The Ti»tes of Monday publishes a letter from "a well-
informed correspondent" in Mauritius which states that we have by no means heard the last of Madagascar. The French, he says, have sent out so great an army of officials that the fonctionnaires far outnumber the civil population, "and they are making themselves beloved of none." The law allows one month's forced labour, but the officials are en- forcing as much as six months, so the labourers have taken to the bush, and private employers cannot get hands to work for them. "The taxes are oppressive, and in some cases down- right foolish—e.g., an annual tax on every head of cattle and every hectare of rice cultivated. The result is that the cattle are being slaughtered so that beef is already scarce and dear, whilst rice, which was formerly exported, has now to be im- ported. The natives are cutting down the indiarabber trees' and the whole country is unsettled." The correspondent goes on to tell how a fonctiortnaire used his power to force "the twelve-year-old daughter of a chief to live with him as his concubine," how nine or ten officials have been killed, and how people fear a general massacre if France goes to war. A few years ago we could have said, and said truly, that nothing of this kind could be said of any part of the British Empire. Now, however, thanks to what has happened in Rhodesia, we have little right to speak of French misdeeds. There we allowed forced labour to be introduced, the oxen to be seized, and the natives to be so mismanaged that a rising and massacre did actually take place. We had better not talk of Madagascar till we have expiated our own crimes in Rhodesia.
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