THE ORIENTAL AT CLOSE QUARTERS.
_To-morrop is the _East. By Douglas Story. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.)—Mr. Story seems to have the happy knack of pene- trating into the inmost council-chambers of the most unapproach- able Eastern potentates, and of persuading the most inscrutable Asiatic Premiers to divulge to him their plans. Egypt, Persia, Siam, India, China, and Japan,—through these nations he has passed, not as a tourist, but as a keen investigator of the habits, and, what is more important, of the political philosophy,.af rulers and people alike. His conclusion is no optimistic one for British interests in the Far East. .The result of his investigations has been to arouse in his mind a doubt of. the wisdom of an alliance with an Oriental Power, an anticipation of racial animoeities con- sequent upon the growth of. a national spirit in the hitherto moribund nations of the East, and a belief that the commerce of Great Britain will suffer in competition with rivals she herself has fostered." The growth of this national !spirit is the keynote of his book. Speaking of the villagers of Lower Egypt,,he says that they are "keen men a affairs, cognisant of the world's movement, shrewdly Critical of political events abroad as well as in Cairo. The Omdeh was connected with his colleagues
and with Cairo by telephone ' Each morning they received their newspapers in Arabic, and were as well informed of foreign affairs as the man in the street of -London or Paris. Compared with a village, gathering in an English inn, their conversation was .intelligent and weighty—a revelation to me in my Cockney egotism.", But as dangerous as the' Asiatic awakening, thinks Mr. Story, is the carelessness of the British colonist, a carelessness which, he is careful, to point opt, is by no means shared by the German and American. "The representatives
of those nations work, while Englishmen abroad play Every evening, at five o'clock, the great bar of the Hong Kong Club is lined with the British who have finished their day's work. In the streets the offices of the British firms are dark and silent, but from the Windows' of the German merchants broad streams of electric light signal the nation's industry till after midnight." Mr.. Story's style is terse and convincing, and his book gives, within convenient compass, an interesting analysis of the factors likely to influence the trend of events emit of Suez in the immediate future.
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