In England, if a man wishes to get married, he must do so, in the great majority of cases, under the law of England; in Scotland under the law of Scotland. In either country he is at liberty to get married in a registrar's office or in a Christian church; if he decides upon a church, no legal consequences will follow other than those which follow from marriage in a registrar's office. If subsequently either party to the marriage wishes to raise an action arising therefrom they are at liberty to do so in the appropriate court; the court is the same court, and the law to be applied is the same law, whether they have been married in a church or in a registrar's office, whether they are Christians or not. But the court, and the law to be applied therein, differ according to whether the parties are subject to English or to Scots law. The divorce law of England is applicable to both Christians and non-Christians; neither category is prohibited by law from having recourse to it, though a convinced Christian may be so prevented by his faith and conscience. In other words, the matrimonial affairs of an Englishman or a Scotsman are governed by the civil law to which he is subject, whatever his religious beliefs.

The Mende people occupy an area of something like 10,000 square miles in the central and south-eastern part of the Sierra Leone Protectorate. Comprising nearly 70 chiefdoms, they numbered, at the time of the last official census (1931), some 580,000 persons, including about 10,000 resident in the Colony. Available statistics suggest that their numbers are on the increase, and may be in the neighbour-hood to-day of one-third of the whole population of the Protectorate, which is estimated at some 2 millions.

In November 1927 bands of professing Christians were found going about the Itu Division of Calabar Province, in the extreme south-east of Nigeria. Members of these bands declared that they were spirits. It was clear that although they professed Christianity, what had become uppermost in their super-excited minds were pagan ideas: of Ekpo, a disembodied spirit which takes many forms according to the belief of the Ibibio, and has many characters most of which are injurious, so much so that in the past in Calabar town a ceremony used to take place every second year to drive all the Ekpo out of the town and into the river; and of Mmeo, who are the spirits of good or evil to whom sacrifice in the form of chickens, yams, eggs, &c. is offered by the Igbo at the appropriate shrine when trouble threatens a person or place. After considerable disorder, lasting about a fortnight, order was restored by the aid of a detachment of police. Those who were arrested were put on to making a road, and this manual labour caused an almost immediate return to sanity.

Ata Kwasi was a young Ashanti, about twenty-one years old. He had gained the Primary School leaving certificate and shortly after leaving school got a job as a junior clerk. In March 1945 he complained of a persistent cough and was admitted to hospital where pulmonary tuberculosis was diagnosed. Pressure on the limited accommodation, the impossibility of a cure and his own dislike of a hospital regimen made him leave after a few weeks. The following are the letters and reports of his illness which he wrote in English to a friend during the last four months of his life. They are produced without alterations except for the deletion of place-names.

La poésie du Rwanda comprend trois genres principaux: la poésie pastorale, la poésie guerrière, et la poésie dynastique. Cette dernière dont je vais dormer ici un échantillon s'occupe du Roi, exaltant et inspirant, tour à tour, son rôle politico-social dans le pays qu'il régit. II y aurait beaucoup à dire sur le style compliqué de ce genre de poésie, où les archaïsmes abondent et où les figures, par suite, sont difficiles à comprendre. Les plus anciens morceaux remontent au grand Ruganzu II Ndoli, 12e ascendant du Roi actuel.

The Fulani people extend across Africa, from Senegal to Dafur, but their origin, like the origin of the universe, is unknown. I have drawn attention to the probable origin of the name Fulani. I propose in this article to review some of the suggested origins of the Fulani language and to put forward a suggestion of my own.