Moreover, in so far as my experience enables me to form an opinion, Mr. Harris has acquired a firm grasp of the main principles which should guide Europeans who are called upon to rule over a backward and primitive society, and of the fact that prolonged neglect of those principles must sooner or later lead to failure or even disaster. He writes as a fair-minded and thoroughly well-informed observer. Throughout his pages may be found many acute observations on the various problems which, in forms more or less identical, tax the ingenuity of the governing race wherever the white and the coloured man meet as ruler and subject. Notably Mr. Harris dwells (p. 67) on the great influence exerted by the example set by officials; this example, he thinks—most rightly in my opinion—is more important than the issue of laws and decrees. Here, he says—and I quote the passage with regret—“is where the Belgian and French Congo officials have failed so utterly.” To put the matter in another, and somewhat mathematical, form, I have always held that 75 per cent. of the influence of British officials for good depends on character, and only 25 per cent. on brains. Mistakes arising from defective intelligence will generally admit to being rectified. Those which are due to defects of character are more often irremediable. My belief is that the great and well-deserved success which has attended Sir Reginald Wingate’s administration of the Soudan arises in no small degree from a recognition of this common-place, and from its practical application in the choice of officials. I am not sure that its importance is always adequately recognized in London. It is well to encourage the importation of cocoa and palm oil into the London market. But it is better to acquire the reputation, which (p. 280) Mr. Harris says has passed into a proverb in the Congo, that “the Englishman never lies.”