The onslaught upon Southern Nigeria in the matter of the liquor traffic carried on by that sincere, but tactless, misinformed and pugnacious cleric, Bishop Tugwell, and the bulk of his assistants in West Africa, aided by the Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee at home, is a typical example of the harm which lack of perspective and muddle-headedness can do to a good cause. The liquor traffic is common to the whole of West Africa and requires constant and vigilant attention. For more than a century, long before the bulk of the coast line was occupied by the Powers in a political sense, spirits had been exported to West Africa from Europe together with cotton goods, woollen goods, beads, ironware, hardware, haberdashery, perfumery, salt, tobacco and a host of other articles. At first the trade was untaxed. As European political influence extended, the various Administrations found it necessary to control the traffic by placing an import duty upon spirits at the port of entry. In this policy Great Britain has always led; the other Powers have always lagged. When interior penetration from the coast began and the scramble for Western Africa was well on its way, Great Britain’s influence was responsible for the proposal that the import should be prohibited beyond a certain geographical limit interiorwards. Thus Northern Nigeria was excluded from the accessible zone of European spirit import. By general consent the trade has been looked upon as a potential danger, if unregulated, and nowhere has the determination to prevent it from becoming an active evil been so clearly recognized as in Southern Nigeria; by successive increases of duty, and, as I shall show, by so adjusting taxation as virtually to penalize spirits of high potency in favour of spirits of weak strength. The Governor-General of French West Africa, M. Ponty, told me only last autumn at Dakar, how he desired to bring the French duties up to the British level, and what difficulties he was experiencing in doing so. Now the existence of a permanent, outside influence, whatever its origin, directed at encouraging the Administration in this course could only be to the good. While differences of opinion must exist as to the relative importance of the matter compared with other problems of administration, I have met no one who would not regard a policy of letting in spirits free, as wrong. I have met no one who is not convinced that it is right to tax the trade just as high as it can be taxed, up to the point, that is, when people will still buy and not be driven to illicit distilling, which in the West African forest could not be suppressed. If Bishop Tugwell and his friends had concentrated upon the potentiality of the danger, and had given every help and assistance to the Administration to cope with it, supplying the Administration with such information as they might possess of a specific, controllable, accurate character, it would have been difficult