“The Spectator,” August 16, 23, 30, 1913

It is impossible to read the White Paper recently published on the subject of slavery in the West African dominions of Portugal without coming to the conclusion that the discussion has been allowed to degenerate into a rather unseemly wrangle between the Foreign Office officials and the Anti-Slavery Society. There is always a considerable risk that this will happen when enthusiasts and officials are brought into contact with each other. On the one hand, the enthusiasts in any great cause are rather prone to let their emotions dominate their reason, to generalise on somewhat imperfect data, and occasionally to fall unwittingly into making statements of fact which, if not altogether incorrect, are exaggerated or partial. On the other hand, there is a disposition on the part of officials to push to an excess Sir Arthur Helps's dictum that most of the evils of the world arise from inaccuracy, and to surround all enthusiasts with one general atmosphere of profound mistrust. An old official may perhaps be allowed to say, without giving offence, that, quite apart from the nobility and moral worth of the issue at stake, it is, from the point of view of mere worldly wisdom, a very great error to adopt this latter attitude. There are enthusiasts and enthusiasts. It is probably quite useless for an anti-suffragist or a supporter of vivisection to endeavour to meet half-way a militant suffragist or a whole-hearted anti-vivisectionist.