Elliot Evan Mill (1905) The decline and fall of the British Empire : a brief account of those causes which resulted in the destruction of our late ally, together with a comparison between the British and Roman Empires ; appointed for use in the national schools of Japan.
Purports to be a history written in 2005 describing the decline of the British Empire.
PREFACE. THIS little book is intended for use in the upper classes of our National Schools. It will, we hope, supply a long-felt need. Any Empire, which wishes to play a notable part in the history of the World, must realize that other Empires as proudly exultant as herself have passed away. If she wishes to avoid a similar fate, her inhabitants must from childhood be acquainted with the errors of their predecessors if haply they may avoid them.
Had the English people, at the opening of the Twentieth Century, turned to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of *the Roman Empire, they might have found in it a not inaccurate description of themselves. This they failed to do, and we know the result. In compiling this book, my thanks are therefore due to that laborious author. In numerous instances I have found those phrases in which he described the decadence of Rome singularly applicable to the England of the Twentieth Century. In all such cases I give references to Gibbon’s work in the English Bohn Edition, 7 volumes, 1853-5.
THE AUTHOR. TOKIO, 2005.
From the frontispiece:
“We deem it our duty to recommend it warmly to the notice of all our readers, for it deals in an original and striking manner with the causes which are at the present moment undermining the splendid fabric of our Empire.” — National Service League Journal
Full text available at: http://library.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/reada/britainfall.pdf
Review at: http://reflexionesfinales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-decline-and-fall-of-british-empire.html
