160 J.-A. PEMBERTON
‘the colored peoples into the World War’.^254 Schacht noted that the
Congo Act of 1885, to which Belgium, Britain, France and Germany
were signatories, provided that in the event of war the parties to the act
‘would renounce the Congo Basin as a basis for war-like operations.’^255
He also noted that the German government had suggested on August 23,
1914, that the colonies be left out of the war. Britain and France, Schacht
observed, effectively rejected this suggestion: he stated that they had pro-
ceeded to violate the Congo Act by bringing the war into the German
colonies, the combined military forces of which, Schacht added, consisted
of only around 7000 men and had ‘no significance other than to act as a
police force for the maintenance of law and order.’^256 Schacht stated that
whereas Germany had never used the inhabitants of its colonies for mili-
tary purposes, France had ‘brought over half a million coloured soldiers
into the field against Germany,’ adding that the consequence of this was
‘the widespread unrest prevailing amongst the colored peoples.’^257
Appealing to his target audience, Schacht observed that in mat-
ters of international politics, Americans had generally shown a ‘healthy,
human, moral attitude,’ adding that while it ‘is true that, for reasons
which are gradually being seen in their true light,’ the American peo-
ple had entered the war, they had ‘rightly refused to ratify’ the Treaty of
Versailles because it was an ‘immoral treaty’.^258 Schacht acknowledged
that a large number of Americans disapproved of many of the things that
had occurred in Germany in recent years. However, he then suggested
that his American ‘friends’ should ask themselves what would they do
if they found themselves in Germany’s position: what would they do
if, like Germany, they had lost a war which they had fought in the sin-
cere belief that it was ‘for their very existence’ and then found them-
selves ‘oppressed for twenty long years by an unjust peace imposed by
the victors, and on top of that were deprived by their opponents of the
(^254) Ibid., 225–26.
(^255) Ibid., 225.
(^256) Ibid., 225–26.
(^257) Ibid., 226. Bryce Marian Wood noted that the fact that France had been the ‘milita-
rizer of the natives’ was cited by elements in Britain who were keen to ‘uphold the fitness of
Germans to rule over African territories.’ Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem,
90.
(^258) Schacht, ‘Germany’s Colonial Demands,’ 223.