parties concerned are worse off than they were before the experiment was started. It may be said: "But a native industry can also fail." It can, undoubtedly. A virulent disease may, for example, sweep the native cocoa farms in the Gold Coast to ruin; or production may at a given moment so exceed demand that prices will fall below the figure at which the native finds it worth his while to plant cocoa, or even keep his plantations in existence. A phenomenon of the latter kind occurred some time ago in connection with the Sierra Leone coffee industry, which never, however, attained large proportions. The native population may be temporarily inconvenienced. Its purchasing power, expressed in terms of European merchandise, will rapidly fall. But an event which would cause widespread distress and unemployment, almost amounting to an economic catastrophe necessitating measures of government relief, among a population divorced from its land, leaves no permanent impression upon a population which remains in possession of the land. The land is turned to other uses, that is all. The people grow more remunerative crops. For a time they may even confine themselves to putting an increased area under food cultivation. So long as the people possess the land, they may suffer a diminution of their externally acquired wealth by such an adverse tide of fortune. But their existence and their future are secure. They can live, and they can prosper.
No one wishes to stultify European enterprise in the African tropics. But just as Europe is beginning to perceive that the unequal distribution of communally produced wealth is at the bottom of the preventible social misery identified with what is called "civilisation," so has the time arrived when a concensus of experienced opinion in Europe might be expected to recognise that the form which European enterprise assumes in the tropical regions of the earth, must adapt itself to local conditions. Tropical Western Africa needs the assistance which Europe is able to give to its peoples and to its economic development in the shape of railways, good roads, improved waterways, harbours, ocean and river craft, technical instruction, internal security, medical and sanitary services. It needs the European-trained administrator, the merchant, or the buyer for the European manufacturer, the engineer, forestry officer,
