advance of the Protectorate under Sir Walter Egerton’s administration has been amazing) to say that, between them, questions vitally affecting the national existence of the people, the study and organization of their laws and courts and administrative authority, have been left somewhat in the background. In criticizing a West African Administration it must always be borne in mind that no broad lines of public policy are laid down from home. None of the Secretary of State’s advisers have ever visited Nigeria, and however able they may be that is a disadvantage. There is no West African Council composed of men with experience of the country, as there ought to be, which would assist the Permanent Officials in advising the Secretary of State. The result is that each Governor and each Acting-Governor “runs his own show” as the saying is. One set of problems is jerked forwards by this Governor, another by another. The Governor’s position is rather like that of a Roman Emperor’s, and the officials responsible for large districts, never knowing what a new Governor’s policy is going to be, look upon every fresh change with nervous apprehension, which has a very unsettling effect. A vast wastage of time as well as many errors would be avoided if we had clear ideas at home as to the goal we are pursuing, and laid down specific principles by which that goal could be attained. This could be done without hampering the Governors. Indeed, the very indefiniteness of the home view on all these problems is often a serious handicap to a Governor who, for that very reason, may hesitate to take action where action is required, fearing, rightly or wrongly, the influence which Parliamentary questions may exercise upon the Secretary of State, and who may also find himself committed by an Acting-Governor, in his absence, to actions of which he personally disapproves. In other instances the existence of definite plans in London would act as a salutary check upon sudden innovations by a new and inexperienced Governor. Frequent changes of Governors there must be until the conditions of life in Nigeria are very much improved; but the inconveniences arising therefrom would be largely mitigated if there were continuity of a well-thought-out policy at home. This digression is not, perhaps, altogether irrelevant to the subject under discussion.