The most economic and the most politic line to follow is that of the employment of free labour. Supervision is reduced to a minimum, abuses of authority are rare, the work goes more smoothly, the song takes the place of the boot and the lash, the native labourer goes home when the day’s toil is over vowing vengeance on no one, and the white man returns to his somewhat primitive home with a mind undisturbed by conscious wrong-doing. II LAND AND ITS RELATION TO LABOUR It will not, I think, be contested that throughout West Africa there is no native conception of private ownership of land. This is almost an article of religious faith amongst the African races generally. Let one tribe murder a member of another community and a palaver will be called and compensation paid. If wife-stealing or kidnapping of boys takes place, the tribes involved will remain calm and settle their dispute by making peaceful and honourable amends. Let one tribe exploit the palm, or without leave settle on the lands of another, and, on the instant, the ultimatum is despatched—“Depart forthwith, or accept the alternative!” Indeed the occupation of the communal lands of another tribe is recognized by most tribes as an overt act of warfare, the signal that all negotiations for peace are at an end. Perhaps no more eloquent testimony of the attachment of native tribes to their lands is to be found anywhere than in the great Equatorial regions of the Congo. The early ’eighties witnessed in the Congo basin three convulsive movements; the entrance of the white man from the west, following on Stanley’s journey across the continent; the incursion of the Arabs from the north, and the Lokele wars towards the south. This latter movement was destined to change the whole situation in the Equatorial regions, south of the main Congo. The Lokeles, probably pressed by the Arabs from the north, started a “land war” with their southern neighbours, the object being to obtain an extension of tribal land. This pressure set in motion a land war, which ultimately extended over an area nearly five times the size of Great Britain and ran right through the south reaching down to the Lukenya river, and in some places even across the greatest of the southern tributaries—the Kasai. Tribes fought each other for the maintenance of their ancient boundaries until the whole of the Equatorial region was in a state of warfare, which only ceased when starvation claimed victims by the thousand. Then only were boundaries re-adjusted by peaceful agreements; even so the whole population for months was in such dire straits for food, that men sold their wives, and mothers their children, for a single basket of manioca. One realizes how passionately the natives are attached to their lands as they recount the horrors of those terrible years. Said one to me recently—“At first we fought to protect our lands, but in the end we had to fight to obtain ‘meat’—human flesh—to stay the pangs of hunger.”