| Show THE POWERS IN AFRICA How the Dark Continent Is Divided Among Them I T Stead In the Independent BrItIsh Africa can be variously des scrlbed geographically politically eth J i nologlcally I and religiously Hut the simplest definition Is I tills all Africa that Is I comfortably habitable ly white men Is I under the British Hag or under British protection And again everything Africa that pays dividends lies within the sphere pegged out for John Bull by Ills advntuou soniv Wherever In Africa you find land In which whiteskinned children can be bred and reared you will and It lies within the IlrltMi zone And wherever there Is I In frtcn any paying property that also v Ill be found to be within the same sphere oflnlunce All of Africa that Is habitable and all at Africa hat AfrIQ1 pays Its way that Is British AfrIc The Other nations have scrambled for John Bulls Pinviigu FrIance for Instance In-stance hall annexed the Sahara In her West African colony of Senegal every fifth European Is I a French official Germany has annexed 320000 square miles of desert In the Southwest and 400 000 of srmltroplcal land In the east but they have more olllclala than colonists colon-ists foV jlnc than dividends Portugal 1 has quite an empire of malarial mal-arial marches on both coat Belgium has the Congo Free State a masnlfl cent empire In the heart of tropical Africa which nerds 81000 a year subsidy sub-sidy from Belgium heep 1 I from bankruptcy and which notwithstandIng notwithstand-ing the Subsidy has run up a debt of over 8000000 Italy the last to Join In the IH ramble has nearly come to grief over her African adventure Africa stands solely on the debt side of tho account ac-count of mery European nation but one and even In the Case of Britain the entries to the bail arc neither few nor mall British AfcaIrreVer be described In another way Wherever you find a good harbor In Africa or a navigable river navlgbl 1011 snt or a great Inland lake there > ou mal be sure the tlrltlrh fag Is 1 not t far off The Congo Is I the only great African river which does not enter the sea under un-der British protection The Congo was r l J ncoce his nl up btomed and in 11 de reeI bie by Mr Stanley a lrlTlshexplorer and lilt I waters are as free to the Hags of all nations as I they were British Tire only harbor In southern Africa that Is worth having which Is I not Brit Ill lit I Delagoa bay and John Hull to this day rueftlll recalls the foot that ho only lost that bi allowing It to he sent to arbitration before n tribunal which took more account of rarely little de of n remote Idt than the ne sltles of the living present The only harbor on the southwept coast the natural nat-ural port of German Rnuhwt Africa Is I Watflsih bar wntre a British sentry sen-try stands on guard under the shade of the Union Jack Wherever navigable writer It I there the descendant ot the tr old vikings recognlies his fatherland even In the heart of Africa Of the wrest lakes which Ha In a long string from the Zambesi to the Nile there Is I not o on uliose shores there In I not a British possession Even the smaller lakes such ns Lake Tchad seem to at treat the searovera of the Northland |
