To the harsh doctrines justifying the dominion of France over inferior races there at first succeeded a naïve idealism, which saw in all the subjects of France men of equal value ready to be transformed into true Frenchmen. Experience and contact with the various populations of the French Empire have modified this exaggerated view and have taught France the complexity of her colonial problems. She knows now that her task is not to assimilate white, black, and yellow populations, each of them with its own traditions, but to help each, in its own interest as well as in the interest of all, to develop along the lines of its own individual civilization