Indian colony-that is to say, that there is in the minds of domiciled Europeans nothing answering to the hostility and contempt toward black and coloured people which is boasted by many spokesmen of white folk in the Southern States of America and prevalent now in South Africa; or that there is not, conversely, a latent jealousy of and hostility towards the 'buckra' in the temperament of the black and coloured which may lend itself on occasions to the inflammatory excitement of a cry of colour for colour, race for race.' Such prejudice, however, does not appear on the surface, and such as there is is unquestionably diminishing. It is strongest on both sides in the women and on the woman's side of life.

"But though in Jamaica and in other West Indian colonies there may be in general social and professional relations no barrier against intermixture, there is beyond question an aversion on the part of white creoles to intermarriage with coloured families, and this aversion may, I think, be relied upon, at any rate for a long time to come, to check, in practice, any such obliteration of race distinctions as is foreboded by negrophobists in the United States as the necessary result of the admission of social equality.

"It is true that in these colonies you will occasionally find Creoles of mixed race in good positions married to ladies of pure European blood. But, as a rule, such marriages will not have been made in the colony, but in England, where there is less sensibility on such matters. Again, you will find men of pure European extraction and good position with Creole wives of mixed race, though perhaps not without special information to be identified as such, nor disposed to be so identified. Moreover, in the lower social ranks of employees in stores, so far as these are recruited from Europe, such mixed marriages may frequently be met with.

"On the whole, however, it does not appear to me that admission to social and professional equality, when resulting from compatibility of temperament and interests, does, in fact, conduce necessarily or strongly to likelihood of intermarriage:

at any rate of frequent and habitual and unhesitating intermarriage.

"I myself began my connection with the West Indies under the prejudices of the theory of the degeneracy of the offspring of interbreeding, which was commoner, perhaps, at that time, in the writings of anthropologists than it is now; but I have found myself unable to establish any judgment on the facts in support of any such sweeping generalisation. The effects of a first cross are no doubt constitutionally disturbing and many persons of mixed origin are of poor physique. But the phthisis and other diseases from which they suffer are equally common among the West Indian negro population of apparently pure African blood, and arise among these from the overcrowding of dwellings, bad nutrition, insanitary habits, and other preventaable causes. There may naturally be aversion on the part of and a strong social objection on behalf of the white woman against her marriage with a black or coloured man. There is no corresponding strong instinctive aversion, nor is there so strong an ostensible social objection, to a white man's marrying a woman of mixed descent: the latter kind of union is much more likely to occur than the former. There is good biological reason for this distinction. Whatever the potentialities of the African stocks as a vehicle for human manifestation, and I myself believe them to be, like those of the Russian people, exceedingly important and valuable-a matrix of emotional and spiritual energy that have yet to find their human expression in suitably adapted forms-the white races are now in fact by far the further advanced in effectual human development, and it would be expedient on this account alone that their maternity should be economised to the utmost. A woman may be the mother of a limited number of children, and our notion of the number advisable is contracting: it is bad natural economy, and instinct very potently opposes it, to breed backwards. from her. There is no such reason against the begetting of children by white men in countries where, if they are to breed at all, it must be with women of coloured or mixed race. The

offspring of such breeding, whether legitimate or illegitimate, is, from the point of view of efficiency, an acquisition to the community, and, under favourable conditions, an advance on the pure-bred African. For notwithstanding all that it may be possible to adduce in justification of that prejudice against the mixed race, of which I have spoken, and which I have myself fully shared, I am convinced that this class as it at present exists is a valuable and indispensable part of any West Indian community, and that a colony of black, coloured, and whites has far more organic efficiency and far more promise in it than a colony of black and white alone. A community of white and black alone is in far greater danger of remaining, so far as the unofficial classes are concerned, a community of employers and serfs, concessionaires and tributaries, with, at best, a bureaucracy to keep the peace between them. The graded mixed class in Jamaica helps to make an organic whole of the community and saves it from this distinct cleavage.

"A very significant light is thrown on the psychology of colour prejudice in mixed communities by the fact that, in the whites, it is stronger against the coloured than against the black. I believe this is chiefly because the coloured intermediate class do form such a bridge as I have described, and undermine, or threaten to undermine, the economic and social ascendency of the white, hitherto the dominant aristocracy of these communities. This jealousy or indignation is much more pungent than the alleged natural instinct of racial aversion.

"The status of such blended communities among human societies may not be high, but the white man has, in fact, created them, and continues to do so, and whatever undesirable characteristics, moral or physical, may be accentuated by interbreeding, it is certain that, from the point of view of social vitality and efficiency, it is not the mixed coloured class, if any, that is decadent in Jamaica. Where, therefore, we have created and are developing a community of diverse races, I cannot, in the light of British West Indian conditions, admit that interbreeding is necessarily an evil. I think, rather, that where we

have such a community we had better make up our mind not only not to despise the offspring of the illicit interbreeding that invariably takes place in such conditions, but to make our account of a certain amount of legitimate and honourable interbreeding and to look upon it not as an evil but as an advantage. We need not be much afraid that those persons, the race purity of whose offspring it is essential for the world to maintain, are going to plunge into a cataract of mixed matrimony. Such a development is not at all probable."

APPENDIX H

THE DUTCH ISLANDS

THE Dutch Antilles are of little importance viewed commercially. The largest of the islands, Curaçao, has only an area of 550 square kilometres and is almost without agriculture; foreign trade would be almost non-existent were it not for the transit facilities with the nearby Venezuelan ports. The population of the inhabitants of the Dutch islands is estimated at sixty thousand. It is not an underestimate. The islanders figure in the tables of foreign commerce with their exports of so-called Panama hats and with frequent invoices of orange peels which in Holland are manufactured into the muchprized Curaçao liqueur. The total business of the islands amounts to about one million six hundred thousand dollars, and it is not on the increase. The revenue obtained is a little under one million, and there is a small annual deficit in the budget. The administration of the islands is beyond all praise, as is indeed the case with all the Dutch colonial possessions. Expenditures for the year 1910 amounted to 6,738,174 guilders and local revenue to 5,815,588. The deficit of 922,586 guilders was covered, as usual, by a subvention from the home government.

APPENDIX I

THE FRENCH ISLANDS

NOTE I

MORE eloquently than by words the decadence of the French Antilles is told in the following commercial statistics taken from the official publications of the French Colonial Office:

COMMERCE OF MARTINIQUE

The situation in Guadeloupe is still more disastrous. Competent observers seem to agree that there are not half a dozen plantations on the island which are not mortgaged far beyond their present market value. Under these circumstances it is quite natural that the Colonial Land Bank,-Crédit Foncier Colonial,-should decline to make any further large advances.

There is one hopeful symptom of the otherwise dark situation in Guadeloupe which in the coming years presents a chance however slight, but still a chance, of salvation. Without the financial resources which they once had, and which are still unpaid, to a limited extent at least by the planters of Martinique, the landowners of Guadeloupe are eliminating their sugar cane and are planting cacao and coffee.