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 Potsdam is the complete control we have now obtained over these essential supplies.  We can, if we choose, cut off Germany altogether from these vital economic necessities, if she does not consent to abandon militant imperialism for some more civilized form of government.  We hope that this war will end in that renunciation, and that Germany will re-enter the community of nations.  But whether that is so or not, whether Germany is or is not to be one of the interested parties in the African solution, the fact remains that it is impossible to contemplate a continuing struggle for the African raw material supply between the interested Powers.  Sooner or later that means a renewal of war.  International trade rivalry is, indeed, only war—­smouldering.  We need, and Labour demands, a fair, frank treatment of African trade, and that can only be done by some overriding regulative power, a Commission which, so far as I can see, might also be the same Commission as that we have already hypothesized as being necessary to control the Customs in order to prevent gun-running and the gin trade.  That Commission might very conveniently have a voice in the administration of the great waterways of Africa (which often run through the possessions of several Powers) and in the regulation of the big railway lines and air routes that will speedily follow the conclusion of peace.

Now this I take it is the gist of the Labour proposal.  This—­and no more than this—­is what is intended by the “international control of tropical Africa.” I do not read that phrase as abrogating existing sovereignties in Africa.  What is contemplated is a delegation of authority.  Every one should know, though unhappily the badness of our history teaching makes it doubtful if every one does know, that the Federal Government of the United States of America did not begin as a sovereign Government, and has now only a very questionable sovereignty.  Each State was sovereign, and each State delegated certain powers to Washington.  That was the initial idea of the union.  Only later did the idea of a people of the States as a whole emerge.  In the same way I understand the Labour proposal as meaning that we should delegate to an African Commission the middle African Customs, the regulation of inter-State trade, inter-State railways and waterways, quarantine and health generally, and the establishment of a Supreme Court for middle African affairs.  One or two minor matters, such as the preservation of rare animals, might very well fall under the same authority.