The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.16

c12.16

The political tendencies of the French people under the Third Republic are anything but democratic. The French are probably the most high-handed of all the colonial powers in Asia and Africa. This republic was not less despotic than were the monarchical nations in the treatment of the late Manchu-Chinese empire. Nor is it more considerate to the Chinese republic. The Lao-hsikai (Tientsien) affair of 1916 is a recent incident. And in spite of the solemn conferences and mutual assurances of the Powers at Madrid (1880) and Algeciras (1906) in regard to the integrity and independence of Morocco, France systematically pursued an aggressive policy in that Sultanate by which finally Germany was exasperated to bring about the Agadir crisis of 1911. Besides, "the tyranny exercised by the army, the alleged influence wielded over the army by the clergy, the fact that military organization is used as a means of propaganda for royalism, the vicious opposition on the part of the majority of the press to all truly liberal ideas and motives of action, the unscrupulous distortion by the same press of all facts opposed to its own ideas of patriotism, all these may be regarded as portents and symptoms of social retrogression".¹