A Biologist as Ethnologist

Abstract

RENAISSANCE of interest and pride in their colonial possessions are outstanding and most satisfactory features among the French of to-day. Prior to the War few Frenchmen went abroad, apart from Algeria, as colonists and planters, and, with some brilliant exceptions, the officials sent overseas were men of inferior quality, of whom their political party or their departmental chiefs were anxious to be quit. Their salaries were often mere pittances, and their numbers, judged by the British standard, out of all proportion to real requirements; the sum total of their salaries was frequently excessive as compared with the revenue of their particular colony and a distinct impediment to development and progress. Bureaucracy strangled enterprise even among their own countrymen, and French colonial administration was a synonym for inefficiency and red-tape.

L'Industrie des pêches au Cameroun.

Par Dr. Théodore Monod. (Commissariat de la République Française au Cameroun, Mission Monod (1925–1926): Première partie, Généralités.) Pp. 509 + 25 planches. (Paris: Société d'Éditions Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1928.) 90 francs.