Stanford's Compendium Geography and Travel

Abstract

ONE of the characteristics of the age of synthesis in which we live is a desire on the part of the people of Great Britain for a better knowledge of the Britains beyond the seas. Hence spring Imperial conferences and schemes for reciprocal education; hence, also, a crop of volumes dealing with the geography, history, and conditions of the colonies. Among these not one has been written with a deeper insight into the problems which confront a young nation than Prof. Gregory's work on Australia and New Zealand. It is too much the custom for writers to judge the measures of a new country by old-world standards, and to commend or condemn them according to the degree of their correspondence. But a moment's reflection will disclose the fallacy of such a criterion. If the problem of colonial administration could be satisfactorily solved by imitating ancestral patterns, what is the reason for the frequent failure of nations which systematically follow this course? why should it be thought necessary to utter warnings against the attempt to import Berlin into Uganda? and how is the success which attends the experimental and empirical methods of Great Britain to be explained? Stanford's Compendium Geography and Travel. (New issue.) Australia. Vol. i. Australia and New Zealand. Second edition, re-written. By Prof. J. W. Gregory Pp. xxiv + 657. (London: E. Stanford, 1907.) Price 15s.