(5) Birth-rate. On a priori grounds it is argued that the break-up of African homes must result in a lowered birth-rate. If this be so, Africans who would have been born under native exploitation of the soil are being sacrificed. Again, vital statistics are urgently needed.

(6) Rights of man. Before public opinion was aroused on the matter it is beyond controversy that pressure was being put upon Africans on behalf of foreign exploiters of the soil. That, so far as I know Kenya, is largely, if not indeed entirely, a thing of the past, in the form of actual compulsion by order, but I do hold that there is no justification for bringing administrative pressure or influence, in any form, to bear on the natives of the country which will lead them to believe that, after their taxes have been paid, a duty still lies upon them to become wage-earners under foreign exploiters of the soil. To lead the African to believe that he owes this duty is to take a mean and despicable advantage of those who cannot resist.

If Africans had induced the European capitalist to open up centres of industry where they could become wage-earners, then undoubtedly there would lie upon those Africans the duty of supplying the wage-earners regularly and continuously in accordance with the needs of the industry, the establishment of which they had invited. If they did not supply the labour the capitalist would have a fair cause of complaint. But the fact that a European goes to Africa, uninvited by Africans, and engages in a venture which needs a regular supply of wageearners, obviously does not constitute any moral obligation upon the African to supply him with labour.

Herein lies the root cause of all East Africa's labour troubles. Capital, in most instances, goes to East Africa, not at the call of the Africans, but at the call of a Government which is foreign to the African. Capital, when it has reached Africa, turns to that Government to supply the labour. In response, that Government has in the past used its power-on occasions, most unjustifiably-in order to discharge its obligation to capital. And apparently it is going to do so again.

(7) Land.-I have a list (furnished me by a tribal authority) of 180 names of families turned off land to make room for one estate. The same kind of thing has happened elsewhere, and indeed the Kikuyu tribe claim that they have been very badly

treated in this respect. The rights of these natives have been sacrificed to foreign exploiters of the soil.

On lines of enquiry such as the above it will be possible to come to definite conclusions as to whether the system of foreign exploitation of the soil has involved-and still involves-the sacrifice of Africans. It is my own conviction, gained after thirteen and a-half years in Uganda, and eight and a-half in Kenya, that the African has been, and still is, sacrificed to foreign exploiters of the soil.

The history of social progress is very largely the history of successive movements which challenged the truth of established asssumptions upon which men's conduct towards each other was based. To take but one instance. The time came when the established assumption upon which men engaged in the slave trade was challenged. Now, we marvel how men calling themselves Christians could be so blind to the plain meaning of the Golden Rule as to enslave their fellow men.

Another example. Lindley tells us (p. 127) that Queen Elizabeth challenged the right of the Pope to invest the Spaniard with the possession of the New World. To-day we agree that she was right. It is highly probable that the people of a hundred years hence will have as great a difficulty in understanding how we could act on certain assumptions in Africa, as we have in understanding how Christian men could engage in the slave trade.

The assumption underlying much of what is in the Report of the five Governors seems to be that the British people have a right to bring Africans into subjection, and to make them become producers, and even wage-earners, that some measure of relief may be accorded to Europe's unemployment problem. We have got into a mess, and Africa must be made to help us out of it. This is the assumption which the Church in East Africa must challenge, and challenge with such insistence that the matter be threshed out. The difficulty has been that Churchmen have not clearly understood the application of the teaching of the Founder of their Church to problems of Empire, otherwise they could not have done the things they have done in Africa, or remained silent while rulers committed themselves to policies contrary to the Golden Rule: that men should do unto others as they would be done by.

I say this because I, a Churchman, did much in Africa, which VOL. 245. NO. 499.

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I now see clearly was contrary to Christian ethics, and because what I did was in accordance with the thought of Churchmen of the time. Thinking men will not condemn us if in new circumstances of Empire in Africa, we did not at once grasp what it has taken years to teach us. Both administrators and missionaries were but human, and in both cases allowances must be made for human inexperience. Even now, in 1926, many leaders of the Churches are puzzled to know what is the right attitude to adopt on many of the problems raised by our Empire in Africa. For Empire in Africa does raise many problems for the Churchman.

Take as an illustration the question of human porterage. When I went out to Africa in 1904, I travelled to my up-country station with the aid of porters, and over and over again I wanted workmen in those early days. How did I get porters and workmen ? I asked the chief to get them for me; he ordered them out, and willy nilly they had to come. Livingstone and Stanley had to use slaves at times. Africa made us conform to its own low standards. Forced labour, you say? Yes, forced labour. It dragged us down. I remember very vividly the annoyance I used to feel when journeys which I planned to make were delayed through the failure of the chief to turn out the porters I needed in sufficient numbers and at the right time. The Memorandum of the Bishops, already referred to, yields the point that under the conditions then existing (1919) in Kenya Colony some measure of compulsory labour to supply the demands of employers was necessary. The Bishops conceded that, under proper safeguards, compulsory labour for private employers might be brought into operation.

In that same year (1919) a District Commissioner invited to his office a Baptist missionary and myself, to ask us what our attitude would be in the event of his ordering the chief of our area, which supplied but few men for the labour market, to turn out more men for employers in the neighbourhood. We agreed that we would not protest or criticise until six months had gone by and we had had opportunity to test the results of his action.

I recall these incidents of personal experience to illustrate my contention that, in the new conditions arising in Africa, we missionaries and administrators had not realized that we had no moral right to compel Africans to serve us or others of our race.

Our nation had used force to stamp out the slave trade, and bring inter-tribal peace; and that same idea of force was carried over into our other relationships with Africans. Now we are beginning to realize that while it was right to use force to end oppression, it is not right to force Africans to serve us; we do not want to enthrone a new oppression to replace the old one. We may use force to serve the African, but we may not use force to make the African exploit the soil for us, that raw materials be provided for the home markets. The only Christian justification for Empire over backward peoples is that it may serve them—not exploit them.

One point which needs to be cleared up is whether we have any right to use taxation of the African as a lever to make him serve us. Let me illustrate from what has happened amongst Missions in some parts of Africa, and then proceed from Missions to Government administration. Missions in Africa, wherever they exist, own land, under various conditions of tenure, ranging from freehold to temporary occupation licences. Much land has been granted to Missions at various times by British Governments. With regard to some of these grants of land, there are restrictive covenants, one such, in some cases, enjoining that no rent may be charged to such Africans as may settle on the land alienated to Missions. The idea was that such land should give Missions the opportunity of gathering around them their necessary African workmen and of building up a community of African Christians. But with regard to other grants of land, some of them of large extent, no such restrictive covenants were embodied in the title deeds. Further, such liberty was accorded Missions in parts of our African Empire that it was possible for them to include, in their grant from Government, land which was already occupied and put under cultivation of permanent crops by Africans. By the liberty accorded to them to act in this way, portions of native communities, numbering in all some thousands, automatically became the tenants of the Mission grantee.

By this procedure a great benefit was conferred upon Missions, for these tenants were required to pay rent, and were further liable, under local conditions of tribal tenure, to work for the chief for pay when called upon to do so for one month a year. The Missions exercised the right of the chief to call upon the tenants to work and, without doubt, the labour supply thus

secured was of very great advantage in carrying out the development of the Mission's building, porterage, and other activities. Missions used the facilities given them to build up educational and other work of undoubted benefit to the African Christian communities, but from time to time Africans have challenged the rightfulness of the policy. Where lands owned by Missions are of large extent, their administration calls for special departments, and the revenue from the rent-roll is a very considerable factor in Mission finance.

Two questions emerge in connection with Missions where the policy has been as outlined above. The first is in connection with the original entering upon land already brought under permanent crops, or already claimed by African owners. If it can be shown that Missions have, in some cases, however innocently and with full consent of Government, despoiled Africans of land, ought they, or ought they not, to make restitution? If it is impracticable to hand back the land, possibly descendants of the families owning the land originally might be allowed to live on it without paying rent.

The second question is that of the varying restrictive covenants under which Missions hold land. If it is in the interests of righteousness and uprightness of dealing; if, in short, it is more in accord with the Golden Rule that African tenants should not pay rent, as is laid down in some title deeds, ought not that restrictive clause to operate with regard to all Mission-owned land? It is obvious that this is a very big issue, but if there is any doubt about it at all it would be well for Missions to face it now, when conditions are not so rigidly fixed as they will more and more become with every passing year. A re-examination of the whole position by Missions, in the light of a deepening appreciation of the application of the Golden Rule to Africans, would be of incalculable moral value to the whole community, both European and African, in British Africa.

With this introduction of one example of how some Africans are taxed," we can now consider taxation by Governments. The two methods, direct taxation, by hut or poll tax, and indirect, through customs duties, are of course in force. From the Cape to the Sudan there is a growing feeling amongst Africans that the revenues derived from direct and indirect taxation are expended to develop areas under European occupation, rather than those