Books: Banana Engine

A VERY NAKED PEOPLE—Albert Londres—Liveright ($3).

Curious about international white slave traffic, Author Londres once lived with the traffickers, about whom he wrote The Road to Buenos Aires. His latest excursion—to Africa, through French Sudan, the High Volta, the Ivory Coast, Togoland, Dahomey, the Congo—disclosed a black slave traffic. The native African, says he, is a "banana engine" making the roads of a continent at the expense of his life. He may work a month on banana fuel, then find himself owing eleven francs because of huge taxes. Other Londres observations: 1)...