5 FEBRUARY 1910, Page 29

SOME BOOKS OF THE WIIEK.

[Under this heading we notice such, Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.]

Mr William Cadbury publishes, with an added chapter, a new edition of his Labour in Portuguese West Africa (G. Routledge and Sons, 2s. (3d. net). In this new chapter he carries on the story of the matter down to November, 1909. It cannot be considered satisfactory. Recruiting was suspended by decree in July; but this seems not to have prevented the landing of additional labourers. And in the legislation itself there are serious defects, even should it be carried out, a contingency in which no one who knows the diameter of Portuguese administration will implicitly believe. No provision is made for the return of large classes. Married labourers under contracts made at various dates—this is the rule rather than the exception—must stay for their whole lives: children born on plantations are still doomed, as they were before, to permanent slavery. There is but one way of dealing with slavery,—end it at once.