Islam, on the other hand, despite its shortcomings, does not, from the Nigerian point of view, demand race suicide of the Nigerian as an accompaniment of conversion. It does not stipulate revolutionary changes in social life, impossible at the present stage of Nigerian development; nor does it undermine family or communal authority. Between the converter and converted there is no abyss. Both are equal, not in theory, but in practice, before God. Both are African; sons of the soil. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man is carried out in practice. Conversion does not mean for the converted a break with his interests, his family, his social life, his respect for the authority of his natural rulers. He is not left stranded, as the Christian Church, having once converted, leaves him, a pitiful, rudderless barque upon a troubled sea. He does not become, through conversion, an alien in thought, in custom, and in outlook; a foreigner in his own land, a citizen of none. He remains African, attached to his country, looking for inspiration inwards, rather than towards an alien civilization across thousands of miles of unknown seas. No one can fail to be impressed with the carriage, the dignity of the Nigerian—indeed, of the West African—Mohammedan; the whole bearing of the man suggests a consciousness of citizenship, a pride of race which seems to say: “We are different, thou and I, but we are _men_.” The spread of Islam in Southern Nigeria which we are witnessing to-day is mainly social in its action. It brings to those with whom it comes in contact a higher status, a loftier conception of man’s place in the universe around him, release from the thraldom of a thousand superstitious fears. It resembles in its progress the annual overflow of the Niger diffusing its waters over the land. The extensive ramifications of internal trade, now greatly fostered by the construction of additional roads and railways and rendered wholly safe by the _pax britannica_, leads to the multiplying of facilities for human intercourse among the various peoples of the Protectorate. The Hausa pushes ever further south his commercial operations. The Delta, and still more the Western Province, yearly attest to the widening area of his activities. Not to be outdone, his trading rival the Yoruba taps in additional numbers the markets of the north. Railway construction finds the Mohammedan labouring side by side with the pagan in the same trench. A sense of security and the increasing circulation of a portable medium of exchange in the shape of silver and nickel coinage attract to the great native markets of the Central Province, such as Onitsha, for example, the tattoed pagan Ibo and his pagan colleagues the Anams, Katundas, and Kukurukus, where they rub shoulders with the Mohammedan Hausa, Nupe, and Igarra. In and around Ibadan, Oyo, and Lagos you meet the Kano and Sokoto trader with his donkeys and pack-bullocks, and even the Tuareg