The policy of the new State was to be “fruitful activity” in peace and order as soon as the Arab wars had ceased and the slave trade had been superseded by an agricultural and industrial _régime_. With a neutralised State this seemed to be a permanent function commendable alike to its people, its Government, and its international associates and sponsors. Whether we regard the moral concomitant of an era of fruitful activity or only the material essentials of a community so employed, the bald reality called for men and money for its accomplishment. Of white men there were few in a region where a tropical sun, and other climatic disadvantages, counted heavily against their labour. The Negro alone appeared to thrive in conditions more suited to his physical characteristics. The problem of creating a State of the Negro population involved social and material questions of vast import to those who had undertaken to develop and govern this unknown and savage land. Should the Negro be taught the nobility of labour—informed of the glorious edifices to civilisation it had reared and what benefits its pursuit would shower upon him if he would but follow the white man’s precept and example in the sphere of honest toil? The trade in black men had been suppressed by the courageous white men of Belgium. Trade in the material resources of the country was now but a phenomenon of the law of self-preservation and the principle of self-support. It is in the adoption of practical measures to develop that trade for the greatest good of the greatest number that the Belgians have shown an executive skill which gives the character of indolent farce to the droning administration of certain other African colonies, particularly British Lagos, which derives sixty-five per cent. of its supporting revenue from traffic in alcoholic liquor,[37] as compared with five per cent. derived from the same source by the Congo Free State. If the Government of the Congo Free State had to deal with a white population capable of co-operation as independent political units in the State’s development, it may easily be conceived that measures perhaps more in consonance with certain European theories might have been devised. The candour of this suggestion in no wise detracts from the fitness and happy efficacy of the measures by which the Government of the Congo State has achieved one of the greatest colonising successes of modern times.