And the overspreading of India by the British was in the same way very clearly done under compulsion, first lest the Dutch or French should exploit the vast resources of the peninsula against Britain, and then for fear of a Russian exploitation.  I am no apologist for British rule in India; I think we have neglected vast opportunities there; it was our business from the outset to build up a free and friendly Indian confederation, and we have done not a tithe of what we might have done to that end.  But then we have not done a little of what we might have done for our own country.

Nevertheless we have our case to plead, not only for going to India but—­with the Berlin papers still babbling of Bagdad and beyond[3]—­of sticking there very grimly.  And so too the British have a fairly sound excuse for grabbing Egypt in their fear lest in its phase of political ineptitude it should be the means of strangling the British Empire as the Turk in Constantinople has been used to strangle the Russian.  None of these justifications I admit are complete, but all deserve consideration.  It is no good arguing about the finer ethics of the things that are; the business of sane men is to get things better.  The business of all sane men in all the countries of the Pledged Allies and in America is manifestly to sink petty jealousies and a suicidal competitiveness, and to organise co-operation with all the intellectual forces they can find or develop in the subject countries, to convert these inept national systems into politically efficient independent organisations in a world peace alliance.  If we fail to do that, then all the inept states and all the subject states about the world will become one great field for the sowing of tares by the enemy.

[Footnote 3:  This was written late in February, 1916.]

So that with regard to the civilised just as with regard to the barbaric regions of the “possessions” of the European-centred empires, we come to the same conclusion.  That on the whole the path of safety lies in the direction of pooling them and of declaring a common policy of progressive development leading to equality.  The pattern of the United States, in which the procedure is first the annexation of “territories” and then their elevation to the rank of “States,” must, with of course far more difficulty and complication, be the pattern for the “empires” of to-day—­so far as they are regions of alien population.  The path of the Dominions, settled by emigrants akin to the home population, Siberia, Canada, and so forth, to equal citizenship with the people of the Mother Country is by comparison simple and plain.