Another point which the Ceylon League is urging is the need for the appointment of a protector of coolies to prevent assaults upon them, and false charges such as are often brought against those who give notice to leave. It is represented that protectors able to speak Tamil freely with the coolies and having sympathy, patience and tact, could do much to protect the interests of these ignorant and helpless people and to maintain harmonious relations between employer and labourer.

Trouble in Liberia.

CONFIDENTIAL information having been received by the Society of the arrest and detention by the Liberian Government of a number of Kroo chiefs who had approached the Liberian representative seeking a settlement of a local conflict on the Kroo coast between the natives and the Liberians, and their condemnation by court-martial, a letter asking for an inquiry was addressed to the Foreign Office, in reply to which the following reply was received :

SIR,

FOREIGN OFFICE,

February 2, 1917.

On receipt of your letter of the 22nd ultimo, a telegram was at once dispatched to the Acting British Consul-General at Monrovia respecting the report that the Kroo chiefs summoned to Sinoe were to be courtmartialled and, it was feared, executed; and Mr. Parks was instructed to impress upon the Liberian Government the bad effect which would be created should such an incident occur before full investigation had been made into the causes of the trouble.

I am directed by Mr. Secretary Balfour to inform you that a telegram has been received from Mr. Parks, in reply, reporting that sixty-seven Kroo chiefs have been tried by a special Commission and found guilty of rebellion and murder, and have already been sentenced to death.

Mr. Parks adds that the proceedings of the Commission are not yet made public, but that the President of the Republic has been induced to exercise clemency in respect of forty of the condemned chiefs, and that the others will be executed at Sinoe on February 2.

I am, etc.,

The Secretary,

(Signed) W. LANGLEY.

The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society.

HOJZER V
COLLE

20

ANTI-SLAVERY REPORTER AND ABORIGINES' FRIEND.

The Late Earl of Cromer.

THOSE who are in the inner circles of the Society know how valuable has been the assistance and sympathy which Lord Cromer has been ever ready to give to its work during the last few years, especially on the subject of the Portuguese slavery, on which he has both written and spoken frequently and forcibly. Of his work in suppressing slave trading and slavery in Egypt and the Sudan there is no need to write at length; it is writ large in the history of the great territory with which Lord Cromer's administrative life was so long and notably associated, but we may quote a paragraph from a letter written to The Times by the Secretary of the Society when Lord Cromer finally left Egypt in 1907

"Two measures may be mentioned which have materially contributed to this result (i.e. the suppression of slavery in Egypt), viz. the establishment of a home for freed women slaves in Cairo which was initiated in 1884 under the auspices of Lord Cromer by a number of influential men both in England and Egypt, who formed a strong committee for raising the necessary funds, and the Slavery Convention which was drawn up in 1895 by the efforts of Lord Cromer and the late Sir John Scott. Of the former, Lord Cromer wrote that he regarded the Female Slaves' Home as a most important part of the general machinery adopted in Egypt for the suppression of slavery, and that he knew of no measure more calculated to hasten its entire disappearance."

In a speech in the House of Lords on the Portuguese Slavery question in July, 1913, Lord Cromer reminded the House of his work in putting down slavery in the Sudan. No proclamation, he said, was passed and nothing sensational was done, which attracted attention, but "a steady, continuous pressure was put on " by the Governor-General, Sir R. Wingate, and "in spite of the enormous difficulties, at this moment there is neither slavery nor forced labour in the Sudan."

The Committee at its February meeting passed a resolution expressing appreciation of Lord Cromer's work and sympathy in his loss, which was forwarded to Lady Cromer.

The Committee.

WE have to regret the loss of three members of our Committee who have felt obliged to resign their membership on account of the difficulty of attending meetings when resident out of London: Mrs. Joel Cadbury, Admiral Sir George King Hall and Mr. J. G. Alexander. Mr. Alexander, who is the senior member of the Committee, having joined it as long ago as 1876, has, we are glad to announce, accepted the position of a Vice-President, and we hope that he will be able in that capacity still to attend Committees when possible.

Two new members have been duly elected, both representing the Society of Friends, which has been for so long closely associated with our work :

MR. ALFRED BROOKS, a son of our Treasurer, and MR. ALFRED F. Fox, a relative of the Vice-Chairman, whose enfeebled health now unfortunately debars him from taking any part in the Society's activities.

Obituary.

WE deeply regret to record the sudden death, at the end of last year, of MR. JOEL CADBURY, who had been associated with the Society for many years, and a member of its Committee which he joined in 1893, attending its meetings whenever he was able to be in London for them. We have also to deplore the loss of one of the Vice-Presidents, MR. FRANcis Reckitt, who died on January 25. For many years he served on the Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society before becoming a Vice-President, and was a generous supporter of its work.

MR. WM. SUMMERS, who died in November last, was an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, for many years in Morocco, and more recently in Madrid. Mr. Summers was a Corresponding Member of our Society.

LEGACY.

The late Mr. Francis Reckitt by his will bequeathed a sum of £500 to the Society.

Lagos Auxiliary

In addition to the names of the officers given in our issue for April, 1916, we are asked to add the following:

:

Registrar of Correspondence-Mr. J. O. Davies.

Financial Secretary-Mr. L. A. Cardoso.

Assistant Secretary-Mr. O. Labinjo.

Committee: Messrs. J. W. Vaughan, Yesufu Agoro, A. W. Thomas, J. Amblestone, D. A. Taylor, Fred E. Williams, Chief Obani Koro, the Revs. N. Johnson, A. N. Cole, W. B. Euba and J. S. Fanimokun.

Review.

THE EMPIRE AND THE FUTURE.1

THE general object of these admirable lectures delivered at King's College, London, in 1915, is to enlighten public opinion on the meaning of our 4 Macmillan & Co,

Empire and the problems connected with it, and, in Lord Cromer's words, "to cleanse the minds of Englishmen of misapprehensions as to the true significance of the terms 'Empire' and 'Imperialism.'" "The War," as Sir Charles Lucas says in his illuminating address on Empire and Democracy, "is the latest and greatest of Imperial studies, the people are lifting up their eyes to a vision which is no baseless fabric.'" This might well serve as a motto for the book.

Almost all the writers, including Mr. Steel Maitland who contributes an introduction to the volume, have referred to the marvellous response given by our Dominions to the call of the War and the unity of feeling brought about between men of different classes, races and colours who are fighting and suffering side by side for the common cause. "The Empire," says Dr. Parkin, " even in its loosely organized condition, is the rock upon which the wild dreams of German ambition have been shattered."

With this great object lesson before their eyes there can no longer be the indifference or the hostility of the past to what are called " Imperial " responsibilities and interests, when these are rightly understood. Our people, as a whole, needs, as the Master of Balliol insists, to be educated. The War has created the popular interest and the opportunity. Now is the time to extend the campaign which was sketched out at the Summer School Conference held at Oxford just before the War.

"The Imperial sense," he writes, is a thing which is growing under our very eyes; both the need and the opportunity to instruct and guide our people in it are already urgent upon us. Workmen, business men, the student class, are all eager for a lead."

Mr. Kerr, in his lecture on Commonwealth and Empire, one of the most suggestive of the series, dwells on the ambiguity in the terms "Empire" and "Imperialism" which are open to misunderstanding and serious. misinterpretation. If by them we understand Cæsarism, reaction, ascendancy of a dominant race over all other peoples, let us by all means banish the word as well as the thing. Mr. Kerr reminds us that in the past British writers have been "perilously near to preaching the Prussian brand of Imperialism." But Imperialism, in its true sense, involves heavy responsibility and the bearing of burdens. It recognizes that in order to prevent the invariable disasters which attend unregulated commercial contact between peoples who differ widely in civilization the more backward people must be protected from oppression, exploitation and other evils.

Mr. Kerr mentions the old slave trade and the modern instances in the Congo, Putumayo and the New Hebrides. Civilization cannot stand still, look on and do nothing; it is bound to intervene and regulate intercommunication in the interests of all concerned. This is, as Mr. Kerr points