Dangerous Inheritance Read Online Free PDF

instance.’
    â€˜I don’t believe in it in any instance,’ Fleur said quickly. ‘It’s fundamentally and morally wrong that any race should order another about.’
    Richard laughed, not very happily. ‘Now she’s off on her hobby-horse. She conveniently ignores the immense good that superior races have done for backward peoples.’
    â€˜I don’t, Daddy. But it was done the wrong way. It’s right that countries that have the money and the know-how should help the poorer ones. In fact it’s an obligation. But it’s not right that they should take over the Government of a country that’s not theirs and dictate how the people in it should live.’
    â€˜I’m with Fleur on that,’ Truss put in. ‘All peoples have theright to make their own laws; and it can’t be denied that the great Colonial Powers exploited their subject races shamefully. The cruelties inflicted on the wretched natives of the Congo in the reign of King Leopold II of Belgium simply do not bear thinking about.’
    â€˜Every anti-colonialist raises that old hare,’ Richard shrugged. ‘But you’re talking of a hundred years ago; and, anyway, it was an exception. There is abundant evidence that most of the countries that were colonised in Asia and Africa owe an immeasurable debt to Europe. We taught them methods of agriculture that greatly increased their crops, abolished famine by making them build up reserves of corn and rice, checked disastrous floods by building dams, opened up their countries to trade by giving them roads and railways, and altogether raised their standard of living.’
    â€˜But all that could have been done without inflicting on them the indignity of losing their freedom,’ Fleur protested. ‘It is being done still by loans which enable them to improve their countries for themselves, and by thousands of volunteers going out to help them better social conditions.’
    â€˜I know, dear,’ Marie Lou put in. ‘And we understand how anxious you are to take up that sort of work yourself. But the loans have no strings, so lots of the money goes on big houses and Cadillacs for unscrupulous politicians, and the volunteers have no power to enforce a better state of things. Just think of India and suttee. If the British hadn’t put a stop to it the Hindus would probably still adhere to the awful custom of widows being burnt on their husbands’ funeral pyres.’
    â€˜Not in these days, Mummy. And it would have been stopped by the progress of education if we’d sent them teachers instead of soldiers.’
    â€˜You may be right, but I greatly doubt it,’ remarked the Duke. ‘You overlook the part that soldiers played. Their presence ensured the continuance of a strong and benign Government; and that is the first essential for the maintenance of peace. Perhaps the happiest era the world has ever known was when the rule of Rome was enforced from the borders of Scotland to the frontiers of Persia and from the deserts ofAfrica to the Danube. The Pax Romana continued for nearly four hundred years, so that when at last the Romans withdrew from Britain, and the Danes invaded her, the people had come to regard a life of peace as their natural inheritance and no longer knew how to fight.
    â€˜The same applies to the Pax Britannica. Had the British not conquered India its history during the last century and a half would have been one long tale of wars between its many States. And what happened when India was given her freedom? The Hindus and Mohammedans resumed their age-old blood feuds. A million innocent people were murdered in the space of a few months. No, my child, whatever you and our American friends may think, there’s a strong case for protecting the poor and humble from death and ruin by men of an alien and wiser race enforcing law and order. But at my age I know well that no argument will convince you; so