The impetuous scramble for African territory, which began thirty years ago, made, and continues to make, a considerable breach in this old primitive system. White men, acting through the doubtful medium of interpreters not infrequently corrupted in advance, have secured from chiefs titles to land of all dimensions. These chieftains, as a whole, never fully grasped the meaning of the titles obtained with honeyed words, and which they are now unable to repudiate. That this is so is partly proved by the fact that in some colonies areas have been conceded twice and even three times over. Swaziland is, of course, the most flagrant example, where it will be remembered a situation so complex was created that it ultimately became impossible for any Court to decide as to who were the real owners of specific areas. In West Africa things are not, and never can be, quite so bad, although in some colonies, the Gold Coast for example, German Cameroons and French Congo, land difficulties are being piled up for the endless confusion of future administrators. In Belgian Congo there is no immediate probability of trouble, due partly to the fact that capital has little confidence in Belgium’s heritage, but more because the major part of the population has disappeared. [Sidenote: LAND AND LABOUR] There is a vital connection between land and labour in all tropical and sub-tropical colonies. The economic future of native races is immobilized in the proportion in which their lands are taken from them. The almost phenomenal success of the cocoa industry in the British colony of the Gold Coast is due entirely to the fact that the natives are the proprietors of the cocoa farms. Throughout the colonial world, there is no more striking contrast between a landed and a landless native community than the British Gold Coast colony and the neighbouring Portuguese colony of San Thomé. In both territories cocoa flourishes, both produce excellent cocoa, in both nature is very kind, but while the one will march on conquering the cocoa markets of the world, the other is doomed to ultimate disaster.