The Post Office clerks at Sierra Leone, and Custom House officials at Lagos, are cited as paragons of impudence and “swelled head.” It must be admitted that these men fully realize that they are servants of the British Crown and maintain a dignity not altogether appreciated by the white community. If they can be accused of “swelled head,” may it not be that white example has led them to regard such an attitude as “correct form” for Government officials? Examples of this may too often be seen in British Crown colonies, for between the British official class and the merchant community a great gulf is fixed, across which many officials gaze with unbecoming contempt. Let the subordinate native but ape this attitude, and, in him, it becomes a sin. With bated breath and eloquent gesture, the frightful immorality of the native is a morsel of scandal dear to the heart of many superior whites. This is a matter, however, upon which students of African social life have some differences of opinion, but none have any such differences of opinion upon the necessity of “Form B,” which so many white officials are prone to forget. An exposure of African immorality cannot, it is true, be long delayed; sooner than most people think that day is coming. Locked in the breasts of governors, doctors, missionaries and educated natives are strange stories and appalling statistics; their volume is daily increasing; facts are being labelled and classified and these only await the opportunity which an increasing virulence of attack upon native immorality—ignoring that of the white race which obtains in every African town—will precipitate. The chief indictment against the African is that of being incurably lazy. Prejudice has so blinded the eyes of critics that they do not see the fleets of sail and steam craft which the horny black hands send to and from the West Coast laden with produce. Look over a single ship; there are boat-boys, deck-boys, boys for cleaning brass, washing plates and dishes, splicing ropes, hauling rigging and painting ironwork. “Boys” for loading barrels of oil, for towing and loading floats of giant timbers, all of whom, more or less, keep the doctor busy bandaging their crushed fingers and toes or sometimes their broken heads. “Boys,” too, for delivering cargo ashore, through the wild surf in which many lose their lives every year.