This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
860
WEST AFRICA

cially those in the higher and more experienced grades, can, as a rule, remain in the West African service, robs the Administration of the fruits of accumulated experience, and continually dislocates the machinery and introduces changes which militate against efficiency and a steady advance. There is, in my belief, a perfectly feasible way in which this difficulty might be overcome, and which would tend to the great advantage of both of the two branches of tropical administration which I have indicated; but in the position which I at present hold it is not fitting for me to propound schemes which have not as yet the entire approval of the Secretary of State, nor would space permit of my doing so here.

I am convinced that one of the questions which will most occupy thought in the twentieth century will be the development of the tropics, and the solution of the twin problems which (as I have said) it involves, and I am confident that the genius of our race will be among the first to recognise the growing, and, indeed, already vital, importance to civilization of the raw products of the tropics, with the necessity for organizing the industry of its teeming millions and promoting their welfare on well-considered lines of policy, and that we shall solve its difficulties, whether by one method or another, as we have ever done in the past.