SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF THE AFFAIRS OF OUR TROPICAL EMPIRE.
tTo ram EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR."' SIR,—I have read with the greatest interest Lord Milner's address on Crown Colonies, delivered on June 7th before the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. The keynote of the speech is the urgent need for a close and scientific study of the con- ditions prevailing in the various parts of our tropical Empire. Lord Milner's earnest appeal that we should bestir ourselves in this matter will receive the most hearty support of all those who have had any close personal contact, whether as adminis- trators or as mere students, with the problems incident to the control and development of tropical dependencies. I fear, however, that there is a serious obstacle in the way of any effective action being taken in response to Lord Milner's statesmanlike plea,—and this obstacle is the utter indifference of the vast majority of the people of the United Kingdom to the history, present condition, future prospects, and administrative systems of the tropical portions of our Empire.
Some years ago I formulated a plan for an exhaustive work on " Comparative Colonization in the Tropics." The first two volumes of this work were published in 1907, prior to which time I had already been engaged for more than fifteen years in study and travel in the tropics, and had published three volumes on the subject of the control and development of tropical dependencies. Apart from the highly favourable comments on the first two volumes of my large work which appeared in the European and American Press, I received a pleasing testimony to the general soundness of my under- taking in the form of a number of letters from statesmen and administrators in every part of the world. My publishers sent out about four thousand letters in this country, describing very fully the object and scope of my volumes ; and in each letter was enclosed a reprint of reviews and of the opinions of distinguished men of affairs in regard to the importance and utility of the work. These letters were addressed to every Member of each House of Parliament, to every University, learned institution, public school, public library, and Chamber of Commerce in the United Kingdom, to a large number of great business houses interested in tropical commerce, and to some hundreds of gentlemen pro- minently associated with the government of the Empire. These four thousand letters elicited two replies,—one from the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, the other from the British Huseum.
I hope I may be mistaken in accepting this incident as evidence of a general lack of interest in the scientific study
of the affairs of our tropical dependencies. In any case I shall be truly thankful, on purely patriotic grounds, if Lord Milner, working with the advantage of the very high prestige which he so justly enjoys, turns public attention to our tropical Empire, and thus succeeds in a task to which I have devoted myself unavailingly for twenty years.—I am, Sir, Sze., ALLEYNE IRELAND. Royal Societies' Club, 63 St. James's Street, S.W.
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