"AFRICA DANCES
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the review of my book, Africa Dances, your reviewer in several places calls my accuracy into question ; he has, of course, a perfect right to do so, but I think in that case he should give an accurate account of my book. As it is, he mis- represents me completely : he even makes me travel into places I never went. I never touched French Guinea, and only hurriedly crossed the Gold Coast ; most of my journey was in Senegal and Dahomey.
The question whether most Europeans in West Africa can be qualified as drunkards and most protestant missionaries as sex-obsessed is of course a question of standards : the amount of alcohol habitually consumed by the Europeans I came across would undoubtedly cause them to be considered in Europe heavy drinkers ; and the missionaries' emphasis on sexual purity for people to whom such a notion is completely foreign seems to justify the epithet I used.
But when your reviewer criticizes my account of the fetish religion in Dahomey because it :does not square with his know- ledge of the religion of Liberia, he passes the limit of fair comment. In Dahomey masks are not used ; only a portion of the population go to the " converts," which have no connexion with the " bush schools " ; and " the big bush devil " (whatever your reviewer may understand by the use of the word " devil " in connexion with African religions) is not active there. In several places I have pointed out that the fetishist religion of- Dahomey is unique- Among African religions, and qualified anthropologists have not questioned this ; consequently, it seems to me your reviewer's criticism though extremely interesting per se is hardly valid.
Some of his other strictures would hardly have been made had he read my twice-repeated caveat that I was only dis- cussing the people and places I visited : I never attempted any generalizations. Finally, the question whether the mask is a sacred thing in itself is open to much discussion : I never denied that it was fed, but suggested that it was sacred as the abode of the fetish' (T- prefer that word to " devil " with its European associations) and that it was the spirit in the object, rather than the object itself which was a subject of reverence.—I am, yours, &c.,
GEOFFREY CORER.
The Elms, Fitzroy Park, Highgate, N.6.
[Mr. Graham Greene writes : I must apologize to Mr. Gorer for my carelessness in ,stating that hi passed through French Guinea. The mistake arose, I think, through the lack of boundaries in his sketch maps. The mistake is not as im- portant as it . sounds. OU his journey across French Sudan and again in his journey up from the IvOry Coast he was often within fifty miles of the frontier of French Guinea, and these boundaries do not represent any hard and fast demarca- tion between the-tribes: I hope Mr. Corer will sympathize with niy mistake ; these boundaries are the devil, and Mr. Corer himself from his letter seems- to have forgotten that his journey took him much further through the Sudan than through either Senegal or Dahomey. As for the missionaries and Europeans, my experience must have been an extra- ordinarily lucky one or Mr. Corer's extraordinarily unlucky.]
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