HISTORY OF ASIA GENERAL SURVEY 103 



problematic project of building a railway to unite the Mediterranean 

 Sea to the Far East by the way of Persia and India shall be carried 

 out, and whatever be the result of the present war, Russia will hold 

 the highway of intercommunication between Europe and Asia; less 

 than any other nation can Japan afford to give up the use of this 

 route, and being thus dependent upon the Russians cannot keep in 

 a state of perpetual hostility with them. 



During a long time, we had in Europe the bad habit of studying 

 separately the various political problems and of seeing only partic- 

 ular cases in what were really but the secondary effects from general 

 causes. Nowadays, there is not a single problem of foreign politics 

 which can be treated with indifference. Whatever be the part of the 

 globe- where the gun thunders, the repercussion of it is felt in the 

 capitals of the whole world; special questions become questions of 

 general interest, and the effort of diplomacy to avoid a universal 

 conflagration tends to circumscribe the struggle between those chiefly 

 concerned; the task is rendered the more arduous in that the multiple 

 treaties or alliances between nations extend the limits of the debates 

 and thus increase the chances of a general conflict. 



Europe used to consider Asia, except in her western part, as a 

 domain where events rolled on without any distant effect and having 

 therefore but an interest of mere curiosity. China, Bossuet could 

 pass over in silence, that is to say the third of the total population of 

 the globe, in his Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle, a very poor work 

 by the bye, admired only by those who have not read it. However, 

 during the course of the fifth century the invasion of the barbarians, 

 and in the thirteenth the raids of the Mongols, should have opened 

 the eyes of the most blind of observers. And these considerable 

 events were not the result of fortuitous causes, but the natural con- 

 sequence of important events which had happened in the interior 

 of Asia, while our ancestors had not the faintest suspicion of them. 



Moreover, the great navigators of the sixteenth century unraveled 

 the mystery which shrouded the remote countries and helped to 

 make clear the interest Europe had in knowing them better, and 

 let us say, with frank cynicism, in speculating upon them. 



The first attempts to create factories, then the conquests at the 

 end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries, showed 

 that Europe had abandoned her majestic indifference, and was feeling 

 the necessity of a policy which reached beyond the horizon bounded 

 by her small and greedy continent. 



At the close of the wars of the First Empire, as soon as peace is 

 signed, we see the Western nations resume the routes to Asia, for 

 a short period neglected. England in India and China, the Dutch 

 in the Spice Islands, France in Indo-China, later on the Russians 



