Evening Journal

CONTEMPORARY OPINION.

Carl Peters' Methods in Africa.
From the New York Tribune.

Carl Peters seems at last to be in a fair way of getting his deserts. What these deserts may be it is perhaps as well not to attempt to prejudge. But this much is evident, that he is either a great sinner or has been greatly sinned against. He has for years enjoyed a world-wide reputation as a scientific explorer of Africa, and, indeed, he has added much to our knowledge of that continent. His scientific work has, however, been incidental. His prime object has been to extend the borders of the German colonial empire, and he has really been a political and military conquest seeker, serving Germany in Africa exactly as Prjevalsky and others served Russia in Central Asia. In this capacity also he has been successful. He has secured for Germany extensive and populous regions in Africa, over which, as Imperial Commissioner, he has ruled with the absolute authority of a Czar.

From the first there have been unpleasant rumors concerning his treatment of the natives. On his exploring expeditions he seized, without payment, whatever supplies he needed from the villages through which he passed. To all remonstrances his answer was a blow or a shot. When he became Imperial Commissioner his conduct grew still more harsh and arbitrary. The whip was his sceptre, and he applied it without stint to men and women alike. Hints came to Europe of even worse practices than this. An English missionary Bishop denounced him as a monster, and severed all relations with him. And now, at last, the hideous tale is fully bruited forth. It is to the effect that he forced a negro girl, the daughter of a chief, to become what we may euphemistically term his 'common law wife' according to some heathenish rites, and then, discovering that she had a negro lover, had her and that lover put to death by hanging without trial. The German Government has been compelled, by the publicity given to it by the Socialists, to take the matter up and order a rigid investigation. Peters will therefore soon be vindicated as a grossly slandered man or convicted of being a monster for whom inhuman is too mild an epithet.