NIGERIAN DAYS. By H. C. G. Hastings. With an Introduction
by R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Illustrated. (Lane. 12s. 6d.) HERE is a book describing in summary retrospect the experiences of eighteen years spent as an administrator in West Africa ; and it records no wars, no punitive expeditions. It is an account of British rule among African peopler, ranging from naked pagans to cultured Mahommedans, carried out ' on the principle of utilizing native rulers and native institu- tions so far as is possible for a European power. Mr. Cunninghame Graham, no votary of Imperialist ideas, feels able to say in an introduction that Mr. Hastings' story " shows how a great Empire can be built up almost without injustice and without bloodshed, and what the builders have to face, as they lay stone on stone." This reviewer hoped for one thing which was not to be found in it—some account of the great Nigerian cities as they are to-day ; yet part of Mr. Hastings' official life was spent in Kano, that huge central mart. But Mr. Hastings is by temperament a man of the bush : he dwells, in affectionate memory, on the days of long marching, the river journeys, the coming into little remote native villages. There is no need to be told that he enjoyed his life and his work. But it may be noted that he regards the knowledge of four languages—Hausa, Nupe, Fulani and Shuwa Arabic— as essential for the northern provinces of Nigeria. " Not a smattering, not a working knowledge, but a real conversance with the finer shades of meaning." If that is the standard which Sir Frederick Lugard and Sir Hugh Clifford have succeeded in establishing it is not surprising that we do not hear of wars—the crude solution on which ignorance falls back. Yet there is another name which should be recalled. Since 1900 there has been a radical change in the whole spirit of West African rule that is expressed chiefly by saying that it has become an object to preserve African law and custom instead of breaking them down. For that change nothing else is so near the true motive cause as the propagandist work done by Mary Kingsley.
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