ling with the Kaffir Wars, and sketching the conditions leading
up to the grant of a liberal constitution. It returns to the District
of Natal from 1845 to 1857, discusses the creation of the Orange River
Sovereignty, the abandonment of the Sovereignty, and the events north
of the Vaal, in the South African Republic and Orange Free State from
1854 to 1857. In these last chapters the author brings out more
prominently than elsewhere the conflict between the whites and the
blacks, the correlated problems arising therefrom, and measures
brought forward to solve them. The reader easily learns that the
handling of the question in South Africa has not been very different
from the method of attack in the United States. The South African
method has, in some respects, been more cruel than that of the United
States.

J. O. BURKE.

* * * * *

_Native Life in South Africa, before and since the European War and
the Boer Rebellion._ By SOLOMON T. PLAATJE. P.S. King and Son, Ltd.,
London, 1916. Pp. 352.

Mr. Plaatje is a South African native, educated near Barkly West at a
mission school. He later studied languages and served as an
interpreter for important officials such as Duke of Connaught and Mr.
Chamberlain. He later rose to a position of some importance in the
Department of Native Affairs. He once edited a paper called _Koranta
ea Becoana_. He is now the editor of the _Tsala ea Batho_ (the
People's Friend). Although treating of questions concerning the
oppression of his people, his writings have been marked by moderation
and common sense. He is not an agitator, not a firebrand, and can,
therefore, be read with profit. Rather resenting the power of the
uneducated chiefs who rule by virtue of their birth alone, Mr. Plaatje
belongs to a new school of thought. He is making a new appeal for the
native.

Mr. Plaatje modestly disclaims any pretension to literary merit. He is
merely giving a "sincere narrative of a melancholy situation, in
which, with all its shortcomings," he "has endeavored to describe the
difficulties of South African natives under a very strange law, so as
most readily to be understood by the sympathetic reader." The author
had access to sources from which he obtained the facts presented. He
has made personal observations in the Transvaal, Orange Free State and
the Province of the Cape of Good Hope. He used other facts collected
by Attorney Msi