The

with the aid of a loan of 500,000l. was put into operation. Customs receipts in 1910 were 75,4391. A treaty was made with France for the delimitation of frontiers and an agreement made with Great Britain by which the Kaure-Lahun territory was ceded to Sierra Leone in exchange for a strip on the south side of the Morro River and the payment of 4,000l. which had been withheld in respect of an earlier transaction. It had been necessary for Sierra Leone to occupy the ceded territory because of the disorders in Liberia.

Recognition of the Act of Annexation of the Congo by Belgium had not been granted by the British Government at the end of the year and it was announced that recognition would be withheld until freedom of trade was in actual operation. The reasons were given in despatches, and in a valuable series of Consular accounts of voyages in the interior, published in November, 1911 (Africa, No. 2, 1911, cd. 5860). The Consular investigations during 1909 and 1910 showed that though there was a marked improvement in the administration in many districts, in some there were abuses awaiting remedy, but since these reports were written there has been a general and all-round improvement, and there is now no question of the good-will of the Belgium Government and of its sincerity in carrying out the scheme of reforms. But there was sufficient doubt of the desire of the administration to observe the treaty obligations as to freedom of trade to lead Sir Edward Grey to decline recognition meanwhile. A valuable report on the trade and resources of the Congo by the Consul, H. G. Mackie, was issued in September. The districts in which activity is more particularly noticeable are the Bushira, Lukenie, Oubangi and Lake Leopold II. In the absence of British firms, Mr. Mackie could not yet form an opinion as to free trade in the Congo, there being no concrete examples; but the formation of a company in Belgium by a British firm with 1,000,000l. capital to work a grant of land concessions was heralded among foreigners in the Congo as the dawn of a new era and a substantial proof of the good intentions of the Belgian Government. The total value of the exports in 1909 (the latest available figures) was 3,121,6007.; and the imports, including goods in transit for other parts, 1,139,3007.-a general turnover of 4,260,000l. The total value of goods the produce of the Congo and imports consumed in the Congo was 3,131,800. This was a monetary increase, but that was due to the rise in the value of rubber at Antwerp; in some native products there was a fall in the output. The report gives details of the activity of the Government in studying and fostering the economic resources of the districts. It contains also a statement of the conditions under which the Belgo-British Company mentioned (in which Sir W. H. Lever is the moving spirit) will work its land concessions. One stipulation is that the company shall pay the natives not less than 24d. a day of eight hours. The

company would revolutionise the present primitive conditions of the palm-oil industry. The total trade for 1910 was of the value of 139,577,838 francs-exports 95,598,697 francs and imports 43,979,141 francs.

Katanga, according to a Consular report (July, 1911), possesses vast copper and tin deposits, and should be able to put copper on the European market at 301. a ton. There are also diamond pipes. It may be regarded as one of the richest regions of Central Africa, both for mining and agriculture. The railway systems from the north, south, east and west will meet in it, and the white immigrants it will attract may probably give Central Africa a greater economic importance than either the north or south of that continent. Belgium has agreed to connect the Katanga railway to the Portuguese border and to reach a given point simultaneously with the line from Lobito Bay. This would complete the line from the Katanga district to the coast, a distance of 1,000 miles, and incidentally shorten by a week or more the journey to Rhodesia. A railway extension to the Congo at Bakama is also to be undertaken, thus giving access to 900 miles of navigable river; and another from Stanleyville to Lake Albert Edward, the route of which has already been surveyed. The completion of these projects will open out Central Africa amazingly.

Major Gillam of the British Army and Major Beauregard of the Belgian went to Africa in July with parties of assistants to delimit the frontier between Rhodesia and the Congo, and, in conjunction with Portuguese Commissioners, to determine the meeting point of the three territories. The exchanges of territory consequent upon the delimitation of the eastern frontier of the Congo between Great Britain, Germany and the Congo have been carried through without hitch.

In March there was disaffection and reports of native plots at Boma, fomented, it was said, by Manyema from the disturbed Welle districts; but the news was officially discredited as of no significance.

The Boma Appeal Court sentenced a lieutenant in the Free State Service to twelve years' penal servitude for participation in the Mongalla cruelties, thus confirming a sentence of 1909.

The German and British Governments agreed each to investigate simultaneously sleeping sickness in their West African possessions for three years from December 1, 1911, and to keep each other informed of the results.

In German South-West Africa (formerly Damaraland) the total value of the trade in 1909 was 56,784,352 marks, and for the first nine months of 1910, 58,127,349 marks. Exclusive of the cost of the military garrison, revenue now exceeds expenditure, chiefly because of the diamond industry, the profits of which, says Consul Müller, mostly go to people outside the Protectorate. There are copper, lead, ore and tin mines, as well as diamond

iferous areas, and systematic geological and prospecting surveys are proceeding in every direction. The Government imposes an export tax of 33 per cent. on the gross value of the diamonds. produced, and there are other levies, amounting to 48 per cent. of the gross value. The farming industry has been retarded by cattle disease. The Government owns the railway system, which is yearly extended. Much other constructive work is being done in the towns and harbours, and it is evident that in this region Germany has a valuable colony which she is developing with foresight and energy. Save for quite minor difficulties the trouble with the Hottentots may be regarded as at an end. Occasional border incidents are adjusted with the Union Government without difficulty. The Germans and British are good neighbours in this as in all other parts of Africa.

In February there were reports of further Hottentot disturbances along the Cape border, and that the Bondels were acting in co-operation with Simon Copper's people-a tribe notorious for the trouble it has given the Germans in the south of Damaraland. The revolt was suppressed.

A successful campaign was carried through in the Rovuma district and a new region opened to civilisation.

Sleeping sickness has caused much devastation in Portuguese West Africa, and had reached the negroes on the plantations at São Thomé. Major Viera, an officer sent by the Republican Government to report on local conditions, came to the conclusion that the labourers were not badly treated, but that there were over 50,000 entitled to repatriation from the islands. He advised obligatory repatriation; the Government could not sacrifice the interests of humanity to those of the planters. The controversy about labour conditions in São Thomé continued during the year, the reforms instituted by the Lisbon Government being inadequate. Arrangements were made to recruit labour from Mozambique, on two-year contracts, with compulsory repatriation on their expiry. The Government thus hoped to remedy the scandal of slave labour in the islands.

In August the King appointed Sir Francis Mowatt, Mr. Russell Rea, M.P., and Sir Mackenzie D. Chalmers, Commissioners to inquire into the finances, economic condition and judicial procedure of Malta. Until the Commission reported the Secretary of State declined to allow controversy about the working of the constitution to be reopened. The war in the Tripolitaine overcrowded Malta with refugees, many of whom arrived in a pitiable condition.

A question having arisen as to the payment of State money for services rendered by religious bodies, a return was published giving, inter alia, particulars of such payments to the Roman Catholic clergy in Malta. The Bishop of Gibraltar adversely criticised the return as misleading, and his letter was referred to the Governor of Malta, who replied that the return was understood in

Malta not to refer to services in private chapels of Government institutions (which were omitted). "Malta," Sir Leslie Rundle pointed out," was a Roman Catholic country when it became a British possession, and Great Britain undertook to protect the religion of the country."

CHAPTER VIII.

AMERICA.

H. WHATES.

I. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES.

As the year preceded that of a Presidential election campaign, the movements of parties were largely tactical; and the "Insurgent" movement and the Democratic victories at the previous November elections had considerably demoralised the Republicans. The Democratic party, however, was by no means unified, and collectively had no definite platform. The situation was further complicated by the movements for Canadian reciprocity and Anglo-American arbitration, and by the campaign against the

Trusts.

Congress resumed on January 6. On the 12th, President Taft sent it a special Message urging that the Panama Canal should be fortified, as being virtually part of the coastline of the United States and constructed solely by the nation at an enormous cost. An appended Report of the Fortification Board estimated the total cost at $12,500,000. Speaking in New York on January 21 the President again advocated its fortification, on the ground that it was the duty of the United States under the second HayPauncefote treaty to maintain its neutrality except so far as it was an instrument of the national defence. He scouted the idea of leaving its protection to the Navy and thus tying down that force. Later in the year these views were also powerfully advocated by Rear-Admiral Mahan. On the other side it was argued that Colon and Panama, if left unfortified, would be exempt from bombardment under the Hague Convention of 1907, and that treaty obligations with Great Britain required that the Canal should always be open to British war vessels. No nation, it was contended, would dare to violate its neutrality. Eventually Congress voted in March $3,000,000 towards the fortification, including it as an item in the Sundry Civil Appropriations Bill. On February 12 Colonel Goethals, who was in supreme charge of the work on the Canal, declared that it would certainly be completed by September, 1913, at a comprehensive cost of $360,000,000, and that the competition of the Tehuantepec Railway would be disposed of and that of the transcontinental railways adequately met if the toll on shipping were $1 per ton. An exhibition to

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celebrate the achievement was to be held in San Francisco in 1915.

The President's aspirations for an Anglo-American arbitration treaty had been expressed at the meeting in Washington of the Society for the Juridical Settlement of International Disputes (Dec. 19, 1910). The Treaty of 1908 (A. R., 1908, p. 438) had ruled out questions affecting the vital interests, independence, or honour of the contracting States; but the President, at the meeting in question, had stated that the United States were ready to submit to a properly constituted arbitral tribunal any issue that could not be settled by negotiation, whether of honour, territory, or money. Early in 1911 he informally took steps to ascertain the feeling of the Senate, and a treaty on the lines of the abortive Olney-Pauncefote Treaty of 1907 was advocated in the Press.

For the moment, however, the movement was less prominent than that for reciprocity in trade with Canada. On January 26 the President sent a special Message to the Senate, embodying recent correspondence on the subject between the Department of State and the Canadian Government and making a powerful appeal for reciprocity. The United States, he said, now needed new sources for their supplies of natural products; now was the time, before Canadian policy became too crystallised, " to facilitate commerce between the two countries and thus greatly to increase the natural resources available for our people.' Reciprocity would be of mutual advantage, and would "cement the friendly relations with the Dominion which have resulted from the satisfactory settlement of controversies that have lasted a century, and will further promote good feeling between kindred peoples. He therefore earnestly hoped that a measure embodying it would be promptly enacted into law. According to the summary issued by the State Department the basis of the Agreement was reciprocal lists of leading food products, e.g., wheat and other grains, dairy products, fresh fruit, vegetables, fish of all kinds, eggs, poultry, cattle, sheep and other live animals; also certain commodities now free in one country would be made free in the other, such as cottonseed-oil by Canada, and rough lumber by the United States. Tin and tin plates, actually subject to duty in both countries, would be mutually free. Barbed wire fencing, now exempt from duty in Canada, was also exempted in the United States. Some raw materials, such as mica and gypsum, which enter into numerous industries, were admitted free to the United States, while printing paper would become free on the removal of all restrictions on the exportation of wood-pulp from Canada. There were reduced identical rates in each country on secondary food products, such as fresh meats, canned meats, bacon, hams, lard compounds, canned vegetables, flour, cereal preparations, and other foodstuffs partly manufactured; as also (but not identical) for a list of manufactured commodities, including motor vehicles, cutlery, clocks, watches,