Plan of Khartum

Map of Africa (1902)




INTRODUCTION

"The movements in the masses of European peoples are divided
and slow, and their progress interrupted and impeded, because
they are such great and unequally formed masses; but the
preparation for the future is widely diffused, and . . . the
promises of the age are so great that even the most
faint-hearted rouse themselves to the belief that a time has
arrived in which it is a privilege to live."--GERVINUS, 1853.

The Roman poet Lucretius in an oft-quoted passage describes the
satisfaction that naturally fills the mind when from some safe
vantage-ground one looks forth on travellers tossed about on the stormy
deep. We may perhaps use the poet's not very altruistic words as
symbolising many of the feelings with which, at the dawn of the
twentieth century, we look back over the stormy waters of the century
that has passed away. Some congratulation on this score is justifiable,
especially as those wars and revolutions have served to build up States
that are far stronger than their predecessors, in proportion as they
correspond more nearly with the desires of the nations that
compose them.

As we gaze at the revolutions and wars that form the storm-centres of