It is a source of great pleasure to me, as it must be to all our friends here, that we are once again able to meet in an International Conference after the long years of war and its aftermath. I need not speak of what the War has meant to national welfare or the private lives of many here. But it was inevitable that it should have gravely affected the progress of the cultural studies to which this Institute is devoted, not merely because it has made so serious an interruption in their pursuit, but because it has for a time severed the international contacts and broken up the intellectual partnerships on which much of the vitality of our work depended. Even to-day, it is not easy to foresee the time when some of these partnerships can be resumed in their old form, much as we might ourselves hope that changes in national relations should not be an obstacle to association in the field of cultural studies.

When discussing the political development of the African it is important to ask whether in his social organization there is a sufficiently strong element of popular participation in government to form a basis for modern democratic institutions. Another question is, to what extent the present system of colonial government (which for the sake of convenience, I shall call Indirect Rule, without analysing the various meanings and application of the term) gives free play to such democratic institutions as may already exist. In this article, an attempt is made to answer these two questions, so far as they apply to Basutoland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The position in the latter territory has recently been referred to by two writers when dealing with the second question and, as their findings were almost diametrically opposed, a detailed analysis of the position will not be out of place.

Pour bien comprendre le problème du mariage chrétien en AOF, il est nécessaire de bien situer la place de l'individu et de la femme, d'une part dans la société païenne, et d'autre part dans la société chrétienne.

La société païenne a comme élément fondamental et comme cadre, tout à la fois, la collectivité familiale patriarcale (ou matriarcale). Cette collectivité familiale n'a pas constitué son organisation en vue du bien direct et immédiat de l'individu, c'est au contraire toute l'activité de l'individu qui se trouve ordonnée en vue du bien supérieur de cette collectivité. L'individu adulte ne fonde pas une famille nouvelle qui aura sa vie propre et son indépendance, car la famille patriarcale qui l'englobe, la seule famille qui compte, existait bien avant l'individu. Elle prend son origine dans un passé lointain, plus ou moins mythologique, et son avenir est sans limite. C'est cette collectivité patriarcale qui possède seule une personnalité complète, au point d'absorber largement celle des individus, aussi peut-on dire que les individus ne sont plus que les organes ou les instruments de cette personnalité complexe. Les intérêts de la collectivité dominent les intérêts de l'individu et en cas de conflit, ce sont toujours-les intérêts de ce dernier qui sont écartés.

French West Africa is the largest political grouping in tropical Africa, but the population is comparatively thin. In the area of nearly 1,800,000 square miles, stretching from Senegal to the Niger and Dahomey colonies, there are less than 15 million inhabitants; whereas the British colony of Nigeria has an area of roughly 370,000 square miles, but over 19 million inhabitants. Protestant missionary work is weak in French West Africa, compared with its strength in British territories, partly owing to the historic weakness of the French Reformed Churches, together with the difficulties experienced by English-speaking missionaries, which have given Protestant missions a very inferior place to Roman Catholicism.