atively mild exhilarant character, introduces the
undisciplined native mind to the furious joys of trade fire-water.

Africa is the main battle-ground between Moslem and missionary, for it
is in that continent that the forces of Islam and Christianity are most
nearly balanced. The American Protestant Mission, which is, as we have
seen, one of the principal belligerents, complains loudly on behalf of
Christendom that in Africa especially our colonial administrations do
not give the support to Christian missions that Christian Governments
should.

Apart from the fact that we administer these countries in trust for
their indigenous population and have no right to thrust our own creed
upon them to the exclusion of any other with a sound system of ethics,
it can most cogently be urged that Islam is the only religion which
insists on total abstinence, and that seems to be the only way in which
the native African can avoid alcoholic excess.

I have in front of me a letter written by an American of Boston, Mass.,
to the _Spectator_ of February 15th, 1919. In it he alludes to a report
of the Committee for preventing the demoralisation of native races by
the liquor traffic which is said to be "making Africa a cesspool of
alcohol, and statistics show that in this devil's work Holland with her
gin and, I regret to say, the United States with its trade rum have been
the conspicuously worst offenders." The writer goes on to say that the
native races are morally and intellectually children, and that has been
recognised in the States where it is a penal offence to introduce
alcoholic drink within the Indian reservations.

This being so, the attitude of American Protestants in attacking the
only teetotal creed which is working among natives in a continent where
total abstinence is unanimously declared to be essential to native
welfare indicates loose thinking. It is still more extraordinary when we
remember that the teetotal party in the United States have moved heaven
and earth and every device, legitimate or otherwise, to secure national
prohibition, about which, to put it mildly, there appear to be two
opinions among American citizens. We are told that the South adopted
prohibition as a measure of protection against the negro. Apart from the
safety of white colonists in Africa, is the welfare of African negroes
beneath the consideration of a free-born American? If so, why does he
(or she) subscribe so liberally to support missions