The Portuguese colonies of Angola, San Thomé and Principe, which comprise the major portion of Portuguese West Africa, experience the greatest difficulty in obtaining labour. It is perfectly true that during the last half-century, close on a hundred thousand labourers have left the shores of Angola for the cocoa islands and other places, but these it must be remembered were almost exclusively slaves which had been bought or captured in the remoter regions of Angola, Rhodesia, Barotseland, and, more especially, the Congo Free State. The Portuguese colonists of Angola are so pressed for labour that they started some years ago an “anti-slavery” movement against the Portuguese planters of the islands. No doubt there was an honest element in this movement, but it is equally beyond question that the mainspring of the movement was local anxiety to keep all the slaves in the Angola colony, which is to this moment rotten with slavery. If Angola, a territory more than twice the size of France, were properly developed, it would require first of all a complete abolition of slavery, and then an immense augmentation of the labour supply. When we were at Lobito, the Robert Williams Railway Company and the Electrical Syndicate between them were at their wit’s end for two thousand more men, but these could not be obtained. The two colonies of San Thomé and Principe are by far the most serious problem. The area of the two islands is not large—only 400 square miles together—but they are extraordinarily fertile; the very air seems to intoxicate with abounding fertility; everything flourishes, cocoa, sisal and rubber; everything multiplies and replenishes on the earth, but man; for some reason there appears to be a curse upon those islands, they are almost without an indigenous population and the wretched slaves imported to fill the ranks die off like flies. The future of the Portuguese cocoa colonies is doubtful because it is obvious that they cannot be run permanently by a temporary solution of the labour question. [Sidenote: THE BRITISH DEMAND] Both France and England at present manage their labour difficulties with greater ease than any of the other Powers, and this because both have a floating supply in their colonies, which, owing to the high standard of colonial development as expressed in railways and steamers, motors and good roads, is readily transferred to the more needy districts. At the same time every now and then we hear laments that expansion is rendered impossible owing to the lack of men.