CHAPTER XI THE TASK OF ADMINISTRATION The executive government of those parts of the British Empire under direct rule is held in marvellously few hands, and it often happens that the more remote and dangerous the districts, the fewer seem to be the men who control and develop.

Whole territories are under the sway of single individuals ; matters affecting great expanses and thousands of people are decided by solitary men, who inherently and almost unconsciously personify the supremacy of white over black, and through whom the beneficent influences of enlightenment spread to the ignorant masses they govern.

Most of their work is done in the darkness which distance and official obligation impose ; the hardships they undergo, the dangers that threaten, the difficulties they conquer, only come to the light of publicity by some fortuitous circumstance, or are negatively evidenced by a condition of peace and well-being where once was rebellion or anarchy. Yet their work goes silently onward ; it is commonly taken as just all that should be expected, and the great British public is too absorbed in its 212