16 MAY 1931, Page 3

Sir C. P. Lucas We record with regret the death

of Sir Charles Lucas in his seventy-eighth year. He had a long and honourable career in the Colonial Office and was head of the Dominions Department when he retired in 1911. He was a devoted labourer for the Working Men's College. But he is remem- bered best for his many scholarly and attractive books on the Empire and its history. He had the good sense to realize that the English public was very imperfectly acquainted with our DorniniOns and Colonies overseas, and knew still less of their past. Seeley was a voice crying in the wilderness—among the professional historians —when he .wrote. his Expansion of England half a century ago. Sir Charles Lucas, when he wrote his Historical Geography of the Colonies, was among the pioneers of what has now at last become a recognized and popular study. An International Congress of Colonial History is announced as a feature of the great Colonial Exhibition just opened in Paris. That Congress, with all that it represents, would not have been possible but for the labours of a few men like Sir Charles Lucas a generation and more ago.