1 f' 1 f v jPSHrgJB! _ »Md| W' f.% iTO-Hli ✓ . V yv " tZp' Vp^ kj .. .,i^>-.-' '£».t jy -y • •«,< >* V -i^1>'- ; ,^ r\|£6- . : .,«H -SKa*- •: Rfc^t /. ■:$$& 'ZZ* \ S{fri( ricari uxaces 843 \arieties of Speech Christian r M ohammedanism is a drab blanket that smothers progress. It teaches fatalism, no atonement for sin, no redemption by sac¬ rifice. The word “Islam” itself means resignation. Mohammedanism does not lift the negro out of ignorance. Moslems are intellectually isolated from all modern thought. Polygamy, slavery and the slave-trade are relig¬ ious institutions. No matter what his native tongue, the Moslem recites his prayers in Arabic five times daily. How meaningless and comfortless are such vain repetitions! i P AGANISM is a religion of dread and fear , not hope and comfort. Its devotees do not thank a bounte¬ ous power, but seek to appease an irate one. The merest inanimate object is imbued with a threatening spirit, so that the poor negro is kept in continual abject mental terror. The lonely call of a nightbird is a warning voice of an evil spirit. The whole village waits, in fear and horror, for the impending calamity. Paganism calls for human sacrifice, for the burial of a chief’s wives with his body, for the slaughter of a slave to carry messages to the dead, for the murder of innocent infants whose teeth appear in inauspicious irregularity. Paganism makes a gloomy spiritual background of life. A MISSIONARY OF THE MILITANT FAITH I SLAM holds sway in North Africa. Its con¬ tinuous advance into Central Africa is the greatest crisis before the Church today. In Cairo is a school of 12,000 students for the training of Moslem mullahs and maulvies. All through the East such institutions exist under the patronage of princes and kings, nobles and wealthy men. Into every town, into every kraal, the Arab trader penetrates. In the bazaar, in the center of the circle of mud huts, he sets up a wayside mosque. In 1900 Years, the Christian net saved 3,500,000 Africans I I E VERY Moslem returns from his pil¬ grimage to Mecca fired by a zeal to propagate his faith among the idola¬ trous. Five times a day, in the field, in the market, he spreads his rug and prays, pub¬ licly glorying in his faith. He gets three converts for Islam for every one we get for Christ. We must combat schools with schools, faith with faith, zeal with zeal, mission¬ aries with missionaries. In 1500 Years, Islam Caught 460,000,000 L / If a baby’s teething is irregular, it is surely bewitched and must be put to death. 2 Ill luck is believed to accompany deformity, and so a baby not perfectly formed is left to die. 3 Even a perfect baby is buried with its mother if she fails to come back from the Valley of the Shadow. 4-5 Twins are bad luck, and so the babies are stuffed into water-jars and thrown into the bush. 6 Forced feeding and unfit food cause fatal convulsions. 7 The awful “ medicinal ” concoction administered by the witch-doctor kills far oftener than it cures. 8 Men and women drink rum, and they in turn give it to little children, laughing in glee when they have made them drunk. I 9 Superstition,'as opposed to hy¬ giene, aids in the spread of tetanus, smallpox and other virulent diseases. f P EOPLE whose igno¬ rance is abysmal. Warriors who devour the flesh of notably strong men to acquire strength. Men who inherit the wives of their fathers. They rifle graves to get eyeballs for charms. They kill 4,000,000 annually for witchcraft. Can such people be de¬ veloped ? Yes, they can. B ECAUSE their youngsters are very precocious, wide¬ awake, curious, imitative, teachable. Because the grown¬ ups are physically virile, loyal to a friend, aroused to activity by example and incentive. Graduates of the Livingstonia Industrial Mission are the ma¬ sons, carpenters, machinists, printers, and telegraph operators whose work is transforming the district of Ngoni. The graduates of another mis¬ sion school, according to the testimony of their employers, are a “hundred times better than raw Kaffirs,” and, individually, “a good fellow, reliable, truth¬ ful, and obliging. For general conduct, he could give us whites something to emulate.” Conditions the J^iiss D O YOU beat a tom-tom in the house when a member of the family is dying? And shriek madly to scare off the evil spirit that is taking possession of the body? No, you don’t. Nor do you cele¬ brate a funeral or any family event with a wild dance of sensuous appeal, in which the participants are decked out in straw or blazer stripes. • ■EBraan ! l # tonary must Y OU don’t entrust your sick baby to an ignorant old crone whose knowl¬ edge of medicine consists large¬ ly of a knowledge of poisonous herbs and fearful incantations. And when a snake bites you, you don’t call in a witch-doctor who will black¬ mail your friends for supposed intimacy with the spirits who are preventing the wound from healing. We are horrified at hearing of things like these, because we have lived for generations in an atmosphere of culture, education, scientific progress and religion which makes these practices seem im- possible. But these are condi¬ tions the mission¬ ary must confront. confront C IVILIZED MEN loosed in Africa a dragon which has cut a swath across the continent, leaving death and de¬ struction, sickness and immoral¬ ity in its wake. That dragon is Alcohol. The pagan religious belief in being “possessed by a spirit” approves crazed, drunken revels. Whole districts are depopulated from the effect. Undermined in health, the dupe of the white man’s “civilization” falls prey to the fevers and plagues that stalk through the kraal. Demoralized by the white man’s gift, the tribe is more licentious than before their paganism was disturbed. Missionaries state that the liquor traffic is their arch-enemy, harder to combat than witchcraft, ignorance, and racial superstitions. to J^frica JZum C OLONIAL GOVER¬ NORS would rejoice to see the traffic and the havoc it entails abolished. But liquor pays enormous duties, 300% in the case of gin. Half the public revenues of Southern Nigeria are paid by booze. And so the traffic stays. An African Prince has written: “Even if foreign powers should for a time be financial losers, they cannot eventually be anything but gainers—aided by a country almost unlimited in its capabilities and the willing, grateful service of forty mil¬ lions of people rescued from the moral as well as physical death now staring them in the face.” Boys and Girls Gather Round and Lap up the Dregs from Barrels and Jars In a Year, Over One and a Half Million Gallons of Rum Were Shipped from Boston to the West Coast of Africa H ALF A MILLION blacks a year are sucked into the eddies of this vortex of molten gold. Half a million souls snatched from the stagnation of paganism, and not helped upward, but flung down into the swirling hell that is Johannesburg. They are attracted there by wild tales of wealth, or dragged there after they have signed a contract laborer’s papers in a drunken stupor brought on by the contractor’s rum. Thousands of ignorant men and boys are cooped up in veritable kennels, living a segregated existence in filthy surroundings. The dust-laden air of the mines is conducive to tuberculosis. Living conditions like these aid in its spread, until about 32% of the miners are tubercular. The African learned commercialized vice from contact with the white man. tion - 300.000 Souls a Sear T wenty thousand of th ese blacks die annually. Many more become so vitiated by the evil influences of their surroundings that they stay on from year to year, sinking further into depravity. Other thousands, drawn by home ties which are strong with the African, return to their native villages of thatched huts, taking with them the vices and diseases of the gold city. BUT—something like fourteen mission societies are entrenched in the mining districts. And some of the blacks who walk the hundreds of miles back to their homes are propagandists of the lessons of Light they have learned at the compound mission meetings. Uhe jJanqer F OR CENTURIES North Africa has felt the grip of Mohammedanism. In the Seventh Century the Christian Church was crushed under the western sweep of the followers of Mohammed. Today the influx of Europeans and the return of the Berbers on furlough from the fields of bloody France have sounded the death-note of Mohammedanism as a religion. It may continue to serve as a social force, but nothing more. The Mohammedan leaders themselves realize this. They are on the defensive. Their one hope lies in Central Africa, and there they are planning to recoup their losses. JPlfrica C ENTRAL AFRICA, now a “No Man’s Land,” will be Christian or Moham¬ medan as YOU elect. In YOUR hands lies the destiny of eighty million blacks. You cannot waive the issue. It is squarely before you. The program of America for World Betterment takes cognizance of these eighty million white souls in black skins. YOUR country has definitely committed itself. YOUR Church has replied to the call. A patriotic and sacred duty is YOURS NOW JMethodist Dividends on /oV yo\ >/«\ [□□Qoof foofpQf {□□fToo) •[□□QoD]-jOQQao]~|t]oQoaf{ODQQuf'[oaQDaf jOQQoDT OUR SCHOOL WORK COMP A RED -ff, ■jJm “Six times four are twenty-four Six times five are thir - ty ” C AN’T you hear the singsong chant? Accompanied by the buzzing of the imprisoned horse¬ fly which seems to be vainly trying to get the keynote? Education in Africa goes on by the multiplication table. Every pupil at the mission represents a family which is being indirectly influenced. Every graduate of a mission school be¬ comes a teacher. L o rO^THE]‘NE]ED FOR SCHOOLS E VERY day cases are cited where a student who dropped out of the mission classes is discovered in some far-away village. He is now the center of an enlight¬ ened group. A tattered chart or a well-thumbed book has helped the one-time pupil to pass on the lessons in readin’ or ’rithmetic or religion. We h ave 10,000 pupils in our buildings, which are now crowded to capacity. But with every child who is admitted to a mission school the opportunity to reach more Pagans is multiplied. OUR MEDICAL WORK IE B EFORE breakfast, a line forms outside the hospital — because within dwells the only doctor for three and a half millions of people. In the line are literally “the lame, the halt, and the blind.” In the mouth of one black, “a lion is roaring.” Another man limps with the pain of a festering toe. There is a child who comes to have a new dressing on the scalp wound the doctor sewed up so neatly. Such a treatment is a common case, because, as the African youngster sleeps with his feet to the smouldering fire, his head is within easy reach of the claws of a prowling hyena. All day long the dispensary is filled with patients. As the crowd gathers and waits in silence for the doctor, a Bible-woman assem¬ bles a group in the courtyard of the hos¬ pital and leads them in prayer. .*y*‘ i /HoneysInvested in Health s' 1 ^\ ^-v /-^ □ D □ D onol □ doo |0 0 Q D |D[“| □ DODD DDOD nno dodo QDOO |0fJO o ooo| PROPORTION TO THE NEED T WO medical plants, con¬ sisting of a doctor, hospital, and dispensary, are main¬ tained by our Church. One is in Portuguese East Africa, the other is in Rhodesia. Many times, medicine is the entering wedge for missionary activity. Pagan people are often too proud and bigoted to meet the missionary half-way, or too superstitious and fearful to dare turn from heathen gods to a Gos¬ pel preacher. But if this stranger can cure the fever burning in one’s head, it’s worth while to risk the spirit’s wrath or the witch-doctor’s whin¬ ing threats. The African is accus¬ tomed to associate medicine with religion. He learns easily to revere the God whose medicine¬ men are so powerful. The palaver of this man is listened to with open eyes and open hearts. It is strange talk, but it is good. I NTO a little circle of mushroom straw huts comes a strange man from another tribe. The people crowd around him. He speaks their dialect, and, being of their own race, can speak sympathetically of the work, the problems, the customs of the little village. But he has more than that to talk of. He has a message which he brings from the missionary meetings in a far-away village. There is a different God, who made us. Who does not demand sacrifice of life. Who does not terrify with portent warn¬ ings. Who is a comforter. L T hey would hear more of it. And so he stays in the little settlement and builds him a hut. It becomes a school, and then a church. Finally its close palm-branch walls are too narrow to hold the eager congregation, and a larger and more sub¬ stantial building is erected. We have 346 native preachers and workers in Africa. They can work in only 346 villages at one time. But the jungle is dotted with thousands of circles of straw huts, thousands of homes waiting for the Word. We have built in Africa 364 churches and chapels, parsonages and homes. But there are thousands of villages which have nosuch buildings, villages which are waiting for the day when the Methodist Church will find the means to erect a chapel. You have the means. Will you keep the village waiting in vain? * CENTRAL WHAT WE NE PROPERTY and EQUIPMENT 67 Churches and Chapels. 46 Missionary Residences. 85 Native Residences. 2 Hostels. 3 Mission Houses. $269,265 Additional Buildings and Equipment for 43 Schools. 7 Missionary Residences. 6 Native Residences. 4 Presses—additional equipment. $283,375 7 Hospitals. 4 Dispensaries. 1 Leper Home. 1 Tubercular Sanitarium. 1 Doctor’s Residence. 1 Native Residence. $45,500 Total Property and Equipment. $598,140 What We Have in PROPERTY Number Valuation Churches, Chapels, Parsonages, Homes. 364 $341,275 Educational Institutions (14) and Presses (5). . .. 19 Hospitals and Dispensaries. 4 114,913 Total Property . $456,188 AFRICA iD —1918-1922 STAFF and MAINTENANCE 40 Missionary Preachers.. 161 Native Preachers. $237,480 34 Missionary Teachers. 1 Missionary Bookbinder. Ill Native Teachers. 6 Native Printers and Bookbinders. $160,320 9 Missionary Doctors. 6 Missionary Nurses. 8 Native Nurses. 7 Native Medical Assistants. $70,670 Total Staff and Maintenance. $468,470 Total Requirements.$1,066,610 From Local Receipts. 38,095 From Home Base.$1,028,515 entral Africa —1918 STAFF 76 Missionaries and Foreign Workers 306 Teachers 330 Native Preachers and Workers.712 Total Staff Students and Pupils . 9,809 Membership . 20,617 Sunday School Scholars . 14,797 Epworth Leagues’ Members . 296 Unbaptized Adherents . 12,099 Me ^Material an I IFE in an African kraal may truly be called the “simple life.” A day’s task consists of nothing more arduous than supplying ^ the day’s needs. Under the vertical rays of the tropical sun, the needs of clothing and shelter are easily satisfied. Food is at every hand. Why should the negro be anything but lazy? Truly the African is the pampered pet of a bounteous continent. But the women get less than a fair share of the pampering. They not only keep the house; they often make the house, such as it is, Farmeretting is not a war-time fad in the African wilds. It is a weary matter of clearing the ground for planting and raising crops with the aid of only the crudest tools forged from native ore. i a where it comes from ACH village is an independent unit—a world. A hundred huts of straw and palm-sticks in a clearing of the jungle. The doors are so low one has to crawl in. In the center of the kraal is the palaver-hut, to which the head¬ man summons his followers by means of a hollow wooden drum. The jungle is crisscrossed with a nervous system of footpaths connecting the villages. The paths are worn by generations of warriors, hunters, and women going to their work in the fields, by traders and slave-gangs, by rum-carriers and missionaries. Si JVation in C AN YOU IMAGINE anything that would be more fun than the experience of showing a group of African boys something big and complicated and modern, like a printing press, for instance? Missionaries in industrial schools have that experience, and it’s hard to tell who has more fun —the missionary or the black boys. At Old Umtali a little paper, THE AFRICAN ADVANCE, is printed by the students of the school. It literally records the African’s advance, and in the mere ability to get out such a publication the black has proven his ability to assimilate the lessons we are offering him. These youths have never seen anything like the “wonder tools” of the white man. They take to them like a duck to water. T HE NATIVES of Rhodesia are farmers. Show them how to be better and more profitable farmers, and the wages of the mines will have no lure. That is what the mission schools have set about to do. A farmer in Rhodesia couldn’t run down to the village smithy to have his tools mended, so the mission teaches forge work and makes every farmer his own blacksmith. The missionary must be adaptable. More than that, he must be a diplomat. For half the nations of Europe are dabbling in the African pie,—not merely with their fingers, but with mailed fists. Only little Liberia and Abyssinia (about the size of Indiana and Texas) are independent. The rest belongs to England, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Negro. These neighbors with different characteristics and ideals must be amalgamated. Africa is necessarily full of adjustments. Before the Continent stops being climactic and becomes a strong whole, a great welding process must go on. The fire of Christianity is a powerful welding agent. A LITTLE black mite of a baby is sick. Like all mites of babies, whether black, white, red, or yellow, its tummy is upset. A witch-doctor is called. He comes, a great, dignified figure, hung with feathers, teeth, shells and snake-skins. His body is painted in hideous and horrible fashion, designed to terrify his gullible patients. The awed mother points to her drooping babe. With a grunt, the stoical wise man steps outside the hut. In the midst of the palaver circle he spreads an animal skin. Seated beside it, he rattles his gourd full of stones and then scatters them on the hide. With muttered words, he studies their positions, frowning and nodding pro¬ foundly. And then he speaks. An evil spirit is responsible for this. The child’s mother has been intimate with this spirit. An accusing murmur goes up from the assembled tribe. The witch-doctor fixes the poor woman with a hypnotic eye. There are tears and lamentations, threats and portent warnings, until at last the terrified mother confesses. For the price of one of his most costly fetishes, the mother is freed from the evil influence, and the child is cured. But, strange to say, he dies. anism A LITTLE black mite of a baby is sick. But the girl-mother, before she was sold in marriage, had attended the mission school for a short period. And there she learned to respect the white man’s knowledge and to have confidence in his good intentions. And so, in the still, cool hours of the evening, she steals with her baby out of the hut and pussyfoots to the mission house. There the kind white lady helps her wash the black mite and cool his fevered body. Together they feed him regular baby food. The mother listens carefully to the instructions about the queer little beadlike pills. Her baby is cured. And that missionary family has hammered another blow at paganism. Because, sooner or later, the girl-mother will tell how her confidence in the white man was justified. And the tale will travel and bear fruit. '171727-17-17172727171717171727271727172717171717171717171717^7271717171717172^17VI7I717WI7J7J7171717 17V 2717 W272^171717^7 2727272 7 27272727271 7 27171 7 27271727272 727272727272727272717272727.1727l r 172727172727272727.272727 272727272717272T27 21 HEN the United States entered the war in April, 1917, the conflict raging in Europe appeared to many people to differ but little, except in size, from pre¬ ceding wars. When, however, President Wilson put the United States into the conflict, he lifted the struggle into world significance by laying down a Great World Emancipation Plan. The world in spots has been an unfit place in which to live. We entered the war to make the world safe for Democracy and Democracy safe for the world. America has set this standard for the nations. Everywhere man’s equality must be recognized and insured; his right to come and go as he will, so long as he observes the common laws of humanity and concedes to every other man what he himself enjoys. World Betterment is the new cry. Every movement which aims to spread this attainment will take on added emphasis. Weak peoples, little peoples, far-away peoples, oppressed peoples are to have their day. By the common consent of our Allies, Woodrow Wilson, as chief executive of a great people enjoying the blessings of true Democracy, firmly holds the leadership in the movement for making the world a better place. The spirit of Democracy must be given an oppor- JJour JMoney* tunity to take root and to grow wherever the need exists. To accomplish that purpose we drew the sword, and we have succeeded. In our crusade we were sending food to three-fifths of Europe, relieving distress and suffering in France, Belgium and in Asia Minor. The impulse that forced us to do this, also demands that the Christian missionary program for the world must go forward in increasing measure. The fester-spots in the family of nations must be cleaned up. The Foreign Missionary Movement of the Methodist Church of America is one hundred years old! The Centenary Anniversary comes at a critical time in history. Everywhere people are raising the question, “Has Chris¬ tianity failed?” Christianity has not failed! It is the spirit of the Christ that cried out to Ger¬ many, “STOP.” It is the spirit of the Christ that compelled the Central Powers to lay down their arms and to acknowledge defeat. It is the spirit of the Christ that will bring freedom — political, economic and religious freedom —to all the peoples of the world. It is the spirit of the Christ that will fill the Centenary Missionary coffers to overflowing, in order that brother¬ hood, and love, and peace, and helpfulness, and true Democracy may be spread and maintained throughout the world. There is this possibility N EVER before have bound¬ ary lines meant so little, or so much. A wave of righteousness has swept aside all barriers and let into the world a new order of things. Today boundary lines mean nothing, and yet every¬ thing. Henceforth, they will be sacred against the hands of the invader. International brotherhood has been hurled to the front on a cataract of blood and an avalanche of carnage. The fester-spots in the family of nations are to be cured. Internationalism has so decreed. Blackest, perhaps, of all the white man’s acts may be in evei 'ry^Afric ncan W/a & e read in the history of the “Dark Continent.” We as a people owe much to the black races of Africa. There is much to settle for. Let us not delay in doing our share—we who, as a na¬ tion, have sent Africa rum in quantities sufficient to float a formidable navy—we who, as a people, have cheated her out of riches greater than the wealth of Croesus. Let the Church in America lead the way! Let Methodism lead the Church! Let every one of us as indi¬ viduals feel that we carry a burden which can be cast off only by a generous outpouring of our wealth. You Act Today A LEADER OF HIS RACE [ PRESIDENT WILSON says: “T THINK it would be a real misfor- X tune, a misfortune of everlasting consequence, if the missionary pro¬ gram for the world should be inter- * rupted. There are many calls for money, but that the work undertaken should be continued at its full force seems to me of capital necessity.” GRAPHIC SERIES ‘Prepared by WORLD OUTLOOK for the CENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH ill Fifth Avenue New York City % The Graphic Series embraces books on the following countries NORTH AFRICA CHINA JAPAN KOREA CENTRAL AFRICA MEXICO MALAYSIA PHILIPPINES SOUTH AMERICA INDIA Copyright, 1918, by World Outlook