India Quarterly October - December 1948

The mention of overseas dependencies in the passage last quoted may rmind us that the development of our maritime supremacy had unforeseen effects on the development of British power as the progress of discovery in all the seas of the world removed the old centre of gravity from the Mediterrnean to the oceans and made the position of our islands in the world no longer peripheral but centra [...] Conversely the scurity of many of our over-seas Dominions and the maintenance of sea comunications in remote parts of the world must depend in present conditions of maritime power to an important extent on the power of the United States so that from the British the American and the Imperial points of view the closest mutual co-operation seems to be dictated. [...] On the continent of Europe the reduction in the number of the Great Pwers which threatened the system at the close of the first world-war has now reached a stage when we may look in vain for any country with a real claim to this status with the exception of the predominantly Asian power of the Soviet Union which at present embodies the threat of European domnation against which a counter-b [...] RECONSTITUTION OF CIVIL MACHINERY The first task to which the Steering Committee addressed itself was the divsion of the administrative machinery but the human beings could not of course be Treated as chattel; the trained administrative personnel of the Central Gvernment and of the Provinces of Bengal Punjab and Assam was consequently shared out on the basis of individual preferences. [...] Since the dawn of history the people of Eurasia the inhabitants of the great northern plains which begin at the foot of the Cliffs of Artois and cotinue without any serious obstacle up to the mountains of Central AAii...tend through a continuous movement towards the light of the ocean towards itr sweeter sky of the Mediterranean shores where 'the orange-tree blossoms'! But impeded by the Alp