258 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 
is to be permitted to conquer Kanem Wadai and Baghirmi, 
when she can succeed in pushing troops into those remote 
regions, 
'Thus the “ scramble for Africa” has ended in the annexa- 
tion, real or nominal, of the whole continent by one European 
power or another, Except some desert tracts in the Eastern 
Sahara, south of Tripoli, there is no region which is not claimed 
by one of the great colonizing states, "The boundaries now 
settled, however, are in many cases so unnatural, that their 
modification is certain to be one of the main employments 
of the twentieth century. 
It remains to add a few words about a topic which for the 
last ten years has been in every mouth—Imperial Federation. 
The problem At the present moment the Crown is the only 
of Imperial formal tie between the many colonies and pos- 
Federation. ‚ossjons over which the Union Jack floats. But 
racial patriotism and the memories of a great past tell in 
favour Of federation in the majority of the colonies, no less 
than in the mother-country, A firm and well-compacted union 
of all_the. British Jands would form a state that might control 
the whole world. 
But if sentiment is all in favour of Imperial Federation, there 
are many practical difficulties in its way. Supposing that the 
Constitu- Union were accomplished, and a Federal Parlia- 
tional ment of the whole British world assembled, would 
difficulties. {pe mother-country allow herself to be outvoted 
and her policy changed by a combination of her daughter- 
states? On the other hand, would Canada be prepared to 
enter into a war for purely Australian interests, or South African 
colonists vote money freely for a struggle to keep the “ open 
door” in China? It is extremely possible that such doubts 
would prove to be unnecessary, and that in the spirit of mutual 
dependence every member of the Federation would make its 
sister’s quarrels its own. The example of the United States, 
whose foreign policy has seldom been handicapped by internal