Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Imtilute. Edited by the Secretary.
Vol. XXXI., 1899-1900. (The Institute, Northumber- land Avenue.)—There are always a number of interesting 1.apers in these volumes, most of thorn being of a kind which the reviewer is better qualified to describe than to criticise. First in order of merit and interest we should place Sir John Colomb's truly admirable paper on " British Defence." Next come Mr. Everard F. im Thurn's paper on " British 4uiana and its Boundary," and Mr. Lionel Phillips's " Out- look in South Africa." Nothing could be more to the point than the encomium pronounced on Mr. ha Thurn's lecture by Lord Justice Collins, one of the Venezuela bouridary arbitrators. It had told him, he gave the audience to under- stand, in fifty minutes more than counsel's speeches for fifty days had done. " No speech lasted less than ten days." It must have been a great pleasure to his Lordship to point out that it was the role of the American lawyers representing Venezuela to magnify the good deeds of Spain (which had Christianised the natives by driving them into her territory and there enslaving them), while the British counsel had been equally laudatory of the Dutch. Yet the American counsel "represented a nation which had just succeeded in wresting from Spain the last remnant of those colonies of which Venezuela and Guiana were the first," while " scarcely was the ink dry upon the award when Great Britain found itself at death grips with the Dutch." " We do.not hear so much now," goes on the Lord Justice, "of those gentler qualities of the Dutch nation." Mr. Lionel Phillips's paper takes us over subjects which have been already, and will have to be hereafter, much discussed. We will content ourselves with say- ing that it is well worth studying, and that it was supplemented by the conversation which followed.
Previous page
