The Anti-slavery Reporter and Aborigines' Friend

taking vigorous action, and is "facing very strong opposition from the Chinese gentry, local officials, as well as from the Governor." The Government pleads various reasons for not enforcing registration, e.g., that it would amount to official recognition of an illegal practice, and involve heavy expenditure. The Anti-Mui-Tsai Society has pointed out that Part III of the Ordinance of 1923 distinctly made provision for registration, and as the South China Morning Post has pointed out, the Government has not honoured its own pledge to abolish the system; indeed, it has not seriously tried to do so. Six years after the enactment of the Ordinance sale and purchase still go on. Cases of cruelty still occur, and the MuiTsai girls are described as being hardly driven, and at the tender mercy of every member of the Chinese family; for the least thing that goes wrong, the household drudge is thrashed as a matter of course, and is often kept in a half-starved condition. The Society has been in communication with the Colonial Office on one reported case of cruelty, which has been referred to the Governor of Hong Kong with a request for a report upon it.

In contrast to the inaction of the Hong Kong Government, the Chinese Government, under the new Chinese Criminal Code, has made the sale and purchase of Mui-Tsai illegal and punishable by imprisonment for not more than seven years, or less than one. The Canton Government has passed regulations against the practice. The Anti-Mui-Tsai Society retains a membership of something like 1,000, and is supported strongly by the Chinese and foreign press of the Colony.

New Guinea.

OUR attention has been called from Australia to some extremely severe sentences passed upon natives in the mandated territory of New Guinea. A number of natives, including some police, left their employment at Rabaul, and held meetings at the Roman Catholic and Methodist Mission Stations. When questioned, they asked for higher pay. (The average rate is about 6s. a month, with rations and some clothing.) The next morning most of them were back at their work, as they had been advised by the missionaries to return. For this offence they were charged with conspiring to desert from the service, and twenty-one of the defendants received the maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment, and six others from thirty to thirty-three months' with hard labour. In addition, the police strikers, after serving their sentences, will have to complete their periods of indenture as Government labourers.

A correspondent in the Sydney Morning Herald points out that the crime which has met with such a ferocious sentence amounted to what was simply "a stop-work meeting"; such meetings are said to be held in Sydney very often (too often for the good of the country), but it is not there considered a punishable offence! The correspondent asks whether the law under which the natives were sentenced had ever been approved by

the Federal Parliament; "If so, why then is there one law for the coloured people, and another, or rather, no law at all, for the whites?" The case certainly seems urgently to demand enquiry, and the matter has been referred to the I.L.O. at Geneva.

Reviews.

LIBERIA-OLD AND NEW.*

By JAMES L. SIBLEY and D. WESTERMANN.

THIS account of Liberia gives a far more favourable impression of the position and prospects of the Negro Republic than those to which we are accustomed. Mr. Sibley went out to investigate on behalf of an American Group especially interested in education, while Dr. Westermann contributed the scientific and ethnographical part of the book.

The origin and history of Liberia are generally known; the great difficulties in its administration result from the many different races and peoples, involving conflicting interests. They include the natives of the interior, who themselves "represent all stages of development from the most primitive pagan groups "in the forest regions to those who have made some advance in civilisation; (2) the so-called civilised natives; these two classes number about a million; (3) Americo-Liberians, numbering some ten to fifteen thousand, who have inter-married with the natives, and (4) Americans and Europeans. The writer claims a high place for the Americo-Liberians, who have contributed the idea of self-government, having been in close touch with the United States. The natives, he contends, are a superior people to many in Africa, have shown capacity for governing under their own Chiefs, and are efficient craftsmen. The race problem is not acute, but there are certain marked needs of the country, the chief of which is for trained leadership, and a high ideal of public service. The other two great needs are popular education and economic development. The great task of a good government will be to develop the native peoples and absorb them into the national life, and this process, which is going on, constitutes the hope of Liberia. Meanwhile, the adjustments between the primitive natives and those more civilised involves difficulties and shortcomings.

The author does not make light of the financial troubles through which Liberia has passed; the concessions which have been granted "never turned out successfully," and the efforts of a Commission before the War to straighten things out were not well followed up afterwards. The morale of the Government was at a low ebb, and conditions became desperate. Mr. Sibley holds, however, that the prospects are undoubtedly improving, and that the great natural resources of the country-palm oil, palm kernels, etc., are being turned to account, and has great hopes of

* James Clarke & Co., Ltd. 7s. 6d. net.

the economic development which will result from the large concession given to the American Firestone Company. He believes that it will greatly improve native conditions. We find no reference to the danger which seems too likely to arise from a wholesale demand for labour involving compulsion for the native labourer, to which Mr. R. L. Buell has called attention in his recent work, The Native Problem in Africa.

It is to America, Mr. Sibley contends, that Liberia is entitled to look for "a greater share of moral, political and financial support," though not for political union, but her assistance should be such as will enable the Liberian people to help themselves; in the last resort, she must look for salvation to herself.

It is in this particular that the Negro Republic has failed hitherto to make good. REPRESENTATIVE

FORMS OF GOVERNMENT IN

AFRICA.*

By LORD LUGARD.

IN BRITISH

WHAT is the best form of government for peoples, like those of Africa, "not yet able to stand alone," and how can the control of the more advanced nations be best exercised in the interests of such peoples? These are the questions which Lord Lugard sets himself to answer in this treatise which is described as an extract from the text-book edition of The Dual Mandate (in preparation).

Parliamentary institutions and modern democratic government have been gradually evolved through the centuries, to suit the Anglo-Saxon race, and cannot be applied in the case of peoples of widely differing stages of evolution and culture; moreover, representative government is not understood by African tribes, and is opposed to their traditions and mentality.

Lord Lugard argues that the government of large and populous dependencies is best carried on by the adaptation of native institutions, by native rulers under close British supervision, and by co-operation with general advisory councils.

The system of Indirect Rule, as it is carried out in Nigeria and elsewhere, enlists the native chiefs to whom the people are bound by traditional loyalty, as an integral part of the machinery of government, responsible for the discharge of the duties laid upon them. All that is best in the African's inherited traditions and aptitudes is retained and adapted to the higher form of civilisation. Lord Lugard claims that the system has succeeded where it has been tried, and in his view :

"it is the only policy by which harmonious relations can be maintained between the white and coloured races in the far future, and by which those nations which to-day enjoy the advantages of civilisation can hand on the torch of progress to the nations which come after them." *W. Blackwood & Sons, 5s. net.