ical policies to be followed out in
the government of the new states should involve a thorough and complete
system of modern education, built upon the present government, religion,
and customary laws of the natives. There should be no violent tampering
with the curiously efficient African institutions of local
self-government through the family and the tribe; there should be no
attempt at sudden "conversion" by religious propaganda. Obviously
deleterious customs and unsanitary usages must gradually be abolished,
but the general government, set up from without, must follow the example
of the best colonial administrators and build on recognized, established
foundations rather than from entirely new and theoretical plans.

The real effort to modernize Africa should be through schools rather
than churches. Within ten years, twenty million black children ought to
be in school. Within a generation young Africa should know the essential
outlines of modern culture and groups of bright African students could
be going to the world's great universities. From the beginning the
actual general government should use both colored and white officials
and later natives should be worked in. Taxation and industry could
follow the newer ideals of industrial democracy, avoiding private land
monopoly and poverty, and promoting co-operation in production and the
socialization of income. Difficulties as to capital and revenue would be
far less than many imagine. If a capable English administrator of
British Nigeria could with $1,500 build up a cocoa industry of twenty
million dollars annually, what might not be done in all Africa, without
gin, thieves, and hypocrisy?

Capital could not only be accumulated in Africa, but attracted from the
white world, with one great difference from present usage: no return so
fabulous would be offered that civilized lands would be tempted to
divert to colonial trade and invest materials and labor needed by the
masses at home, but rather would receive the same modest profits as
legitimate home industry offers.

There is no sense in asserting that the ideal of an African State, thus
governed and directed toward independence and self-government, is
impossible of realization. The first great essential is that the
civilized world believe in its possibility. By reason of a crime
(perhaps the greatest crime in human history) the modern world has been
systematically taught to despise colored peoples. Men of education