employees. In a short time they completely disappeared, caught or driven out by the agents of the committee. The Ba-Luba and Wasanga, the tribes we have been working among, are, we find, a peaceable, industrious race, with practically no warlike propensity, an easy prey to any organised hostile force. I am led to believe that their numbers have decreased during the last fifty years owing to a continuous traffic in slaves with the Arabs of the East and Mambunda of the West. To-day the slave trade has ceased in this particular district, the traders being afraid to come anywhere near the Belgian posts. To such an extent have conditions changed with the advent of Belgian administration that many small chiefs are now recovering individuals raided from them by their stronger neighbours and not already sold to the traders when European control reached the country. In all discussions and criticism of the mistakes made by European administration in Central Africa there is one condition which seems to me to be never taken into account. That is the necessity of employing officials who have to spend a long time learning how to do efficiently the work that they have to carry on from the day they arrive at their posts. There is no school in which to learn Central African Civil Service except Central Africa, and it is impossible in Africa to obtain a sufficient number of qualified officials. Not many go to Central Africa with the idea of making their permanent homes there. It has been my own good fortune to settle in a healthy part of Central Africa, but from my knowledge of the Continent as a whole, I think it is not an exaggeration to state that two-thirds of the officials who leave Europe are, within five years of their arrival, either killed by the climate, invalided home, or have left the country at the termination of an agreement. All these have to be constantly replaced by inexperienced men, with their job to learn. What wonder then that grievous mistakes are sometimes made by some of these untried men, necessarily placed in responsible positions? In writing this letter to you, I state only my own experience and opinion of the spirit and effect of Belgian administration in the district of Katanga; but it seems natural to me to suppose that the same spirit extends throughout the whole of the Congo territory; and it seems almost the duty, at the present time, of any Englishman who has had opportunity to judge of the general methods of Belgian administration to give publicity to his knowledge.—Yours, etc., G. GREY. [Sidenote: Cardinal Gibbons Speaks out.]