None deny, because they cannot, this prodigious importation of spirits into the Gold Coast and Southern Nigerian territories; but one thing baffles every observer—where does it go? The Egba and Yoruba people of Southern Nigeria are not drunken. We could find very few white people who had seen any appreciable degree of drunkenness; generally it was suggested that drinking took place at night. In order to test this theory, I went several times, at a late hour, quietly through the lowest parts of Lagos town. I saw many things, some of an appalling nature, but no single drunken man or woman could I find, and the statistics for convictions barely show one per thousand of the population. Yet we cannot escape from the official figures. Over six and a half million gallons of spirituous liquor of European manufacture were imported last year into the British colonies of Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gold Coast. What happens to this increasing stream of spirits? No one has ever been able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Some say that being a currency, millions of bottles of gin are “banked,” _i.e._, stored; some say that large quantities are consumed at festivals; others assert that it disappears in secret drinking. I am inclined to think, however, from visits paid at all hours to the people’s homes, that spirit drinking is spread over a much wider area than has hitherto been thought; that is to say, moderate drinking prevails widely, but that at present few of the natives drink to excess. If the moderate drinking of to-day is leading the people to drunkenness to-morrow, then a catastrophe of first magnitude will fall upon West Africa. Drunkenness is admittedly on the increase in the Gold Coast, and this is so obvious that three years ago the Governor sounded a warning by saying that he recognized drunkenness was becoming one of the most dangerous enemies to Christianity. What is to be done? Everyone admits that the sale of intoxicating liquor to natives (many would also add—and to whites) in Africa is an evil; all are agreed that the danger is potential rather than actual. But very few seem to have any other remedy than—repression, prohibition, high licenses, heavy duties; these are the methods which find greatest favour to-day. Prohibition is an extremely difficult proposition for any African colony, and it is well-nigh impossible where the French and German boundary lines march with that of another colony. If, for example, Great Britain proclaimed prohibition for the Gold Coast, what guarantee have we that German native traders would not smuggle spirits across the Volta into the Gold Coast, or the French traders carry it over the Dahomean border into Southern Nigeria? [Sidenote: HIGH LICENSES AND DUTIES]