“AFTER THE STORM.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2373, 14 December 1908, Page 2

“AFTER THE STORM.”

THE DOWNFALL OF BRITAIN.

A CONTINENTAL FOBECAST.

Gibbon required many volumes to relate the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. A German author describes the fall of tho British Empire in sixteen pages. “After the Storm: Reflections on the Decline of the British Empire,” is the title oi a pamphlet that has had an enormous sale in Germany recently. The little book is supposed to be the report of a lecture delivered by one Arabi Pasha, at Alexandria, in 1911. It is. one of those fantistic works that have been -popular of late forecasting .great wars in Europe, and the author imagines tho British Navy to suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the Germans in the'North Sea. Twentyfour hours later a German Army Corps lands on the English coast. “Tho Anglo-French entente, proceeds the story, “was now powerless to restrain' the German legions which swept over France and England. After the crushing defeat of the British fleet in the North Sea, Rusp sia’s promised support was not given to England and France. Japan revealed herself as an adept in applying the perfidious principles of British political methods. Ten days after the magnitude of the German victory in the North Sea was known at Tokio, the Japanese had taken possession of Hong-Kong.. A terrible revolution broke . out in India, end thousand's of British residents in that country were massacred. Order was not restored in India until the Russian Cossacks marched into the country, and "were greeted by the inhabitants, as in the old days by the oppressed peoples of the Balkan 1 oninsula, as liberators. .A massacie of tho Europeans in Egypt was only prevented by tho landing of Italian troops.” The South African States constituted themselves into ia republic, Ireland became another republic, and the United States had to sent troops into Canada to maintain order." The war lasted just three

weeks, Britain being starved into (submission. “Victorious Germany showed a wise magnanimity in her conditions,” it seems. “Apart from a war indemnity proportionate to the Wealth of England and France, she contented herself with seizing all the African possessions of the two countries, with the exception of the now independent Republic of the South. Moreover, Germany did not' retain this booty for herself, but divided it with the two other Powers of the Triple Alliance.” . Ultimately the United States .absorbed, Canada, and Japan obtained China, Siam,, the Malay Archipelago, Australia and New Zealand. Russia took charge of the Asiatic Continent, excepting those portions taken over by Japan, and the African Continent was divided among Germany, Austria, and Italy. The story is rounded off nicely with the reflection that “London will remain for over the venerable shrine at which historians will assemblo to pay homage to the shades of a departed Power.”