(1)
In the title of his Paper the Minister has (surprisingly, I thought,
at first sight) called the problem that of our Other Foreign Policy'
presumably because it is no longer one of 'possessions' but rather,
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from our point of view,/effecting some of honourable 'dispossession'
and that having to be done in an international atmosphere in which
both continued possession and dispossession is liable to involve us
in international criticism if not embarrassment. This problem, and
the name the Minister has here given to it happen to form a curious
(almost ironic) dénouement to both the circustances in which we orig-
inally acquired many of these territories (other than the W. Indian
ones) and to a comment in almost the exactly opposite sense which
in 1902 the Minister's predecessor made upon it, which, I think, is
worth quoting. In the last two decades of the 19th century we had,
in pursuit of a purely foreign policy designed to counter the ambitions
of France and Germany, acquired numerous territorial interests around
the globe but in the form strictly of Protectorates as an instrument
deliberately chosen for this diplomatic purpose because by it we merely
acquired control of the foreign relations of these places and no
internal jurisdiction or administrative responsibility. This, however,
inevitably compelled us, both from practical necessities like protect-
ing foreign nationals in them and from international obligations such
1890 as those arising from the/ Brussells Convention on slavery, to assume
an increasing measure of internal jurisdiction and control - a problem
exactly analogous with the present one hf having responsibility withou
power. This problem and the many anomalies which it produced in what
were still technically foreign countries obliged the Colonial Office
in 1899 to propose that we should annex practically all of these
places as straightforward colonies and accept full responsibility for
their government, and when this proposal, with departmental support from
Foreign Office, came before the then Under Secretary of State, Lord
Cranbourne, he observed in a minute, somewhat apprehensively,
"It seems to me that what has hitherto been a foreign policy has now