THE UGANDA RAILWAY.
MR. LABOUCHERE is impartially hostile to every extension, and to almost every recognition, of Imperial responsibilities, but if he has a pet aversion it is the Uganda Protectorate. His feelings on this subject may be supposed to be somewhat specially acute in view of the fact that it was in regard to Uganda that the Little Englanders of the Liberal party, without and within Cabinet limits, made one of their latest rallies and were defeated. It was therefore an old wound, the ache of which prompted his motion and speech in opposition to the second reading of the Uganda Railway Bill on Monday, when he enjoyed the support and countenance of Sir William Harcourt. That statesman was understood to be the leader of the anti-Imperial development party in Mr. Gladstone's last Ministry. Occupying now a position of "greater freedom and less responsibility," Sir William Harcourt found a congenial task in stringing together some cavils against the Government Bill authorising the expenditure of £3,000,000 sterling on the railway from Mombasa to the northern shores of the Lake Victoria Nyanza. This action of Sir William Harcourt's might, indeed, at first sight seem a little curious in a member of the Government which itself came to the conclusion that a railway to Uganda must be made. But it is explained by the fact that the estimated cost of the light railway which the late Government had in view was only £1,755,000. Sir William Harcourt says that the Committee of 1895, which was composed of the same gentlemen who reported in 1896, recommended the adoption of a reduced scheme which was to cost just half the money now proposed to be expended, and on the strength of this difference he said, on Monday night, that he did not see that the House could reasonably be asked to assent to the enlarged proposal. The public generally, we are con- vinced, will hold that it is much better that the Govern- ment, having satisfied itself through its expert advisers that the smaller sum talked of last year would. be quite inadequate for the construction of a really serviceable line, should frankly ask Parliament for a much larger sum, and that the House of Commons would have acted with extraordinary and most culpable levity if it had failed to give the Ministry the means they asked for for the prosecution of an undertaking to which both parties in the State are pledged. Mr. Curzon, whose speech in replying to Mr. Labouchere was very clear and. able, made a statement with regard to the Foreign Office Committee, to which the control of the construction of the Uganda railway has been entrusted, which cannot but be regarded as justifying the confidence that the business will be carried out as economically as is consistent wish efficiency. The managing director is Mr. O'Callaghan, a man whose whole life has been spent in railway work ; the con- sulting engineer is Sir Alexander Rendel, who fills the same post at the India Office ; and the other members of the Committee are Sir Montagu Ommanney, Crown Agent for the Colonies, who is familiar with the kind of work, and Sir John Kirk, whose experience in East Africa is exceptionally great. This, it will be recognised at once, is a singularly strong body, which can be safely trusted to see that the money voted by Parliament for the railway will be wisely dispensed. That there may be good and sufficient reasons in other circumstances against the management of a project of railway construc- tion by a Government Department may be readily acknowledged. But in this case, as Mr. Curzon well points out, where the railway under construction is under- taken purely for Imperial ends, and is carried in part through a difficult country inhabited by a wild and warlike tribe—the Masai, with whom it would be only too easy for a blood-feud to be aroused—it must clearly be best that the persons engaged on the construction should be for the time the servants of a Government Department, which would at once interfere in the event of harsh or indiscreet treatment of the natives. "If you employ con- tractors," asked Mr. Curzon, "what guarantee have you that they will engage men who are experienced in the ways of managing native tribes and in dealing with them dexterously ? That reason, if there were no other, would be strong enough to impose on the Government the duty of constructing the railway." Another great advantage of the Government system of management in this case is that the Indian Government have facilitated the obtaining, by the officers in charge of the works, of three thousand coolies whom they would never have allowed to go to work on the the -Uganda railway if it had been in the hands of contractors.
The public, we think, will be quite satisfied by the state- ments of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that the construction of the railway to Uganda is in excellent hands, and will be carried on with thorough efficiency and with- out waste of the public resources. As to the necessity for that railway, unless we are to abdicate Imperial responsi- bilities recently accepted by a remarkable preponderance of public opinion, there can be no question whatever. The nation had practically made up its mind that we must keep Uganda before Sir Gerald Portal was despatched to inquire into the possibility of retirement from that position. After his return and report, retirement was absolutely impossible. The abandonment of a great civilising mission which we had claimed, in the face of the world, as falling to us, and the desertion of large numbers of natives who were trusting to us to maintain the good order and comparative freedom from bloodshed which Englishmen had been mainly instrumental in establishing, would have involved an intolerable wound to our national self-respect. But when the right decision had been taken on that question, the early construc- tion of a railway from the coast to Uganda became inevitable. A very slight amount of reflection showed that it was impossible to contemplate the indefinite con- tinuance of a state of things involving an arduous journey of nearly three months between our representatives in the new Central African dependency of Great Britain and their nearest supports, when that journey might be reduced by a perfectly practicable engineering effort to a duration of less than as many days. It would be plainly wrong to expose our officers to the risks involved in such a state of things. It would be plainly foolish, having undertaken the mission of planting civilisation on the shores of the great central lakes, to allow communi- cations between that region and the sea to remain in a condition involving the maximum amount of human suffering possible for their maintenance and the maximum cost for the transit of goods. At the present moment, Mr. Curzon told the House on Monday, all the stores required by our representative in Uganda and his staff and escort have to be carried on the backs of native porters. That costs us £40,000 a year, which, when the railway is in working order, will fall to £6,000. This saving of £34,000 a year is no insignificant initial economy to be set against the interest on the construction of the railway. The immense reduction in the cost of carriage which the railway would effect will of course at once make possible the development of the commercial resources of our new dependency. In opposition to Mr. Labouchere's pessimist views on this point, Mr. Curzon states that he is assured by informants who have been in Uganda that there is every chance of cotton, india-rubber, cereals, and coffee being cultivated there. If that be so, there is good prospect of a development in Uganda and its dependencies, the people of which are by no means sunk in savagery, of new markets for British manufactures, to be exchanged for the produce which the railway will make it possible to convey to the coast.
But, beyond and above these considerations, the British public, we are convinced, will rightly feel a genuine pleasure at the significance of the Uganda Railway Bill, in regard to the African policy of her Majesty's Government. It means, we take it, without a doubt that Great Britain intends to hold firmly the lands about the upper waters of the mighty river on whose lower reaches she is doing so noble a work of civilisation and emancipation. It is strange that the importance of this point fails to impress Sir Charles Mike, who is unequally yoked, in opposition to the Uganda Railway Bill, with such un- believers in Empire as Mr. Labouchere and Sir William- Harcourt. The extraordinarily maladroit diplomacy of the Anglo-Congolese agreement, of which instrument, as Sir Charles Dilke truly observes, one half was torn up by Germany and the other half by France, produced the im- pression that there was little or no firmness of purpose about England's policy in the heart of Africa, in presence of that of other European Powers. The steady construc- tion of the Uganda railway, and the position which its completion will establish, will, we may fairly believe, effectively neutralise that unfortunate impression, while at the same time immensely reinforcing our effective in- fluence for the suppression of that interior slave-traffic, against the mere outward results of which our naval squadrons have fought devotedly, but in vain.
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