Let me try to make my meaning perfectly clear in regard to this latter case. I make no attack upon any organization or body. I criticize the trend of certain influences, and I willingly admit, as all must do, even those who most dread their effects, that these influences have their origin in centres imbued with genuine altruism. Also that of one side of them nothing but good can be said—the destructive side, the side which is ever prepared to respond to the call of human suffering. Neither do I suggest that education can, or should be, arrested. I simply lay down this double proposition. First, that educational and allied influences, whose combined effect is to cause the West African to lose his racial identity, must produce unhappiness and unrest of a kind which is not susceptible of evolving a compensating constructive side. Secondly, that in no period of time which can be forecast, will the condition of West African society permit of the supreme governing power being shared by both races, although short of the casting vote, so to speak, policy should everywhere be directed towards consolidating and strengthening Native authority.
Still less do I make any reflection upon the educated West African as such. Among these Westernized Natives are men to be regarded with the utmost respect, for they have achieved the well-nigh insuperable. They have succeeded, despite all, in remaining African in heart and sentiment; and in retaining their dignity in the midst of difficulties which only the most sympathetic alien mind can appreciate, and, even so, not wholly. To Mary Kingsley alone, perhaps, was it given to probe right down to the painful complexities of their position as only a woman, and a gifted woman, specially endowed, could do. Of such men the great Fanti lawyer, John Mensah Sarbah, whose recent and premature death is a calamity for West Africa, was one of the best types. The venerable Dr. E. Wilmot Blyden, whose race will regard him some day as its misunderstood prophet, is another. One could name others. Perchance their numbers are greater than is usually supposed, and are not confined to men of social distinction and learning. And these men wring their hands. They see, and they feel, the pernicious results of a well-meaning but mistaken policy. They appreciate the depth of the abyss. But they lack the power of combination, and their position is delicate to a degree which Europeans, who do not realize the innumerable undercurrents and intrigues of denationalized West African society are unable to grasp.