the interpreter as signifying their utmost willingness to be embarked.”  If this statement is correct, it is in itself almost sufficient to satisfy the most severe condemnation of the whole system heretofore adopted.  It is, indeed, impossible to read the evidence adduced in the White Paper without coming to the conclusion that, whatever may be the case at present, the system of recruiting in the past has not differed materially from the slave trade.  If this be the case, it is clear that, in spite of any legal technicalities to the contrary, the great majority of labourers now serving under contract in the islands should, for all purposes of repatriation and the acquisition of freedom, be placed on a precisely similar footing to those whose contracts have expired.  There can be no moral justification whatever for taking advantage of the engagements into which they may have entered to keep them in what is practically a condition of servitude.

Recently, certain improvements appeared to have been made in the system of recruiting.  Mr. Smallbones states his “impression that the present Governor-General will do all in his power to put the recruiting of native labour on a sound footing.”  Moreover, that some change has taken place, and that the labourers are alive to the fact that they have certain rights, would appear evident from the fact that Vice-Consul Fussell, writing from Lobito on September 15, 1912, reports that “the authorities appear unable to oblige natives to contract themselves.”  It is not, however, clear that all the changes are in the right direction.  Formerly, M. Carlos de Silva says, “There was at least a slight guarantee that ‘servicaes’ were not shipped against their wishes in the fact that they had to contract in the presence of a curator in this (i.e. the Angola) colony.”  Now this guarantee has been removed.  The contracts may be made in San Thome before the local guardian, and Mr. Smallbones, although he is, without doubt, quite right in thinking that “the best guarantee against abuses will lie in the choice of the recruiting officials, and the way in which their operations are controlled,” adds the somewhat ominous remark that the object of the change has been to “override the refusal of a curator in Angola to contract certain ‘servicaes’ should the Governor-General consider that refusal unreasonable or inexpedient.”  Sir Edward Grey very naturally drew attention to this point.  “It is obvious,” he wrote to Sir Arthur Hardinge, “that a labourer once in San Thome can be much more easily coerced into accepting his lot than if the contract is publicly made in Angola before he leaves the mainland.”  It cannot be said that the answer he received from M. Texeira Gomes was altogether complete or satisfactory.  All the latter would say was that Colonel Wyllie, who had lately returned from San Thome, had never heard of any case of a labourer signing a contract after he had arrived in the island.

All, therefore, that can at present be said on this branch of the question is that the evils of the recruiting system which has been so far adopted are abundantly clear, that the Portuguese Government is endeavouring to improve that system, but that it would as yet be premature to pronounce any opinion on the results which are likely to be obtained.