crease. The Expenditure was 237,8921. The total value of the imports for 1904 was 717,2361., an increase of 16,410l. over 1903, and the exports 484,870l. as against 418,6311. Great Britain took 37.7 per cent. of the exports. The armed force consisted of 17 officers and 527 men (West Africa Frontier Force). The hut tax in the Protectorate was peaceably collected. The traffic on the railway was increasing. The Government report says that it is on the development of the Protectorate that the commercial prosperity of Sierra Leone depends and on the making of roads as feeders to the railway. Palm kernels and rubber will thus find easier access to the coast; and in these commodities the Protectorate is rich. The Protectorate is governed as far as possible through the native chiefs and by native laws where these are not repugnant to human justice. The "Human Leopard Society" is not yet extinct. During 1904 twenty-eight persons were convicted of murder in connection with crimes carried out by this organisation.

The Gold Coast continues to progress, and during the year it was arranged between the Joint West African Committees of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce and the Colonial Office to survey for a new line from Accra into the interior. Other public works in contemplation are a harbour at Accra, with a breakwater and a jetty, thus doing away with landing by means of surf boats. The construction of waterworks in Accra is also to be proceeded with. The Revenue in 1904 was 647,6431., including 20,000l. grant-in-aid from the Imperial Government for the administration of the Northern Territories. This Revenue was the largest yet received. The exports in 1904 were of the value of 1,340,0267., an increase of 90,817. over 1903. The gold yield for the first six months of 1905 was estimated at 300,6177. The Government railway earned 148,0971. in 1904, and the expenses were 61.67 per cent. of the earnings. The boundaries are now all settled and the population of the northern territories is believed to be increasing. There were no internal disorders of moment.

The French Ivory Coast Colony is also progressive. The imports in 1904 were of the value of 737,3231., and the exports 435,6081., the abnormal imports being due to railway construction. The Customs receipts were 98,4651., as against 75,8771. in 1903. There were about 500 Europeans in the Colony. The natives appeared to be submissive, and since the pacification of the Boulé and Agba districts French administration had been successful.

In the German Cameroons there was some trouble, two traders and an official being murdered in May and factories plundered, and an expedition had to be despatched into the hinterland. In Portuguese West Africa, contiguous to German territory, the Kuanjamas revolted in July and cleared out several villages by massacre. Three French missionaries were captured but allowed to escape.

Liberia continues in a bankrupt and backward condition. A Franco-Liberian Commission is delimiting frontiers, and European control of the country is sooner or later inevitable. It is stated that the only part of its revenue which the Liberian Government has not yet mortgaged is the sale of postage stamps.

The news from the Congo Free State during the year showed that the Government was overhauling its administration as the result of recent disclosures. Early in the year a Sultan in the Welle district rebelled, and an expeditionary force of 1,000 was sent against him. It succeeded in suppressing the trouble. Hostilities were reported from various other districts, and the result of one expedition was the defeat and death of the Sultan of Jabir, who had for many years given much trouble to the State.

The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the alleged maladministration in the Congo Free State was issued in November, signed by all three members, Dr. Edmond Janssens, M. Advocate-General of the Brussels Appeal Court (President); Baron Nisco, President of the Boma Appeal Court; and M. de Schumacher, a Swiss jurist. Its tone was distinctly friendly to the Government of the State, and at its close the Commissioners expressed their wish to place on record their sense of the great benefits of civilisation which had been secured to the inhabitants of an immense territory. They spoke of the suppression-complete or approximate of the slave trade, of cannibalism and of human sacrifices, and the extensive establishment of railways, steamers, and telegraphs, of the development of an important trading city at Leopoldville, and of villages on the Congo recalling sea-side towns in Europe, with hospitals and schools, so that the traveller derives the impression not of crossing a continent unknown twenty-five years ago, or known to be steeped in sanguinary barbarism, but of a country long settled under the sway of European civilisation. This eulogy, however, only served to emphasise the gravity of the conclusions which the Commissioners, in the body of their Report, felt constrained to state as to the abuses from which over wide regions the natives suffered without any effective interference on the part of the Administration. They dwelt, for example, on the " crushing" (écrasant) character of the porterage corvée in certain regions where the "unfortunate populations" subjected to it-their numbers being small, and the amounts to be transported "enormous "-were "menaced with partial destruction." The op

pressions practised in regard to the collection of rubber were resolutely exposed by the Commission. These abuses, they appeared to think, had been latterly much reduced in the Domaine privé, though still not unknown there, but no such improvement could be reported in the regions exploited by certain commercial companies, and, in particular, the "A.B.I.R.," i.e., the so-called Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company. There "it was scarcely disputed that the imprisonment of female hostages" (from

villages defaulting in the amount of rubber due from them), "the subjection of chiefs from such villages to servile work, the humiliations inflicted on them, the lash given to" (defaulting) "rubber-gatherers, the brutalities of the blacks set to watch those under detention were habitually practised." Another system which the Commissioners protested against as funeste, was that of armed black "sentinels" charged with the duty of superintending the work of the rubber-gatherers in the forest or looking after them in their villages. Together with these severe though measured conclusions of the Commissioners must be mentioned their reprobation of the practice of military attacks upon villages defaulting in the amount of rubber due from them, attacks which, as the Commissioners pointed out, were, by a "deplorable confusion," sometimes reported in official documents as if they were expeditions into an enemy's country.

From the Report it clearly appeared that while the local Government had from time to time issued humane instructions, and while persons proved guilty of abuses had been punished by the Courts, especially that at Boma, the authorities, administrative and judicial, of the Congo Free State, if they had the will, certainly had not wielded the power to enforce the practice of humanity and justice on all the officials of the State, and still less upon the companies enjoying territorial concessions.

The Commissioners made a series of recommendations directed to the protection of the natives against the abuses established. King Leopold, who, on the publication of the Report, reiterated his claim to have been actuated by philanthropic rather than commercial motives in the founding and administration of the Congo State, appointed a new Commission to devise practical measures for dealing with the necessities of the case, in the light of the recommendation of the Report.

French West Africa lost in September a very able and successful explorer and administrator by the death of M. de Brazza at Daka. He had been on a mission to investigate charges of maladministration, and died on his return from the interior. He was, in effect, the creator of the French Congo, his explorations of the Ogové and successful inducement of King Makoko to put himself under the French flag, preventing the late Sir Henry Stanley, in the early eighties, from including in the Free State the country on the north shore of Stanley Pool. He had been General Commissioner of the Congo and Gaboon territories. His last great expedition was in 1891-2, when he opened up a route from the French Congo to Lake Chad.

As a result of M. de Brazza's report it was reported in France that the concessionaire system, against which British merchants had for years protested, was to be abolished, on the ground that it retards the economic development of the country. Certain public works were to be instituted, among them a railway across the Gaboon. There was considerable native trouble of the anti-European kind, and the Senegalese troops were kept in

active employment, sometimes against enormous odds, for in some districts the natives seem to have risen en masse.

The course of events in German South-West Africa, where the insurrection of the Herreros had not, though that of the Witbois had, been quelled at the close of the year, is described under Germany in Chapter II., Foreign and Colonial History, pages 287-8. It may be observed that German non-success in suppressing the native revolt is much to be regretted as tending to endanger white supremacy in Africa. Herr von Lindeguist, the new Governor of German South-West Africa, visited the Transvaal on his way to his new post, and with Lord Selborne was entertained at the German Club in Johannesburg. The High Commissioner spoke of the community of interests between German South-West and British South Africa, and it is from this standpoint that the trouble in Damaraland is regarded. Trade in the Colony is paralysed, and the possession is unlikely to be anything but a burden to Germany for years to come.

Malta.-Affairs in Malta have been quiet, the political agitation having subsided. The revenue for 1904-5 was 467,8351., and the expenditure 458,6561. The net surplus at the close of the year was 62,4421. The German Emperor visited Malta in April, and met with a respectful reception. He inspected the naval works in progress and visited the principal places in the island. The year has been a prosperous one, and the working classes were fully employed; there was indeed a shortage of labour on the breakwater and dockyard extension works. H. WHATES.

CHAPTER VIII.

AMERICA.

I. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES.

THE year 1905 wrote a new chapter in American history. Since 1898, when it took Spain's Colonies by force of arms, the United States had been an Eastern as well as a Western Power; it had had a stake in the Far East and could no longer stand aloof from the great political and social movements that centred the eyes of the world on Asia. It followed then also, almost as a matter of course, that the United States should watch with keen interest the war between Russia and Japan, and that when the opportunity presented itself President Roosevelt should offer his services to bring about peace. It was at his invitation that the Peace Conference was held in the United States. It was the first time in American history that a Conference to which the United States was not a party had been held on American soil. This, more than anything else, emphasised the new place of the United States in the family of nations. It was an ad

mission on its part, no less than on that of the rest of the world, that what affected the rest of the world affected it in no less degree.

Immediately after the battle that destroyed the last vestige of Russia's sea power, President Roosevelt began cautious inquiries to ascertain if the belligerents would consent to discuss terms of peace. Both sides proved responsive, and on June 8 a despatch was sent by the President, through diplomatic channels, to the Japanese and Russian Governments, expressing his feeling that the time had come when in the interests of all mankind he must endeavour to see if it was not possible to bring to an end the terrible and lamentable conflict then being waged. With both Russia and Japan the United States had inherited ties of friendship and goodwill; and the President urged the Russian and Japanese Governments, not only for their own sakes, but in the interest of the whole civilised world, to open direct negotiations for peace with each other. While he did not feel that any intermediary should be called in, in respect to the peace negotiations themselves, he expressed himself entirely willing to do what he properly could, if the two Powers concerned felt that his services would be of aid in arranging the preliminaries as to the time and place of meeting.

After an interchange of views as to the place where the Conference should meet, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was finally selected, and a large building in the Government dockyard was set apart for the use of the plenipotentiaries. Before coming to Portsmouth they made a call of ceremony on the President, who was at his summer home, Oyster Bay, New York. There, on August 5, on board the Government yacht Mayflower, the plenipotentiaries were introduced to each other by the President, who entertained them at luncheon and drank to the prosperity of both nations and to the conclusion of a just and lasting peace between them.

The year was also made memorable by an attempt on the part of the President further to extend the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. On February 7 the Minister Resident of the United States, accredited to the Dominican Republic, signed a protocol with the Dominican Secretary of State of Foreign Relations by which the United States agreed to adjust the obligations of the Dominican Government, foreign as well as domestic. In order to do this the United States was authorised to take charge of the Custom houses, name the employés necessary to their management, and collect and take charge of all receipts. Out of the revenues collected 45 per cent. was to be paid to the Dominican Government to meet the needs of the public service, and the balance was to be applied to the payment of interest on, and liquidation of, the Dominican debt. It was further provided that no change should be made in the duties and taxes of the Republic without the consent of the President of the United States,