vaster sections of the Continent, of infamies on a scale exceeding anything the world has seen since the old-fashioned slave trade was abolished. True, that the uprising of the public conscience against the worst of these infamies was evidential of the continued prevalence among the British people of the countervailing spirit which destroyed the old slave trade; and that it also testified to the existence of similar sentiments in individual citizens of other lands. The comfort to be derived from this is real. On the other hand it must not be overlooked that this countervailing spirit which, considered as a national force, is peculiar to Britain, was able to make itself felt effectively as an international influence, only because its manifestations had a basis of historical justification in formal conventions. Where that historical basis was lacking, the national influence could not be exercised; and the anarchy reigning in international relationships precluded reform. Moreover, these events proved to demonstration that even among so naturally generous a people as the French, national protests inspired alike by considerations of humanity and national honour were unable to prevail against the power of sectional interests, although those sectional interests were not wholly French and although the manner in which they were exercised was admittedly disastrous to French national interests.
Such was the general state of the African question when the Great War shattered all the hopes which some of us entertained that the very wrongs of Africa, and the incessant friction resulting among the European Powers politically concerned with Africa through the pursuance of selfish and short-sighted aims, might give rise to another International Conference, which would furnish the occasion for elaborating a native policy towards Africa worthy of civilisation. If such a conference, whose propelling motive would have been a desire to redress wrongs, to guard against their repetition and to avoid causes of international irritation directly or indirectly imputable to their perpetration, could have been held, some of us thought that Europe would have been ministering to the peaceful future of her own peoples as well as to that of the peoples of Africa. It fell to the lot of the author, three years before the Great War, to place this view, which was received with approval, directly before a some-
