and that is the question of forced labour. We cannot tolerate any
possibilities of the enslavement of black Africa. Long ago the United
States found out the impossibility of having slave labour working in the
same system with white. To cure that anomaly cost the United States a
long and bloody war. The slave-owner, the exploiter of the black,
becomes a threat and a nuisance to any white democracy. He brings back
his loot to corrupt Press and life at home. What happened in America in
the midst of the last century between Federals and Confederates must not
happen again on a larger scale between white Europe and middle Africa.
Slavery in Africa, open or disguised, whether enforced by the lash or
brought about by iniquitous land-stealing, strikes at the home and
freedom of every European worker--_and Labour knows this_.

But how are we to prevent the enslavement and economic exploitation of
the blacks if we have no general watcher of African conditions? We want
a common law for Africa, a general Declaration of Rights, of certain
elementary rights, and we want a common authority to which the black man
and the native tribe may appeal for justice. What is the good of trying
to elevate the population of Uganda and to give it a free and hopeful
life if some other population close at hand is competing against the
Baganda worker under lash and tax? So here is a third aspect of our
international Commission, as a native protectorate and court of appeal!

There is still a fourth aspect of the African question in which every
mother's son in Europe is closely interested, and that is the trade
question. Africa is the great source of many of the most necessary raw
materials upon which our modern comforts and conveniences depend; more
particularly is it the source of cheap fat in the form of palm oil. One
of the most powerful levers in the hands of the Allied democracies at
the present time in their struggle against the imperial brigands of