The New Map of Africa (1900-16). By H. A. Gibbons.
(New York : The Century Co. 2 dollars net.)—Mr. Gibbons's political history of Africa since 1900 is interesting but highly controversial. Ono of his main ideas is that the aims and methods of Germany in Africa have been much the same as ours, though he admits in an obscure footnote that their wonderful roads and stations are the product of forced labour, which we do not employ. He does not believe that South-West Africa was meant to be used as a base for attacking the Union, and he regards as a more police force its garrison of five thousand men, though in anyi British Colony of equal size such a garrison would be absurdly large. His last chapter is a plea—based on the false analogy of Alsace-Lorraine —for the return of her lost colonies to Germany. Mr. Gibbons says that he sympathizes with the Allies ; he is, on the whole, not unfair to our administrators—except to Lord Cromer and the Egyptian Service—and declares that the prosperity of the Transvaal " is largely due to Lord Milner's initiative." But his bias and his inexactitude deprive his book of any value for reference that it might have possessed.
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