The British Empire : Its Structure and its Problems. By
Johannes Stoye. (Join► Lane. 12s. 6d.)
A German on the Empire
Da. SToYg's book on the British Empire was first published in Germany in the spring of 1935 ; a successful French verskin has now been followed by a translation into English by Mr. W. '1'. Payne, and the opportunity has been taken to revise the text in the light of later events. There are two ways in which to judge a work of this kind : either as a treatise on the British Empire or as a book by a foreigner about ourselves. In the .first capacity, Dr. Stoye's volume cannot claim a full measure of praise. He has imbibed a great deal of information from a wide variety of sources, some of which are fresh to most English readers ; but the assimilation and digestion are not complete, with the result that the picture (if one may so mix the metaphors) is sometimes distorted. It is queer, for instance, that in a section on " The Economic Significance of the Empire " he gives three inches of space to Mr. Elliot, nearly twelve to Lord Beaverbrook, four to Sir Herbert Samuel, ten to Sir Oswald Mosley, and seven to various spokesmen of the Labour Party, whose stand towards the Empire is nuriandrdasetThadas "_strikinglyainailar_" l'afrhat of the Fascist leader. There are, too, a number of incidental errors of fact, of which one example will serve—Egypt is declared to have become an independent member of the League of NationS in 1922, Whereas,: of doom, she lifts" not become a member yet. Nor is there any clear, continuous theme to concentrate the reader's interest, much as Dr. Stoye makes of his theory that the British Empire is a natural product of British " Blood and Soil." His conclusion is optimistic : " We do not see the disintegration of the British Empire before us, and still less do we desire it—in the interests of world peace."
The value of the book, on the other hand, as a foreign mirror of our imperial selves is diminished by the omission of " passages that were meant only for non-English readers." Dr. Stoye draws a good deal on Renier, Bardoux, Keyserling, de Madariaga and other earlier critics of British character, most of whom have told us of our honest self-righteousness. " The sensation of security,".says Dr. Stoye, " gave birth to the conviction of superiority." But it is in occasional and sometimes unguarded passages that the greatest interest lies ; for they show what terms a German scholar naturally chooses to describe certain portions of our history. Thus Dr. Stoye
writes of pre-War foreign observers : -
" Many went so far as to maintain that in the event of a European war the Dominions . . . would in all circumstances remain outside —even at the risk of being compelled to dissolve their ties with the Mother Country. But we know what really happened. Tho Great War taught these over-hasty prophets a lesson, gave them a course in political science on which they will long ponder."
Let us hope so. Here is a different sample. In a section on the Mosul oil question Dr. Stoye says that after the Sykes- Picot Agreement of 1916 : . . .
" The British . . . through the activities of the famous and now almost legendary gentleman-adventurer, Lawrence, deceived the French in tke most underhand way, and financed the revolt of Sheikh Hussein and his sons."
This is not so consoling to our " conviction of superiority." But doubts are cast on the soundness of Dr. Stoy-e's knOwledge and judgement by a passage on the opposite page, in which
-lae-tays_of bite-`117-mandater,-1_ _ _ " The open-door principle was to be observed in economic matter-4. -.-Of course no one has ever heard anything about it again."
" Of course " this is a flat untruth, as Lord Beaverbrook or Sir Oswald Mosley could have told him in no minced words.
Dr. Stoye skates quickly and (as the above quotation shows) sometimes a little clumsily over the thin ice of the mandates and the German colonial question ; but his English readers will not overlook the fact that his initial map of the Empire marks such countries as " German East Africa," " German South-West Africa," and " German NeW Guinea." NVhieh makes one wonder all the more how much, force to attach, to his statement in the Foreword (to the English edition only) that " Germany has wiped the slate clean as far as Britain is
Previous page
