France is following in the footsteps of Spain. A fatality dogs her schemes of empire and colonisation. In truth she has no colonies--they are but military possessions. She has set her face, alone and in conjunction with others, in America, Asia, and Africa to hoop our enterprises in with bands of iron. Failure attended her policy across the Atlantic, in India, in Burmah, and but the other day at Fashoda. Her object in that last instance was to connect her possessions in West and East Africa, so that the red British lines which are steadily extending from North and South Africa should never be joined. France is the largest holder of territory upon the Dark Continent, and she probably regarded that fact as the best justification for her subtle move, through the Marchand and Abyssinian Missions, to add still more to her dominions. She had been permitted to hoop us about at Bathurst and Sierra Leone upon the West Coast and has all but completed the same process round Ashantee and the Niger countries, not to speak of elsewhere. Madagascar she had grabbed without a shadow of excuse, but time and South African civilisation will make it a bigger Cuba. Already her failures at government in that vast African island are grievous. Less than five years ago, to use a phrase I have employed elsewhere, property and life were ridiculously safe in that country. But then the Hovas and Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony ruled the land. Other changes predicted have come about there. The one native who showed honesty and courage in successfully opposing them at Tamatave the French subsequently executed. The Queen and Prime Minister were banished. Speaking English, the chief foreign language spoken, has been tabooed. Natives who are heard using it, or suspected of employing our mother tongue, are thrust into prison and kept there, _pour encourager les autres_, until they promise to discontinue speaking it. Association of natives with English or Americans renders them marked persons. The Protestant missions are regarded as centres of treason and enmity to French authority. Quickly, as foretold, has come about their reward(?) for non-interference politically in the early days of French intrigue. Had they insisted, with the British Government of a bygone day, in saving the island for the Malagasy, they would have succeeded. Our commerce has also had to suffer, for the French _instruct_ the natives that they must only buy articles of French manufacture. The native who purchases British or American goods soon discovers, from the severe handling he receives through the local officials, that he has made a serious mistake. Robbery and lawlessness are rife, and in many places neither life nor property is safe beyond rifle-shot of the French garrisons. The facts are notorious and are in possession of the Foreign Office in Downing Street.