February 17.
Axy expression of opinion by Lord Curzon of Kedleston upon matters relating to the Middle and Far East is necessarily worthy of respectful consideration. In the course of a comparatively short, but progressively useful, public career Lord Carzon has gained personal knowledge of the stupendous problems that confront Europe and Asia, and has had opportunities of readjusting ideas inspired by knowledge of the conditions prevailing in any one particular country by the evidences which were i brought before him in many others. In delivering the Rectorial Address at Glasgow University on January 25 Lord Carzon was able to speak to his audience not only with the authority attaching to one who was recently Viceroy of India, but with the weight that mast be accorded to the utterances of a man who, prior to accepting that exalted position, had published several volumes dealing particularly with the subject that he selected—the relations of the East and West. And, moreover, Lord Curzon had produced books which were not the resalt of academic studies, but the fruits of personal investigation; be had written of what he had himself seen, and such light as he had been able to throw upon the problems which' have arisen from the peculiar relation in which the East and the West stand to each other had been obtained at first hand, and was not a mere reflexion of the rays from Iamps lighted by other hands. Travel in almost every part of the Far East, service as Under-Secretary of State for India and later as Under-Secretary for Foreign
occupancy of the responsible post of Affairs, crowned by a five year! Viceroy of India, had fitted Te rd Curzon {o speak' as informatively as is possible to any living man upon one of the most important of world questions.
th some of the conclusions that he arrived at as a result of a consideration of the more recent history of the relations of Europe and Asia, there may be disagresment. He attaches what some will think is undue importance to the effect upon the Oriental mind generally of the success gained by Japan in the war with Russi Lord Curzon thinks, and his view is entitled to the more attention, as he was at the head of affairs in India during the war, that the psychological effect of the first victory of consequence gained by the Asiatic over the white man, for three centuries, has resulted in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.