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could never comprehend such persons; to him it was a privilege to give. We can hear him now in his sharp businesslike way :

"How much do you want altogether?"

"How much do you think I ought to give?"
"There you are, and God bless you."

The gift was always substantial, always given with a smile and always with a blessing; such a gift in this way was thrice given.

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"IN BLESSING OTHERS."

I God is no man's debtor" was surely never more fully exemplified than with John Holt, for he was indeed abundantly blessed in his family and business life; first a life companion who shared his burden of business and to the full his joys and aspirations, whilst her sound judgment and activity in work for the benefit of others was a constant source of pleasure and inspiration to her husband. But the reward did not stop here, for with advancing years when the Liverpool and African business extended by leaps, sons and nephews began to assume a larger share in the business, so that the once vigorous personality, now giving way as the result of life-long effort, was able to retire from activity and enjoy the supreme delight of watching these sons and nephews treading firmly the same path and endeavouring to follow faithfully the example set by the founder of John Holt & Co., Ltd.

New Vice-President.

WE are glad to announce that Mr. John R. Barlow of Bolton, who has long been a good friend to the Society's work, has accepted the position of a VicePresident.

Parliamentary.

NEUTRAL ZONE IN AFRICA.

IN a speech in the House of Commons on July 21 Mr. Joseph King, M.P., called attention to this subject. He said:

I shall intervene but for a few moments between the House and the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, whom I am sure we are all waiting to hear, but I must call attention to the fact, which was borne in upon me as I listened to the very interesting and illuminating speech of the Colonial Secretary, that in 1885, at the Conference at Berlin, a General Act was passed dealing with Africa, Part 3 of which provided for the neutralities of territories over a large area of Central Africa. I believe it is understood that that General Act, which was signed by this country, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, and Belgium, was ignored, or possibly forgotten, at the outbreak of hostilities. At any rate, it is interesting to remember that when it was signed in 1885, Prince Bismarck, who was, of course, Germany

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ANTI-SLAVERY REPORTER AND ABORIGINES' FRIEND.

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personified at that time, declared that at any rate we ought to preserve Africa from the horrors and miseries of war. I am afraid that those who succeeded Prince Bismarck's rule in Germany did not follow either his spirit or his policy in that connection. I venture at this time to express the hope that when the day comes later on when great Colonial issues will be settled, that the aspirations, in fact, the pledged word and faith of the Allies with that of all the States of Europe, will be remembered and that some attempt will be made to make Africa a neutral zone and to preserve it from the military preparations and military rule which Germany, especially, has established there. It is in that hope and believing that though the faith of our country and other countries pledged in 1885 has come to nought to-day, yet the day may come-I hope it may come soon-when these aspirations and arrangements may be brought up again and established on a firm and more lasting foundation.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, July 28.

Mr. J. KING asked whether the General Act of the Conference at Berlin, signed on February 26, 1885, bound this country, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, and Russia, with other Powers, in the event of all or any of them being involved in war, to place a large area of Central Africa under the rule of neutrality during the war; if so, whether this treaty was duly considered by the Government during the early days of August, 1914; and whether this provision of that treaty had been forgotten or ignored by all or any of its signatories.

LORD R. CECIL: The Berlin Act provides machinery by which belligerent Powers possessing territories in the free trade zone in Africa may, with the consent of the other belligerents, neutralize such possessions for the period of the war. It does not, however, impose any binding obligation on any Power to take this course. The question of neutralizing the territories of the present belligerents in the free trade zone was carefully considered during the early days of last August, but the events which occurred in Africa during the first ten days of the war rendered such a course impossible.

The Swiss League.

THE Bulletin of the Swiss Native Defence League, of which our friend Monsieur René Claparède is President, has not been published for a year owing to the exigencies of the war. We welcome its re-appearance in the issue of June last.

NEUTRAL ZONE IN AFRICA.

The paper contains an examination of the question which is exercising many minds here of the application of Article 11 of the Act of Berlin relating to the neutralization of the Congo Basin and the possibility of keeping the war out of Africa. The question has formed the subject of articles and

letters in our own Press, and has been raised in the House of Commons.1 It was treated somewhat fully by our Organising Secretary in an article in the Contemporary Review for August. The writer in the Bulletin endeavours to piece together from the Belgian Grey Book and other sources the events which happened in the Congo Basin in the earlier months of the war, but while he deplores the fact of the war having been carried into Africa in spite of the Berlin Treaty, he does not attempt to apportion the responsibility, contenting himself with pointing out the irony of the spectacle presented to the natives of the so-called superior races falling upon one another just as simple savages do, and even employing black troops to settle their quarrel.

THE INTERNATIONAL BUREAU.

The Bulletin contains a paragraph on the position of the International Bureau at Geneva, which has had a year of special difficulty owing to the necessary curtailment of its correspondence with the other Societies, especially in belligerent countries. Its work has consequently been largely arrested, but the secretary of the Swiss League has undertaken such part of the work as has been possible. He mentions with appreciation correspondence which he has had with our own Society, and states that the Bureau has relations with thirteen Societies in Europe, America or Australia, and with many prominent men interested in race questions. The Bureau is entirely dependent upon the co-operation and support which is given to it by the different Societies.

Among other subjects referred to in the Bulletin, there is an appreciative reference to the action of our Society in regard to Portuguese West Africa and the question of native title to unoccupied land in Rhodesia.

Review.

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AFRICA. 2

BY SIR CHARLES LUCAS, K.C.B.

THIS interesting book is an account of the later history of South Africa from the year 1895, before the Boer War began, up to the present day. Sir Charles Lucas gives an illuminating account, from the British point of view, of the events which led up to the war, and closes the volume with a valuable summary of his conclusions on the general position.

Sir Charles Lucas remarks upon the striking contrast between the slow pace with which the history of South Africa was formed for nearly four hundred years after the discovery of the Cape and the rapid course of events in the last half century. The world to-day moves with tremendous rapidity, and this movement has been nowhere more marked than in South Africa, where, as he says, it seems as though some force hitherto pent-up has at 1 See page 72.

2 New Edition, Part II, Clarendon Press.

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length burst forth bringing a stream of energy into a world hitherto little touched by modern influences. The chief cause of this unlocking of force he finds in the expansion of railways, and pre-eminently in the discovery of minerals. If the latter discovery had been made earlier the whole history of the Boer Republics might have been changed.

The book opens with a chapter on the conditions in South Africa before the Jameson Raid, which Sir Charles Lucas describes as "a record of perpetual challenge to Great Britain on the part of the Government of the South African Republic." Of the Raid itself he well says that, both inside and outside the South African Republic, it did immense harm, strengthening and consolidating anti-British feeling throughout South Africa, and, while it gained nothing for the Uitlanders, it increased the difficulties of the Imperial Government tenfold. The one man who conspicuously profited by it was President Kruger, “ who stood out more than ever as the pillar of Dutch nationality in South Africa." The author regards the war as a great race struggle, a combined Dutch effort against the English power in South Africa, and holds that, owing to the tactlessness and vacillation which marked the British want of policy for many years, it was inevitable.

In the light of the present great war, the reference by Sir Charles Lucas to the significance of the Boer War for the British Empire as a whole is of special interest. In that war, he reminds us, for the first time to any appreciable extent, all parts of the Empire shared burden and sacrifice, banding together for the defence of the Mother Country. "To estimate this war aright in its fruitfulness for the future," he says, "it must be borne in mind that the self-governing Dominions had no small hand in it, and its outcome was a self-governing Dominion."

Sir Charles Lucas holds that the whole history of South Africa has pointed to the importance of its being politically, as it is geographically, one. Lord Milner had, we are told, always appreciated the necessity of union, and, about 1907, there was a strong movement on both the Dutch and British sides towards union, to which the publication in that year of Lord Selborne's memorandum on the mutual relations of the Colonies contributed in no small degree. The necessity, too, of a uniform native policy was being recognized by thinking white men in consequence of the Report of the Native Affairs Commission of 1905 and the subsequent native rising in Natal and Zululand.

The question of the treatment and position of the natives is one of the most important in the country, for, as Sir Charles Lucas reminds us, South Africa differs from the great Colonies of Canada and Australia in having an immense majority of coloured men in its population, the whites in the whole of British South Africa numbering under 18 per cent., and their

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increase does not bring with it the disappearance of the blacks. This constitutes a native question which far overshadows any similar question in the other great Dominions.

"The colour problem in difficulty and danger excels all other questions which threaten the cohesion of the British Empire."

Sir Charles Lucas admits that the terms of union in 1909, satisfactory as they were to white citizens of South Africa, were little to the liking of the natives and coloured men, for, not only was the Cape Franchise not adopted in the other provinces, but the terms of the Act of Union made it possible, though in a remote contingency, that coloured men might be debarred from voting even in the Cape Colony. He recalls the fact that the debates in the Imperial Parliament showed Members to be alive to the fact that the Union of South Africa meant a White Man's Union, and that Great Britain was invited to sanction a colour bar, which, he says, “in less democratic days would have been swept away as a matter of course by British statesmen and the British people." He holds that what has happened in regard to the treatment of Indian immigrants proved" free democratic Government on British lines to be hardly more tender" to coloured immigrants than the Boer oligarchy was.

We note with some surprise that, while admitting generally the trouble caused by Asiatic immigration into South Africa, Sir Charles Lucas defends the introduction of Chinese labour for the mines in 1904 as a perfectly legitimate and reasonable measure regarded as a temporary remedy for abnormal economic conditions." He does not dispute the serious effect of the policy on colonial feeling, but appears to regard the opposition to it in this country as a mere political move. In this we cannot agree with him, holding as we do that the terms on which alone the Chinese labourers could be brought into the Colony were objectionable, and came dangerously near to slavery.

The author draws attention to the prosperity of Basutoland during the past thirty years owing largely to the skill and judgment of the successive Resident Commissioners. He regards it as unquestionable that Basutoland, as well as Bechuanaland and Swaziland, prefer to remain outside the Union, under the direct control of the Imperial Government.

Of Southern Rhodesia he says that, in the first ten years of this century, it "was rather preparing to make history than making it," and its future is at present in the balance. He also refers to the question of the ownership of the Unalienated Land of Southern Rhodesia now before the Privy Council as an all-important one.

The value of the book for purposes of reference is greatly increased by the series of clear maps which illustrate it.

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