It is a haunting thought that since the “85” scramble for Africa, the civilized Powers who rearranged the map of the African continent, ostensibly in the interests and for the well-being of the natives, have passively allowed the premature destruction of not less than ten millions of people. Now these Powers complain bitterly that they are short of labour and jump at any expedient which presents itself to obtain labour for their hustling developments. [Illustration: COCOA FARM, BELGIAN CONGO.] The sins of King Leopold are visiting themselves upon his successors in every part of the Congo basin. The prospective gold mines, the cocoa farms, the public departments, all of them are handicapped owing to lack of an adequate labour force. If only the Belgians could restore to life an odd million of the able-bodied men and women done to death under the régime of their late sovereign, what a different outlook their colony would possess! The Belgians now propose bringing Chinese for the Katanga Mines, but seeing that their former experience of Chinese coolies was not a happy one, and considering other drawbacks, I very much doubt whether they will ultimately launch the experiment of bringing thousands of Chinese across Africa. The original idea of the Belgian Government was that of bringing the coolies into the Congo under a regulation which would secure their repatriation at the termination of the contracts, coupling that regulation with others similar to those adopted by Great Britain in South Africa. Mr. R. C. Hawkin,[8] whose knowledge of South African politics is not only wide, but intimate, at once pointed out that the Belgian Administration was restricted by the Berlin and Brussels Acts. This opened up a situation so obviously awkward that nothing more has been heard about the introduction of Chinese labour into the Congo, at least for the present. [Sidenote: WHAT GERMANY LACKS] Germany, like Belgium, differs from France and England in that she has no other colonies from which to draw a labour force. Quite recently her colonists, at their wit’s end for labour, passed a resolution agreeing to import 1000 Indian coolies for labour in the mines. It had not occurred to them that the British India Office might object. How much trouble, to say nothing of expense, they would have saved themselves if only they had asked the office-boy in Downing Street!—they need have gone no higher.