Hofmeyr, for South-West Africa, said they had prohibition of all liquor containing over 2 per cent. of alcohol.

General Freire d'Andrade, representing Portugal, said the problem would not be solved by control or by prohibition of one class of spirits.

At the Cape of Good Hope, in Basutoland, Bechuanaland and the Transkei territories, either prohibition or the permit system is in operation. No African can be employed as a barman, and in Natal no licences are issued within a native location.

For selling liquor to natives the penalty in New South Wales is rol.; in Queensland and Western Australia, 20l.

Twenty-five shillings is a heavy duty, but it is not so heavy as in the Union of South Africa, where it is 35s. The Bantu race extends diagonally across Africa from Natal to Nigeria, so there is no racial difference, and yet in the Transvaal twenty years ago no 'coloured person' could obtain liquor of any kind by purchase or barter, the penalty being imprisonment for three months with or without hard labour. For the person who supplied the liquor the penalty for a first offence was imprisonment for not less than six months, and, at the discretion of the court, a fine not exceeding 250l.; for a second offence the penalties were doubled; for a third, imprisonment, and, again at the discretion of the court, a fine not exceeding 1000l. Hard labour may be added, and, in default of payment of the fine, imprisonment for a further period of not more than two years. Similar restrictions existed in the other South African dependencies, and are still in force since the Union.

In Cape Colony a permit was needed signed by an employer or someone in authority. In Swaziland a proclamation (1923) prohibits the importation of spirituous liquor except with the written permission of the Commissioner or an Assistant Commissioner. In Basutoland the late King Khama absolutely prohibited the importation of liquor.

The late Cecil Rhodes said that for the development of the country 'absolute prohibition of intoxicating drinks was essential.'

The danger spot in British West Africa is the Gold Coast. In Accra, the capital, the infantile mortality in 1918-21, four years, was 373 per 1000; there is one licence for 190 inhabitants, and, as one might expect from this fact, that Colony, with a population of under two millions, took 35 per cent. of the total imports of spirits into British West Africa during the four years 1913-16. The total population of these Colonies is about twenty-three or twenty-four millions, and the Gold Coast proportion should be 84 and not 35 per cent. What has the Gold Coast Medical Service to say about the birth rate and social conditions generally ?

Why are the two policies so divergent in principle ? In South

Africa, practical prohibition so far as Africans are concerned; in West Africa restrictions are non-existent, except in the large towns, and I believe there is no limit to the number of licences. I think the reason is this: the white population of West Africa is made up of Government officials, a few missionaries, and merchants and their staffs. If there were a large and independent white population in West Africa as in South Africa, I feel sure that we should have as stringent regulations in the west as in the south.

The official finds liquor a means of getting an abundant, indirect, and easily collected revenue, and there is a tendency to look upon economic development as equally if not more important than moral considerations. The merchant's view is, I think, that self-determination is a good working principle, that if the African wants liquor he should have it, and that the evils inherent in drink are exaggerated. The missionary, who knows more of the people and their ways than the other classes mentioned, is opposed to the trade, which he regards as inimical to the moral and material welfare of the African.

So far I have dealt with British Dependencies, but we have also to consider how far the policy of France, whose Colonies surround Sierra Leone and the Gambia and extend to both the east and west boundaries of the Gold Coast, may affect us.

France, like ourselves, has obtained possession of enormous areas in West Africa, the shores of which for half a century had been deluged with cheap liquor from Europe.

The European Governments all found the trade in full swing, and for revenue purposes and to protect the African have gradually raised the duty-France, however, generally lagging behind Britain, and so attracting commerce by lower duties.

A new spirit has, however, arisen across the Channel, and France is genuinely alarmed, for the reasons which follow, at the spread of alcoholism in her African Colonies.

M. J. Le Cesne, the president of the West African section of the Union Coloniale Française, and vice-chairman of the largest French firm trading in Africa, has sounded a note of alarm, and in an address in Paris delivered during the war stated that the abuse of alcohol

carried in its train deplorable effects: physical degeneration, diminution in the birth rate, the spread of tuberculosis, insanity, increase in crime, etc. All along the coast from the Kroo to the Ivory Coast not more than one birth to eight adults can be reckoned; at Bassam 25 per cent. of the natives are consumptive. Similar effects can be verified in Dahomey, and in certain circles in Senegal, particularly in the regions where the Mussulmans are in the minority.

One birth per eight adults with an infantile mortality of at least 50 per cent. means 'letting in the bush,' or the desert; in time, the extinction of a race.

Twenty-four years ago I visited Gaboon, the French colony on the equator, and at Sette Camma, which is in the southern part of the colony, an old resident informed me that bush cows (bos-caffer) and elephants were becoming more plentiful in the coast districts. This surprised me, and I said that with the influx of trade I would have expected more people and a scarcity of big game. He replied that the population was dwindling. A few days later I was in the capital of French equatorial Africa, and was told that the Mpongwes, the coast tribe, were dying out and being replaced by the Mpangwes, a more virile and temperate tribe from the interior. It did not strike me then that alcohol was one cause of this, but I know now.

Before the time mentioned I spent several months in Porto Novo, the commercial capital of Dahomey. The spirit trade was enormous owing to the low duty; at least 95 per cent. of the trade of one big German firm consisted of liquor, so the agent informed me. In the compound of one of the French firms I have seen 200 puncheons of alcohol, varying in strength from 90 to 96 degreesthat is, practically absolute alcohol, and almost double the strength of proof spirit. A very large proportion of the exports were therefore paid for, directly or indirectly, with alcohol.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, in his book The Edge of the Primeval Forest, describing his first voyage up the River Ogowe in 1913, writes as follows:

On the banks are the ruins of abandoned huts. 'When I came out here fifteen years ago,' said a trader who stood near me, 'these places were all flourishing villages.' And why are they so no longer ? ' I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and said in a low voice, 'L'alcool.'

Mr. H. W. Nevinson, in A Modern Slavery, describing life in a mission station in Angola, writes :

But now the Portuguese have crept up to it with their rum and sugar cane plantations. At the top of the hill was a large sweet potato plantation for rum; at the foot of the hill, where a copious stream of water ran, a rum factory had been constructed. The hideous main building, gaunt as a Yorkshire mill; the whitewashed rows of slave huts; the newly-broken fields; the barrels just beginning to send forth a loathsome stench of the new spirit; all were as fresh and vile as civilisation could make them. But the whole country is fast degenerating owing to rum. You see no fine old men now' is a constant saying; 'rum kills them off.' It is making the whole people bloated and stupid. Near the coast it is worse, but the enormous amount carried into the interior and manufactured in Bihé is telling rapidly, and I see no hope of any change so long as rum plantations of cane or sweet potato pay better than any others.

It means depopulation, a reproduction of what civilisation and drink have done for aboriginal peoples all over the world. It

was an article of faith with many that settled agricultural communities could survive alongside civilisation; that the nomadic races were those who disappeared, as in North America and Australia. In Tasmania the last descendant of the aborigines died forty or fifty years ago; the Australian aboriginal is only kept from extermination by segregation; the Maori, one of the finest races that ever existed, is barely preserved by strict prohibition ; in the islands of the South Seas drink and new diseases are working havoc, and now we find similar results arising in West Africa. No wonder that France and Portugal are alarmed; bush cows and elephants are valueless to France if another struggle should arise in Europe.

Why is America dry? It was a question of economics. There are forty-four States and six Territories in the Union, and the amendment to the Constitution, passed by the House of Representatives in December 1917, was adopted by thirty-six separate States within a year. It was not a purely philanthropic measure ; it was one quietly and persistently supported by big employers of labour and men in big business who knew that prohibition meant better work, bigger production, less crime, fewer accidents, and increased happiness.

For West Africa the question is not one for a committee of merchants or officials, from whom much evidence has already been received; it is one for doctors, political economists, and missionaries, who are disinterested, and whose sole concern would be the moral, economic, and social development of the African

races.

The first step should be to work for concerted action with France, Portugal and Spain, and arrange an identical tariff ; then come into line with South Africa and raise the duty to 35s. a gallon; then the 'long last mile' to prohibition.

THOMAS WELSH.

OUR PUBLIC SECURITY PROBLEM

'OPEN a school, and you may close a prison,' is an old saying which educationists are fond of quoting. But fifty years ago, when education was made compulsory in England, few could have imagined that the educated criminal of to-day would be offering a problem far more difficult of solution than the Bill Sikes of that period. Neither could many have foreseen that education would cause such unrest amongst the masses, adding to our troubles in this connection. Again, owing to education, democracy is now so critical that no Government can hope to remain in office long enough to carry out all the reforms which it may have in view. Our present Prime Minister has, it would seem, exceptional opportunities; but who can tell what tomorrow may bring forth ?-a slip or two in a speech may scatter his enormous majority and force a dissolution. There can be no doubt, either, that the Conservative Cabinet has inherited many difficult problems, not the least urgent being to find a more satisfactory method of dealing with our habituals, both criminals and delinquents, aged and youthful.

Sir W. Joynson-Hicks appears, however, to be alive to the fact, as he has lost no time in appointing a Home Office Committee to report and advise on the whole question. Alas! committees are often but limbos of good intentions, and, even supposing that this particular Committee proves itself an exception, what a gigantic task it has before it, that is, if the reference is as comprehensive as it must be if any good result is expected. For it is as well to remember that the maintenance of public security involves the organisation and sound working of both the police and prison departments, to say nothing of the justice administered by the 'great unpaid.' Again, before any reform in our criminal laws can be brought about, that very conservative body, the judiciary, has not only to be consulted but persuaded that a change is called for.

Further, there are the vested interests of our many philanthropic societies to be considered-societies which our traditional policy has created, but which are now nourished and kept alive by subsidies which far exceed the contributions of