582 



The Review of Reviews. 



SIR EDWARD GREY'S STEWARDSHIP. 



A Dismal Recoku ok Broken 'I'rkaties. 



" DiPLOMATicus " in the Fortnightly Review for 

 December subjects Sir Edward Grey's foreign policy 

 to a merciless but not unjust examination. He points 

 out that Sir Edward Grey, under the mask of con- 

 tinuity, has developed Lord Lansdowne's policy to a 

 point never contemplated by its author, with the 

 result that English relations with Germany are now 

 worse than they have ever been, and we have been 

 brutally blackmailed by France. 



HIS TWO GREAT BLUNDERS. 



The supreme mistake of Sir Edward was in his 

 allowing himself to be dragged into supporting the 

 destruction of the Treaty of Algeciras. " Diploma- 

 ticus " says ; — 



The plain and brutal Texplanalion is tliat France never 

 intended to abide by the Act of Algeciras, that she gradually 

 and systematically evaded it in the sense of the superseded 

 Convention, and that Sir Edward Grey weakly connived at her 

 evasions, and finally upheld her in them. 



Only second to this mistake was the utterly useless 

 and irritating attempts, persisted in against the 

 warnings of King Edward, to induce Germany to 

 limit her naval armaments. 



A HOLOCAUST OF TREA IIKS. 



Sir Edward Grey, it is admitted, did his best to 

 prevent the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, 

 but having failed he appears to have acquiesced in 

 every other species of lawlessness. " Diplomaticus " 

 .says : — 



It was not long before the Austrian example was followed in 

 an aggravated form by all his own friemls, and then under the 

 inlluence of the cnuchemar d'isolalion, which apparently 

 oppresses him, he weakly yielded to thorn. For a parallel to 

 the holocaust of solemn Treaties which followed without protest 

 from this country we may search diplomatic history in vain. 



Nor was this all. With these Treaties, every security for the 

 sfaliis quo became utterly discredited, where it had not been 

 actually destroyed. In Morocco, France and Spain between 

 llicni tore up the Act of .\lgeciras and their Mediterranean 

 compact with this country. , In Tripoli, Italy made a bonfire of 

 the Treaties of Paris and Berlin, of her Mediterranean Agree- 

 ment with us of 1902, and the .\nglo- France 'Spanish Status 

 Quo Agreement of 1907, not to mention the Hague Conventions 

 on Arbitration and the Rules of War. Russia has virtually 

 extinguished the integrity and independence of Persia, notwith- 

 standing her Agreement with us in 1907, which solemnly 

 guaranteed both. Japan availed herself of the opportunity of 

 annexing Korea, which, although virtually sanctioned in 

 advance by her second Treaty of Alliance with us, was none 

 the less a cynical violation of her Treaties with China and 

 K.ore.1, and thus inadmissible under the Declaration of London 

 of 1S71, which Sir Edward Grey so vehemently invoked in the 

 Bosnian affair. Finally, the United Stales cavalierly set at 

 noii;;ht the llay-Pauncefote Treaty by deciding to fortify the 

 Panama Canal without asking our leave or encountering our 

 mildest protest. One has only to put the facts in this succinct 

 form to understand why Europe today is a prey to alarms and 

 anxiety. No one knows where the next blow m.iy fall. The 

 sanctions of order and equity in international life are gone. All 

 restraints of honour and good faith have disappeared, and the 

 predatory instincts of the larger Slates only await their oppor- 

 tunity. Weak States, which always looked to Great Hrilain to 

 ilef'-mi ihi-ni, ,\rc ^glia-l. 



THE RESULT OF IT ALL. 



Sir Edward Grey has connived at the atrocities of 

 Italy in Tripoli and thereby alienated Mohammedan 

 affection in India and elsewhere. The Mediterranean 

 has become a Latin lake, and on the top of all this 

 " Diplomaticus " enumerates a long list of commercial 

 sacrifices in Turkey, in Korea, in Morocco, in Persia. 

 And what have we gained? The friendship of 

 France ? " Diplomaticus " says : — 



Only the other day I was pained to read an article in the 

 Timps in which, despite the unflinching and effective support 

 we lent France during her recent perilous negotiations with 

 Germany, w't were virtually threatened with a termination of 

 the ciileiitc if we hesitated to support every point of the French 

 case in the impending Morocco negotiations with Spain. 



THE DELHI DURBAR DONATIVE. 



W'hat Shall Ii' Bk ? 



Mr. Saini- Nihal Sinuh writes in the AHneteeiith 

 Century on the King's power in India. He declares 

 that to the educated Indian the Durbar is a heavy 

 drain of expense on a country too seriously bled to 

 begin with. Of the business people, fashioned largely 

 by Britons, very much after the British pattern — 

 cold-blooded, matter-of-fact, calculating men of the 

 world — he says : — 



They abominate 'the trait in the character of their own 

 Maharajas and Rajas which makes them draw largely upon, the 

 .State revenues lo maintain meaningless magnificence, and 

 unequivocally condemn those Chiefs who, despite being brought 

 up under the guidance of English tutors, and having imbifjed 

 Western ide.as from wide travels in the Occident, do not give 

 up the exaggerated display associated with the dark ages. They 

 s\ould be happy beyond measure if a way could be found to 

 restrain the Indian rulers from ti eating their principalities as 

 estates instead of States. 



These considerations would make the Durbar 

 unpopular. The one thing that has saved it has been 

 the personal courage and initiative of the King : — 



The statesmanship of King George the Fifth, and his per- 

 sistence and pluck to carry out his " hope" to visit India, have 

 altered the whole situation, and stirred to its deepest depths the 

 loyally so deep-rooted in all Indians that Western education, 

 even when distorted by tcrrofist teachers, has been unable to 

 blot it out. 



Passing to the question of Coronation boon, Mr. 

 Singh mentions eleven suggestions. His own con- 

 clusion is : — 



Probably, in the last analysis, the boon with which the first 

 Itrilish sovereign's visit to India should be associated is the 

 issuance of an Imperial Rescript on education which will 

 guarantee that the second decade of the twentieth century shall 

 sec the torch of knowledge carried to every home throughout 

 the Indian Peninsula. "The Giver of learning" ahvays has 

 been reverenced in Hindostan equally by the Hindus, Moslems, 

 Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, and nothing will appeal so much 

 to the educated classes, nothing will do so much substantial 

 good to the illiterate masses, as the provision of a system of 

 free and, if possible, compulsory education throughout India. 

 The boon will be all the more worthy of the epoch-making 

 event if a handsome donation is made from the Privy Purse, 

 and if His .Majesty will use his good offices to induce the House 

 of Commons to vote a donation of, say, ;f 1,000,000 from the 

 Imperial Exchequer, 



