216 THE TASK OF ADMINISTRATION of sympathetic tact and administrative ability displayed by the administrator, his lieutenants, and others, any day may not see it kicked off for the time. It would be merely an incident in the process of regulation, serious enough in the case of a powerful tribe, and disappointing as a break in the success of the first principles of the policy which has been carried out so remarkably, and with but slight interruption, for fully eight years.

Still, appreciation of power is the controlling influence at the back of every native mind, and the following words, WTitten by me of the JNIatabele in 1895, apply with little modification and with equal strength to the blacks of the Sudan : " It may safely be said that, as a native cannot well appreciate a power of which he has not been made practically aware, and that as a general rule the only argument which he recognizes as satisfactory and finally convincing is ' brute force,' whenever he becomes actively demonstrative of his contempt for the power he knows not, or for the justice of its rule, he should once and for all, firmly yet fairly, be made to thoroughly appreciate it by means of an armed force sufficiently strong to render an engagement a well-assured victory. It is surely wiser and kinder, to say nothing as to cost, for any mistaken ideas to be dispelled promptly whenever there are signs that they will lead to trouble, than to let their results develop until they become dangerous, and maybe fatal.

" The idea held by humanitarians in England,