It is impossible to read the White Paper recently published on the subject of slavery in the West African dominions of Portugal without coming to the conclusion that the discussion has been allowed to degenerate into a rather unseemly wrangle between the Foreign Office officials and the Anti-Slavery Society.  There is always a considerable risk that this will happen when enthusiasts and officials are brought into contact with each other.  On the one hand, the enthusiasts in any great cause are rather prone to let their emotions dominate their reason, to generalise on somewhat imperfect data, and occasionally to fall unwittingly into making statements of fact which, if not altogether incorrect, are exaggerated or partial.  On the other hand, there is a disposition on the part of officials to push to an excess Sir Arthur Helps’s dictum that most of the evils of the world arise from inaccuracy, and to surround all enthusiasts with one general atmosphere of profound mistrust.  An old official may perhaps be allowed to say, without giving offence, that, quite apart from the nobility and moral worth of the issue at stake, it is, from the point of view of mere worldly wisdom, a very great error to adopt this latter attitude.  There are enthusiasts and enthusiasts.  It is probably quite useless for an anti-suffragist or a supporter of vivisection to endeavour to meet half-way a militant suffragist or a whole-hearted anti-vivisectionist.  In these cases the line of cleavage is too marked to admit of compromise, and still less of co-operation.  But the case is very different if the matter under discussion is the suppression of slavery.  Here it may readily be admitted that both the enthusiasts and the officials, although they may differ in opinion as to the methods which should be adopted, are honestly striving to attain the same objects.  The Anti-Slavery Society, and those who habitually work with them, have performed work of which their countrymen are very justly proud.  But they are not infallible.  It is quite right that the accuracy of any statements which they make should be carefully tested by whatever means exist for testing them.  For instance, when the Society of Friends[105] say that they are in possession of “first-hand information” to show that “atrocities” are being committed in the Portuguese dominions, the Foreign Office is obviously justified in asking them to state on what evidence this formidable accusation is founded, and when it appears that they cannot produce “exactly the kind of evidence as to ‘atrocities’ which would strengthen your (i.e. the British Government’s) hands in any protest made by you to the Portuguese Government,” it is not unnatural that the officials should be somewhat hardened in their belief that humanitarian testimony has to be accepted with caution.  It would obviously be much wiser for the humanitarians to recognise that incorrect statements, or sweeping generalisations which are incapable of proof, do their cause more harm than good.