The Colonisation of Indo-China. Py J. Chailley-Bert. Trans.
prosperity of Hong-Kong and Burmah, particularly as M. Chailley, Bert reviews everything from an independent standpoint, and the style and a few mental peculiarities only betray his nationality. He is very ready with his figures, and seems to have acquired a really wonderful grasp of his subject, so that the work in itself is as readable as such a book can well be. That part of it which endeavours to describe our system, bureaucracy, and dealings with neighbours and commercial relations, reveals also the want of those qualities which bar the way to the colonial success of the French. M. Chailley-Bert is sensible of some of them, but in his description of Civil Service tests and the qualifications of candidates for colonial posts, and again in his suggestion of similar standards for his own country, it is obvious that he fails to realise that it is the man and not the system that succeeds. He lays it down quite seriously in a paragraph of advice to his countrymen that " we must try and understand the people who are of such and such a race," &c. Fancy an English writer talking to us about " understanding people " !
Previous page
