IN this study Southeastern Asia is limited to the land area on the continent of Asia which is south of China and east of India. In particular it includes Burma, Thailand, Indo-China, and Malaya.

Nationalism has more than one connotation. Every people has a nationalism or a patriotism of some sort and perhaps always has had. However, in previous ages it was more the expression of a feeling of cultural, tribal or ethnic oneness. In modern times the word has acquired a political connotation so that it is possible to say that some peoples have developed a modern political nationalism and others have not.

Afrail, deaf, dyspeptic little man is still, after some three decades of governmental service, one of the outstanding politicians in Australia. Although he left the cabinet when the Labor Party took charge in the fall of 1941, William Morris Hughes is now a member of the Advisory War Council. He is also the leader of the United Australian Party. There is little doubt that he will be one of the representatives of the Commonwealth when the next group of statesmen sit around the peace table, and that he will voice his convictions quite determinedly. An examination of some of his past views on foreign policy may well afford clues as to the position that he will take at the next peace conference.

On September 26, 1792, George Lord Viscount Macartney, the first British envoy ever to reach China, sailed from Portsmouth with a commission as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China. The aims of the mission were to put Sino-British relations upon a treaty basis, redress various grievances in the existing commercial arrangements at Canton, open new ports to trade in north and central China, and, if possible, establish a permanent legation in China. As the objectives of the embassy were important and as it would establish precedents for future British missions to China, the government had planned it with care, and had placed at its head an especially competent diplomat and colonial administrator. The British were well aware that the Chinese considered foreign embassies as tribute-bearing missions and generally, if not always, demanded that the ambassador perform the kotow before the Emperor.