of these products and largely to increase the output will, again, be very great.
Industrial capitalism and the political interests o( the ruling classes will here find common ground. The drive towards some comprehensive form of forced or slave labour to hasten output will be considerable. These perils are not imaginary. Certain prospectuses and public speeches issued and delivered in this country during the past two years cannot be over-looked: a literature is already growing up on the subject. The "idleness" and "indolence" of the African native are being insidiously taught to a section, at least, of working-class opinion at home, with a view to securing Labour support for policies and practices alike immoral and anti-social. The impression that the Empire "owns" vast estates in Africa, which are lying fallow owing to the incurable sloth of the aboriginal inhabitants is being sedulously propagated. The immunity enjoyed by the Chartered Company of South Africa in its treatment of the native peoples of Rhodesia and the almost complete subordination of the Administration of British East Africa to the capitalist theory of tropical African development, are profoundly disquieting. Nor, in considering these dangers, must we blind ourselves to two facts, which the Great War of 1914-18 has brought out with special prominence. One is that no Government need be deterred in future from imposing an unjust policy upon African peoples through fear of the military risks attendant thereon. The latest inventions in the science of human destruction have removed that brake. Not even a homogeneous people fairly well armed and good shots like the Basutos could offer an effective resistance to modern engines of slaughter. The other fact is the employment of many African troops in the war. Tho European governing classes have now ocular demonstration that their capacity to bend the peoples of Africa to their will through the conscripted African, is limited only by considerations of prudence in thus staking the future of their domination in Africa upon an African militarism. Of this more anon.
Against these dangers may be set the creation of a new international mechanism—the League of Nations—which may succeed in evolving an international conscience in the affairs of Africa. This is not the place to discuss
