It is difficult to write plainly of Christian missionary effort in West Africa. The individual missionary may be an influence for good in the best sense. He may not be. He does not go into the country to make money. He is, as a rule, singularly selfless. His life is often, perhaps generally, a work of essential self-sacrifice. In the category of human motives gravitating towards West Africa, his, it must be conceded, takes front rank. Than the apostolic missionary there is no grander figure, whether in West Africa or elsewhere. But it is the genesis of the effort, not the man, that most counts fundamentally. If the effort itself is out of perspective the work of the individual must feel the effect. I say it is difficult to write about missionary effort. It seems to be regarded as taboo. You must not touch it lest you hurt people’s feelings. But nowadays, one sphere of human activity cannot be ruled out of discussion, Christian effort out here seems to me to have forgotten in many cases that Christ was the servant of the people, not their master. It is intolerant of native customs; native religions irritate it; native law it regards with contempt. I walked one evening along the Niger banks with a missionary. We passed some native huts. In one was a fetish with a votive offering at its feet. My companion jerked his stick disdainfully towards the object, and with scorn in his voice declaimed against the “idol.” Yet he knew, or ought to have known, that it was not the thing of wood that was worshipped, but its indwelling spirit. That gesture was so characteristic of much one sees and hears out here. I exclude the Roman Catholics from that remark. Amongst them I have met the broad, tolerant spirit of generosity and true kindliness of heart. I can hear now the cheery, warm-hearted, jovial laughter of the Onitsha priests, their sunniness, their infecting optimism. There is so much that is dark and dismal about this missionary effort, inwardly I mean. All the African world is black to it, black with sin, black with lust, black with cruelty. And there is its besetting misfortune—it is alien. It preaches an alien God; a White God, not a Black God. The God that is imported here has nothing African about Him. How can He appeal to Africa?