The Berlin Conference of November 15, 1884, may be regarded as the crystallised result of the interest manifested in respect of the Mid-African situation by the learned bodies and the eminent legal authorities indicated, and also as the outcome of Germany’s tactful method of superseding the then imminent treaty between Great Britain and Portugal signed on February 26, 1884, but thereafter abrogated. As pointed out in another chapter, the British-Portuguese treaty met with active opposition in Germany and in England. [Sidenote: German Astuteness.] [Sidenote: The Act Praised and Condemned.] It was during the agitation of this feeling that the Conference was summoned at the instance of Germany. If one could analyse _in extenso_ all the essentials which so aptly informed Prince Bismarck of Germany’s masked advantages in such a Conference, the Iron Chancellor would stand revealed as an early monument to the German astuteness of to-day. In creating an Areopagus of the fourteen Powers assembled at Berlin and referring to it the questions which, if unsettled, would have led to conflicts, combinations, and confusion prejudicial to German East Africa, Prince Bismarck’s workmanship surpassed the materials which his skill employed. As the Prince said at the final session of the Conference, the lofty aims and political idealities proclaimed during its earlier sessions would, when translated into facts, offer opportunity for improvement. Indeed, time and the practical application of its precepts, so enthusiastically proclaimed, have revealed the theorist where the man of practical political sense would better have written certain clauses of the General Act. As it stood in 1885, it cannot be regarded with that awe which certain persons manifest when they misinterpret its inconclusive preachments. Some praise it as “the inauguration of a truly new era in colonial affairs.” Others, condemning it without reserve, speak of it as “the work of theorisers without experimental basis.” A fair estimate of this unique political palaver, as embodied in its General Act, probably lies somewhere between the extravagant praise and the untempered condemnation frequently bestowed upon it. If, from a legal and political point of view, it can be regarded as only a tissue of the substance it aimed at, the fact remains that the Berlin Conference has more than justified itself by guiding, often dispelling commercial rivalries which, in their unchecked development, might have nullified the great sacrifices of Belgian blood and money in the cause of African civilisation. The Conference entered the forum when many complications, arising from competing expeditions, conflicting explorations, unregulated trading operations, the advent of evil adventurers, the devastating slave trade, and a combination of other causes—commercial and political—had provoked the distrust and avarice frequently observed when several European peoples occupy in common a