Among those to whom the government of the coloured races of mankind appears in the light of a sacred trust committed to an Imperial white people, as to the servants of that people possessing the widest experience in the practice of such government, the preservation of the national life of these races must be a matter of paramount importance. Increased knowledge born of familiarity in the art of tropical government and of anthropological knowledge, a clearer realization of human needs which an expanding mental horizon brings with it, are teaching us many things. They are teaching us that there can be no common definition of progress or common standard for all mankind; that the highest human attainments are not necessarily reached on parallel lines; that man’s place and part in the universe around him must vary with the dissimilarities of race and environment; that what may spell advance for some races at a particular stage in their evolution may involve retrogression, if not destruction, for other races in another stage; that humanity cannot be legislated for as though every section of it were modelled on the same pattern; that to disregard profound divergence in culture and racial necessities is to court disaster, and that to encourage national growth to develop on natural lines and the unfolding of the mental processes to proceed by gradual steps, is the only method by which the exercise of the Imperial prerogative can be morally justified. Our one and only conspicuous Imperial failure was due to a misguided belief that we could, and that it was desirable in our own interests that we should, crush out nationality by violence. It inflicted upon the victims immense misery and upon the performers embarrassments which have endured for centuries. Elsewhere we are experiencing the discomforting reflex of a policy based upon the supposition that East is capable of assimilation with West under alien guidance. British India is rent with confusion and mentally unsettled by a jumble of conflicting ideals, to which the Protected Native States offer a contrast that cannot but carry with it its own very significant lessons. All the good work accomplished in Northern Nigeria during the last seven years can be flung away by a refusal to benefit from experience in other parts of the world. In pleading for the slow but sure policy everywhere in Nigeria, and in pleading that where in Nigeria national life has already expanded through the exercise of its own internal forces into organized communities, possessing their own laws and customs, their own machinery of government and their own well-defined characteristics, that national life shall be protected, preserved and strengthened to enable it to bear the strain of new conditions, one is pleading, it seems to me, for the true welfare of the people and for the highest concept of Imperialism.