Akbar Ilāhābādī—Akbar of Allahabad— has been the victim of much injustice at the hands of scholars, both in the West and in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent that was his homeland. The reason is a simple one. Akbar's fame is based—and quite properly based—upon his humorous verse; and scholars tend to be rather solemn people who may enjoy reading humorous verse in the brief periods of recreation which they allow themselves, but to whom the thought simply does not occur that a man may express in humorous verse ideas just as significant, and basically just as serious, as, let us say, a man who writes a voluminous commentary on holy writ.

For Japan and Britain, 1934 was a year when naval policy was a major issue. During that year, decisions had to be made on the future of the Washington and London naval disarmament treaties, and, for both Tokyo and London, the political implications of the abrogation or renewal of these treaties were at least as important as the technical. The Japanese Government could not afford to renew the treaties, the British Government could not afford to see them go. In this situation, the feasibility of an Anglo-Japanese non-aggression pact, one of the purposes of which would be to check the demands of the Japanese navy, was seriously considered by the British.

From the legal, political, and ethical points of view, much turns on the precise sequence of events by which a war develops. Regrettably, by the time a conflict begins to attract the attention of scholars, it may be too late to reconstruct its origins. Participants die or disappear, records are lost or destroyed, memories fail, or false information is deliberately circulated. The resulting weakness of scholarly investigation then permits those with a vested interest in some particular view to rewrite history in keeping with their own peculiar demonology.