There are at the present time so many societies and institutes—national and international—for the study of African questions that there would be no justification for the inauguration of yet another unless it had an object in view, different from, or at least not effectively met by, any existing organization. There are, as it seems to me, two directions in which the organizations at present in existence need to be supplemented, and the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures has been founded in the hope of meeting these two requirements.

Text-Books used in African schools are admittedly to a large extent not satisfactory. Many of them are neither adapted to the life and mind of the people whom they are intended to teach, nor do they meet the requirements of the principles of modern education. The call for better school-books in Africa is therefore general.

The International Institute of African Languages and Cultures considers it as one of its foremost duties to direct attention to this serious and urgent problem, which needs careful study, and for the solution of which the co-operation of those engaged in education in Africa is imperatively required.

Die meisten Menschen glauben, dass die Sprache lediglich Verständigungsmittel ist. Jeder Reisende empfindet es ja als störend, dass man im fremden Lande seine Wünsche nicht unmittelbar äussern kann, sondern sich einer fremden Sprache oder eines Dolmetschers bedienen muss, und man erlebt dabei Missverständnisse und Verdriesslichkeiten. So ist es denn auch für den Beamten, den Geschäftsmann und den Missionar höchst lästig, dass man in Afrika sich nicht ungezwungen mit den Eingeborenen unterhalten kann, sondern damit warten muss, bis die Eingeborenen die Sprache des Europäers gelernt haben, oder der Europäer die Sprache der Afrikaner. Man versucht, diesen unerfreulichen Zustand auf allerlei Weise zu beseitigen, indem man die Kenntnis einer europäischen Sprache im Lande nach Möglichkeit verbreitet oder irgendeine afrikanische Verkehrssprache als Vermittlerin zwischen Europäern und Eingeborenen anwendet. Für rein praktische Zwecke wird das gewiss nützlich sein, aber es hat daneben eine bedenkliche, um nicht zu sagen gefährliche Seite, die der Freund der Afrikaner nicht übersehen darf.

The purport of this article is to provide an answer to the following questions:

1. What is African music like as compared to our own?

2. How can it be made use of in Church and School?

The answer might be as brief as the questions:

1. African and (modern) European music are constructed on entirely different principles, and therefore

2. they cannot be fused into one, but only the one or the other can be used without compromise.

The attention of most of my readers will only be engaged by the second of these points as being one of practical interest, while the first is of a more theoretical nature. But my second answer being only a conclusion drawn from my first one, I shall have to support it by entering on some theoretical detail; it will not, therefore, be possible to keep altogether clear of musical technicalities. Readers who feel alarmed at the idea of having to find their way through analyses of this kind, or to read music, may safely confine their attention to the last section; as for the preceding ones, they will, it is hoped, be indulgent towards the author, granting him that it would be difficult to state a thing without speaking of it.

Generalizations based on insufficient or inaccurate data have in the past contributed to many anthropological fallacies. Instances of such hasty generalizations will come to mind readily enough, and it will be recollected that whole theories have been so formulated and, after leading anthropological enquiry down sterile labyrinths of thought to dogmatical culs-de-sac, have had to be jettisoned with all their accumulated impedimenta of false inferences and falser conclusions. There is no room as yet for broad generalizations in cultural anthropology: our reliable information is still too fragmentary and unrelated.

Les pièces satiriques, objet de cette étude, se jouent chaque année en pays mandingue, dans certains villages malinké et bamana des cercles de Bougouni et de Bamako; c'est-à-dire, dans la partie méridionale du Soudan français.

Cette région est remarquable à plus d'un titre. Elle a vu se former au moyen âge, grandir, et décliner à la fin du XVIe siècle un des plus puissants empires du monde, le royaume de Mali ou Melli, dont les souverains entretinrent des relations avec le Maroc, l'Égypte, l'Arabie et le Portugal. Elle est le berceau d'une civilisation qui surprit tous les voyageurs arabes ayant eu l'occasion de l'observer. L'un d'eux, Ibn Batouta, traversa en 1351-2 une partie de l'immense territoire soumis au monarque de l'époque, le Mansa ou Massa Suleyman Keita, et qui s'étendait alors du Sahara à la forêt dense, et de la Nigeria actuelle au Sénégal; il fut vivement frappé de l'organisation administrative de ce pays, de la pompe déployée à la cour, et surtout de l'ordre et de la sécurité qui régnaient partout.

This short contribution to the pages of the Journal of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures will later form a part of my main theme in the preface of a volume which has not yet been published. I hope it may be of sufficient interest to readers of this journal to warrant its appearance in advance, in a setting where it is divorced somewhat from its ultimate context. The plea which it contains is of such importance that I gladly welcome any publicity which may be given to it by its publication in a journal having an international circulation.

In 1926 the Government of the Gold Coast invited me to visit that country in order to advise them regarding a common script for the leading languages and on related subjects. I arrived on the Gold Coast in February 1927, and stayed there until the middle of April. As a basis for my work I had with me a draft of the proposals of the Institute in regard to the orthography of African languages. These have now been published in the Memorandum on a Practical Orthography of African Languages.

Notre Institut venait à peine de naître qu'il était douloureusement éprouvé par la mort d'un de ses directeurs: Maurice Delafosse, gouverneur honoraire des Colonies, Professeur à l'École Coloniale et à l'École des Langues Orientales Vivantes de Paris.

Some parts of Bantu territory have been extensively investigated and described in monographs and periodicals, whereas others have been almost entirely neglected. This is not the place to enter into the reasons for this, which are in fact, to some extent, of a superficial character; nevertheless we are now in the satisfactory position of being able to say that research workers, missionaries, and government officials have thrown much light on the way in which the Bantu tribes live, and on their languages. It would take us too far if we attempted to review all the Bantu literature of the last few years, but we shall try to give a summary of the principal publications.

It is a very significant fact that the first memorandum issued by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures should be devoted to Practical Orthography, for in no branch of African study is there such diversity of practice as in the orthography of the languages. Moreover it is probably no exaggeration to say that, inasmuch as the reading and writing of his language form the Native's first step in education, no question is of greater urgency than this matter of presenting the written language in a way that shall be logically satisfactory.

CE que regarde de loin le laboureur quand il se redresse, c'est le village. Ce n'est pas le désir de manger qui est cause de cela, c'est tout le passé qui l'attire de ce côté\

THE Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick D. Lugard, G.C.M.G., D.S.O., served in Uganda during the period of settlement, and subsequently in Nigeria, where he was Governor General from 1914-19. He has been a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations since 1922. His best-known book is The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa.

L'INSTITUT se propose deux buts principaux. Il entend d'abord être un bureau général d'information destiné à recueillir et à diffuser les renseignements de toute nature relatifs aux langues, aux civilisations, aux problèmes particuliers intéressant l'Afrique. Il s'efforcera, en même temps, d'établir la liaison entre les spécialistes qui s'occupent de ces questions. Il cherchera ensuite à unir la science aux expériences pratiques en indiquant comment les découvertes de la première peuvent être utilisées pour l'administration, l'éducation, l'hygiène, le bien-être, l'évolution des Africains. Des recherches sur les bases de la propriété foncière et du droit, la notion de délit et les idées qui s'y rattachent, aideront puissamment les magistrats ayant à trancher des litiges ou à réprimer des infractions. Par ailleurs des enquêtes sur les effets du contact entre les civilisations européennes et africaines, les modifications qui découlent de celui-ci, et les transformations de la vie intéresseront l'agriculture, l'élevage, le commerce, la colonisation.

THE Fourth Meeting of the Executive Council of the Institute was held on November 24 and 25, 1927, at Brussels, in the Palais des Académies, kindly placed at its disposal by the Prime Minister and Minister for the Colonies. The Rt. Hon. Sir F. D. Lugard was in the chair and members present included Rev. Father Dubois, Professor Lévy-Bruhl, Mr. J. H. Oldham, Sir Denison Ross, Professor Schachtzabel, Rev. Father Schebesta, Professor Seligman, Rev. E. W. Smith, Professor Van der Kerken, Professor Westermann (Director), Monsieur H. Labouret (Director), Mr. H. Vischer (Secretary General), and Miss D. G. Brackett (Secretary). The delegates were welcomed by the Prime Minister and received in audience by H. M. the King of the Belgians. Prince Léopold, who has recently visited the Belgian Congo, was present at a large reception at the house of the Prime Minister and manifested great interest in the work of the Institute.