servitude, that no semblance of scandal" attached to the type of domestic slavery in Sierra Leone, which was of a mild form; the number of redemptions of slaves was very small, and official opinion had been expressed that Sierra Leone was backward in regard to slavery legislation, and some remedial steps were necessary. The report of a conference of Provincial Commissioners in April, 1924, stated that the time had arrived when domestic slavery should be abolished in the Protectorate. It was not anticipated that total abolition would cause a social upheaval, and compensation to slave-owners was considered both unnecessary and undesirable.

In the Governor's opinion the only alternative to leaving slavery to die a natural death (a process which might occupy some fifty years) was to pursue a definite forward policy.

A policy of inaction," he wrote, "would mean therefore that Great Britain was content to see slavery persist in one of His Majesty's Protectorates for some twenty-five years after Queen Victoria proclaimed jurisdiction therein."

He adduced reasons for abolition both humanitarian and economic, and the Executive Council unanimously advised that early steps should be taken to accelerate the total abolition of slavery in Sierra Leone.

It was recommended that the Gambia precedent should be followed, declaring all persons born after a certain date to be free from birth, and that any persons held in any manner of servitude should become free on the death of their masters. Sir Ransford Slater was emphatically of the opinion that immediate emancipation of all existing slaves was impolitic and unnecessary, being likely to upset the Chiefs and people. His despatch, however, ended with the decisive words:

"I consider that a firmer policy in regard to slavery has been long overdue in Sierra Leone; I feel confident that the measures herein recommended will, when explained, be accepted as just and reasonable by the chiefs, and it is certain that they will, in the course of time, greatly increase the prosperity of Sierra Leone and the happiness of its peoples."

The Governor enclosed a Minute by Captain Stanley on the question, which is of considerable interest, quoting as he does, the course which had been taken against slavery in Nigeria, the Gold Coast, and the Gambia. He expressed agreement with the Governor's recommendations, and pointed out that under them slaves would acquire their freedom by redemption, by birth, on the death of their masters, and on entry into the Protectorate from neighbouring French or Liberian territory.

In a despatch of the 7th September last, the Secretary of State wrote to the Governor concurring in the enactment of the Bill and enclosing a copy of the East India Company's Act of 1843, by which the legal status of slavery was abolished in British India.

The volume closes with copies of the correspondence which passed with the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, in January last.

Abyssinia.

THE following further letter has been addressed by the Secretaries on behalf of the Society to the Foreign Office. The letter received only a formal acknowledgment, but we have good reason to believe that the Foreign Office is fully seized of the importance of the question which we have urged.

9th March, 1926.

TO THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

SIR, We beg to acknowledge your letter of the 18th ultimo, in regard to conditions in Abyssinia. Our Committee is glad to learn that the position of the tribes which migrated from South Abyssinia into British territory is now improved on their return to their native province, owing to steps taken by the Abyssinian Government to prevent oppression, but our Committee begs me to point out that since the publication of the White Paper, reports show that raids from Abyssinia into Kenya have not ceased. According to a question put in the House of Commons on the 8th ultimo by Sir Robert Hamilton, a raiding incursion took place recently into Kenya, in which British troops were in action for two days in and around the Kidepo Valley. We have reason for believing that this raid did in fact take place.

It appears to our Committee that as the Abyssinian Government undertook certain obligations in regard to slave raiding and trading, on applying for admission to membership of the League of Nations, it is of vital importance that the League should have the fullest information available as to the fulfilment of the League's conditions, and the Committee ventures to express the hope that the Secretary of State will see his way to bring all the facts bearing on the subject to the notice of the Council of the League.

Forced Labour in Portuguese Africa.

THE New York World, in an article dealing with the Draft Slavery Convention of the League of Nations, refers especially to the bad conditions, of labour in the Portuguese colonies on the East and West Coast of Africa, which have been brought to the notice of the League. A prima facie case has, it states, been made against an administration which forces some 8,000,000 natives, free in name, to work for a period each year either for the government or for Corporations chartered by it. An interview is published with a former missionary, Rev. F. R. Bunker, who went out to Africa in 1891 and spent many years in Portuguese territory, learning the native tongue and assisting in giving it a written form. Mr. Bunker specially arraigns the

administration of the Mozambique Company, which has a fifty year lease for about 60,000 square miles of territory.

The corporation has complete and dictatorial powers. It may draft native labour. Its official employees become local magistrates and judges. It maintains prison and disciplinary barracks. Natives charged with evasion of the labour laws go before its administration to be judged. There is no court of appeal. In 1924 the Mozambique Company collected $750,000 in taxes from the natives." Mr. Bunker describes a native village where the chief met him and told of the exactions made upon the people :

"Our canoemen," he said, our warriors and our hunters have been seized. For long months they are off in far places and when they return it is but to be taken away once more. The police even take our women. They must work on the roads despite their babies. Even old men and young boys must work for these white men."

On another occasion Mr. Bunker came upon several hundred blacks driven with whips by other natives, who having been drafted by the Mozambique Company's native police, were being taken to Beira, the labour distributing centre of the Company. By Portuguese law all male natives. between eighteen and sixty must furnish at least three months' labour in the year to the Government or its authorised corporations.

"In other words, they are supposed to leave their homes in the veldt, very often just as work is necessary on their own crops, to labour on some plantation, or in a mine, or in a refinery. Since these may be from fifty to two hundred miles away from their native kraals the difficulties of volunteering are obvious."

"But the natives, despising the system, have no intention of volunteering. Thereby they are open to the charge of disobeying the law. Agents of the Mozambique Company then send out native policemen for the necessary number. Mr. Bunker gives it as his opinion that "conditions in Angola, while probably somewhat less terrible, are not greatly different" from those in Portuguese East Africa.

Emancipation in Burma.

AN interesting account of the way in which the slaves of the Hukawng Valley were freed, to the number of 3,487, has been given by a special correspondent of The Times. As already reported, the Governor of Burma, Sir Harcourt Butler, resolved, in consequence of the reports of slavery made to him, to visit the district and interview the chiefs in order to explain to them his policy whereby an end should be put to the practice. A Durbar was accordingly held in January, 1925, when the Governor announced that compensation would be paid to the owners on a fixed scale, that slaves were no longer to be sold or given away, and no families of slaves would be broken up. This was agreed to by the chiefs of the Valley. An expedition was carried out in December to effect the emancipation of

the slaves, who were estimated to number over a third of the whole population, and at each village all owners of slaves were called up to declare their slaves, of whom a register had been prepared, and receive the compensation money. Release certificates were given to the slaves, who received their price of redemption from the Government on condition that they agreed to stay in the Valley; otherwise they had to enter into a bond to repay the price by easy annual instalments. The whole undertaking was successfully completed by March last at a cost to the Government of nearly £15,000.

It is added that two of the Commissioners who were in charge of the expedition to the Hukawng Valley left for Assam " to inquire into and take evidence about the abominable habit of human sacrifice as practised by the Nagas of these hills," while the rest of the expedition returned to Burma.

GIRL SLAVERY.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Rangoon Gazette, as reported by The Times correspondent,

"invites attention, as others have done before him, to the great number of girl slaves to be found throughout the length and breadth of Burma. These girls are given, or sold, for life as domestic servants by their indigent parents, and when the girls are badly treated, the parents are unable to reclaim them, owing to lack of money. The correspondent, who signs himself Thudaw, states that he has seen slave girls mercilessly thrashed for the slightest fault, and he appeals to the Government to emancipate girls who are thus cruelly treated and wrongfully enslaved."

This appears to be a practice similar to the Mui tsai system in Hong Kong, against which the Society successfully protested, and which was brought to an end a few years ago-and in Malaya.

Slavery and Forced Labour.

AMERICAN MEMORANDUM.

THE American Federal Council of Churches has through its Commission on International Justice and Goodwill issued an incisive Memorandum on this subject, in which are stated" in briefest possible form the reasons why, in its judgment, the Government of the United States should co-operate with other nations in drafting and then in putting into active operation a general convention providing for the complete abolition of slavery and all forms of forced labour akin to slavery."

The Temporary Slavery Commission of the League of Nations has found, on investigation, that slavery still exists in some nineteen distinct areas in different parts of the world. Moreover, although the legal status of slavery has been officially abolished by all civilised nations, yet forced labour, akin to slavery, has taken its place in certain areas, especially where an advanced people have taken

"

possession of the land, have established their own government and have undertaken the economic exploitation of undeveloped territories and backward peoples. Even in regions controlled by the United States, it is reported that there are not wanting certain forms of peonage closely akin to forced labour and slavery. "The evil of slavery and forced labour has been recognised during recent centuries as having international implications and effects. It is now generally admitted that these evils can be completely over-thrown and abolished only by the united and determined expression of the moral judgment of the world, and by the persistent, co-operative activities of the more progressive nations.

"The reasons why the United States should help prepare and then should ratify an international convention for the complete abolition of slavery and forced labour may be summarised in some such terms as the following: Because slavery is an entrenched moral and economic evil having world-wide implications and effects.

"I.

"2.

Because the United States through its history has developed and is committed to ideals and principles of significance for the entire human race in regard to the intrinsic and inalienable rights of man as man in respect to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Failure of the United States therefore to participate actively in this world movement would belie the high ideals, principles and purposes of the people of the United States.

"3. Because the world has become such a compact economic unity that the United States inevitably purchases the products of areas still practicing slavery and forced labour and is therefore inevitably bound up with the system.

"

4. Because this evil cannot be completely abolished without the concerted moral agreement and united practical activity of all the leading nations.

"

5. Because the refusal of the United States to have a share in this humane movement would be a serious blow to the ideals and efforts of other nations along these lines.

"6. Because the negroes of the United States are taking increasing and insistent interest in the achievement of justice and fair treatment for their own people in Africa.

"

'7. Because the United States is deeply and directly concerned from the economic standpoint in having fair labour conditions prevail in the production of those great, staple necessities of modern life, such as cotton, rubber, sugar, cocoa, etc., in regard to which African production will increasingly come into competition with American production."

The Native in Parliament.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

KENYA (NATIVE RESERVES).

8th March.

Colonel WEDGWOOD asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies

Kenya to see that the provisional as described in the

Gazette," are

whether steps are being taken in boundaries of the native reserves, approved by the natives affected; if so, what steps are being taken to that end; and will the confirmation of these natives reserves be made