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 seems to me in its utterances at any rate tainted with humbug. I own that I hate the humbug in England's policy towards weaker races for the sake of all the misery on white and black it brings; and I think as I see you wasting lives and money, sowing debt and difficulties all over West Africa by a hut tax war in Sierra Leone, fighting for the sake of getting a few shillings you have no right to whatsoever out of the African,—who are you that you should point your finger in scorn at my tribe? I as one of that tribe blush for you, from the basis that you are a humbug and not scientific, which, I presume you will agree is not the same thing as my being a philanthropist.

I had the honour of meeting in West Africa an English officer who had previously been doing some fighting in South Africa. He said he "didn't like being a butter-man's nigger butcher." Oh! you're all right here then," I said; "you're out now for Exeter Hall, the plane of civilisation, the plough, and the piano." I will not report his remarks further; likely enough it was the mosquitoes that made him say things, and of course I knew with him, as I know with you, butchery of any sort is not to your liking, though war when it's wanted is; the distinction I draw between them is a hard and fast one. There is just the same difference to my mind between an unnecessary war on an unarmed race and a necessary war on the same race, as there is between killing game that you want to support yourself with or game that is destructive to your interests, and on the other hand the killing of game just to say that you have done it. This will seem a deplorably low view to take, but it is one supported by our history. We have killed down native races in Australasia and America, and it is no use slurring over the fact that we have profited

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 by so doing. This argument, however, cannot be used in favour of killing down the African in tropical Africa, more particularly in Western Tropical Africa. If you were to-morrow to kill every native there, what use would the country be to you? No one else but the native can work its resources; you cannot live in it and colonise it. It would therefore be only an extremely interesting place for the zoologist, geologist, mineralogist, &c., but a place of no good to any one else in England.

This view, however, of the profit derivable from and justifying war you will refuse to discuss; stating that such profit in your wars you do not seek; that they have been made for the benefit of the African himself, to free him from his native oppressors in the way of tyrannical chiefs and bloody superstitions, and to elevate him in the plane of civilisation. That this has been the intention of our West African wars up to the Sierra Leone war, which was forced on you for fiscal reasons, I have no doubt: but that any of them advanced you in your mission to elevate the African, I should hesitate to say. I beg to refer you to Dr. Freeman's opinions on the Ashantee wars on this point, but for myself I should say that the blame of the failure of these wars to effect their desired end has been due to the want of power to re-organise native society after a war; for example, had the 1873 Ashantee war been followed by the taking over of Ashantee and the strong handling of it, there would not have been an 1895 Ashantee war; or, to take it the other way, if you had followed up the battle of Katamansu in 1827, you need not have had an 1874 war even. Dr. Freeman holds, that if you had let the Ashantis have a sea-port and generally behaved fairly reasonably, you

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 trembled. A melancholy train of gloomy scenes of former times, as it were, passed visibly the review before my overclouded eyes, and I compared the overflowing measure of my sufferings with the scanty portion of my joys. Only the present moment sways in our mind in such a disposition, and reflects its hue on sufferings and pleasures past, on our wishes and fears, on our hopes and expectations. Feathers sink to the bottom when the torrent is too violent, and rocks are unrooted. In that moment the whole course of my life appeared to me to have been destitute of every joy, and futurity stared me grisly in the face. Without being rightly conscious of the original source of that agonizing state of mind, every expectation was thereby infected, and every cheering hope destroyed at once. No situation of mind is so dreadful as the moment in which a violent, hopeless passion, which we have struggled with in vain, convulses every faculty of the soul in its first incon-

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 need hardly have had Ashantee wars at all. But, however this may be, I think that a good many of the West African wars of the past ten years have been the result of the humbug of the previous sixty, during which we have proclaimed that we are only in Africa for peaceful reasons of commerce, and religion, and education, not with any desire for the African's land or property: that, of course, it is not possible for us to extend our friendship or our toleration to people who go in for cannibalism, slave-raiding, or human sacrifices, but apart from these matters we have no desire to meddle with African domestic affairs, or take away their land. This, I own, I believe to have honestly been our intention, and to be our intention still, but with our stiff Crown Colony system of representing ourselves to the African, this intention has been and will be impossible to carry out, because between the true spirit of England and the spirit of Africa it interposes a distorting medium. It is, remember, not composed of Englishmen alone, it includes educated natives, and yet it knows the true native only through interpreters.

But why call this humbug? you say. Well, the present policy in Africa makes it look so. Frankly, I do not see how you could work your original policy out unless it were in the hands of extremely expert men, patient and powerful at that. Too many times in old days have you allowed white men to be bullied, to give the African the idea that you, as a nation, meant to have your way. Too many times have you allowed them to violate parts of their treaties under your nose, until they got out of the way of thinking you would hold them to their treaties at all, and then suddenly down you came on them, not only holding them to their side of the treaties, but not holding

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 his ship.—Our much-abused Fleet will do its duty—toward the great Revolution.—We consider it our duty to defend Petrograd. We will fulfill our self-imposed obligation.—Not because of the request of a pitiful Russian Bonaparte (Kerensky) who retains power simply because of the unlimited patience of the Russian Revolution. Nor because of the treaties made by our government with the Allies, treaties intended to smother the Russian Revolution.—We follow the call of our revolutionary sentiments.—We go into death with the name of the great Revolution in our hearts and on our unfaltering lips.—The Russian Fleet has always stood in the front lines of the Revolution. The names of its sailors are written in the book of the history of the struggle against Czarism. In the earliest days of the Revolution the sailors marched in the front ranks, our ultimate aim being deliverance from all misery.—And this life and death struggle with our own oppressors gives us the right to appeal to you, proletarians of all countries, with a strong voice, with the voice of those who look into the eyes of death in the revolt against the exploiters.—Break the chains, you who are oppressed! Rise in revolt!—We have nothing to lose but our chains!—We believe in the victory of the Revolution, we are full of this belief.—We know that our comrades in the Revolution will fulfill their duty on the barricades to the bitter end.—We know that decisive moments are coming. A gigantic struggle will set the world afire. On the horizon the fires of .the revolt of all oppressed peoples are already glowing and becoming stronger.—At the moment that the waters of the Baltic will became red with the blood of our comrades, will close forever over their bodies, at this moment we call upon you.—Already in the cluch of death, we send our warm greetings and appeal to you:—Proletarians of the world, unite! Rise in revolt, you who are oppressed.—All hail, the World Revolution!—Long live Socialism!" prehension was general, and particularly in Petrograd. The psychology of "The Country is in danger!" provided an excellent opportunity for a counter-revolutionary military coup. With Boris Savinkov as the intermediary, Kerensky and Kornilov plotted drastic action against the Petrograd masses, the centre of the proletarian revolution. The dictator Kerensky required power, the annihilation of the revolutionary masses, and the military coup was to provide the power without which his dictatorship was a mere pose. It was agreed that Kornilov was to march upon Petrograd, crush and disarm the masses; and Kornilov, with Cossacks and other reliable troops, marched upon Petrograd. But the Soviet intervened and compelled the weakling Kerensky to issue an order for the arrest of Kornilov. The result was not the submission of Kornilov, but his determination to march upon Petrograd for purposes of his own, and crush both the Provisional Government and the Soviets, erecting a military dictatorship. The danger was acute. A general


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 mobilization of the revolutionary masses of Petrograd was immediately accomplished, the Bolsheviki imprisoned during and after the July uprising were released, and they marched out to meet Kornilov's troops, who were definitely defeated on September 15, on which day the Provisional Government went through the empty formality of officially declaring Russia a republic.

The aftermath of the Kornilov rebellion was swift and certain. The counter-revolution was active, the Soviets in danger—and the Bolsheviki everywhere rapidly became the majority. Leon Trotzky was elected President of the Petrograd Soviet, the most influential of all, and as a protest Cheidse, Skobeleff and Tseretelli resigned. The period of compromise was definitely at an end, and througout Russia the Soviets recognized the necessity of revolutionary proletarian action and policy. Life itself was making Bolshevism the accepted policy of the revolutionary masses.

These events isolated the Provisional Government. Its mandate had hitherto been the support of the Soviets; the attempt to secure a new and more general mandate through the Moscow Conference had failed; and Kerensky tried the desperate means of convoking a Democratic Congress to dispel the isolation of the Provisional Government and secure a mandate for its acts. The Congress met on September 27, and immediately it was rent with disputes. Capital punishment and coalition were discussed bitterly amid riotous disturbances. Trotzky appeared and issued a declaration of civil war in the event that the counter-revolution should oppose all power to the Soviets. Against the protest of the Bolsheviki; who bolted the Congress, and by a wavering majority, coalition was approved, a new cabinet formed; and it was decided to convene a Preliminary Parliament, to sit until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. Kerensky badgered the Congress into approving all his acts by threatening to resign and by picturing tragically the situation of the country.

The Preliminary Parliament opened on October 8, and in spite of the fact that the elections everywhere showed an overwhelming majority for the Socialist candidates, the bourgeoisie was amply represented in the Parliament, out of all proportion to its numbers. The Parliament, officially designated as "The Council of the Russian Republic," demanded that the Provisional Government should be responsible to it, but the Government refused absolutely, and the demand was withdrawn: the Parliament was simply to have "advisory" functions. Turmoil and impotence marked the activity of the Parliament; recriminations made deliberations impossible;


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 not a single measure of any importance was passed. At the first session, Trotzky, speaking on behalf of the Bolsheviki, charged that the propertied classes were represented out of all proportion to their numbers, and declared that the Parliament was against the Revolution. The Menshevik Cheidse was elected President, and against the protest of the Bolsheviki and Social-Revolutionists of the Left, it was decided to discuss in secret the constitution of the government. Instead of the Preliminary Parliament providing a mandate for the Provisional Government, it provided a new instrument for the offensive against coalition. And throughout the country the moderates were being ousted from control of the Soviets, the Bolsheviki becoming ascendant.


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The Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviets, after the Kornilov affair, was still in the control of the moderates, as a Congress had not been held since the June session, and the members of the Committee were hang-overs. The masses had, however, deserted the moderates, and the Executive Committe was becoming as isolated, as helpless as the Provisional Government itself. The Committee determined upon a final maneuvre to preserve its prestige, a final desperate attempt to "compel" the Allies to accept the peace terms of revolutionary Russia. It adopted a series of peace terms, specifying concretely the meaning of "no annexations and no indemnities," as follows:

"1.—Evacuation by the Germans of Russia, and autonomy of Poland, Lithuania, and the Lettish provinces.

"2.—Autonomy of Turkish Armenia.

"3.—Solution of the Alsace-Lorraine question by a plebiscite, the voting being arranged by local civil authorities after the removal of the troops of both belligerents.

"4.—Restoration to Belgium of her old frontiers and compensation for her losses from an international fund.

"5.—Restoration of Serbia and Montenegro with similar compensation, Serbia to have access to the Adriatic, Bosnia and Herzegovina to be autonomous.

"6.—Disputed Balkan districts to receive provisional autonomy, followed by a plebiscite.

"7.—Rumania to be restored her old frontiers on condition that she grant Dobrudja autonomy and grant equal rights to the Jews.

"8.—Autonomy for the Italian provinces of Austria to be followed by a plebiscite.

"9.—Restitution of all colonies to Germany.

"10.—Re-establishment of Greece and Persia.

"11.—Neutralization of all straits leading to inner seas and


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 the lower degrees may receive the inheritance only by virtue of the right of representation;

the descendants in the same degree receive equal shares;

if a degree has only one descendant, that descendant has the right to receive the whole portion.

Classes and shares of the surviving spouse in receiving the inheritance of the deceased shall be as follows:

if any heir under section 1629(1) is still alive or represented, as the case may be, the surviving spouse has the right to receive a share as if being an heir in the children’s degree;

if any heir under section 1629(3) exists and that heir is still alive or represented, or if no heir under section 1629(1) exists but any heir under section 1629(2) exists, as the case may be, the surviving spouse has the right to receive half of the inheritance;

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 also the Suez and Panama Canals. Freedom of navigation for merchant ships. Abolition of the right to torpedo merchant ships in war time.

"12.—All belligerents to renounce war contributions or indemnities in any form, but the money spent on the maintenance of prisoners and all contributions levied during the war to be returned.

"13.—Commercial treaties not to be based on the peace treaty; each country may act independently with respect to its commercial policy, but all countries to engage to renounce an economic blockade after the war.

"14.—The conditions of peace should be settled by a peace congress consisting of delegates elected by the people and confirmed by Parliament. Diplomats must engage not to conclude separate treaties, which hereby are declared contrary to the rights of the people, and consequently void.

"15.—Gradual disarmament by land and sea, and the establishing of a non-military system."

The Executive Committee, which still placed emphasis on diplomacy and not on revolutionary action, delegated former Minister of Labor Skobelef to present these terms as its delegate to the Conference of the Allies at Paris. But the Provisional Government secretely advised the Allies against Skobelef, and Jules Cambon, of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declared that "the Allied governments will absolutely refuse to consent to M. Skobelef's taking part in the deliberations" of the Conference; and it was declared, moreover, that the Conference would discuss only military problems, and not problems of peace terms. The attitude of the Allies caused an immediate reaction in the Revolutionary Democracy, destroying completely the influence of the moderates and establishing firmly the ascendancy of the Bolsheviki, who ten days later realized their program of "All power to the Soviets."


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 All through these days of storm and upheaval, in which the forces of a new revolution were accumulating strength, the Provisional Government was shifting toward the Right, and the more it drifted in that direction the greater became its isolation and its impotence. No action was taken on the pressing problems of the Revolution, on peace, on land, on reconstruction m general. The thunderbolt of complete chaos was about to shatter Russia. The government was a government of words, its policy the empty eloquence of Kerensky. The more the Government wavered, the firmer became the revolutionary policy of the Soviets. The fictitious "unity of the parties" was rent asunder; compromise snapt under the impact of antagonisms that could no longer brook compromise. Two movements were converging upon the Provisional Government, bent upon its destruction: the movement from the Left, the Soviets, and the movent from the Right, the imperialistic bourgeoisie. Kerensky, helpless, dazed, sickly, and a weakling, scolded alternately the Right and the Left, unaware that the issue was now definitely joined, that the basis of his dictatorship was destroyed; and Kerensky, moreover, scolded the Allies for their unsympathetic attitude towards Russia's inability to fight. The climax of these events had come when the Bolsheviki bolted the Preliminary Parliament, and determined to convene an All-Russian Congress of Soviets to act independently and decisively upon the vital problems of the Revolution.

These two simple decisions were epochal. It was clear that they meant the overthrow of the Provisional Government, and it was so interpreted by all. As the Bolsheviki bolted the Preliminary Parliament, curses and imploring cries soared in a chorus throughout the hall. The decision to convene an All-Russian Congress struck consternation among the moderates. The Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviets refused to call a new Congress, compelling the Petrograd Soviet to take the initiative,—and this was a symbol of the waning power of the moderates and the calm, stern confidence of the revolutionary masses. This was in the middle of October, and as the Bolsheviki prepared for the Congress, the reactionary forces of the imperialistic bourgeoisie openly prepared a coup against the Soviets and the Provisional Government. But the chief campaign was against the convocation of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets: this was the decisive event. The Executive Committee declared against it, and sent instructions to the local Soviets not to participate; while its organ, the Isvestya, directed an energetic campaign against the Congress. All the forces


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 cf the counter-revolution, from the Centre to the Right, prepared to destroy the coming Congress, the imperialistic bourgeoisie by means of a military coup d'etat.

The prevailing situation and the logic of events compelled the Bolsheviki to supplement their program for the Congress with a movement for an insurrection to overthrow the Provisional Government. At first, this proposal met with small response; but Lenin, basing himself upon facts, declared in a systematic press campaign in Pravda that armed insurrection was absolutely necessary to assure the convocation of the Congress and to thwart the plans for a coup d'etat being organized by the reactionary forces. The Provisional Government was planning the evacuation of Petrograd, Rodzianko declared the loss of Petrograd would dispose of the revolutionary workers and the Baltic Fleet. Realizing that the Petrograd troops were with the Bolsheviki, Kerensky on October 27 ordered the garison to the front; the troops refused, and retaliated by organizing the Military Revolutionary Committee, which played such an important part in the events culminating in the revolution of November 7. The action of the troops was ratified by the Petrograd Soviet. It was then discovered that the General Staff was formulating plans to seize Petrograd with the aid of reactionary regiments and forcibly prevent the meeting of the Soviet Congress; and insurrection became inevitable, reinforced by the argument of Lenin that the insurrection should not wait until the Congress met, but that the Congress should be confronted with the accomplished fact of the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

On November 6, the day before the insurrection, Kerensky appeared before the Preliminary Parliament, and made a statement "authorised by the Provisional Government." Part of the statement follows:

"I considered it my duty to cite for you the most definitely phrased passage from a number of proclamations published in the local paper Rabochy Put in the form of 'Letters to the Comrades' by Ulyanov-Lenin, the much-sought offender against the state who is now in hiding. This said offender against the state called upon the proletariat of Petrograd and upon the troops to repeat the experiment of July 16–17, and argued in favor of the necessity of an


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 immediate uprising. Thus, for example, in one of the issues containing the first of a series of these proclamations, Ulyanov-Lenin wrote: 'On the i6th of October, in the morning, I learned that at a very important Bolshevist meeting in Petrograd the question of the uprising was being discussed in detail. At that meeting were present all who were prominent in the Bolshevist activities in the Capital, and only a negligible minority—two comrades—disapproved of the uprising. It is necessary to analyze their arguments and expose the grounds for their hesitation in order to prove how disgraceful they are.' I shall not expatiate on the arguments in favor of an immediate armed uprising, but I must say that this same proclamation ends in the following way: 'What are you going to wait for? Are you waiting for a miracle? Are you waiting for the Constitutional Assembly? Are you waiting, you who are hungry! Kerensky has promised to call the Constitutional Assembly.' In the next appeal the very same Ulyanov definitely puts the question of an immediate uprising, and says that procrastination in this matter is equivalent to death.

"Simultaneously with these appeals, a series of statements were issued by other leaders of the Bolsheviki at a number of meetings at which they called for an immediate armed uprising. In this respect, especially noteworthy are the speeches made by the President of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates of Petrograd, Mr. Bronstein-Trotzky, and by some other organizers of the revolt.

"Thus, before the Preliminary Parliament I must state that a certain part of the population of Petrograd is now in a state of insurrection. (Remarks from the Right: "Is that what we have come to!") I have already proposed that a judicial investigation be started at once. (A noise.) I have ordered that arrests be made." (Disturbance on the extreme Left.)

After this speech, the Preliminary Parliament passed a vote of confidence in Kerensky by the small majority of I23 to 102. That night Kerensky ordered the suppression of the extreme radical and the extreme conservative papers, and reactionary soldiers seized the offices of Bolshevist papers. But that was all. The storm broke the next day, November 7, and the insurrection of the revolutionary masses, directed by the Military Revolutionary Committee, dispersed the Preliminary Parliament and swept the Provisional Government into oblivion. There was some bitter fighting; the Bolsheviki seized the telephone and telegraph wires, and besieged the members of the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace;


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 to your own, imposing on them restrictions and domestic interference which those treaties made no mention of at all. I have before me now copies of treaties with chiefs in the hinterland of our Crown Colonies, wherein there is not even the anti-slavery clause—treaties merely of friendship and trade, with the undertaking on the native chief's part to hand over no part or right in his territories to a foreign power without English Government consent. Yet, in the districts we hold from the natives under such treaties, we are contemplating direct taxation, which to the African means the confiscation of the property taxed. We have, in fact, by our previous policy placed ourselves to the African with whom we have made treaties, in the position of a friend. "Big friend," it is true, but not conqueror or owner. Our departure now from the "big friend" attitude into the position of owner, hurts his feelings very much; and coupled with the feeling that he cannot get at England, who used to talk so nicely to him, and whom he did his best to please, as far as local circumstances and his limited power would allow, by giving up customs she had an incomprehensible aversion to, it causes the African chief to say "God is up," by which I expect he means the Devil, and give way to war, or sickness, or distraction, or a wild, hopeless, helpless, combination of all three; and then, poor fellow, when he is only naturally suffering from the dazzles your West African policy would give to an iron post, you go about sagely referring to "a general antipathy to civilisation among the natives of West Africa," "anti-white-man's leagues," "horrible secret societies," and such like figments of your imagination; and likely enough throw in as a dash for top the statement that the chief is "a drunken slave-raider," which as the captain of the late s.s. Sparrow would

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 if any heir under section 1629(4) or (6) exists and that heir is still alive or represented, or if any heir under section 1629(5) exists, as the case may be, the surviving spouse has the right to receive two thirds of the inheritance;

if none of the heirs specified in section 1629 exists, the surviving spouse has the right to receive the whole inheritance.

If the inheritance owner has several surviving legitimate wives under the law prior to the coming into force of Book 5 of the Civil and Commercial Code, all those wives collectively have the right to receive the inheritance as per the classes and shares specified in section 1635, but, as between themselves, each inferior wife shall have the right to receive half of the portion the principal wife would receive.

If either spouse who is still alive is a beneficiary under a contract of life insurance, that spouse has the right to receive the whole sum agreed with the insurer, but the spouse is required to compensate the original property of the other spouse or the marital property, as the case may be, with the premium from the insurance only up to the amount which can be proved to be higher than the amount the deceased would be able to pay as premium,

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 but there was never any doubt of the outcome. The revolutionary masses secured a complete victory, the ministers of the Provisional Government were arrested, and Kerensky fled from Petrograd to the front to secure the adhesion of "loyal" troops, march upon Petrograd and crush the sevolutionrevolution [sic].

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened at the Smolny institute, confronted with the accomplished fact of the Provisional Government's overthrow. The Bolsheviki and the Social Revolutionists of the Left, representatives of the peasants who accepted the Bolsheviki program, dominated the Congress. While the armed revolutionary masses were completing the work of overthrowing the government and preparing to meet the attack of any troops that Kerensky might hurl at Petrograd, the Congress heatedly debated the problem of all power to the Soviets. A number of delegates, a small number, wished to ignore the successful revolution of the proletariat, and yield all government power to the Constituent Assembly, the Congress, in the meanwhile, to suspend its sessions while a new bourgeois-coalition government was organized. But their arguments were brushed aside, and the Congress decreed that the Soviets should be constituted as the government of Russia. The Congress elected a ministry in the form of a Council of People's Commissaires, with Lenin as President of the Council (Premier) and Trotzky as Commissaire of Foreign Affairs.

In the meanwhile, Kerensky had succeeded in rallying some


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 say, "It may be so, and again, it mayn't." Anyhow it seems to occur to you as an argument only after the war is begun, though you have known the man some years; and it has not been the ostensible reason for any West African war save those in the Niger Company's territories, which run far enough inland to touch the slave-raiding zone, and which are entirely excluded from my arguments because they have been in the hands of experts on West Africa in war-making and in war-healing.

Our past wars in West Africa, I mean all our wars prior to the hut-tax war, have been wars in order to suppress human sacrifice, to protect one tribe from the aggression of another, and to prevent the stopping of trade by middle-men tribes. These things are things worth fighting for. The necessity we have been under to fight them has largely arisen from our ancestors shirking a little firm-handedness in their generation.

There is very little doubt that, owing to a want of reconstruction after destruction, these wars have not been worth to the Empire the loss of life and money they have cost; but this is nothing against us as fighters nor any real disgrace to our honour, but merely a slur on our intellectual powers in the direction of statecraft. They are wars of a totally different character to those of the hut-tax kind, that arise from aggressions on native property: the only thing in common between them is the strain of poor statecraft. This imperfection, however, exists to a far greater extent in hut-tax war, for to it we owe that general feeling of dislike to the advance of civilisation you now hear referred to. That, to a certain extent, this dislike already exists as the necessary outcome of our policy of late years, and that it will increase yearly, I fear there is very little doubt.

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 It is the toxin produced by the microbe. It is the consequence of our attempt to introduce direct taxation, which seems to me to be an affair identical with your greased cartridges for India. Doubtless, such people ought not to object to greased cartridges; but, doubtless, such people as we are ought not to give them, and commit, over again, a worthless blunder, with no bad intention be it granted, but with no common sense.

It has been said that the Sierra Leone hut-tax war is "a little Indian mutiny"; those who have said it do not seem to have known how true the statement is, for these attacks on property in the form of direct taxation are, to the African, treachery on the part of England, who, from the first, has kept on assuring the African that she does not mean to take his country from him, and then, as soon as she is strong enough, in his eyes, deliberately starts doing it. When you once get between two races the feeling of treachery, the face of their relationship is altered for ever, altered in a way that no wholesome war, no brutality of individuals, can alter. Black and white men for ever after a national breach of faith tax each other with treachery, and never really trust each other again.

The African, however, must not be confounded with the Indian. Externally, in his habits he is in a lower culture state; he has no fanatical religion that really resents the incursions of other religions on his mind; Fetish can live in and among all sorts and kinds of religions without quarrelling with them in the least, grievously as they quarrel with Fetish; he has no written literature to keep before his eyes a glorious and mythical past, which, getting mixed up with his religious ideas, is liable in the Indian to make him take at times

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 troops and marched upon Petrograd, simultaneously issuing proclamations. The revolutionary troops and masses marched out to meet the invaders, armed with tons of revolutionary literature. There was some fighting and more fraternizing and discussion; Kerensky's "army" melted away, and seeing that all was lost, Kerensky fled, against the advice of his officers who urged that he appear in Petrograd even should he be placed under arrest.

The proletarian revolution had conquered. But it still had to pass through a period of civil war and international complications that was to test its capacity, virility and integrity. Upon the basis of its magnificent achievements culminating in the events of November 7, the proletarian revolution prepared confidently and resolutely to meet coming events.

The problem of the Revolution, that each development and each crisis emphasized, was: the destruction of the Soviets, or all power to the Soviets. But all power to the Soviets necessarily meant a proletarian revolution, the assumption of power by the revolutionary proletariat, leading on the poorest masses of the peasantry. And, considering the Russian Revolution retrospectively and in whole, we realize that its fundamental aspect is the development, through hesitation, compromise, temporary defeat and ultimate victory, of a proletarian revolution.

The rapidity of events should not obscure their developmental character. As a revolutionary process, the proletarian revolution in Russia developed through all the necessary stages. The overthrow of Czarism resulted in the establishment of the imperialistic bourgeois republic of the Milyukov-Guchkov government. But the frankly imperialistic character of this government was incompatible with the stage on which it operated. Imperialism was undermined by the oncoming proletarian revolution, and Imperialism had to camouflage itself in the colors of radical democracy to promote its purposes and preserve Capitalism. The camouflage assumed the form of the "radical-Socialist" government of the coalition and of Kerensky. This is a significant development. That period comes in Capitalism when, shaken by the oncoming proletarian revolution, it adopts as a last bulwark of defense the "radical democracy" of the moderate labor and Socialist movement, which is dominantly the movement of skilled labor and the petit bourgeoisie. This phenomenon assumed the form of "laborism" in Australia, where the "labor" government became the centre of Imperialism and bourgeois reaction against the revolution. It seems, apparently, that a similar development may occur in England, where the Labor Party,


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 lobster-like backward springs in the direction of that past, though it was never there, and he would not have relished it if it had been. Nevertheless, the true Negro is, I believe, by far the better man than the Asiatic; he is physically superior, and he is more like an Englishman than the Asiatic; he is a logical, practical man, with feelings that are a credit to him, and are particularly strong in the direction of property; he has a way of thinking he has rights, whether he likes to use them or no, and will fight for them when he is driven to it. Fight you for a religious idea the African will not. He is not the stuff you make martyrs out of, nor does he desire to shake off the shackles of the flesh and swoon into Nirvana; and although he will sit under a tree to any extent, provided he gets enough to eat and a little tobacco, he won't sit under trees on iron spikes, or hold a leg up all the time, or fakirise in any fashion for the benefit of his soul or yours. His make of mind is exceedingly like the make of mind of thousands of Englishmen of the stand-no-nonsense, Englishman's-house-is-his-castle type. Yet, withal, a law-abiding man, loving a live lord, holding loudly that women should be kept in their place, yet often grievously henpecked by his wives, and little better than a slave to his mother, whom he loves with a love he gives to none other. This love of his mother is so dominant a factor in his life that it must be taken into consideration in attempting to understand the true Negro. Concerning it I can do no better than give you the Reverend Leighton Wilson's words; for this great missionary knew, as probably none since have known, the true Negro, having laboured for many years amongst the most unaltered Negro tribes—the Grain coast tribes—and his words are as true to-day of

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 through its slogan of a "democratic peace," promoted the war and reaction, and is the party of social-imperialistic State Capitalism as against the proletarian revolution. Democracy serves to promote Imperialism, and democracy may serve to prevent, temporarily, the proletarian revolution. The "radical" bourgeois republic of the Menshevist-Kerensky government was precisely of this character—the final stage of the republic of Capitalism. Pluming itself as revolutionary, it acted against the Revolution; it put pacifism in the service of Imperialism; it used Socialism to deceive the masses; it incorporated within itself the "revolutionary democracy" of moderate Socialism to provide Capitalism with a new lease of life. But this final stage of Capitalism multiplies the inherent contradictions of Capitalism, and is temporary. The "Socialism" of a bourgeois government is in the very nature of things mere camouflage, and being such it acts as a developer of class consciousness and revolutionary Socialism. The oncoming proletarian revolution in Russia, passing through a series of defeats which alternately weakened Capitalism and strengthened the Revolution, finally annihilated the bourgeois-"Socialist" republic. The proletarian revolution in Russia was not an isolated or arbitrary seizure of power, as was the Paris Commune; it was the outcome of an historical development characteristic of the proletarian revolution as a process of action and development.

Proclamation issued by Lenin, as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissaires, November 18, 1917.

Comrades: Workers, Soldiers, Peasants, All who Toil!

The workers' and peasants' Revolution has finally been victorious in Petrograd, scattering and capturing the last remnants of the small bands of Cossacks duped by Kerensky. In Moscow the Revolution was successful even before a few trainloads of our fighting forces arrived there from Petrograd. In Moscocw the Junkers and other Kornilovites have accepted the conditions of peace: the disarming of the Junkers, the dissolution of the "committees of safety." From the front and from the provinces there flows in, daily and hourly, news of the support by the overwhelming majority of the soldiers in the trenches and by the peasants in their villages of the new government and its decrees on peace and giving the land to the peasants. The success of the Revolution of workers and peasants is assured, for the majority of the people have already come out in its favor.


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 the unaltered Negro as on the day he wrote them thirty-eight years ago, and Leighton Wilson, mind you, was no blind admirer of the African.

"Whatever other estimate we may form of the African, we may not doubt his love for his mother. Her name, whether dead or alive, is always on his lips and in his heart. She is the first being he thinks of when awakening from his slumbers and the last he remembers when closing his eyes in sleep; to her he confides secrets which he would reveal to no other human being on the face of the earth. He cares for no one else in time of sickness, she alone must prepare his food, administer his medicine, perform his ablutions, and spread his mat for him. He flies to her in the hour of his distress, for he well knows if all the rest of the world turn against him she will be steadfast in her love, whether he be right or wrong.

"If there be any cause which justifies a man in using violence towards one of his fellow men it would be to resent an insult offered to his mother. More fights are occasioned among boys by hearing something said in disparagement of their mothers than all other causes put together. It is a common saying among them, if a man's mother and his wife are both on the point of being drowned, and he can save only one of them, he must save his mother, for the avowed reason if the wife is lost he may marry another, but he will never find a second mother."

Among the tribes of whom Wilson is speaking above, it is the man's true mother. Among the Niger Delta tribes it is often the adopted mother, the woman who has taken him when, as a child, he has been left motherless, or, if he is a boughten child, the woman who has taken care of him.

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We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration a bill printed by order of the last session of General Assembly, entitled "A bill establishing a provision for teachers of the Christian religion," and conceiving that the same, if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound, as faithful members of a free State, to remonstrate against the said bill—

Because we hold it for a "fundamental and undeniable truth," that religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion, then, of every man, must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is, in its nature, an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated in their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men: it is unalienable, also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him: this


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 It is quite clear that the landholders and capitalists, the chinovniks (bureaucracy) and office-holders, closely connected .with the bourgeoisie, in a word, all those who are rich or who are aiding the rich, will be hostile to the new Revolution, will oppose its success, will threaten to cease the activity of the banks, will disorganize or stop the work of certain institutions, will spread confusion and sabotage in every way, directly and indirectly. Every class conscious worker knows very well that we must inevitably meet with such opposition, that the higher officials are opposed to the people and will not surrender their charges to the people without opposition. The toiling classes are in no way intimidated by this opposition, not for a moment do they tremble before the threats and sabotage of the supporters of the bourgeoisie.

Behind us are the majority of the people. Behind us are the majority of the toilers and the oppressed of all the world. We are fighting in the cause of justice, and our victory is certain.

The opposition of the capitalists and of the higher officials will be broken. Not a man will be deprived by us of his possessions without a special law for the nationalization of the banks and syndicates. This law is being drawn up. Not a single worker will be deprived of a copek; on the contrary, aid will be given him. Without establishing any new imposts, for the present, the Government will first take up the task of a strict supervision and control of the collection of taxes already established, without any concealment whatever.

In the name of these just demands, the vast majority of the people have rallied around the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government.

Comrades and Toilers: Remember that it is you who now control the government. No one will help you unless you yourself unite and take all government functions into your hands. From now on your Soviets are the organs of government power, fully authorized, decisive organs.

Rally around your Soviets. Strengthen them. Take hold yourselves of this task, from below, and wage relentless warfare on all attempts at anarchy on the part of drunkards, hooligans, counter-revolutionists. Junkers, Kornilovites.

Introduce strict control over production and an inventory of products. Arrest and bring before the revolutionary tribunals of the people, all persons who injure the cause of the people, whether this injury takes the form of sabotage (destruction and interruption) of production, or that of hoarding supplies of grains or products,


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 Among both, and throughout all the bushmen tribes in West Africa, however, this deep affection is the same; next to the mother comes the sister to the African, and this matter has a bearing politically.

There is little doubt that there exists a distrustful feeling towards white culture. Up to our attempt to enforce direct taxation it was only a distrustful feeling that a few years careful, honest handling would have disposed of. Since our attempt there is no doubt there is something approaching a panicky terror of white civilisation in all the native aristocracies and property owners. It is not, I repeat, to be attributed to Fetish priests. Certainly, on the whole, it is not attributable to a dislike of European customs or costumes; it is the reasonable dislike to being dispossessed alike of power and property in what they regard as their own country. A considerable factor in this matter is undoubtedly the influence of the women—the mothers of Africa. Just as your African man is the normal man, so is your African woman the normal woman. I openly own that if I have a soft spot in my feelings it is towards African women; and the close contact I have lived in with them has given rise to this, and, I venture to think, made me understand them. I know they have their faults. For one thing they are not so religiously minded as the men. I have met many African men who were philosophers, thinking in the terms of Fetish, but never a woman so doing. Be it granted that on the whole they know more about the details of Fetish procedure than the men do. Yet though frightened of them all, a blind faith in any mortal Ju Ju they do not possess. Your African lady is artful with them, not philosophic, possibly because she has other things to do what with attending to the children,

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 or that of holding up carloads of grain, or disorganizing the activity of the railroads, teleqraph, post office, and in general, any form of opposition to the great common cause of peace, of assuring to the worker control over the production and distribution of goods.

Comrades: workers, soldiers, peasants, all who toil! Put all the power in your districts into the hands of your Soviets. Preserve and guard as the apple of your eye, the land, grain, the factories, tools, products, transportation—all these are henceforth your common possession. Gradually, in agreement with the majority of the pleasantry, and with their approval, as we learn the lessons of their practical experience and that of the workers, we shall advance steadfastly and unwaveringly to the realization of Socialism, in which we shall be aided by the advanced workers of the most civilized countries and which will give to the nations permanent peace and delivery from all oppression and from all exploitation.


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 duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considerd as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.

2. Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made


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 the farm, and the market—than go mooning about as those men can. For another thing they go in for husband poisoning in a way I am unable to approve of.

Well, it may be interesting to inquire into the reasons that make the West African woman a factor against white civilisation. These reasons are—firstly, that she does not know practically anything about it; and, secondly, she has the normal feminine dislike to innovations. Missionary and other forms of white education have not been given to the African women to anything like the same extent that they have been given to the men. I do not say that there are not any African women who are not thoroughly educated in white education, for there are, and they can compare very favourably from the standpoint of their education with our normal women; but these have, I think I may safely say, been the daughters of educated African men, or have been the women who have been immediately attached to some mission station. I have no hesitation in saying that, considering the very little attention that has been given to the white education of the African women, they give evidence of an ability in due keeping with that of the African men. But all I mean to say is, that our white culture has not had a grasp over the womankind of Africa that can compare with that it has had over the men; for one woman who has been brought home to England and educated in our schools, and who has been surrounded by English culture, &c., there are 500 men. But into the possibilities of the African woman in the white education department I do not mean to go; I am getting into a snaggy channel by speaking on woman at all. It is to the mass of African women, untouched by white culture, but with an enormous influence over their sons and brothers, that I am now referring as a

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 foresaw that my sisters would be reduced to poverty if I did not assist them; and, though people said to me, 'Let their husbands get on by themselves; they are capable of making their own way,' I saw they could not, and I set about providing for them. As for my father, he thought that, in joining those democrats, he always kept aloof from treason. But he did not know how many desperate characters there were, who, like C, for example, only waited for a revolution, and were always plotting mischief. I thought, therefore, it was better to be where I should have Mr. Pitt by my side to help me, should he get into great difficulty. Why, they almost took Joyce out of bed in my father's house; and when my father went to town, there were those who watched him; and the mob attacked his house, so that he was obliged to make his escape by the leads, and slip out the back way. Joyce was getting up in the morning, and was just blowing his nose, as people do the moment before they come down to breakfast, when a single knock came to the door, and in bolted two officers with a warrant, and took him off without even my father's knowledge. Then, were not Lord Thanet, Ferguson, and some more of them thrown into gaol? and I said, 'If my father has not a prop somewhere, he will share the same fate;' and this was one of the reasons why I went to live with Mr. Pitt. Mr. Pitt used to say


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 neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entagled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

4. Because the Bill violates the equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensible, in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If "all men are by nature equally free and independent," all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an "equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience." Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine


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 factor in the dislike to the advance of white civilisation; and I have said they do not like it because, for one thing, they do not know it; that is to say, they do not know it from the inside and at its best, but only from the outside. Viewed from the outside in West Africa white civilisation, to a shrewd mind like hers, is an evil thing for her boys and girls. She sees it taking away from them the restraints of their native culture, and in all too many cases leading them into a life of dissipation, disgrace, and decay; or, if it does not do this, yet separating the men from their people. The whole of this affair requires a whole mass of elaborate explanations to place it fairly before you, but I will merely sketch the leading points now. (1) The law of mütterrecht makes the tie between the mother and the children far closer than that between the father and them: white culture reverses this, she does not like that. (2) Between husband and wife there is no community in goods under native law; each keeps his and her separate estate. White culture says the husband shall endow his wife with all his worldly goods; this she knows usually means, that if he has any he does not endow her with them, but whether he has or has not he endows himself with hers as far as any law permits. Similarly he does not like it either. These two white culture things, saddling him with the support of the children and endowing his wife with all his property, presents a repulsive situation to the logical African. Moreover, white culture expects him to think more of his wife and children than he does of his mother and sisters, which to the uncultured African is absurd.

Then again both he and his mother see the fearful effects of white culture on the young women, who cannot be prevented in districts under white control from going down to

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 that Tom Paine was quite in the right; but then he would add, 'What am I to do? If the country is overrun with all these men, full of vice and folly, I cannot exterminate them. It would be very well, to be sure, if everybody had sense enough to act as they ought; but, as things are, if I were to encourage Tom Paine’s opinions, we should have a bloody revolution; and, after all, matters would return pretty much as they were.' But I always asked, 'What do these men want? They will destroy what we have got, without giving us anything else in its place. Let them give us something good before they rob us of what we have. As for systems of equality, everybody is not a Tom Paine. Tom Paine was a clever man, and not one of your hugger-mugger people, who have one day one set of ideas, and another set the next, and never know what they mean.'

"I am an aristocrat, and I make a boast of it. We shall see what will come of people’s conundrums about equality. I hate a pack of dirty Jacobins, that only want to get people out of a good place to get into it themselves. Horne Tooke always liked me, with all my aristocratical principles, because he said he knew what I meant.

"No, doctor, Bouverie was right: I liked the country. At the back of the inn, on Sevenoaks common, stood a house, which, for a residence for myself, I should


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 the coast towns and to the Devil: neither he nor the respectable old ladies of his tribe approve of this. Then again they know that the young men of their people who have thoroughly allied themselves to white culture look down on their relations in the African culture state. They call the ancestors of their tribe "polygamists," as if it were a swear-word, though they are a thousand times worse than polygamists themselves: and they are ashamed of their mothers. It is a whole seething mass of stuff all through and I would not mention it were it not that it is a factor in the formation of anti-white-culture opinion among the mass of the West Africans, and that it causes your West African bush chief to listen to the old woman whom you may see crouching behind him, or you may not see at all, but who is with him all the same, when she says, "Do not listen to the white man, it is bad for you." He knows that the interpreter talking to him for the white man may be a boughten man, paid to advertise the advantages of white ways; and he knows that the old woman, his mother, cannot be bought where his interest is concerned: so he listens to her, and she distrusts white ways.

I am aware that there is now in West Africa a handful of Africans who have mastered white culture, who know it too well to misunderstand the inner spirit of it, who are men too true to have let it cut them off in either love or sympathy from Africa,—men that, had England another system that would allow her to see them as they are, would be of greater use to her and Africa than they now are; but I will not name them: I fight a lone fight, and wish to mix no man, white or black, up in it, or my heretical opinions. That handful of African men are now fighting a hard enough fight to prevent the distracted,

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descending to the level of the street, I found myself for the first time under the lowest arcade. Serving, as it did, for a substructure to the upper ones, it was built of corresponding strength in hewn granite. Though infinitely superior in grace and lightness, it reminded me of the somewhat similar structures found in certain of the streets of Berne.

Following my guide, I entered a vehicle standing near the curbstone on a sort of siding. The car was of light build and elegant appearance; the extensive use of aluminum and tinted ualin rendering it possible, in their construction, to combine great beauty of form with extraordinary lightness and strength. A separate seat was provided for each person, and every thing was scrupulously clean. Before stepping on the neat matting, I imitated my companion in carefully dusting my sandals upon the revolving brush provided for the purpose on the platform.

Perceiving neither horses nor any indication of the presence of steam, I asked what motive-power was employed. Steam, I learned, was seldom employed for any 20


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 purpose. Electric motors of various kinds had been brought to a high degree of perfection, and were preferred for many reasons. Each of these cars, it seems, had its own motor. This was placed under the body of the car, between the wheels, and was so compact as to escape notice at a first glance.

"Electrical as well as chemical science," said my companion, "has made such progress since your period, that many things then regarded as difficult or impossible have become matters of every-day use. It requires, indeed, some effort on our part to conceive how the way to their discovery was so long missed. The great discovery of the principle that enables us to store a large amount of electric force in a small space was long missed by a hair'sbreadth, as it were. Yet this discovery brought about even greater changes in the social condition of mankind than did the improvement of the steam-engine. Electricity completed, in some cases, what steam had begun. Such, for example, was the gradual disuse of animal power, first for draught, at last for any purpose whatever. In other cases, electricity reversed the effect of steam. Such was the utter abolition of the factory system, with all its attendant evils."

We had been the first to enter the car, which, during the short time since our entrance, had been rapidly filling. Just before the car started, another passenger entered,— a lovely girl. I chanced to turn my eyes that way, as she momentarily paused in the doorway,—the pause of a dove about to alight; and my attention was irrevocably distracted from the concluding remarks of my companion. Many beautiful faces had come under my observation


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The proletarian state, brought into being by the revolution of November 7 and by the fiat of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, was a state representing exclusively the producing masses, a state of the federated Soviets. It was, in its fundamentals, the expression of proletarian state requirements as determined by the prevailing revolutionary tasks, and as projected by the Paris Commune. The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes… The Commune was formed of the various municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workingmen, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into die hands of the Commune. … The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centers of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized Government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. In a rough sketch of national organization which the Commune had no time to develop, it is clearly stated that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communes of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send dmtties to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few important functions which still would remain, for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has intentionally been misstated, but were to be discharged by communal, and therefore strictly responsible, agents. The unity of the nation was not to be broken; but, on the contrary, to be organized by the Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence. … The Communal Constitution brought the rural


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 during our progress along the arcades: none, indeed, but beautiful faces were to be seen. But none had for me such an inexplicable attraction as that of the fair girl now appearing at the entrance.

It was not her mere beauty and grace; though she was surpassingly lovely, and in the first blush of youth. The arrangement of her beautiful hair, of a rich brown, as glossy, and seemingly as soft, as floss silk, indicated a maid still unbetrothed. With a graceful gesture of recognition she smilingly greeted my companion, took a seat beside him, and entered into an animated conversation. From this I gathered that she was a near neighbor of my friend's, and that she had been in the city on a shopping excursion. The result of her visit she carried in a small reticule, and, at my friend's request, produced the article for his inspection. When produced, it proved to be neither dry-goods, jewellery, nor even light literature. It was a piece of mechanism of high finish. In size and weight it might be compared with, say, a navy-revolver, though, of course, differing greatly, both in form and purpose, from that amiable instrument.

How tenderly she handled this strange-looking toy! With what admiration did she regard it, while, almost fondly, she turned it this way and that in her shapely hands! How her dark violet eyes sparkled, while, with youthful animation, she explained some peculiarity or advantage in the mechanism!

From what I could understand, it was some ingenious mechanical contrivance of improved construction, connected with some of the manifold applications of electricity. As for myself, my position did not differ greatly


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 uninformed Africans from rising against what looks so like white treachery, though it is only white want of knowledge; and also against those "water flies" who are neither Africans nor Europeans, but who are the curse of the Coast—the men who mislead the white man and betray the black.

Next to this there is another factor almost equally powerful, with which I presume you cannot sympathise, and which I should make a mess of if I trusted myself to explain. Therefore I call in the aid of a better writer, speaking on another race, but talking of the identical same thing. "In these days the boot of the ubiquitous white man leaves its mark on all the fair places of the earth, and scores thereon an even more gigantic track than that which affrighted Robinson Crusoe in his solitude. It crushes down the forest, beats out roads, strides across the rivers, kicks down native institutions, and generally tramples on the growths of natives and the works of primitive man, reducing all things to that dead level of conventionality which we call civilisation.

"Incidentally it stamps out much of what is best in the customs and characteristics of the native races against which it brushes; and though it relieves him of many things which hurt or oppressed him ere it came, it injures him morally almost as much as it benefits him materially. We who are white men admire our work not a little—which is natural, and many are found willing to wear out their souls in efforts to convert the thirteenth century into the nineteenth in a score of years. The natives, who for the most part are frank Vandals, also admire efforts of which they are aware that they are themselves incapable, and even the laudator temporis acti has his mouth stopped by the cheap and often tawdry luxury which the coming of the white man

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 from that in which a fairly educated contemporary of Cicero would find himself while listening to, and trying to follow, a bright Vassar girl's explanation of the purpose and working of an improved telegraph instrument or photographic camera.

Some such ideas were passing through my mind; but, after all, they constituted only the sub-current of thought. My attention was mainly occupied in following the changes of expression on a lovely face, in listening to the varying tones of a melodious voice. As I said before, the face had, for some reason quite apart from its beauty, exercised a mysterious attraction on me, even before the owner began to speak. The sound of her voice completed the charm, producing in me a state of feeling in which predominated a sort of puzzled bewilderment. Why did that face at one moment vividly recall the expression of some one whose name ought to be familiar, yet could not be recalled? Suddenly, again, as in a flash, the expression would change to one quite different, though equally familiar. How was it that certain intonations of that voice seemed to waken some slumbering chords of memory, disconnected, however, and strangely baffling; as when, from some stray notes floating in the memory, we vainly endeavor to complete the melody of which they formed a part?

These pre-occupations so filled my mind, that I gave heed neither to our starting nor to our mode of progression. The account must, accordingly, be filled from my subsequent observations. First, the car began to move slowly along the siding, till, just as a train of cars had passed on the inner track, our car glided out on that same track, and,


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 accelerating its speed, soon reached the hinder ear of the train before it. Beneath the platforms of the cars were powerful electro-magnets, which could be made to act, either as buffers or couplers. As soon as connection was formed, most of the passengers in our car rose, and passed into the forward cars; while others passed from those into the hind-car. As we approached the next station, this hind most car detached itself, lingered behind, and ran into the siding to discharge passengers; while, at the same time, a car that had been filling up at the station began. to move, and presently joined on to the train, as ours had done before. By this system of taking up and discharging passengers, the train once started from the terminus did not need to halt or slacken speed till it reached the end of its route.

Presently, as we drew near the upper terminus, and rose preparatory to leaving the ear, my friend, in a few courteous words, introduced me to the fair maiden that had so highly excited my interest. This introduction he had thus far omitted,—as it seemed to me,—that, being under no necessity of joining in the conversation, I might the more freely make my observations.

She was introduced under the name of Reva Diotha; I, as Ismar Thiusen. This name, which I did not recognize at the time as having any similitude to that I had hitherto borne, was really its legitimate descendant, according to the same law of phonetic change that had transformed my friend's name to Utis Estai. In accordance with the simple though courteous manners of the period, no prefixes or titles of any kind were in use, each person being addressed in society by his or her first name


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 has placed within his reach. So effectually has the heel of the white man been ground into the face of Pérak and Selangor, that these native states are now only nominally what their name implies. The white population outnumbers the people of the land in most of the principal districts, and it is possible for a European to spend weeks in either of these states without coming into contact with any Asiatics save those who wait at table, clean his shirts, or drive his cab. It is possible, I am told, for a European to spend years in Pérak or Selangor without acquiring any profound knowledge of the natives of the country or of the language which is their special medium. This being so, most of the white men who live in the protected native states are somewhat apt to disregard the effect their actions have upon the natives and labour under the common European inability to view natives from a native standpoint. Moreover, we have become accustomed to existing conditions; and thus it is that few perhaps realise the precise nature of the work which the British in the Peninsula have set themselves to accomplish. What we are really attempting, however, is nothing less than to crush into twenty years the revolution in facts and in ideas, which, even in energetic Europe, six long centuries have been needed to accomplish. No one will, of course, be found to dispute that the strides made in our knowledge of the art of government since the thirteenth century are prodigious and vast, nor that the general condition of the people of Europe has been immensely improved since that day; but nevertheless one cannot but sympathise with the Malays who are suddenly and violently translated from the point to which they have attained in the natural development of their race, and are required to live up to the standard of a people who are six centuries in

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 Hands up, and no fooling!'

"Of course, he put up his hands; he'd no choice, for he could n't see any one. Then another man who was in the bushes behind his back ordered him to haul out his bundle of notes and chuck them to the far side of the fire, or take the consequences. Dan saw a revolver barrel gleam in the bush. He cursed a bit, but the thieves had the drop on him, so he just had to out with his wad of notes and heave them over as he was told. A birch log in the fire flared up at the minute, and as the notes touched the ground he saw a chap in a black mask step out and pick them up, and then jump back into the dark. All the time Dan had one eye on the revolver of the man in the bushes. It kept him covered, so he had no show. Then the voice that spoke first gave him the hint not to move for two hours, or he'd be shot like a dog. He sat out the two hours by his watch without hearing a sound, and then came back to C.

"When the boys got the facts, the whole camp was nigh as mad as he was. They put up fifty dollars' reward for any one giving information

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 merely. The idea of showing respect to any one by means of an unmeaning prefix to his name would to them have seemed as ridiculous as does to us the Oriental custom of showing regard to a guest by cramming his month with some supposed dainty.

It may be as well to explain, in this connection, the peculiar system of family nomenclature I found to prevail. The family name, simple before marriage, became compound after. Thus, the parents of Reva, known as Niata Diotha and Hulmar Edial before their marriage, then assumed the names Niata Diotha-Edial and Hulmar Diotha-Edial respectively. Of this compound family name girls assumed only the part derived from their mother; boys, that derived from their father. Thus, Reva's legal name was Reva Diotha, and would remain so till marriage. Her brother's name, again, was Olav Edial.

One manifest result of this system of nomenclature was, that women preserved their distinctive family names from generation to generation, as only men do at present. A girl like Reva, indeed, was as proud to trace her lineage through a long line of Diothas as is any Guelph or Rolan to trace his to an ancestor dimly discernible in the twilight of history.

On being introduced to Reva as Ismar Thiusen, I could plainly perceive that the name was not that of a stranger, but seemingly of one well known by report, at least, though never before seen. She turned upon me, with a look of frank interest, those eyes to which the long, curling lashes lent an indescribable charm. If there was a trace of shyness, it was rather that of a high-bred lad, when presented to a personage of some interest, than the ordinary self-consciousness of a girl.


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 At the moment, however, there was no time for conversation. We had reached the end of the city route; and, amid the crowd of new impressions, I found ample occupation for eye and thought. Before us, across a broad, open space of smooth concrete, rose the grand terminus. Toward this converged, not only all the city railroads, but also roads from every part of the Northern Hemisphere. Behring's Strait, long since bridged over, no longer opposed an obstacle to the passage of the rolling car. Lines of road from every part of the American continent converged toward that bridge, and carried on communication between ancient and famous cities having, as yet, neither name nor existence. From the spot where I stood I could be carried, without a break, to any part of the New World or the Old.

The terminus of such a traffic was, as may be imagined, of immense extent, the concourse prodigious. When it is stated, that comparatively few people remained in that great and crowded city overnight, it may be inferred how great was the multitude. Yet there was no hurry, no confusion. Each knew where to go: every thing was provided for. The immense throng was as courteous and self-possessed as the guests at a select reception.

Within a few minutes we were again speeding on our way, over a track as greatly surpassing in smoothness those of the present as these do the roads of our forefathers. The carriages differed, in many respects, from those now in use. For one thing, they were much wider, reminding me somewhat of the saloon of a riverboat. Yet these enormous cars were not of such unwieldy weight as might have been inferred from their


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 dimensions. Scientific construction and excellent material caused the metallic framework to be relatively light; while the upper portion was almost entirely constructed of ualin,—a material specially adapted for such purposes from its strength, lightness, and durability.

The wonderful smoothness of the motion was largely due to the peculiar construction and arrangement of the wheels. These ran four abreast, the inner pair on a track somewhat lower than the broad metallic plates on which the outer pair ran. Derailment was thus rendered impossible. Collision from behind was obviated by means of an automatic telegraph, which kept the engineer exactly informed of the distance ahead of the preceding train. Of other ingenious contrivances for the prevention of accident I will say nothing, lest I become tedious; nor will I mention the speed attained, lest I should be accused of exaggeration.


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 The new government was the Soviets, federated and assuming all the functions of the state,—the self-government of the producing class. The local Soviet was the local authority of government, elected directly by the suffrage of the workers in the factories and the peasants in the fields; these elections were frequent, and the representatives were at all times freely recallable by their constituents. The local Soviets elected delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, on the basis of proportional representation, and this Congress was the supreme governing body of Russia. The Congress elected the members of the Council of People's Commissaires, and a Central Executive Committee, also on the basis of proportional representation; this Committee sat permanently during the intervals between sessions of the Congress, and directed the activity of the Council of People's Commissaires. At the session of the Congress, each Commissaire and the Central Executive Committee rendered reports; the decision of the Congress on all matters was supreme. The new regime abolished the parliamentary system and the complicated bureaucratic machinery of the bourgeois state; it united legislative and executive functions. This flexible system of government was instantly responsive to the will of the people; it was the utmost in democracy,—not that bourgeois democracy which is simply a form of authority of the appropriating over the producing class, but the free, conscious expression of the initiative, activity and interests of the organized producers.

The Soviet state presents, however, a dual character: it is a democracy in its attitude and relation to the producing class, but a stern and unrelenting dictatorship toward the bourgeoisie. This dual character is the expression of the transition period from Capitalism to Socialism, of the requirements of crushing the resistance of the counter-revolutionary elements, destroying the political power of the Capitalist Class, completing the destruction of the bourgeois regime, and gradually introducing the relations and institutions of Communist Socialism. In this transition period the state assumes the form of a dictatorship of the revolutionary proletariat, an instrument for the crushing of the bourgeoisie in the inevitable civil war.

Civil war ensued immediately upon the assumption of power by


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 that will lead to catching the robbers, and I added another hundred for the Company. So now, Joe, if you can clap your hand on the brutes you'll be doing yourself a good turn and others too."

Close ended his narration, and looked at November, who had listened throughout in his habitual silence.

"Do the boys up at C know you've come to me?" he said.

"No, I thought it wiser they should n't."

November remained silent for a moment.

"You'd best get away back, Mr. Close," he said at length. "I'll go down to Perkins's Clearing, and have a look at the spot where the robbery took place, and then I'll find some excuse to take me to Camp C, when I can make my report to you."

To this Close agreed, and soon we saw him striding away until his strong figure was swallowed up in the forest twilight.

On his departure I tried to talk to November about the robbery, but never have I found him less communicative. He sat with his pipe in his teeth and kept on turning our conversation to

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 advance of them in national progress. If a plant is made to blossom or bear fruit three months before its time it is regarded as a triumph of the gardener's art; but what then are we to say of this huge moral forcing system we call 'protection'? Forced plants we know suffer in the process; and the Malay, whose proper place is amidst the conditions of the thirteenth century, is apt to become morally weak and seedy and lose something of his robust self respect when he is forced to bear Nineteenth century fruit."

Now, the above represents the state of affairs caused by the clash of different culture levels in the true Negro States, as well as it does in the Malay. These two sets of men, widely different in breed, have from the many points of agreement in their State-form, evidently both arrived in our thirteenth century. The African peoples in the central East, and East, and South, except where they are true Negroes, have not arrived in the Thirteenth century, or, to put it in other words, the true Negro stem in Africa has arrived at a political state akin to that of our own Thirteenth century, whereas the Bantu stem has not; this point, however, I need not enter into here.

There are, of course, local differences between the Malay Peninsula and West Africa, but the main characteristics as regards the State-form among the natives are singularly alike. They are both what Mr. Clifford aptly likens to our own European State-form in the Thirteenth century; and the effect of the white culture on the morals of the natives is also alike. The main difference between them results from the Malay Peninsula being but a narrow strip of land and thinly peopled, compared to the densely populated section of a continent we call West Africa. Therefore,

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beautiful Reva had entered the same car with Utis and me. In spite of my admiration, however, it was with somewhat mixed feelings that I contemplated the possibility of a conversation with her. If she would only be content to do all the talking herself, how gladly would I listen. But should she refer—as naturally she would—to whence I came, and what I had seen, how in the world was I to reply? What, indeed. could I say at all, without seeming to have taken leave of my senses? A wild idea occurred to me. I might assume the rôle of a deaf-mute. But besides placing me in a false position, from which extrication would be difficult, the rôle was not a brilliant one. A moment's reflection, too, convinced me that it was too late: she must have seen me conversing with Utis.

Even should she defray the whole expense of the conversation, leaving me at liberty to assume the role of listener, matters would be but slightly bettered. I recalled with dismay the mauvais quart d'heure I once had passed, while a fair Bostonian demonstrated to me the thesis of the interconvertibility of the thingness of noth-

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 ingness, and the nothingness of thingness. My alarms, however, were in vain. Scarcely had we entered the car when Reva perceived a bevy of girls of her own age. She forsook us at once, with a smile and a bow, and hastened over to her fair friends, where presently I saw her exhibiting, to an apparently appreciative audience, the piece of mechanism to me such a mystery.

Utis became engaged in conversation with some friends; and I was left, for a while, to my own reflections. It might. be the re-action after the mental strain involved in the reception of so many novel ideas, but seldom have I felt so intensely depressed. I felt humiliated in my own esteem. I, the college-trained, the much-travelled man, the leading spirit of my set; I, whose knowledge was regarded by a fond mother and admiring sister as almost encyclopedic,—I to shrink from the conversation of a young girl, through fear of betraying my gross ignorance!

My meditations were broken in upon, at this point, by a silvery laugh proceeding from the corner to which Reva had betaken herself. Could they be laughing at me? Had she discovered my ignorance, even through my veil of silence, and was showing me up to her companions? A furtive glance in that direction re-assured me. They evidently were paying no attention to me. Such is the inconsistency of man, that, for a moment, I actually felt aggrieved at what at first gave me such relief,—Reva's discovery of more interesting companionship than mine.

Just then the train slackened its pace. Utis and I alighted amid a crowd of passengers, among whom I lost sight of Reva; and presently we two were left alone on the platform, giving a last glance to the train as it vanished round a distant curve.


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 "You may look about here for a few moments," sail Utis, but do not wander far. I will not be long absent."

Left to myself, I first turned my eyes toward the river. The broad Hudson glittered in the rays of the sun, now descending toward the hills on the farther shore. Rivercraft of strange appearance were gliding over the faintly rippled surface, while from them strains of distant music fell with a caressing cadence upon my ear. These vessels were evidently set in motion by some internal machinery. Yet no hideous smoke-stack disfigured their decks, no pitchy train of smoke lung heavily behind. The outline of the western hills seemed familiar, though altered, like the lineaments of the friend we meet after a separation of years.

The changes were greatest in the form of the Palisades, as I subsequently had occasion to observe. The lapse of nearly eighty centuries would alone have produced considerable alteration in their outline, but the ever-active hand of man had effected far more. Instead of the bold, precipitous wall now dominating the river, like the rockbuilt ramparts of a Titan race, gentle slopes, in a state of high cultivation, extended to the water's edge. Only isolated fragments, rising at intervals in solitary grandeur, lent a savage grace to the otherwise, perhaps, too placid scene.

What chiefly had led to the extensive disappearance of the rock, was the discovery of the valuable properties of trap as the basis of certain fertilizers. First the talus, now so extensive, had been carried away for that purpose; when that was exhausted, the rock itself had been


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 although the Malay in his native state is a superior individual warrior to the West African, yet there are not so many of him; and as he is less guarded from whites by a pestilential climate, his resistance to the white culture of the Nineteenth century is inferior to the resistance which the West African can give.

The destruction of what is good in the Thirteenth century culture level, and the fact that when the Nineteenth century has had its way the main result is seedy demoralised natives, is the thing that must make all thinking men wonder if, after all, such work is from a high moral point of view worth the Nineteenth century doing. I so often think when I hear the progress of civilisation, our duty towards the lower races, &c., talked of, as if those words were in themselves Ju Ju, of that improving fable of the kind-hearted she-elephant, who, while out walking one day, inadvertently trod upon a partridge and killed it, and observing close at hand the bird's nest full of callow fledglings, dropped a tear, and saying "I have the feelings of a mother myself," sat down upon the brood. This is precisely what England representing the Nineteenth century is doing in Thirteenth century West Africa. She destroys the guardian institution, drops a tear and sits upon the brood with motherly intentions; and pesky warm sitting she finds it, what with the nature of the brood and the surrounding climate, let alone the expense of it. And what profit she is going to get out of such proceedings there, I own I don't know. "Ah!" you say, "yes, it is sad, but it is inevitable." I do not think it is inevitable, unless you have no intellectual constructive Statecraft, and are merely in that line an automaton. If you will try Science, all the evils of the clash between the two culture periods could be avoided, and you could assist

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 these West Africans in their Thirteenth century state to rise into their Nineteenth century state without their having the hard fight for it that you yourself had. This would be a grand humanitarian bit of work; by doing it you would raise a monument before God to the honour of England such as no nation has ever yet raised to Him on Earth.

There is absolutely no perceivable sound reason why you should not do it if you will try Science and master the knowledge of the nature of the native and his country. The knowledge of native laws, religion, institutions, and State-form would give you the knowledge of what is good in these things, so that you might develop and encourage them; and the West African, having reached a Thirteenth century state, has institutions and laws which with a strengthening from the European hand would by their operation now stamp out the evil that exists under the native state. What you are doing now, however, is the direct contrary to this: you are destroying the good portion and thereby allowing what is evil, or imperfect, in it as in all things human, to flourish under your protection far more rankly than under the purely native Thirteenth century State-form, with Fetish as a state religion, it could possibly do.

I know, however, there is one great objection to your taking up a different line towards native races to that which you are at present following. It is one of those strange things that are in men's minds almost without their knowing they are there, yet which, nevertheless, rule them. This is the idea that those Africans are, as one party would say, steeped in sin, or, as another party would say, a lower or degraded race. While you think these things, you must act as you are acting. They really are the same idea in different clothes. They both presuppose all mankind to

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 with opium "joints." There are a good many more outside of it than in it. The celestials do not monopolize the pipe. In Mott Street there is no need of them. Not a Chinese home or burrow there, but has its bunk and its lay-out, where they can be enjoyed safe from police interference. The Chinaman smokes opium as Caucasians smoke tobacco, and apparently with little worse effect upon himself. But woe unto the white victim upon which his pitiless drug gets its grip!

The bloused pedlars who, with arms buried half to the elbow in their trousers' pockets, lounge behind their stock of watermelon seed and sugar-cane, cut in lengths to suit the purse of the buyer, disdain to offer the barbarian their wares. Chinatown, that does most things by contraries, rules it holiday style to carry its hands in its pockets, and its denizens follow the fashion, whether in blue blouse, in gray, or in brown, with shining and braided pig-tail dangling below the knees, or with hair cropped short above a coat collar of "Melican" cut. All kinds of men are met, but no women—none at least with almond eyes. The reason is simple: there are none. A few, a very few, Chinese merchants have wives of their own color, but they are seldom or never seen in the street. The "wives" of Chinatown are of a different stock that comes closer home.

From the teeming tenements to the right and left of it come the white slaves of its dens of vice and their infernal drug, that have infused into the "Bloody Sixth" Ward a subtler poison than ever the stale-beer dives knew, or the "sudden death" of the Old Brewery. There are houses, dozens of them, in Mott and Pell Streets, that are literally jammed, from the "joint" in the cellar to the attic, with these hapless victims of a passion which, once

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