United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Italy, having but recently achieved national unity and taken her place among the Great Powers, felt that she could not be left out of the running, now that extra-European possessions had come to appear an almost essential mark of greatness among states; and, disappointed of Tunis, she endeavoured to find compensation on the shores of the Red Sea.
The Scandinavian peoples have developed a tendency to an extra-European outlook, to look west and east rather than southwardly, to be pacifist and progressive in a manner essentially American. From any close sympathy with Germany the Americans are cut off at present by the Hohenzollerns and the system of ideas that the Hohenzollerns have imposed upon German thought.
In the first place, it meant this: That behind the back of France they were not made a party to these communications we should have given, if we had assented to that, a free licence to Germany to annex, in the event of a successful war, the whole of the extra-European dominions and possessions of France. What did it mean as regards Belgium?
Let us assume that in event of war England as well as France must leave a certain naval force in the Mediterranean, which need not be stronger than the combined Italian and Austrian fleets, but might be smaller, in event of a change in the grouping of the States; let us further assume that numerous cruisers will be detained at the extra-European stations the fact, however, remains that England and France together can collect against Germany in the North Sea a fleet of battleships alone three times as strong as that of Germany, and will be supported by a vastly superior force of torpedo-vessels and submarines.
To Britain the French attitude seemed fractious and unreasonable, and she suspected in every French forward movement in other fields notably in the Eastern Soudan and the upper valley of the Nile an attempt to attack or undermine her. Thus Egypt, like Tunis, illustrated the influence of European politics in the extra-European field.
It was based not upon claims established by work already done, but, for the most part, upon the implicit assumption that extra-European empire was the due of the European peoples, simply because they were civilised and powerful. This was the justification, in a large degree, of all the European empires in Africa.
Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes deeper than any such details. It rests upon the fact that even other civilisations, even much lower civilisations, even remote and repulsive civilisations, depend as much as our own on this primary principle on which the super-morality of Potsdam declares open War.
Thus the necessary and advantageous tutelage of Europe over the non-European world, and the continuance of the great world-states, could be combined with the conjuring away of the ever-present terror of war, and with the gradual training of the non-European peoples to enjoy the political methods of Europe; while the lesser states without extra-European dominions need no longer feel themselves stunted and reduced to economic dependence upon their great neighbours.
It is, moreover, contrasted with the Suffolk Crag by the indications it affords of an extra-European climate. Thus it contains seven species of Cypraea, some larger than any existing cowry of the Mediterranean, several species of Oliva, Ancillaria, Mitra, Terebra, Pyrula, Fasciolaria, and Conus.
That the Balkan States should be admitted to the Council of Peace and decide the government under which they are to live is taken as a matter of course because they are Europeans, but no extra-European is credited, even by the extremist advocates of human equality, with any right except to humbly accept the fate which Europe shall decide for him."
Word Of The Day