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Bismarck sent Consul-General Nachtigall with the gunboat Moewe in 1884 to hoist the German flag at various ports. Five days after this had been done the English gunboat Flirt arrived, but was thus too late to obtain Togoland and the Cameroons for England. Dr.
Nachtigal, was commissioned by the German government to report on German trade interests on the West Coast, and the British government was formally acquainted with his mission and requested to instruct its agents to assist him. The real purpose of the mission was shown when Nachtigal made a treaty with the King of Togoland, on the Guinea Coast, whereby he accepted German suzerainty.
Alsace and Lorraine reunited to the metropolis, he explained, will assist France materially with an industrious population and enormous resources in the shape of mineral wealth and a fruitful soil. Germany's former colonies, Kamerun and Togoland, are become French, and will doubtless offer a vast and attractive field for the expansion and prosperity of the French population.
If anyone die during the silence, his relatives are not allowed to weep until the four weeks have been completed." Sometimes the date of the annual expulsion of devils is fixed with reference to the agricultural seasons. Thus among the Hos of Togoland, in West Africa, the expulsion is performed annually before the people partake of the new yams.
In Togoland, among the Ewe people, I know the period is between five and six weeks, during which time the widow remains in the hut, armed with a good stout stick, as a precaution against the ghost of her husband, so as to ward off attacks should he be ill- tempered.
Meanwhile the French were pushing into their lost provinces, occupying Altkirch, Mulhausen and Saarburg; the Russians were invading Bukovina and East Prussia; the Goeben, the Breslau and the Panther had been sunk by the newspapers in an imaginary battle in the Mediterranean, and Togoland was captured by the French and British.
The tide of conquest flowed in this order round Africa from north-west to south-east, and Togoland, which was also the smallest, was the first to be subdued.
Thus the gateway to the East, both by land and by sea, the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the basin of the Red Sea all fall into the hands of the British, who now hold the heart of the Near East. The gains of Great Britain in Africa include Togoland, German Southwest Africa and German East Africa.
Liberia is a republic of freed Negroes, Gold Coast and Ashanti are British colonies and British protectorates, Togoland is a German protectorate, Dahomey is a kingdom subject to French influence, Slave Coast is a British colony and British protectorate, Niger Coast is a British protectorate, the Cameroons are trading settlements protected by Germany, French Congo is a French protectorate, Congo Free State is an international African Association, Angola and Benguela are Portuguese protectorates, and the inland countries are controlled as follows: The Niger States, Masina, etc., are under French protection; Land Gandu is under British protection, administered by the Royal Haussan Niger Company.
Great Britain has secured an important share, but so has France, receiving that part of Congo ceded in 1911, four-fifths of the Cameroons and of Togoland. Creation of a League of Nations to the exclusion, practically, of Germany and of the other losing countries, with the result that the League is nothing but a juridical completion of the Commission of Reparations.
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