Belgian Congo figures largely in every proposal for a rearrangement of the map of Africa. It is claimed that Belgium has annexed more territory than she can safely administer; certain it is that in annexing the Congo she did not take over an ordinary colony. When Great Britain assumed responsibility for her African colonies their virgin wealth was practically untapped; the people inhabiting the colonies, as a whole, welcomed the advent of her rule, and moreover Great Britain had in all her territories, with the exception of Egypt, a free hand. To a greater or less extent this applies to all African Powers, other than Belgium. When Belgian annexation took place, the Congo was in every respect a “squeezed orange”; not only so, but the administration of that territory must remain subject to the paternal control of the European Powers. There is another feature which should not be overlooked, and which may yet cause difficulty. In the event of a general insurrection in French or British colonies, or in the event of invasion, these Powers can at once bring in an outside coloured army, which can, if necessary, be reinforced with white troops. Belgium can do neither. Let any material section of the native army revolt, which, by the way, is the ever present fear of its officers, and the Europeans must run for their lives. They would call in vain for troops from the Mother Country, for by the Belgian Constitution the army may not be ordered abroad, and for other reasons European forces could hardly be used in the Congo. With the unification of language amongst the native troops which is rapidly taking place, with the ever increasing spread of knowledge as to the use of arms, this peril has been gravely accentuated within recent years. Apart from these general—and some of them, remote—difficulties, there are existing reasons for believing that the extensive Congo territories are too heavy a responsibility for Belgium. The country is over eighty times the size of Belgium, a proportion to the Mother Country not by any means without parallel, but circumstances differ so widely that they remove the question from all comparison with any other incident of colonial expansion. The only countries which at all compare with the Congo are Uganda and Southern Nigeria, but these have not suffered as the Congo has done from thirty years of the maddest form of exploitation since Pizarro plundered Peru. Uganda is just about 100,000 square miles and the Imperial grant-in-aid during the last ten years in direct administrative assistance (excluding railway credits) is no less than £1,075,000, or an average annual grant-in-aid of £107,500. This, it will be observed, is approximately an annual grant-in-aid of a sovereign per square mile.