THE MODERN BARBARIANS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14188, 11 October 1909, Page 4

THE MODERN BARBARIANS.

Those worthy citizens who are so fond of denouncing the Empire and of applauding all who attack, libel, and slander it, may well learn a lesson from the proceedings in Morocco. For even i Spain, with all her faults (and those are many), may easily effect an improvement in the manners and morals of tribes who massacre military prisoners in cold blood; while the rule of France would appear Utopian to any selfrespecting witness .of the hideous mutilations of hapless prisoners practised in Tangiers until peremptorily stopped by the Powers! Yet we have British members of Parliament hysterically demanding the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt, in response to the academic claims of weak-fingered Egyptian agitators, who could not possibly exist excepting for British law not to speak of those British statesmen who, until responsibility is thrust upon them, . regard the granting of autonomy for India as the only justifiable course, in spite of the obvious fact that, in India as in Egypt, the granting of independence would be the signal for the outbreak of a hideous anarchy. In spite of the actions of Belgian officials in the Congo, and of the discredit earned by Spanish administrators in Cuba, \ the rule of any Western Nation is usually an unqualified blessing to the greater part of the outer world. This may be emphatically said of the French and Dutch, who have done worthy work as civilisers and ordermakers, while it is peculiarly true of British rule, which has set an example in this respect to all the world and for all time. A knowledge of the atrocities practised daily and callously by the Governments indigenous to and natural to the peoples whose independence we are asked to consider sacred may enable us to understand what an entiraly worthless thing independence often is. .