April 22.  To such as believe that the quaint product called French civilization would be an improvement upon the civilization of New Guinea and the like, the snatching of Madagascar and the laying on of French civilization there will be fully justified.  But why did the English allow the French to have Madagascar?  Did she respect a theft of a couple of centuries ago?  Dear me, robbery by European nations of each other’s territories has never been a sin, is not a sin to-day.  To the several cabinets the several political establishments of the world are clotheslines; and a large part of the official duty of these cabinets is to keep an eye on each other’s wash and grab what they can of it as opportunity offers.  All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth—­including America, of course—­consist of pilferings from other people’s wash.  No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty, occupies a foot of land that was not stolen.  When the English, the French, and the Spaniards reached America, the Indian tribes had been raiding each other’s territorial clothes-lines for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been stolen and re-stolen 500 times.  The English, the French, and the Spaniards went to work and stole it all over again; and when that was satisfactorily accomplished they went diligently to work and stole it from each other.  In Europe and Asia and Africa every acre of ground has been stolen several millions of times.  A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue.  This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.  Christian governments are as frank to-day, as open and above-board, in discussing projects for raiding each other’s clothes-lines as ever they were before the Golden Rule came smiling into this inhospitable world and couldn’t get a night’s lodging anywhere.  In 150 years England has beneficently retired garment after garment from the Indian lines, until there is hardly a rag of the original wash left dangling anywhere.  In 800 years an obscure tribe of Muscovite savages has risen to the dazzling position of Land-Robber-in-Chief; she found a quarter of the world hanging out to dry on a hundred parallels of latitude, and she scooped in the whole wash.  She keeps a sharp eye on a multitude of little lines that stretch along the northern boundaries of India, and every now and then she snatches a hip-rag or a pair of pyjamas.  It is England’s prospective property, and Russia knows it; but Russia cares nothing for that.  In fact, in our day land-robbery, claim-jumping, is become a European governmental frenzy.  Some have been hard at it in the borders of China, in Burma, in Siam, and the islands of the sea; and all have been at it in Africa.  Africa has been as coolly divided up and portioned out among the gang as if they had bought it and paid for it.  And now straightway they are beginning the old game again