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126 not their own. Here, in 1880, we consigned Lord Beaconsfield to his political grave, turned our backs on "scientific frontiers" and oriental adventure, and deemed ourselves ripe to be friends with all the world. Yet from that very date we, and our fellow European nations, embarked on the most rapid and vast career of acquisition and conquest that the world had witnessed since the days of Islam.

For instance, speaking in 1896, Lord Rosebery could say: "During the last twelve years you have been laying your hands with almost frantic eagerness on every tract of territory adjacent to your own, or desirable from any other point of view. In twelve years you have added to the empire, whether in the shape of actual annexation or of dominion, or of what is called a sphere of influence, 2,600,000 square miles of territory … twenty-two areas as large as the United Kingdom itself." And since then we have rapidly gone forward with immense annexations on the same lines. So too with France. The extension of her empire into Senegal and Sahara by 1880 was promptly followed by the annexation of Tunis. She scrambled for Africa in 1884, at the same time consolidating her Asiatic empire in Tongking and Laos. Since 1880 France has acquired 3,500,000 square miles, with a native population of about 40,000,000. So with the other nations.

Nevertheless, even these stupendous conquests