31 AUGUST 1895, Page 2

Our outstanding difficulties with France in West Africa become, if

the Paris Press represents the attitnde of the French Government, not less but more difficult of solution. The Temps is now claiming that recent French expeditions have linked their colony on the Ivory Coast to that of Dahomey, and so cut off the German and English Hinter- lands on the Gold Coast. This was what the French tried to do in America in the eighteenth century. They tried to link their Mississippi settlements with those in Canada, and so cut off the Hinterland of New England; but the attempt was not successful.