[486] With the exception of one wretched Dutch factory on the minute island of Deshima in the harbour of Nagasaki. The Dutch were exposed to almost unendurable indignities. They had no intercourse with any Japanese except the special officials appointed to deal with them.
[487] A new and much more liberal Maltese constitution was promulgated in June, 1920, practically putting Malta on the footing of a self-governing colony.
[488] All intelligent Englishmen or Englishwomen with a vote owe it to the Empire and themselves to read at least one book dealing with India or Egypt from the native point of view. For India, Lajpat Rai’s Political Future of India is to be recommended. A compact book running counter to the views in this text, and giving the Church missionary point of view, is the Rev. W. E. S. Holland’s Goal of India. William Archer’s India and the Future is an interesting display of the temperamental clash of a Nordic writer with things Dravidian. It sustains the argument that even the most high-minded Nordic type cannot be trusted to govern other races sympathetically. (See also in that matter Archer’s In Afro-America.) The Aga Khan’s India in Transition gives very admirably the views of a liberal Indian gentleman. Sidney Low’s A Vision of India is still not yet superseded as a picture of India in 1905-6, when the present stir was only brewing.
[489] A very good book for the expansion of this chapter is Stearns Davis’ (with Anderson and Tyler) Armed Peace, a history of Europe from 1870 to 1914. Even more illuminating is G. P. Gooch’s History of Our Time (1885-1911). This is quite a tiny book, but very clear and thorough. It was revised in its present form in February, 1914, so that its title is misleading; it comes up to 1914. It contains an excellent student’s bibliography.
[490] See F. M. Hueffer’s able but badly named book, When Blood is their Argument. It gives an admirable account of just how the pressure was applied to the teaching organization.
[491] These quotations are from Sir Thomas Barclay’s article “Peace” in The Encyclopædia Britannica.
[492] St. John Ervine’s novel, Changing Winds, gives a good account of the mentality of this time.
[493] See the various publications of the Irish Dominion League, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. A good recent account of Irish ideas is to be found in Lynd’s Ireland a Nation (1919).
[494] Wilfred Scawen Blunt regards the English remaining in Egypt, when they had pledged themselves to go, as the greatest cause of the troubles that culminated in 1914. To pacify the French over Egypt, England connived at the French occupation of Morocco, which Germany had looked upon as her share of North Africa. Hence Germany’s bristling attitude to France, and the revival in France of the revanche idea, which had died down. See Blunt’s My Diaries, vol. i, September 30th, 1891.—A. C. W.
[495] It should not be forgotten that Italian action against Turkey was precipitated by the granting of a charter by the Sultan to an Austro-German company or syndicate for the “taking over” of the Tripolitaine: a process which could only have ended by the hoisting of the Imperial German flag on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, opposite Italy. Also, that through Morocco the Germans were attempting to undermine the French position in Algeria and Tunis by supplying the Moroccans with arms and money, and inducing them to attack French rule separately in Western Algeria, and even by way of Saharan oases in Southern Tunis. The writer of this note has actually witnessed this process going on between 1898 and 1911. He asserts that, whether from right or wrong motives, Germany forced France to tackle the thorny problem of Morocco. Either she had to do so or prepare for the evacuation of Algeria. France may have made a few mistakes, but she has conferred enormous benefits on North Africa. Under her control the indigenous population has increased remarkably.—H. H. J.