A Magisterial Function
A splendid repast, in the course of which good spirits and good cheer had flowed freely. The talk had varied from Oxford dons to Japanese admirals and Russian generals; and when it came down to liqueur and coffee everyone was merry, but truly the merriest was the genial host, and a right down good sort he was.
The Chief Magistrate beat himself this evening, and as he waxed more and more eloquent and glibly passed on from one subject to the other, it was only right that the eternal race question should come in for a fair consideration.
They were a body of learned men, the guests of the evening, including the members of the Diplomatic Service, one or two doctors, with a fair sprinkling of coloured barristers, and, as it became such a company, they talked learnedly.
“When you come to talk of the jurisdiction of the native Kings and Chiefs I lose all patience with you,’ said the host, as he wheeled round upon a youthful barrister who had ventured to make an observation upon the destoolment, that is to say, the deposition of the Chief of Agona. “The King of England is King here, and it is ridiculous to think that these little squirts of puppet headmen can be said to have jurisdiction.”
Macan of the Diplomatic Service rashly came to the rescue of the youthful barrister. “I thought I had seen such a thing as a Native Jurisdiction Ordinance in the Corpus Juris of the Gold Coast.”
The host growled and told him plainly, but politely, without much ado, that he knew next to nothing about the matter. Turning to Kwamankra, he pursued, “Now, what do you think— you go up country, and one day one of your puppet kings sends and arrests you and claps you in gaol —how would you feel over the matter, eh? ’”
“At the best of times, I confess,” said Kwamankra, “it is not pleasant to find oneself in durance vile. But if the jurisdiction is there, what is there to do but to submit to it?”
“That is exactly what you needn’t do. When one of your native authorities comes before me with their confounded jurisdiction notions I treat them as little children, and dismiss the whole thing with a jest. I can assure you, it is a most effective way. Besides, talking seriously, you have not considered the effect of the Order in Council.”
“Which Order in Council do you mean?” ventured a precocious full-fledged.
“What else can I mean but the last, which defined the limits of the colony, and vested the jurisdiction in our sovereign Lord the King,” almost shrieked out the host.
“My dear sir,’ put in Kwamankra, “if I may venture to come to the assistance of my young friend, it takes two to make a bargain, as you will: find if you examine into the constitutional history of the country.”
For the moment the host was nonplussed. He was somewhat hazy as to the historical part of the subject. But asa parting shell, he exclaimed: “Well, be that as it may, it was one of your own men who drew a report upon this very matter upon which the Government have acted. I have seen it with my own eyes, I assure you, and I make you a present of the fact.”
“I say, Whitely,” continued the Chief Magistrate, “how did you get on with that cemetery controversy of yours? I hear you have given your assistant the sack. I say, it is really too bad of you. I am strong on so-called native jurisdiction, and that kind of thing, but when it comes to segregation of the dead, I tell you the thing beats me. Think of old Lawson, the pioneer of the gold industry, not receiving decent interment on the ground of colour. The thing is preposterous, and I am not in sympathy with it.’ Whitely coloured up and appeared confused. The criticism was sharp and unexpected.
The Chief Magistrate was known for his frank expression of opinion, no matter what the subject matter of discussion was. Bilcox thought it was time he came to the rescue of the Government policy.
“Bravo! Chief, I like your fine speech,” addressing the Chief Magistrate. “I never knew you were a champion of the non-segregation theory. At the next sitting of the Council I shall not fail to record the considered views of such a highly placed official as your Honour.”
“I have never been able to understand the argument in favour of segregation,’ put in the conscientious Macan unguardedly. “In the time of an epidemic, for instance, I can understand why the afflicted, without distinction, should be put away. But in normal times, to be sure, I don’t understand the philosophy of the matter.”
“The question has nothing to do with epidemics. The man in the street knows that,” sourly retorted Bilcox. “Besides, it is common knowledge that whites never catch small-pox from blacks,” he added irrelevantly.
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” burst out Dr. Castor. “That’s good, go one further. In all my experience I declare!”
“‘You don’t mean to insult me, doctor, I hope. Besides, all this discussion before these gentlemen,’ waving his hand in the direction of the coloured fraternity, “is most unseemly, and I for one must beg leave to retire.”
“Pray, don’t go away, Mr. Bilcox,” said Kwamankra. “I am sure we are not offended in the slightest. My friends here, like myself, are used to this kind of thing. But what are the odds? I, for one, am strong on reciprocity.”
“And what has reciprocity to do with this matter?” angrily demanded the Political Officer.
“Only this, sir,’ began Kwamankra calmly, “that if you took mankind in the aggregate, irrespective of race, and shook them up together, as you would the slips of paper in a jury panel box, you would find after the exercise that the cultured would shake themselves free and come together, and so would the uncouth, the vulgar, and the ignorant; but, of course, you would ignore this law of nature, and, with a wave of the hand, confine the races in separate air-tight compartments. Wherefore I preach reciprocity.”
“I say, you fellows, we must be going; it is getting late”—this said the senior member of the legal fraternity as he rose, turban in hand, to take leave of the genial host, who was fuming at Bilcox’s rudeness. “Good-night, sir, we thank you so much for kind entertainment,’ he continued, addressing the Chief Magistrate.
“Good-night, gentlemen.”
The Yellow Peril
The political wisdom of Ekra Kwow, the son of Kwamankra, was learnt at the feet of his father while yet he was in his teens. Being a lad of inquiring mind and quick perception, many a curious question did he put to his father on odd occasions, when Kwamankra would return answers full of pith and marrow.
“What is the meaning of the ‘yellow peril’?” interrogated the precocious youth, as he craned his neck behind the chair of the paterfamilias, who was leisurely gleaning from the pages of Public Opinion.
Kwamankra raised his eyes from the printed matter, and beckoned the young hopeful forward. Eyeing the lad curiously, he said, “If you must know, I suppose I must give you the lesson, and, perhaps, the earlier the better. Now, if you should be going to school to-morrow, and at the street corner Kweku Mensah knocked off your cap and punched your nose, what would you do?”
“I would, of course, punch his head back,” answered the lad triumphantly.
“Good! Now let us go a step further. Suppose your school fellows were going on a picnic, and Kobina Tsintsin’s boys met you on the public road and barred your progress, would not you brave lads fight your way through?”
“Of course, dad, what else could we do in honour of our school?”
“Now, for the application. In geography books you have learnt that different nations dwell on the face of the earth—white, yellow, red, brown and black like ourselves. They each occupy a portion of the earth’s surface. Those who occupy those tiny islands somewhere in the English Channel are, as you know, called the English. So you have the Japanese, those brave fellows, the Indians, the Africans, or to come down to particulars, among the Africans, say, the Zulus, the Ashantis, and the Fantis. To give the principle which made you punch Kweku Mensah back, and your school fellows bravely break through the ranks of Kobina Tsintsin’s boys, a name, let us call it the law of self-preservation. Now, if you relax the practice of this principle in the course of life, you go under, and men then talk of the survivors as the fittest, because they have resisted best. You remember those lines in Shakespeare you were reciting to me the other day:
‘Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee—’
That is a wholesome rule of life, my boy. Well,” pursued Kwamankra, ‘there are certain nations in the world who call themselves Christians, and who claim a monopoly of culture, knowledge and civilisation, and who, ergo, think that they have a heaven-born right to survive and thrive while all others go under. They are mostly whites, and when either the brown, or the yellow, or the black man resists and shows he does not mean to go under, these self-same white Christian people hysterically cry out: ‘The Yellow Peril,’ or the ‘Black Peril,’ as the case may be. Do you understand, my lad?” laying his hand slowly on the child’s head, and looking him straight in the face, so that the child’s eyes met the father’s fully and meaningly.
“Yes, I do, dad,” replied the lad. “But tell me, dad, I did not wish to interrupt you before— why did you call the Japs, “those brave fellows?”
“Why, simply because in the present contest they are engaged in with Russia, they have shown they do not mean to go under, whoever else may do so; and they have caused the cry of ‘the yellow peril’ of late to go up more hysterically than ever. Listen to this rare bit,” said Kwamankra, reaching for his scrap album and turning to the letter J: “The sacred duty is incumbent upon us, as the leading state of Asiatic progress to stretch a helping hand to China, India, and Korea, to all the Asiatics who have confidence in us, and who are capable of civilisation. As their more powerful friend, we desire them all to be free from the yoke which Europe has placed upon them, and that they may hereby prove to the world that the Orient is capable of measuring swords with the Occident on any field of battle.’ These words were spoken in the Japanese House of Peers, and they embody the principle I have been trying to inculcate upon you in a nutshell. You will do well to remember them all your life; and since I find you an apt pupil likely to pass the lessons on to others after I am gone, I will tell you of my experiences with the Political Officer.”
“But what is a Political Officer?” queried the stripling.
“There you are again with your inquiring little brain. I must begin from premises to conclusion, step by step, like the quod erat demonstrandum you were worrying me with the other day. Still you are right, my boy. Once define clearly, and all difficulties vanish, as mist before the noon-day sun. Well, the system of Government under which we, the people of the Gold Coast, live is known as the ‘Crown Colony system.’ It is a system somewhat behind the times. Now, what would you boys think of your schoolmaster in these enlightened days if he should, from time to time, ask you to contribute out of your pocket money funds for the laying out of a recreation ground without allowing some of you boys to have a say as to how things were to be done, and what games were to be bought for the school? I am sure you would all revolt and say, ‘If you are going to use our money, you might at least let us say what games we would like.” Under the system I am telling you of the schoolmaster is the Governor, and the lads are the people of this country whose contributions are in the shape of the heavy duties they pay on all imported articles. But they have no voice in the spending of their contributions, and that is why I say the system is somewhat behind the times. To proceed, seeing there must be discontent among the people, the Political Officer is the man appointed to deal with cases arising out of such discontent.”
“But how? I don’t quite understand, dad. Does he go and speak kindly to the people and tell them not to mind, and that they will have the value of their contributions, if they are patient?”
Kwamankra burst out hilariously, and for some minutes could not control himself. The lad began to feel sheepish, and thought he must have said something very odd. But, presently Kwamankra came to, and a look of sadness seemed to play upon his countenance as slowly he murmured to himself the words:
“And its heart as pure as now.’
Quick as thought, memory had flashed back that unique chapter in his life’s experience when she and he had watched over this very child in infant slumbers, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, and in the fulness of their hearts the prayer had gone up:
“That when time’s mystic fingers wrote manhood on its brow,
It’s deeds might be as gentle and its heart as pure as now.”
And now, he was left alone to help realise that prayer in the youthful enquirer. Mastering his feelings, and, for the moment rolling a stone over the sepulchre of the ever virgin past, Kwamankra turned to his son, and drawing him closely to his heart, spoke gently thus: “How I wish I could keep you, my boy, from knowing the seamy side of life. But since knowledge must come some day, it were well I guided thee to the sources thereof, if so be it might not be all gall to thy thirsty soul.”
“No, the Political Officer does not exactly do what one should think, my boy. Here on the Gold Coast the people have also shown that they do not mean to go under, but in a different way. You know the story of the wolf and the lamb. I see you are all eagerness. Well, it will bear repetition. The wolf meets the lamb on a thirsty day by a stream. The wolf stands higher up the stream and drinks, while the lamb quenches its thirst in the lower part. Presently Mr. Wolf says to Master Lamb, ‘what do you mean by making the stream muddy?’ ‘How can that be ’ says Master Lamb, ‘since you are higher up the stream than I am.’ ‘I hear you spoke disrespectfully of me three months ago,’ puts in Mr. Wolf. Master Lamb meekly: ‘I have been in the world only two months gone.’ ‘Well, if it wasn’t you,’ replies the wolf, ‘it must have been your father who did.”
“Coward!” cried Ekra Kwow, excitedly. “Don’t I wish I were close by with my little pop gun? I should have put a hole through Mr. Wolf right enough.”
“Good, my boy, that’s well said. But, unfortunately, it is an every day occurrence in this world, and, what is worse, we can’t always bring to play our pop guns when we may morally be justified in doing so.”
“But it is high time you were in bed. Another time, if you are good, I will tell you all about the Political Officer, and my experiences with him, if you remind me how far we have come to-day.”
“Good-night, dad!”
“Good-night, my boy,” and, in a minute, he had disappeared behind the curtains, leaving Kwamankra to his thoughts and to his pipe.