showed that matters had not improved, seeing that the numbers of floggings in South-West Africa in 1910 was 1262, and in the Cameroons 1909. Erzberger stated also that, although the numbers flogged in German South-West Africa were not then forthcoming, the account of the prisons there pointed to a very raw spot' in Colonial policy; and that Samuel Maherero had said himself that he joined the Herero rising out of fear of being caught and going to perdition in prison-i.e. being flogged to death-as his tribal kinsman had done.

In the German African colonies the punishments legalised for the natives were flogging, fines, imprisonment with hard labour, confinement in chains (a most cruel punishment, of which it was said few men could survive it for more than a year), and death. Corporal punishment was administered either with the sjambok, which should be made of strips of rhinoceros hide 80 to 100 centimetres long, by one in circumference, or with a rope's end steeped in hot tar and then smothered with sand to produce a very rough surface, and used when stiff. The sjambok draws blood profusely at the first stroke, and even Governor von Puttkamer, considering it 'too cruel,' only allowed the use of a rope's end; but the Colonial Department insisted in 1907 on the sjambok being reintroduced. The so-called birch rods were described as 'little sticks,' but cudgels would have been a truer name for them.* Men, women, and children are punished up to twenty-five lashes,' said Bebel. The legal number of strokes was often exceeded; and there is the testimony of eyewitnesses to the fact that officers have frequently said that the first few lashes have been 'no

* Deputy Rören placed one of these 'weapons,' similar to one with which Judge Rothberg had thrashed one of his porters to death on the way to Atakpame, on the table of the Reichstag on Dec. 3, 1906; and some years previously a rhinoceros whip had been laid dramatically on the table of the House by one of the deputies.

good' and must be administered again. These might be followed, according to official ruling, by a second application, at the interval of at least a fortnight. In this respect the rule was often broken, one flogging following on the other. On many occasions attention was called to the fact that the German African territories were known in the adjacent French and British possessions as the 'Colonies of the Twenty-five,' or the 'Flogging Colonies.'" On Dec. 3, 1906, Deputy Rören said:

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Many of the officials look on the natives not as fellow-men but as welcome objects for the satisfaction of their often very coarse and low passions. The conception is unfortunately promoted by many of the existing administrative arrangements. Amongst these arrangements, I reckon in the first place the institution of corporal punishment, or rather the cruelty and arbitrariness with which it is used. The native, after having been completely stripped, is strapped across a block or a barrel that has been firmly fixed; his hands are bound in front, his feet behind, so that he cannot move; and he does not get a few blows with an ordinary stick held in one hand, but the strongest among the black soldiers has to wield a plaited rope or a correspondingly thick stick with both hands, and with all his strength, and that with such violence that each blow must whistle in the air. It has happened that if the blow does not whistle, it has to be repeated; and, if it does not do so, the Hausa gets it himself. It is self-evident that in the portion of the body thus struck, the blood congeals and causes swelling; and so it has happened that a man thus flogged has been ill or sickly for the rest of his life. Yes, it has happened that weak natives have collapsed after the floggings, and soon died. But with all it is the rule, that for months, indeed for years, they find themselves in such a state of nervous tension that, if someone comes near them unexpectedly, they cower and scream loudly, because they fear and have the feeling that the spot that was beaten may be touched. That, Gentlemen, is cruel and unworthy of human beings, but the real hardship is that this punishment is not the result of judicial sentence for great misdemeanours or crimes, but is inflicted at the arbitrary discretion of administrative officials, even by station-directors, who have officially only the rank of subalterns, and is even ordered by their assistants, and by overseers of smaller stations, many of whom have been merely non-commissioned officers. It has happened that even for