AN IMPERIAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA.•
IN one of the most suggestive contributions to this monu- mental work Sir Charles Lucas tells us that " the great safeguard of the British Empire" is the fact that "the Empire itself and its organization have been the result of growth, that its system, if it can be called a system, possesses more elasticity, is more capable of being adapted to changing conditions, than any other which the world has seen." With all deference to so competent a student of Imperial history, we should be inclined to say that the great safeguard of the Empire is knowledge of the wonderful whole by its component parts. There is no cure for "Little Englandism" so radical and so trustworthy as a trip round the world by the All-Red Route. The present writer recently returned from such a tour with a feeling that " the half had not been told him "— that no amount of reading, in books or newspapers, could possibly impart such a living and inspiring sense of the true greatness of the Empire as did the object-lesson of seeing things on the spot, and that no man ought to be allowed to sit in Parliament unless he could show that he had spent at least a year in travelling round the Empire. When the coming Unionist Government finds itself free to abolish payment of Members, we are sure that not even the most rigid economist would grumble if a fraction of the money were devoted to supplying free trips round the Empire for Members of Parlia- ment, who might be sent in pairs—or in threes or fours—so as to refrain from disturbing the balance of parties during their absence. At present, however, we fear that this is a counsel of perfection, and we welcome the admirable encyclopaedia of the British Empire which has just been issued by the University of Oxford—mindful of its high calling—as the best possible substitute for personal visitation of the outlying lands of the British Empire. In the first five volumes, respectively devoted to the British Islands and Mediterranean Possessions, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, a large number of specialists, under the competent editorship of Dr. Herbertson and Mr. Howarth (who was largely responsible for the geographical articles in the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica), describe each district of the Empire in detail. Their work, as a rule, is admirably done, lucid and concise, with a due admixture of statistics, and tells the stay- at-home reader, whether in this country or in the Dominions beyond the seas, just what he wants to know about the place in which for the moment he is interested. In the concluding volume a general survey—also by the hands of various high authorities—deals with such problems as those of adminis- tration, law, commerce, industry, communications, health, education, Imperial defence, &c., in the broad outlook. It • The Oxford Survey of this British Empire. Edited by A. J. Herberteon and 0. J. B. Howarth. 6 role. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. [CS 10e. net.]
would be invidious to mention the names of any special contributors where the standard of the whole work is so high, and we must content ourselves with commending this excel- lent survey to all who wish to study the present state of the British Empire, and congratulating the editors on their successful accomplishment of a task whose complexity is only surpassed by its importance.
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