“Picturesque,” says Sir Harry Johnston, and there speaks the artist. But the word covers a profound truth. A great deal of the denationalizing or Anglicizing process which is going on and which makes bad Africans and bad Christians, is attributable to the discarding of the national dress. Why cannot the Administration and the missionary societies combine in some practical, positive form, to combat this curse of alien dress? There is absolutely nothing to be said in its favour. The West African looks better in African dress, the robe of the Mohammedan and of many pagan Africans. It is much healthier for him. It is preservative of his racial identity; and that is, perhaps, the most important of all pleas which can be put forward for its retention. With very slight modification—such as one sees among the native staff, and personal servants in many parts of Northern Nigeria—it can be made suitable for any form of labour, literary or otherwise. Clad in his national dress the African has a dignity which in most cases he loses almost entirely when he attires himself in a costume totally unfitted for the country, and hideous at best. Nothing to my mind is more pitiable than to visit school after school in West Africa, filled with little boys and girls and big boys and girls in an alien dress, to see the denationalizing process going on day after day and nothing whatever done to stop it. In the case of the women it is not only dignity and nationalism which are concerned, but decency as well. The national dress of the women in West Africa is classical and graceful, and although leaving more of the body exposed than is usual at home (except in the ballroom) it lacks suggestiveness. It does not accentuate the figure. It emphasizes that racial difference—not inequality, but _difference_—which it is so essential to emphasize. With the substitution of European dress, especially of the prevailing fashion, the West African woman loses much of what she need never lose, and acquires that which is of no profit to her. These things cannot be altered in a day, nor would it be possible in some cases for the present adult generation to go back to African costume. But it would in many cases, and the reform could be at once taken in hand so far as the children are concerned. Government could do much. The missionary societies could do more. The anglicised native community could do most. I believe that if some popular Government official, known and trusted, could be led to appeal, in private conference to the native staff and win them over, the movement once started would spread and have enormously beneficial results. That many members of the anglicised community would be hostile goes without saying—that is the fault of the wretched system everywhere at work. That a body of thoughtful men would not, I am satisfied by the many representations on this very subject personally made to me. I shall always recollect, in particular, the private visit paid to me in one of