28 MAY 1892, Page 3

A spirited affair has occurred in West Africa. A Negro

tribe, -the Jebus, who have acquired a number of Snider% have been giving trouble to Lagos, and a force of coloured troops, com- manded by English officers, was sent against them. They found the Jebus, seven thousand strong, posted in an almost impregnable position behind a river, but crossed it under a " withering " fire, in which four men were killed and forty- two wounded. The attack cowed the Jebus, who fled, leaving, it is believed, four hundred killed and wounded. Their chief town submitted at once, and their " King " explained that he had all along been hostile to the war. Three English officers -were wounded in the attack. The affair is of little import- ance, but we suspect it is another illustration of the old truth that British arms are most successful when the attack is a sort of folly, to be justified only by success. No other people appears to succeed in the kind of thing, possibly because no other knows how to obtain complete devotion from coloured troops.