COMING TERRITORIAL READJUSTMENTS.
[TO THE EDITOZ OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—Your interesting and suggestive article in the Spectator of May 7th under the heading of "Lord Salisbury's Speech ". is one which should be widely studied. Is it impossible to hone that we are approaching a moment when it may be feasible to readjust our relations with France on broad and general lines ? Let North-West Africa be wholly French if Indo-China be British. Our cession of all Nigeria, together with Lagos, the Gold Coast, and Gambia, would round off the French North African Empire, and would surely be a fair equivalent for Cochin China and influence in Siam and the southern provinces of China. This arrangement would remove for ever two possible causes of dispute between France and Great Britain, would round off the main tropical dependency of either Power, and would in large measure release France from her present dependence on Russia, inasmuch as France would thereby cease to be a Far Eastern Power. This latter eventuality would also remove the main cause of French jealousy at our position in Egypt, ia which France might be led to acquiesce on the under- standing that we should support her reversionary claims to Morocco, as well as to the Canaries and Spanish and Portuguese possessions in North-West Africa generally. The British Empire as it stands is not too large, but it is too scattered; and concentration and consolidation should henceforth be our watchword.—I am, Sir, &c.,
F. R. G. S.
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