BRITISH AND GERMAN EAST AFRICA, AND UGANDA 121
1921. Meanwhile, the greater part of the territory had been
assigned to Great Britain as mandatory,! and only the
districts of Ruanda and Urundi to Belgium. The division
gave to Belgium only about 20,000 square miles in the north-
west corner of the territory, but this relatively small area
is one of the most populous parts of Africa containing some
three and one half million inhabitants. The boundary line
was criticized because it cut through the native kingdom
of Ruanda. The British defended it on the ground that
they must have within their mandate a possible route for
the Cape to Cairo Railroad; but in 1923 they agreed to add
some 3000 square miles to the Belgian mandate, recognizing
the Kagera River as the natural frontier of King Musinga’s
realm.2 The British also accorded the Belgians special
facilities for transit trade across Tanganyika (as they call
their mandated territory), including the lease of free zones in
Kigoma and Dar-es-Salaam.
The British administration of Tanganyika has been vio-
lently criticized, not only in the propagandist writings of
Heinrich Schnee, ex-Governor of German East Africa, but
also in British circles. The British criticism, that too much
money has been spent and that ‘the administration is
almost overtly hostile. ..to the commercial exploitation
of the territory,” 3 serves to bring out the efforts which are
being made to safeguard and promote the interests of the
natives. Undoubtedly the military operations, the ex-
pulsion of the German plantation owners, the uncertainties
of legal title. the currency difficulties of East Africa. aud the
! See pages 84-85 for an account of the mandate system. The actual
division of the territory was made not by the League of Nations but by
direct negotiation between Belgium and Great Britain, resulting in the
Milner-Orts Convention of May 30, 1919.
* See map and discussion in The Times (London), September 3, 1923.
! “A Bureaucrat’s Paradise,” The Times Trade Supplement, July 7, 1923,
See also the Manchester Guardian Commercial, April 26, 1923.
