18 FEBRUARY 1899, Page 13

[To TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

Sin,—Without attempting to discuss your general argument as to the " white man's burden," I should like to say a few words on "the grand fact," which you proclaim, "that on the Yangtse, on the Nile, on the Niger, on the Congo, in all the vast tropical valleys inhabited by a third of the human race, there has been in the last two thousand years, if anything, retrogression." I admit that my knowledge of the social conditions obtaining on the Niger and Congo in the year 101 B.C. is not sufficiently exact to entitle me to a very decided opinion on the progression or otherwise of their riparian populations; and I will leave the defence of their own race to the learned Chinese resident in this country, who will probably be as much surprised to hear that civilisation has been steadily going down hill in the Celestial Empire as they will be to learn that the Yangtse is a "tropical valley." But as regards the Nile, your state- ment is irrefutable. Egypt, which for four or five thousand years was the light of the world, began to lose her brilliance about four hundred years before the period you mention. But it is a curious and, for the sake of your argument, unfortunate coincidence that this retrogression should have begun simultaneously with the advent of the civilising white man. For, according to Herodotus, Egypt reached its climax of prosperity during the reign of Amasis, and it was that Monarch who first permitted a settlement of Greeks at Naucratis, a step which gradually led to the downfall of the Empire. It needs, however, no great knowledge of Egyptian history or artistic training to see the disastrous effects of the Ptolemaic period, and we all know that the final collapse of Egypt came with the Roman, whose civilisation, in turn, fell before the whitest man of all, the fair-haired warrior of the North. We white men may now be as neces- sary for the world's salvation as we think we are, but it would be a comfort to learn that our belief was backed by something more than the knowledge of our proficiency in making Maxims and motor-cars, and the conviction that we have got hold of the best of all possible religions ; and I am sure all God-fearing Jingoes would be grateful to you if you could produce historical evidence that contact with us has been a boon to the savage. May I suggest Tasmania as a promising field for this inquiry? I admit that our forefathers did a good deal of improvement by " thinning," to borrow a term from forestry ; but unlike the woodman, they did not pretend that it was for the benefit of the survivors. Perhaps they understood the white man's real mission better than we do. At any rate, I for one in- finitely prefer their simple buccaneering spirit to-

"This new-found sneaking gospel, Half bunkum and half brag."

—I am, Sir, &c., Lightwater, Bagshot, February 13th. H. E. COLVILE.

[We thought that the whole gist of our article was the necessity of avoiding both bunkum and brag. As to Egypt, we should contend that the Ptolemaic and Roman domina- tion retarded the decay, which every man who visits Egypt can see for himself. The word " tropical " in modern usage does not mean in the tropics, but presenting tropical charac- teristics. Would Sir Henry Colvile object to the description of the Gangetic valley as tropical ? Yet very little of it is in the tropics.—ED. Spectator.]