To-day one sees the havoc which King Leopold created when he let loose upon the Congo tribes the scum of Europe. None have escaped the infection; girls of tender years and even boys not yet in their teens delight in practices of which in the old days the chiefs would have kept them in complete ignorance for another five years. Upon the women the results have been by far the most revolting, for in the Congo the majority of women have lost their womanhood and have fallen into a daily condition from which even the beasts of the forest refrain. The truth is that in the greater part of West Africa neither monogamy nor polygamy is the prevailing relationship between man and woman. Doctors, administrators and missionaries all know it, and are all powerless at present to bring the situation under control. It is useless for the administration to make laws for practices beneath the surface, the only thing the officials can do, and should do without delay, is to see to it that an ever higher example is set to the natives. This is where the Belgian and French Congo officials have failed so utterly. The Christian missionary alone touches the evil, and though he is defeated again and again, he plods steadily on preaching a perfect chastity—too lofty a standard for most natives at present—but without doubt gathering round him an ever increasing number not only of men but of women who, apart from occasional lapses, set a bright example to the whole countryside. [Sidenote: MOTHERHOOD] The birth of children is in primitive Africa rarely attended by anything abnormal. If a native nurse is confronted with complications, she immediately throws up the case in despair and appeals to the witch doctor, but normally the birth of children is taken as quite an ordinary part of the daily life. One day we were passing through a native village, and there, lying on a plantain leaf, were two chubby little twin girls but half-an-hour old; the mother was sitting close by “resting.” This picture was so beautifully simple that my wife went with a boy to bring up the camera and plates, but on arriving at the spot in about twenty minutes the woman had picked up her twins and carried them home! That is primitive Africa, but in the coast towns where African womanhood delights in corsets and other European follies, the suffering at childbirth is in many cases almost as acute as that amongst the European community. With several Congo tribes, the belief is firmly rooted and put into practice that in order to change the colostrum flow to that of milk, co-habitation is essential.