and to teach the workers how to become more efficient, in order to better their condition in life. But the tendency in the past has been in the opposite direction. While the wage-rate of unskilled labour, measured in purchasing power of the necessaries of life, is probably (at any rate, in West Africa) fully equal to that of labour elsewhere, taking into account the quantity and quality of the output, the wages of skilled labour contrast badly with the wages of the clerk of equal comparative efficiency. The clerk is moreover accorded special advantages in pension, leave, etc. The result is to set a wrong standard. The schoolboy learns to look with contempt on manual labour. A fifth-rate clerk, whose smattering of English is useless for any practical purpose, regards himself as the superior of the skilled workman. Governments and the commercial firms are not wholly to blame in the matter; for the extraordinary rapidity with which the material resources of the African tropics have been developed has created an abnormal demand for clerks, telegraphists, type-writers, accountants, station-masters, store-keepers, and a score of similar occupations.

The remedy lies in a more adequate test for appointments in the government service, and a more uniform degree of proficiency in the different "standards" of the schools by which the qualifications of candidates may be gauged. The New Zealand Government in Samoa deliberately limits the number of pupils who may enter for advanced education to the probable demand. The complaint in West Africa is that the schools now annually turn out many thousands of semi-educated youths for whom there are no openings. It may be that the time has already come when only those pupils should be accepted for tuition in the higher standards who can show that they intend to prosecute their studies until they attain a reasonable proficiency. It will then be possible to adjust more equally the pay and conditions of service of the clerk and skilled artisan.

The statement of educational policy set out in the White Paper is understood to have been endorsed by the principal missions; and thanks to the enthusiasm of Sir Gordon Guggisberg and to the financial prosperity of the Gold Coast-of which he is Governor-it has been possible to start a school in every way equipped to put the policy to a practical test. Gordon College, Khartum (Kitchener's great memorial to a national hero) has hitherto been the premier native college and model in Tropical

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Africa, but as a school founded primarily for Moslems it could not in all respects meet the objects in view.

Achimota, to which the Prince gave his name during his recent visit, will have the necessary hostels and play-grounds, the technical workshops, and the very large British staff necessary to ensure success in an undertaking which at many points will run counter to all accepted precedents. Its Principal, Mr. Fraser, is a man of unusual type, whose ability—as proved at Queen's College, Kandy to weld into one corporate entity boys of various coloured races, and to imbue them with devotion to the prestige and traditions of the college, as in the great public schools of England, amounts to genius. His enthusiasm and singleness of purpose have proved so infectious that he has found no difficulty in attracting volunteers of the very best type from Oxford and Cambridge, who looked on the task to which they had set their hands as of greater moment than promising careers at home or pecuniary disadvantages. The vice-principal is Dr. Aggrey, a native of the Gold Coast, lately a professor at Livingstone College in America. A nucleus of pupils, the repositories and guardians of the future traditions and spirit of the school, will be trained from the kindergarten stage.

Achimota is not merely a new school or college in Negroland; it stands for a new ideal, and if it makes good it will mark a new era in education-the most important of all our dealings with the tropical races. There are some good people who, with the best possible intentions, run about the country warning us all of the imminence of a racial or colour war. They hold up to reprobation our dealings with the coloured races. To these Achimota is the best reply.

Native education in the future will involve the expenditure of a larger proportion of the colonial revenues (of which the illiterate native finds the greater part) than the 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. which has hitherto been deemed sufficient, apart from the departmental agencies to which I have referred. Railways and other forms of material development-though they too have their educative value-must, if need be, give pause in order that the social and moral advance may keep pace with the material. A percentage of every loan for capital works should be set aside for educational buildings and equipment and for similar capital expenditure not directly concerned with the immediate object

of the loan. The system adopted by the Belgians in the Congo of making large employers of labour responsible, not only (as in our ordinances) for medical care, but also for the maintenance of schools, is worthy of consideration, and the employer will undoubtedly gain in the long run if the education is of the right type.

The objects in view in the new orientation of educational policy-which have been described as "nothing less than a revolution in method "-have been well summarised by Mr. Oldham :

Its aims must be far wider than the provision of clerks for government offices, and mechanics for the railways and public works. It must include measures for elevating the life of the community through the improvement of agriculture, the development of native industries, the promotion of health, the training of the people in the management of their own affairs, and the inculcation of true ideals of citizenship and of service of the community. Above all it must aim at providing the people with capable, well-trained, and trustworthy leaders of their own

race.

upon

The area of British Tropical Africa is some twenty times that of these islands, and twice the size of British India. Its population, which at present is a little less than that of Great Britain, may under the Pax Britannica be expected rapidly to increase and fill up the vast empty spaces. The importance of right decisions the principles which shall guide the education and evolution of these scores of millions, and mould their thoughts, can hardly be exaggerated. A future generation may look back with amazement at the comparative apathy of the British people to-day in a matter so momentous, and may regard the little-noticed White Paper which forms the text of this article as one of the principal landmarks of imperial policy in the twentieth century, when the bickerings and squabbles of continental Europe, and the domestic problems which now engross the public interest have faded into the haze of the past.

F. D. LUGARD

THE FUTURE OF EAST AFRICA

1. Kenya. By Dr. NORMAN LEYS. With an Introduction by Prof. GILBERT MURRAY. The Hogarth Press. 1924.

2. Report of the East Africa Commission. Cmd. 2387. 1925.

THE future of East Africa raises the vision of a British tropical African dominion, including Nyasaland and Rhodesia on the Zambesi, Tanganyika Territory and Kenya Colony between the great lakes and the sea, the Zanzibar Archipelago as a commercial emporium, and Uganda, naturally associated with its neighbour the Sudan as sharing the upper basin of the Nile. Such a territory, more than two million square miles in area, would be much larger than India. It offers an opening for British administrative and colonial genius to repeat in East Africa its beneficent work in India. The difficulties of such an enterprise are colossal, but they are no more formidable than those that faced Warren Hastings. In the development of such a British East African dominion, Kenya Colony is the critical member. It has a population numbering some two and a-half million Africans, 23,000 Asiatics, and 10,000 Europeans.

The remoteness of East Africa from Europe, to which the cost of transport is raised by either the high toll through the Suez Canal or the long trail around the Cape, has rendered its development more difficult than that of colonies in West Africa. East Africa was left for centuries to the Arabs and the Portuguese, until the establishment, during the partition of Africa, of British and German Protectorates. Their greatest difficulty has been the scarcity of labour. The country had been depopulated by the raids of military tribes, except in sheltered situations, which are usually less favourable agriculturally. The paucity of native labour led to the sanction by the British Government of compulsory labour on private plantations. That system which, according to the definition of Lord Cromer, is indistinguishable from slavery, had but a short life. The regulations under which it was established were revoked in 1921, leaving the colony embarrassed by serious labour shortage and intense friction between the European and Asiatic settlers.

The proclamation by the Government in July, 1923, that in

the administration of Kenya Colony "the interests of African natives must be paramount," and the approval of that principle by the European community, marked a great change in the policy and opinion of the colony. According to Dr. Norman Leys' recent book "Kenya," a great change was badly needed. He writes after twenty years' medical service in two of the British East African dependencies. He is obviously a close observer, has thought earnestly over African problems, and has stated his impressions in an exceptionally interesting book. It provides, however, disturbing reading. His picture of Kenya Colony is distressing and disappointing. Those who have watched the progress of the colony have known of setbacks and failures, of troubles with the Masai and riots by the Kikuyu, of a few cases of brutality to the natives, and of regulations imposing forced labour; but such incidents were regarded as inevitable in the re-organization of a country where the warrior tribes regarded the privilege of raiding their weaker neighbours as a vested interest with which intruders from other continents had no right to interfere.

These troubles were, it was hoped, comparatively trivial or exceptional occurrences; and it was trusted that the country was being organized with no severer discipline than was necessary in the best interests of its people. It was hoped that the warrior tribes were being drilled into policemen to keep order among the rest; that by a helpful land policy and the opening of roads and railways the natives were becoming comfortably established small-holders; that European sanitation and medical services were improving the health of the population and lengthening the average of life; and that the country, protected from war raids, was making steady progress as the home of an increasing and prosperous peasantry.

According to Dr. Leys these anticipations are not being realised. The government appropriated the land, and gave the best of it to settlers who can only use it if provided with native labour; and as that is too scanty to be obtained by voluntary enlistment, it was provided by compulsion through the chiefs under the stimulus of government officials. As the natives will not stay on the plantations longer than they can help, their wages were kept low, so that they must put in long terms of service to earn their tax money. According to his statistics and statements,