This treatment of the merchant class finds no place in any other colony of West Africa. It is of quite recent growth and monstrously unjust to the merchants, for it should never be forgotten that it is almost entirely to the merchant and missionary communities that Great Britain primarily owes her presence in West Africa. There is another fact our officials would do well to remember, namely, that the natives and the merchants together pay their salaries and pensions. The younger officials make themselves far more objectionable than the older men, but probably this is due to their inexperience. It is, however, regrettable that the older officials do not set a more pronounced example in the other direction. Within recent years, the British Colonial Office has been sending out, in the capacity of Assistant District Commissioners, many youths of necessarily immature judgment and totally lacking in experience. These lads are by far the worst specimens in their attitude towards the native and merchant communities. Recently, this feature has been impressing itself upon travellers in East as well as in West Africa. Mr. E. N. Bennet, in his book on the Turks in Tripoli, says:— “Amongst our fellow passengers to Marseilles were eight young men who were on their way to Uganda. Few, if any of them, had ever crossed the Channel before; they wore school colours and did not know an olive tree when they saw one. Nevertheless, they held, and expressed, very decided views—the ideas of the College Debating Society and the London Club—that the ‘man on the spot’ must be the sole arbiter on matters colonial and that kindness was absolutely wasted on black men; the one ethical quality necessary in a representative of Great Britain was firmness.... They also viewed with disfavour the deportation of Mr. Galbraith Cole. One could only hope that when these inexperienced youths grew older they would grow wiser. As it is, an immense amount of harm is done all over our vast Empire by some of our younger soldiers and civil servants, who, utterly devoid of _cosmopolitanisme gracieux_, treat their non-English fellow subjects with a contempt which would be ridiculous if it were not dangerous.” The merchant seeking a new field for commerce in West Africa will find the warmest welcome and the fairest treatment in German colonies, and next to Germany, in this respect, the British colonies; there is not much to choose between the Belgian and the Portuguese. None but Frenchmen should go to the colonies of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” for there is little Liberty, less Equality and no Fraternity in the French colonies for white or black. IV THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC