Letters to the Editor. 365 



task was ably discharged, appreciated the assistance afforded to future 

 work by the adoptiou of these proposals. 



The hospitality of Trinidad wan prodigious aud the physical 

 energies of the delegates were shown not to have suffered by birth or 

 residence in a tropical climate, but even a lawyer like myself fled 

 appalled from a concluding dinner with twenty-six speeches attached to 

 the menu. If the business element reduces the hospitable displays to a 

 very minor room and importance in West Indian and Canadian-West 

 Indian Conferences of every kind in future we shall have less senti- 

 mental patriotism and Imperialism, fewer speeches of a congratulatory 

 and laudatory type, and more business done. I think some under- 

 standing should be arrived at on that point which will not give offence to 

 the generous instincts of any selected colony. Speech-making at 

 Conferences is perhaps not a vice peculiar to the West Indies, but it is 

 particularly virulent in these parts. 



One of the causes of the resolutions above referred to (which I 

 believe I drew up) was the feeling that notwithstanding the efforts of 

 Dr. Watts, British Guiana was a little out in the cold. Sugar chiefly 

 interested our delegation, and sugar had to be cursorily dealt with in 

 part of an afternoon, during which Professor Harrison, had not the 

 Chairman and the meeting waived the restriction in his particular case, 

 would have had to deal with three or four years of his work and that of 

 his able subordinates in a ten minutes' speech. The courtesy of the 

 waiver in favour of so distinguished and dominant an authority only 

 revealed the more clearly the inadequacy of the space available for what 

 is one of our vital concerns in this colony. To British Guiana problems 

 such as those of balata, timber and cattle, any West Indian Conference 

 whatsoever can give but a small contribution. In a word, the elemen- 

 tary fact stands out that British Guiana has vast interests in which the 

 rest of the West Indies is not concerned or is only concerned indirectly 

 or to a minor degree. What are our minor industries are the major 

 industries of many of the smaller and some of the larger islands. Our 

 future major industries except sugar and rice have no insular equiva- 

 lents. To speak of British Guiana in the terms of a West Indian island 

 is a mistake. It is a great continental possession of the Crown some 

 forty-five times as large as Trinidad and some twenty-three times the 

 size of Jamaica. In regard to this I was glad to read with the rest of 

 the public in the press of February 10th that His Excellency had 

 expressed the views of its possibilities (pars. 24 to 28), which 

 ' ; Timehri" had been advocating for the past three years and that tin- 

 actual route for a trunk railway recommended by Mr. Bland was that 

 suggested even as late as last July by the contributors to that magazine, 

 who. however, never anticipated such rapid local development or such 

 light expenditure on labour as that expert indicates. 



Guiana's Peculiar Possibilities. 

 When ample security is provided for the protection of existing 

 industries, at all events until they can be replaced, and when practical 



