ABSTRACT
ITALY's conquest of Ethiopia has changed the international colonial situation. Her belated attempt at empire-making may herald the beginning of a glorious era of rejuvenated Imperialism or it may inaugurate the end of the white man's rule in Africa. The world may have to face a new period of colonial wars, which will lead to a redistribution of colonial spoils, though the value of colonies is not what it was and though the rulers' hold on subject populations is everywhere loosening. Or it may experience a speeding up of the countercolonization movement all over this part of the globe. Colonial armies, recruited from native populations, may become an element of power on European battlefields, for the militarist spirit which is rising amongst aggrieved nations would scarcely be satisfied with mere colonial triumphs, which nowadays can be but by-products of far more serious hostilities. Minds trained in the tradition of ancient Rome will not shrink from transferring native (provincial) levies to conquer enemies of the European motherland. Whilst the anti-imperialist spirit is nsmg in nearly all dependencies and even spreading in many a mother country, where it weakens the hands which hold colonies, colonial levies are being employed in a European civil war. For nearly a thousand years Spain has used, and sometimes wasted, her strength iri driving the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. The original Gran conquista ultramar was an abortive attempt to make the northern coast of Mrica subservient to the Cross. To-day Moorish mercenaries
are pouring into Spain to uphold the Cross against what is called Bolshevism. And in many lands neither Church nor State seem to understand the ultimate implications of this historical inversion.
