will help to recall them. Public opinion does not appreciate how great are the evils which are being perpetrated in many regions of Africa to-day; nor the graver evils which loom threateningly upon the African horizon. It ought to do so, for the honour and the interest alike of the white peoples are directly involved—particularly in those European States which are governing States in Africa. This book may assist in the diffusion of that necessary knowledge.
It does not profess to be a connected history of Europe's dealings with Africa. There are many such histories, and they serve their object more or less well. But their object, in the main, is to recount the exploits of Europeans in Africa, many of them worthy of admiration. Mine is to show the sufferings which Europe has inflicted upon Africa. To have attempted a comprehensive survey of Europe's relations with Africa from that point of view in a volume of this size, would not, I think, have left any very definite impression upon the average reader's mind. I have, therefore, adopted the method of selection. Apart from a chapter on the Slave Trade, indispensable to my main purpose, I have sectionalised the determining impulses to which European intervention in Africa has responded, and I have provided specific examples under each section. Each example thus constitutes a complete story in itself. This method of treatment may serve to create a really living interest in the subject and to arrest attention, where the alternative method might have failed. At least that is the author's hope.
A subsidiary purpose of the volume is to impress the reader with the remarkable manner in which the political history of Europe during the past half century has been affected by the reflex action upon European affairs of the proceedings of European Governments in Africa. Those
