That it is so hard to keep oneself really humane, and so to be a standard-bearer of civilisation, that is the tragic element in the problem of the relations between white and coloured men in Equatorial Africa.
A war-Christmas in the virgin forest! When the candles on the little palm which served us as Christmas tree had burnt to half their length I blew them out. "What are you doing?" asked my wife. "They are all we have," said I, "and we must keep them for next year." "For next year?" ... and she shook her head.
On August 4th, two days after our return from Cape Lopez, I had prepared some medicine for a lady who was ill there, and sent Joseph to a store to ask that their steamer might take the packet down there on its next journey. He brought back a short note: "In Europe they are mobilising and probably already at war. We must place our steamer at the disposal of the authorities, and cannot say when it will go next to Cape Lopez."
[Illustration: ON THE BANK OF THE OGOWE RIVER.]
We needed days to realise that Europe was at war, though it was not that we had failed to take the possibility of it into account; indeed, following the advice of an experienced merchant, I had brought with me a considerable sum in metal money in case it should come about. But since the beginning of July we had received no news from Europe, and we knew nothing of the entanglements which finally brought on the fatal explosion.
[Sidenote: Native impressions regarding the war]
The negroes had, at first, very little understanding of { 137} what was going on. The Catholics among them were more really interested in the papal election than in the war, during the autumn. "Doctor," said Joseph to me during a canoe journey, "how do the Cardinals really elect the Pope; do they take the oldest one, or the most religious, or the cleverest?" "They take one kind of man this time, and another kind the next, according to circumstances," was my reply.
At first the black labourers felt the war as by no means a misfortune, as for several weeks very few were impressed for service. The whites did little but sit together and discuss the news and the rumours from Europe. By now, however (Christmas, 1914), the coloured folk are beginning to learn that the war has consequences which affect them also. There being a shortage of ships, no timber can be exported, and therefore the labourers from a distance who had been engaged for a year are being discharged by the stores, and as, further, there are no vessels plying on the rivers that could take them back to their homes, they collect in groups and try to reach the Loango coast, from which most of them come, on foot.