6 SEPTEMBER 1930, Page 18

The factors which in the past made for constructive impe-

rialism are ably summarized by Sir Charles Lucas in Religion, Colonising and Trade (S.P.C.K., Is. 6d.). No one who had not the author's intimate knowledge of colonial history could have achieved such a lucid and informing account in so short a space. Trade, which laid the foundations of the Empire, became a Frankenstein monster destructive of over- seas liberties, until having killed the old Empire of its creation it was regenerated in the nineteenth century to become an instrument of liberty. Has this no message for us now when we are threatened by the obscurantist reaction of tariffs and unlimited safeguarding ?

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