"It is impossible to ignore the strategical and political significance of the Imperial triangle of India based on South Africa and the Australasian States, and its influence in the solution of the new problems of Imperial Defence. The effective naval defence of the self-governing Provinces is best secured by a Fleet maintained in the North Indian Ocean; and the reinforcement of the British garrison in India is best secured by units of the Imperial Army maintained in the self-governing Provinces. If these two conditions are satisfied, the problem of the defence of the Mother Country is capable of easy solution."
Hong Kong is of less strategical importance than Singapore. But it is marked out as the advanced base of British naval power in the North Pacific. It has one of the most magnificent harbours in the world, with an area of ten square miles. The granite hills which surround it rise between 2000 and 3000 feet high. The city of Victoria extends for four miles at the base of the hills which protect the southside of the harbour, and contains, with its suburbs, 326,961 inhabitants. It is the present base of the China squadron, and is fortified and garrisoned.
As already stated, the conditions which some years ago made the mastery of the Pacific unimportant to India no longer exist, and the safety of the Indian Empire depends almost as closely on the position in the Pacific as the safety of England does on the position in the Atlantic. But, except by making some references in future chapters on strategy and on trade to her resources and possibilities, I do not propose to attempt any consideration of India in this volume. That would unduly enlarge its scope. In these days of quick communication, both power and trade are very fluid, and there is really not any country of the earth which has not in some way an influence on the Pacific. But so far as possible I have sought to deal only with the direct factors.
Having noted the British possessions in the North Pacific, it is necessary to turn south and study the young "nations of the blood" below the Equator before estimating British Power in the Pacific.
Those who seek to find in history the evidence of an all-wise purpose might gather from the fantastic history of Australasia facts to confirm their faith. Far back in prehistoric ages, this great island was cut adrift from the rest of the world and left lonely and apart in the Southern Pacific. A few prehistoric marsupials wandered over its territory and were hunted by poor nomads of men, without art or architecture, condemned by the conditions of their life to step aside from the great onward current of human evolution.
Over this land the winds swept and the rains fell, and, volcanic action having ceased, the mountains were denuded and their deep stores of minerals bared until gold lay about on the surface. Coal, copper, silver, tin, and iron too, were made plentifully accessible. At the same time enormous agricultural plains were formed in the interior, but under climatic conditions which allowed no development of vegetable or animal types without organised culture by a civilised people.
Nature thus seemed to work consciously for the making of a country uniquely fitted for civilisationby a White Race, whilst at the same time ensuring that its aboriginal inhabitants should not be able to profit by its betterment, and thus raise themselves to a degree of social organisation which would allow them to resist an invading White Race. In the year when Captain Cook acquired the Continent of Australia for Great Britain, it was ripe for development by civilised effort in a way which no other territory of the earth then was; and yet was so hopelessly sterile to man without machinery and the other apparatus of human science, that its aboriginal inhabitants were the most forlorn of the world's peoples, living a starveling life dependent on poor hunting, scanty fisheries and a few roots for existence.
It needs no great stretch of fancy to see a mysterious design in the world-history of Australia. Here was a great area of land stuffed with precious and useful minerals, hidden away from the advancing civilisation of man as effectually as if it had been in the planet Mars. In other parts of the globe great civilisations rose and fell—the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Chinese, the Greek, the Roman,—all drawing from the bowels of the earth her hidden treasures, and drawing on her surface riches with successive harvests. In America, the Mexican, Peruvian and other civilisations learned to gather from the great stocks of Nature, and built up fabrics of greatness from her rifled treasures. In Australia alone, amid dim, mysterious forests, the same prehistoric animalsroamed, the same poor nomads of men lived and died, neither tilling nor mining the earth—tenants in occupation, content with a bare and accidental livelihood in the midst of mighty riches.
Australia too was not discovered by the White Man until the moment when a young nation could be founded on the discovered principles of Justice. To complete the marvel, as it would seem, Providence ordained that its occupation and development should be by the one people most eminently fitted for the founding of a new nation on the virgin soil.
The fostering care of Nature did not end there. The early settlers coming to Australia not only found that nothing had been drawn from the soil or reef, that an absolutely virgin country was theirs to exploit, but also were greeted by a singularly happy climate, free of all the diseases which afflicted older lands. Prolific Australia, with all its marvellous potentialities, lay open to them, with no warlike tribes to enforce a bloody beginning to history, no epidemics to war against, no savage beasts to encounter. And they were greeted by an energising climate which seemed to encourage the best faculties of man, just as it gave to harvests a wonderful richness and to herds a marvellous fecundity.
How it came to be that such a vast area of the earth's surface, so near to the great Indian and Chinese civilisations, should have so long remained unknown, it is difficult to understand. There is faint evidence that the existence of the great Southerncontinent was guessed at in very early days, but no attempt at exploration or settlement was made by the Hindoos or the Chinese. When the Greeks, who had penetrated to India under Alexander the Great, returned to their homes, they brought back some talk of a continent south from India, and the later Greek literature and some Latin writers have allusions to the tale. Marco Polo (thirteenth century), during his voyages to the East Indies, seems to have heard of a Southern continent, for he speaks of a Java Major, a land much greater than the isle of Java (which he knew), and which was probably either New Guinea or Australia. On a fifteenth-century map of the world now in the British Museum there are indications of a knowledge of the existence of Australia; and it is undoubtedly included in a map of the world of the sixteenth century.
But there was evidently no curiosity as to the suspected new continent. Australia to-day contains not the slightest trace of contact with ancient or Middle Ages civilisation. Exploration was attracted to the East Indies and to Cathay by the tales of spices, scents, gold, silver, and ivory. No such tales came from Australia. It was to prove the greatest gold-producing country of the world, but its natives had no hunger for the precious metal, though it was strewn about the ground in great lumps in some places. Nor did sugar, spice, and ivory come from the land; nor, indeed, any product of man's industryor Nature's bounty. Wrapped in its mysterious grey-green forests, protected by a coast-line which appeared always barren and inhospitable, Australia remained unknown until comparatively modern times.
In 1581 the Spaniards, under Magalhaes, reached the Philippine Islands by sailing west from the South American coast. In the nature of things their ships would have touched the coast of Australia. In 1606 De Quiros and De Torres reached some of the Oceanian islands, and named oneTerraAustrialiadel Espiritu Santo",(the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit). As was the case with Columbus in his voyage of discovery to America, De Quiros had not touched the mainland, but his voyage gave the name "Australia" to the new continent.
The English were late in the work of exploring the coast of Australia, though as far back as 1624 there is a record of Sir William Courteen petitioning King James I. for leave to plant colonies in "Terra Australis." In 1688, William Dampier, in theCygnet, touched at the north-western coast of Australia. The next year, in H.M.S.Roebuck, he paid a visit to the new land, and, on returning to England, put on record his impressions of its fauna and flora. It was in 1770 that Captain Cook made the first landing at Botany Bay.
The British nation at the time could find no use for Australia. Annexed in 1770 it was not colonised until 1787, when the idea was adopted of using the apparently sterile and miserable Southern continentas a depôt for enforced exiles. It was a happy chance that sent a "racketty" element of British social life to be the first basis of the new Australian population. The poachers, English Chartists, Irish Fenians, Scottish land rebels (who formed the majority of the convicts sent to Australia) were good as nation-building material.
There was work to do there in the Pacific, there is further work in the future, which calls for elements of audacity, of contempt for convention, which are being worked out of the average British type. There could be no greater contrast between, say, a London suburbanite, whose life travels along an endless maze of little gravel paths between fences and trimly-kept hedges, and the Australian of the "back country," who any day may ride out solitary on a week's journey into a great sun-baked wilderness, his life and that of his dog and his two horses dependent on the accurate finding of a series of water-holes: his joy in existence coming from the solitude and the desert, the companionship of his three animals, his tobacco, and the thought of his "mate" somewhere, whom he would meet after six months' absence with a handshake and a monosyllable by way of greeting, and yet with the love of a fond brother.
That London suburbanite gives the key to his kindly and softly sentimental character in his subscription to a society which devotes itself to seeing that the suburban house cat is not left shut up without food when a family goes away on holidays.That Australian shows how far he has reverted to the older human type of relentless purpose when, in the pursuit of his calling, he puts ten thousand sheep to the chance of death from thirst. It is not that he is needlessly cruel, but that he is sternly resolute. The same man would share his last water with his dog in the desert to give both an equal chance of life. He feels the misery of beasts but says nothing, and allows it to interfere nothing with his purpose.
There is a story of a clergyman coming to a back-country station in Australia during the agony of a great drought. He asked of the squatter permission to hold prayers for rain in the woolshed. The squatter turned on him, fiercely gripping him by the arm.
"Listen!" he cried.
From all around came the hoarse, pitiful lowing and bleating of thousands of animals dying of thirst and hunger.
"Listen! If the Almighty does not hearthat, will he hear us?"
That is the type of man, bred from the wilder types of the British race, who is the backbone of the Australian population, and who will be the backbone of the resistance which the White Man will make to any overflow of Asia along the Pacific littoral.
The Australian took instinctively to his task in the work of White civilisation—that of keeping the Asiatic out of Australia. In the early days of the goldfields, the Chinese began to crowd to the continent, and somesquatters of those days designed to introduce them as cheap and reliable shepherds. The mass of the White population protested, with riot and rebellion in some cases. At one time it seemed as though the guns of British warships would fire on Australian citizens in vindication of the right of Chinese to enter Australia. But maternal affection was stronger than logic. The cause of "White Australia" had its way; and by poll taxes and other restrictive legislation any great influx of Asiatics was stopped. At a later date the laws regarding alien immigration were so strengthened that it is now almost impossible for a coloured man to enter Australia as a colonist, even though he be a British subject and a graduate of Oxford University.
Around the ethics of the "White Australia" policy there has raged a fierce controversy. But it is certain that, without that policy, without an instinctive revolt on the part of the Australian colonists against any intrusion of coloured races, Australia would be to-day an Asiatic colony, still nominally held, perhaps, by a small band of White suzerains, but ripe to fall at any moment into the hands of its 10,000,000 or 20,000,000 Asiatic inhabitants.
Instead of that, Australia is at once the fortress which the White Race has thinly garrisoned against an Asiatic advance southward, and the most tempting prize to inspire the Asiatic to that advance. There is not the least doubt that, given Australia, Japan could establish a power threatening the verygreatest in Europe. Her fecund people within a couple of generations would people the coast-line and prepare for the colonisation of the interior. Rich fields and rich mines put at the disposal of a frugal and industrious people would yield enormous material wealth.
An organised China would put the island continent to even greater use. But there Australia is, held by a tiny White population, which increases very slowly (for men and women have the ideas of comfort and luxury which lead to small families), but which is now fairly awake to the fact that on the bosom of the Pacific and along its shores will be fought the great race battles of the future.
It is curious for the peoples of Europe, accustomed to associate extreme democracy and socialistic leanings with ideals of pacificism and "international brotherhood," to observe the warlike spirit of the Australian peoples. There are no folk more "advanced" in politics. Their ideal is frankly stated to be to make a "working man's Paradise" of the continent. Yet they are entering cheerfully on a great naval expenditure, and their adoption of a system of universal training for military service provides the only instance, except that of Switzerland, where the responsibility of national defence is freely accepted by the citizen manhood of the nation.
Universal training for military service in Australia, legally enforced in 1909, was made inevitable in 1903, when in taking over the administration of thedefences the first Commonwealth Government provided in its Defence Act for the levying of the whole male population for service in case of war. That provision was evidence of the wholesome and natural view taken by Australians of the citizen's duty to his nation. It was also evidence of an ignorance of, or a blindness to, the conditions of modern campaigning. Raw levies, if equipped with courage and hardihood, could be of almost immediate usefulness in the warfare of a century ago. To-day they would be worse than useless, a burden on the commissariat, no support in the field. The logical Australian mind was quick to recognise this. Within five years it was established that, admitting a universal duty to serve, a necessary sequence was universal training for service.
One argument the Australian advocates of universal service had not to meet. In that pioneer country the feeling which is responsible for a kind of benevolent cosmopolitanism, and finds expression in Peace Societies, had little chance of growth. The direct conflict with Nature had brought a sense of the reality of life's struggle, of its reality and of its essential beauty. There is no maundering horror of the natural facts of existence. Australian veins when scratched bleed red blood, not a pale ichor of Olympus. The combative instinct is recognised as a part of human nature, a necessary and valuable part. That defencelessness is the best means of defence would never occur to the Australian asbeing anything but an absurd idea. He recognises the part which the combative instinct has played, the part it still must play in civilisation: how in its various phases it has assisted man in his upward path; how it has still some part to play in the preservation and further evolution of civilisation.
The original fighting instinct was purely brutal—a rough deadly scramble for food. But it undoubtedly had its value in securing the survival of the best types for the propagation of the species. With its first great refinement, in becoming the fight for mateship, the combative instinct was still more valuable to evolution. The next step, when fights came to be for ideas, marked a rapid growth of civilisation. Exclude chivalry, patriotism, Imperialism, from the motives of the world, and there would never have been a great civilisation.
A distinguished British statesman spoke the other day of the expenditure on armaments as possibly a sign of "relapsing into barbarism." He might more truly have described it as an insurance against barbarism—at once a sign of the continued existence of the forces which made civilisation, and a proof that the advanced races are prepared to guard with the sword what they have won by the sword. The Pacific has seen the tragedy of one nation which, having won to a suave and graceful civilisation, came to utter ruin through the elimination of the combative instinct from its people. The Peruvians had apparently everything to make life happy: butbecause they had eliminated the fighting instinct their civilisation was shattered to fragments in a year by the irruption of a handful of Spaniards.
The Australian feels that safety and independence must be paid for with strength, and not with abjectness. He does not wish to be another Peruvian: and he builds up his socialistic Utopia with a sword in one hand as was built a temple of Jerusalem.
Some doubt having arisen in the Australian mind, after a system of universal training had been adopted, whether the scheme of training was sufficient, the greatest organiser of the British Army, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, was asked to visit the Commonwealth and report on that point. His report suggested some slight changes, which were promptly adopted, but on the whole he approved thoroughly of the proposed scheme, though it provided periods of training which seem startlingly small to the European soldier. But Lord Kitchener agreed, as every other competent observer has agreed, that the Australian is so much of a natural soldier owing to his pioneering habit of life, that it takes but little special military discipline to make him an effective fighting unit.
Committed to a military system which will, in a short time, make some 200,000 citizens soldiers available in case of need, Australia's martial enthusiasm finds expression also in a naval programme which is of great magnitude for so small a people. In July 1909, an Imperial Conference on Defencemet in London, and the British Admiralty brought down certain proposals for Imperial naval co-operation.Inter alia, the British Admiralty memorandum stated:—
"In the opinion of the Admiralty, a Dominion Government desirous of creating a Navy should aim at forming a distinct Fleet unit; and the smallest unit is one which, while manageable in time of peace, is capable of being used in its component parts in the time of war.
"Under certain conditions the establishment of local defence flotillas, consisting of torpedo craft and submarines, might be of assistance in time of war to the operations of the Fleet, but such flotillas cannot co-operate on the high seas in the wider duties of protection of trade and preventing attacks from hostile cruisers and squadrons. The operations of Destroyers and torpedo-boats are necessarily limited to the waters near the coast or to a radius of action not far distant from a base, while there are great difficulties in manning such a force and keeping it always thoroughly efficient.
"A scheme limited to torpedo craft would not in itself, moreover, be a good means of gradually developing a self-contained Fleet capable of both offence and defence. Unless a naval force—whatever its size—complies with this condition, it can never take its proper place in the organisation of an Imperial Navy distributed strategically over the whole area of British interests.
"The Fleet unit to be aimed at should, therefore, in the opinion of the Admiralty, consist at least of the following: one armoured cruiser (newIndomitableclass, which is of theDreadnoughttype), three unarmoured cruisers (Bristolclass), six destroyers, three submarines, with the necessary auxiliaries such as depôt and store ships, etc., which are not here specified.
"Such a Fleet unit would be capable of action not only in the defence of coasts, but also of the trade routes, and would be sufficiently powerful to deal with small hostile squadrons, should such ever attempt to act in its waters.
"Simply to man such a squadron, omitting auxiliary requirements and any margin for reliefs, sickness, etc., the minimum numbers required would be about 2300 officers and men, according to the Admiralty scheme of complements.
"The estimated first cost of building and arming such a complete Fleet unit would be approximately £3,700,000, and the cost of maintenance, including upkeep of vessels, pay, and interest and sinking fund, at British rates, approximately £600,000 per annum.
"The estimated cost of the officers and men required to man the ships does not comprise the whole cost. There would be other charges to be provided for, such as the pay of persons employed in subsidiary services, those undergoing training, sick, in reserve, etc.
"As the armoured cruiser is the essential part of the Fleet unit, it is important that anIndomitableof theDreadnoughttype should be the first vessel to be built in commencing the formation of a Fleet unit. She should be officered and manned, as far as possible, by Colonial officers and men, supplemented by the loan of Imperial officers and men who might volunteer for the service. While on the station the ship would be under the exclusive control of the Dominion Government as regards her movements and general administration, but officers and men would be governed by regulations similar to the King's Regulations, and be under naval discipline. The question of pay and allowances would have to be settled on lines the most suitable to each Dominion Government concerned. The other vessels, when built, would be treated in the same manner.
"It is recognised that, to carry out completely such a scheme as that indicated, would ultimately mean a greater charge for naval defence than that which the Dominions have hitherto borne; but, on the other hand, the building of aDreadnought(or its equivalent), which certain Governments have offered to undertake, would form part of the scheme, and therefore, as regards the most expensive item of the shipbuilding programme suggested, no additional cost to those Governments would be involved.
"Pari passuwith the creation of the Fleet unit, it would be necessary to consider the development oflocal resources in everything which relates to the maintenance of a Fleet. A careful inquiry should be made into the shipbuilding and repairing establishments, with a view to their general adaptation to the needs of the local squadron. Training schools for officers and men would have to be established; arrangements would have to be made for the manufacture, supply, and replenishment of the various naval, ordnance, and victualling stores required by the squadron.
"All these requirements might be met according to the views of the Dominion Governments, in so far as the form and manner of the provision made are concerned. But as regards shipbuilding, armaments, and warlike stores, etc., on the one hand, and training and discipline in peace and war, on the other, there should be one common standard. If the Fleet unit maintained by a Dominion is to be treated as an integral part of the Imperial forces, with a wide range of interchangeability among its component parts with those forces, its general efficiency should be the same, and the facilities for refitting and replenishing His Majesty's ships, whether belonging to a Dominion Fleet or to the Fleet of the United Kingdom, should be the same. Further, as it is asine quâ nonthat successful action in time of war depends upon unity of command and direction, the general discipline must be the same throughout the whole Imperial service, and without this it would not be possible to arrange for that mutual co-operation and assistancewhich would be indispensable in the building up and establishing of a local naval force in close connection with the Royal Navy. It has been recognised by the Colonial Governments that, in time of war, the local naval forces should come under the general directions of the Admiralty."
The Commonwealth of Australia representatives accepted in full the proposals as set forth in the Admiralty memorandum. It was agreed that the Australian Fleet unit thus constituted should form part of the Eastern Fleet of the Empire, to be composed of similar units of the Royal Navy, to be known as the China and the East Indies units respectively, and the Australian unit.
The initial cost was estimated to be approximately:
1 armoured cruiser (newIndomitable£2,000,000class).3 unarmoured cruisers (Bristols) at 1,050,000£350,000.6 destroyers (Riverclass) at £80,000 480,0003 submarines (Cclass) at £55,000 165,000—————Total £3,695,000
The annual expenditure in connection with the maintenance of the Fleet unit, pay of personnel, and interest on first cost and sinking fund, was estimated to be about £600,000, to which amount a further additional sum would have to be added in view of the higher rates of pay in Australia and the cost of training and subsidiary establishments, making an estimated total of £750,000 a year.
The Imperial Government, until such time as the Commonwealth could take over the whole cost, offered to assist the Commonwealth Government by an annual contribution of £250,000 towards the maintenance of the complete Fleet unit; but the offer was refused, and the Australian taxpayer took on the whole burden at once.
Still not content, the Australian Government arranged for a British Admiral of standing to visit the Commonwealth and report on its naval needs. His report suggested the quick construction of a Fleet and of docks, etc., involving an expenditure, within a very short time, of £28,000,000. There was no grumbling at this from the Labour Party Government then in power. "We have called in a doctor. We must take his prescription," said one of the Australian Cabinet philosophically.
The Australian, so aggressive in his patriotism, so determined in his warlike preparations, so fitted by heredity and environment for martial exploits, is to-day the greatest factor in the Southern Pacific. His aggressiveness, which is almost truculence, is a guarantee that the British Empire will never be allowed to withdraw from a sphere into which it entered reluctantly. It will be necessary to point out in a future chapter how the failure, so far, of the Australian colonists to people their continent adequately constitutes one of the grave dangers to the British Power in the Pacific. That failure has been the prompting for much criticism. It has ledto some extraordinary proposals being put forward in Great Britain, one of the latest being that half of Australia should be made over to Germany as a peace offering! But, apart from all failures and neglect of the past (which may be remedied for the future: indeed are now in process of remedy), Australia is probably potentially the greatest asset of the British race. Her capacity as a varied food producer in particular gives her value. There is much talk in the world to-day of "places in the sun." Claims founded on national pride are put forward for the right to expand. Very soon there must be a far more weighty and dangerous clamour for "places at table," for the right to share in the food lands of the Earth. Populations begin to press against their boundaries. Modern science has helped the race of man to reach numbers once considered impossible. Machinery, preventive medicine, surgery, sanitation, all have helped to raise vastly his numbers. The feeding of these increasing numbers becomes with each year a more difficult problem. Territories do not stretch with populations. Even the comparatively new nation of the United States finds her food supply and raw material supply tightening, and has just been checked in an attempt to obtain a lien on the natural resources of the British Dominion of Canada. Now, excluding manufactures, the 4½ million people of Australia produce wealth from farm and field and mine to the total of £134,500,000 a year. Those 4½ millions could be raised to 40 millions without muchlessening of the average rate of production (only mining and forestry would be affected).
The food production possibilities of Australia make her of enormous future importance. They make her, too, the object of the bitterest envy on the part of the overcrowded, hungry peoples of the Asiatic littoral. The Continent must be held by the British race. It would appear to be almost as certain that it must be attacked one day by an Asiatic race.
A thousand miles east of Australia is another aggressive young democracy preparing to arm to the teeth for the conflict of the Pacific, and eager to embark upon a policy of forward Imperialism on its own account: with aspirations, indeed, to be made overlord of all the Pacific islands under the British Flag.
New Zealand had a softer beginning than Australia, and did not win, therefore, the advantages and disadvantages springing from the wild type of colonists who gave to the Australian Commonwealth a sturdy foundation. Nor has New Zealand the "Bush" conditions which make the back-country Australian quite a distinct type of white man. On those hot plains of Australia, cruel to a first knowledge, very rich in profit and welcome to the man who learns their secrets, most potent of attraction with familiarity and mastery, Nature exacts from man a resolute wooing before she grants a smile of favour. But, once conquered, she responds with most generouslavishness. In return, however, she sets her stamp on the men who come to her favour, and they show that stamp on their faces. Thin, wiry, with deep-set peering eyes, they suggest sun-dried men. But whilst leaching out the fat and softness from them, Nature has compensated the "Bush" Australians with an enduring vitality. No other men, probably, of the world's peoples could stand such strain of work, of hunger, of thirst. No men have finer nerves, greater courage. They must dice with Death for their lives, time and again staking all on their endurance, and on the chance of the next water-hole being still unparched. This gives them a contempt of danger, and some contempt of life, which shows in a cruel touch in their character.
Imagine a white man who, keeping all his education and maintaining his sympathy with modern science and modern thought, withal reverts in some characteristics to the type of the Bedouin of the desert, and you have the typical Australian Bushman. He is fierce in his friendships, stern in his enmities, passionately fond of his horse, so contemptuous of dwellings that he will often refuse to sleep in them, Arabian in his hospitality, fatalistic in his philosophy. He has been known to inflict torture on a native whom he suspects of concealing the whereabouts of a water-hole, and yet will almost kill himself to get help for a mate in need. He is so independent that he hates working for a "boss," and will rarely take work on wages, preferring to live as his own master,by hunting or fossicking, or by undertaking contract work for forest clearing.
There is material for a great warrior nation in these Bushmen, with their capacity for living anyhow, their deadliness as shots, their perfect command of the horse, their Stoic cruelty which would enable them to face any hardship without flinching, and to inflict any revenge without remorse.
New Zealand has not the "Bushman" type. But as some compensation, the early New Zealand settlers had the advantage of meeting at the very outset an effective savage. The Australian learned all his hardihood from Nature; the New Zealand colonist had the Maori to teach him, not only self-reliance but community reliance. Whilst Nature was very kind to him, sparing the infliction of the drought, giving always a reasonable surety of food, he was obliged to walk warily in fear of the powerful and warlike Maori tribes. The phenomenon, so frequent in Australia, of a squatter leading his family, his flocks, and his herds out into the wilderness and fighting out there, alone, a battle with Nature was rare in New Zealand. There the White settlers were forced into groups by the fear of and respect for the Maoris. From the first they knew the value of a fortified post. Until a very late period of their history they saw frequently the uniforms of troops from Great Britain helping them to garrison the towns against the natives.
As was the case with Australia, the British Empire was very reluctant to assume control of New Zealand.Captain Cook, who annexed Australia in 1770, had visited New Zealand in 1769, but had not acquired it formally for the British Crown. The same explorer returned to New Zealand several years after. But from the date of his last departure, 1776, three decades passed before any White settlement was attempted. In 1788 the colonisation of Australia was begun, but it was not until 1814 that a small body of Europeans left Sydney and settled in New Zealand. The Rev. Samuel Marsden, who had been Chaplain to the Convict Colony of New South Wales, was the leader of the band, and its mission was to Christianise the natives. A little later the Wesleyan Church founded a Mission in the same neighbourhood. In 1825 a Company was formed in London to colonise New Zealand, and it sent away a band of pioneers in the shipRosanna. The wild mien of the natives so thoroughly frightened these colonists that almost all of them returned to England. Desultory efforts at settlement followed, small bands of British subjects forming tiny stations at various points of the New Zealand coast, and getting on as well as they might with the natives, for they had no direct protection from the British Government, which was entirely opposed to any idea of annexing the group. There was no fever for expansion in England at the time. The United States had broken away. Canada seemed to be on the point of secession. The new settlement in Australia promised little. But the hand of the British Government was destined to be forced inthe matter, and, willy-nilly, Britain had to take over a country which is now one of her most valued possessions.
Mr Edward Gibbon Wakefield was responsible for forcing on the British Government the acquisition of New Zealand. The era was one of philanthropy and keen thought for social reform in Great Britain. The doctrines of the French Revolution still reverberated through Europe, and the rights of humanity were everywhere preached to men confronted with the existence of great social misery, which seemed to deny to the majority of mankind even the degree of comfort enjoyed by animals. Wakefield's remedy was the emigration of the surplus population of the British islands—well, the British islands except Ireland, to which country and its inhabitants Wakefield had an invincible antipathy. The prospectus of the Company to colonise New Zealand stated:
"The aim of this Company is not confined to mere emigration, but is directed to colonisation in its ancient and systematic form. Its object is to transplant English society with its various graduations in due proportions, carrying out our laws, customs, associations, habits, manners, feelings—everything of England, in short, but the soil. We desire so now to cast the foundations of the colony that in a few generations New Zealand shall offer to the world a counterpart of our country in all the most cherished peculiarities of our own social system and national character, as well as in wealth and power."
In due time twelve ships carrying 1125 people sailed for New Zealand. That was the beginning of a steady flow of emigrants mostly recruited by various Churches, and settled in groups in different parts of the New Zealand islands—members of the Free Church of Scotland at Otago, of the Church of England at Canterbury, men of Devon and Cornwall men at New Plymouth.
The British Government could hardly shake off all responsibility for these exiles. But it did its best to avoid annexation, and even adopted the remarkable expedient of recognising the Maoris as a nation, and encouraging them to choose a national standard. The Maori Flag was actually flown on the high seas for a while, and at least on one occasion received a salute from a British warship. But no standard could give a settled polity to a group of savage tribes. The experiment of setting up "The Independent Tribes of New Zealand" as a nation failed. In 1840, Great Britain formally took over the New Zealand islands from the natives under the treaty of Waitangi, which is said to be the only treaty on record between a white race and a coloured race which has been faithfully kept to this day.
"This famous instrument," writes a New Zealand critic, "by which the Maoris, at a time when they were apparently unconquerable, voluntarily ceded sovereign rights over their country to Queen Victoria, is practically the only compact between a civilised and an uncivilised race which has been regarded andhonoured through generations of difficulties, distrust, and even warfare. By guaranteeing to the Maori the absolute ownership of their patrimonial lands and the enjoyment of their ancestral rights and customs, it enabled them to take their place as fully enfranchised citizens of the British Empire, and to present the solitary example of a dark race surviving contact with a white, and associating with it on terms of mutual regard, equality and unquestioned loyalty. The measure of this relationship is evident from the fact that Maori interests are represented by educated natives in both houses of the New Zealand Parliament and in the Ministry. The strict observance of the Treaty of Waitangi is part and parcel of the national faith of the New Zealanders, and a glorious monument to the high qualities of one of the finest races of aboriginal peoples the world has ever seen."
The New Zealand colonists, having won the blessing of the British Flag, were not well content. Very shortly afterwards we find Mr James EdwardFitzGeraldwriting to Wakefield, who was contemplating a trip to New Zealand.
"After all, this place is but a village. Its politics are not large enough for you. But there are politics on this side the world which would be so. It seems unquestionable that in the course of a very few years—sometimes I think months—the Australian colonies will declare their independence. We shall live to see an Australasian Empire rivalling the United States in greatness, wealth and power. There is a field forgreat statesmen. Only yesterday I was saying, talking about you, that if you come across the world it must be to Australia; just in time to draw up the Declaration of Independence."
But that phase passed. New Zealand to-day emulates Australia in a fervent Imperial patriotism, and at the 1911 Imperial Conference her Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward, was responsible for the following proposal which was too forward in its Imperialism to be immediately acceptable to his fellow delegates:
"That the Empire has now reached a stage of Imperial development which renders it expedient that there should be an Imperial Council of State, with representatives from all the self-governing parts of the Empire, in theory and in fact advisory to the Imperial Government on all questions affecting the interests of his Majesty's Dominions oversea."
He urged the resolution on the following grounds:
(1) Imperial unity; (2) organised Imperial defence; (3) the equal distribution of the burden of defence throughout the Empire; (4) the representation of self-governing oversea Dominions in an Imperial Parliament of defence for the purpose of determining peace or war, the contributions to Imperial defence, foreign policy as far as it affects the Empire, international treaties so far as they affect the Empire, and such other Imperial matters as might by agreement be transferred to such Parliament.
In advocating his resolution Sir Joseph Ward madean interesting forecast of the future of the British nations whose shores were washed by the Pacific. He estimated that if the present rate of increase were maintained, Canada would have in twenty-five years from now between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000 inhabitants. In Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand the proportionate increase could not be expected to be so great, but he believed that in twenty-five years' time the combined population of those oversea Dominions would be much greater than that of the United Kingdom. Those who controlled the destinies of the British Empire would have to consider before many years had passed the expansion of these oversea countries into powerful nations, all preserving their own local autonomy, all being governed to suit the requirements of the people within their own territory, but all deeply concerned in keeping together in some loose form of federation to serve the general interests of all parts of the Empire.
At a later stage, in reply to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Joseph Ward indulged in an even more optimistic prophecy. The United States, he said, had something like 100,000,000 people. The prospective possibility of Canada for settlement purposes was not less than that of the United States, and the Dominion was capable of holding a population of 100,000,000 in the future. Australia also was capable of holding a similar number, although it would necessarily be a great number of yearsbefore that position was reached. South Africa, too, could hold 100,000,000 people. It was no exaggeration to suggest that those three Dominions were capable of holding 300,000,000 of people with great comfort as compared with certain overcrowded countries. New Zealand, in the opinion of many well-qualified men, could carry upwards of 40,000,000 people with comparative ease and comfort.
But these figures are hardly scientific. Climatic and other considerations will prevent Canada from reaching quite the same degree of greatness as the United States. British South Africa could "hold" 100,000,000 people, but it could not support them on present appearances. The possibilities of Australian settlement are difficult to be exaggerated in view of the steady dwindling of the "desert" area in the light of recent research and exploration, and of the fact that all her area is blessed with a genial climate. New Zealand, to keep 40,000,000 people, would need, however, to have a density of 400 people per square mile, a density surpassed to-day in Belgium and Holland but not reached by Great Britain. A fairly conservative estimate of the possibilities of the British Empire would allow it for the future a white population of 200,000,000, of whom at least half would be grouped near the shores of the Pacific. Presuming a British Imperial Federation on Sir Joseph Ward's lines with such a population, and the mastery of the Pacific would be settled. But that is for the future, the far future.
Sir Joseph Ward, in the event, was not able to carry the Imperial Conference with him, the majority of the delegates considering that the time had not yet come for the organisation of an Imperial Federal system. But it is possible that with the passing of time and the growth of the population of the Dominions overseas, some such system may evolve: and a British Empire Parliament may sit one day at Westminster, at Vancouver or at Sydney. Certainly the likelihood is that the numerical balance of the British race will shift one day from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Following Australia's example, New Zealand has adopted a system of universal training for military service, but there are indications that she will not enforce it quite so rigorously as her neighbour. In the matter of naval defence, at the Conference of 1909 the New Zealand attitude was thus defined by her Prime Minister:—
"I favour one great Imperial Navy with all the Overseas Dominions contributing, either in ships or money, and with naval stations at the self-governing Dominions supplied with ships by and under the control of the Admiralty. I, however, realise the difficulties, and recognise that Australia and Canada in this important matter are doing that which their respective Governments consider to be best; but the fact remains that the alterations that will be brought about upon the establishment of an Australian unit will alter the present position with New Zealand.
"New Zealand's maritime interests in her own waters, and her dependent islands in the Pacific would, under the altered arrangements, be almost entirely represented by the Australian Fleet unit, and not, as at present, by the Imperial Fleet. This important fact, I consider, necessitates some suitable provision being made for New Zealand, which country has the most friendly feeling in every respect for Australia and her people, and I am anxious that in the initiation of new arrangements with the Imperial Government under the altered conditions, the interests of New Zealand should not be over-looked. I consider it my duty to point this out, and to have the direct connection between New Zealand and the Royal Navy maintained in some concrete form.
"New Zealand will supply aDreadnoughtfor the British Navy as already offered, the ship to be under the control of and stationed wherever the Admiralty considers advisable.
"I fully realise that the creation of specific units, one in the East, one in Australia, and, if possible, one in Canada, would be a great improvement upon the existing condition of affairs, and the fact that the New ZealandDreadnoughtwas to be theflag-shipof the China-Pacific unit is, in my opinion, satisfactory. I, however, consider it is desirable that a portion of the China-Pacific unit should remain in New Zealand waters, and I would suggest that two of the new "Bristol" cruisers, together with three destroyersand two submarines, should be detached from the China station in time of peace and stationed in New Zealand waters; that these vessels should come under the flag of the Admiral of the China unit; that theflagshipshould make periodical visits to New Zealand waters; and that there should be an interchange in the service of the cruisers between New Zealand and China, under conditions to be laid down.
"The ships should be manned, as far as possible, by New Zealand officers and men, and, in order that New Zealanders might be attracted to serve in the Fleet, local rates should be paid to those New Zealanders who enter, in the same manner as under the present Australian and New Zealand agreement, such local rates being treated as deferred pay.
"The determination of the agreement with Australia has, of necessity, brought up the position of New Zealand under that joint agreement. I therefore suggest that on completion of the China unit, the present agreement with New Zealand should cease, that its contribution of £100,000 per annum should continue and be used to pay the difference in the rates of pay to New Zealanders above what would be paid under the ordinary British rate. If the contribution for the advanced rate of pay did not amount to £100,000 per annum, any balance to be at the disposal of the Admiralty.
"The whole of this Fleet unit to be taken in hand and completed before the end of 1912, and I should be glad if the squadron as a whole would then visitNew Zealand on the way to China, leaving the New Zealand detachment there under its senior officer."
From the difference between the naval arrangements of Australia and New Zealand can be gathered some hints of the difference between the national characteristics of the two young nations. Australia is aggressively independent in all her arrangements: loyal to the British Empire and determined to help its aims in every way, but to help after her own fashion and with armies and navies recruited and trained by herself. New Zealand, with an equal Imperial zeal, has not the same national self-consciousness and is willing to allow her share of naval defence to take the form of a cash payment. Probably the most effective naval policy of New Zealand would be founded on a close partnership with Australia, the two nations combining to maintain one Fleet. But that New Zealand does not seem to desire. She is, however, content to be a partner with Australia in one detail of military administration. The military college for the training of officers at the Australian Federal capital is shared with New Zealand. The present Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Fisher, is taking steps towards securing a closer defence bond with New Zealand.[4]
In an aspiration towards forward Imperialism, NewZealand is fully at one with Australia. But she has the idea that the control of the Southern Pacific, outside of the continent of Australia, is the right of New Zealand, and dreams of a New Zealand Empire embracing the island groups of Polynesia. It will be one of the problems of the future for the British Power to restrain the exuberant racial pride of these South Pacific nations, who see nothing in the European situation which should interfere with a full British control of the South Pacific.
In addition to Australia and New Zealand, the British Empire has a number of minor possessions in the South Pacific. In regard to almost all of them, the same tale of reluctant acceptance has to be told. New Guinea was annexed by the Colony of Queensland, anxious to set on foot a foreign policy of her own, in 1883. The British Government repudiated the annexation, and in the following year reluctantly consented to take over for the Empire a third of the great island on condition that the Australian States agreed to guarantee the cost of the administration of the new possession. The Fiji Group was offered to Great Britain by King Thakombau in 1859, and was refused. Some English settlers then began to administer the group on a system of constitutional government under Thakombau. It was not until 1874 that the British Government accepted these rich islands, and then somewhat ungraciously and reluctantly, influenced to the decision by the fact that the alternative was German acquisition.
It was no affectation of coyness on the part of the successive British Governments which dictated a refusal when South Pacific annexations were mooted. Time after time it was made clear that the Home Country wanted no responsibilities there. Yet to-day, as the result mainly of the impulse of Empire and adventure in individual British men, the British Flag flies over the whole continent of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, a part of New Guinea, Fiji, and the Ellice, Gilbert, Kermadec, Friendly, Chatham, Cook, and many other groups. It is a strange instance of greatness thrust upon a people.
The native races of the South Pacific, with the possible exception of the Maori, will have no influence in settling the destiny of the ocean. Neither the Australian aboriginal nor the Kanaka—under which last general title may be grouped all the tribes of Papua, the Solomons, the New Hebrides and other Oceanic islands—will provide the foundation of a nation. It is one of the curiosities of world-history that no great race has ever survived which had its origin in a land south of the Equator. From the earliest civilisations to the latest, there is not a single instance of a people of the southern hemisphere exercising any notable effect on the world's destinies. Sometimes there seems no adequate reason for this. That Africa north of the Equator should have produced a great civilisation, which was the early guide and instructor of the European civilisations, may be explained in part by the curious phenomenon of the Nile delta, a tract of land the irrigation of which at regular intervals by mysterious natural forces prompted inquiry, and suggested that all the asperities of Nature could be softened by effort. (The spirit ofinquiry and the desire for artificial comfort are the great promptings to civilisation.) But it is difficult to understand why in America the aboriginal Mexicans should have been so much more warlike than the Peruvians or any other people in South America; and why the West Pacific should wash with its northern waters the lands of two great races, and with its southern waters flow past lands which, though of greater fertility, remained almost empty, or else were peopled by childlike races, careless of progress and keen only to enjoy the simple happiness offered by Nature's bounty.
The Australian aboriginal race is rapidly dwindling: one of its branches, that which populated the fertile and temperate island of Tasmania, is already extinct. In Tasmania, reacting to the influence of a mild and yet stimulating climate, a climate comparable with that of Devon in England, but more sunny, the Australasian native had won to his highest point of development. Apparently, too, he had won to his highest possible point, for there is evidence that for many generations no progress at all had been made towards civilisation. Yet that point was so low in the stage of evolution that it was impossible for the poor natives to take any part, either as a separate race, or by mingling their blood with another race, in the future of the Pacific. The black Australian is a primitive rather than a degraded man. Most ethnologists have concluded that this black Australian is a Caucasian. Wallace ascribes to him kinship withthe Veddas and the Ainus of Asia. Stratz takes the Australian as the prototype of all the races of man. Schoetensack contends that the human race had its origin in the Australian continent.
But, however dignified by ancestry, the Australian aboriginal was pathetically out of touch with modern civilisation. He broke down utterly at its advent, not so much because of his bad qualities as because of his childishness. Not only were alcohol, opium and greed strange to him, but also weapons of steel and horses and clothing. He had never learnt to dig, to build, to weave. War organisation had not been thought of, and his tribal fights were prodigal of noise but sparing of slaughter. When the White Man came, it was inevitable that this simple primitive should dwindle from the face of the earth. It is not possible to hold out any hope for the future of the Australian blacks. They can never emulate the Maoris of New Zealand, who will take a small share in the building up of a nation. All that may be hoped for is that their certain end will be kept back as long as is humanly possible, and that their declining days will be softened by all kindness. A great reserve in the Northern Territory—a reserve from which the White population would be jealously excluded, and almost as jealously the White fashions of clothing and house-building—holds out the best hope for their future. It is comforting to think that the Australian Government is now resolved to do all in its power for the aboriginals. Indeed, to be just, authority hasrarely lacked in kindness of intention; it has been the cruelty of individuals acting in defiance of authority, but aided by the supineness of authority, that has been responsible for most of the cruelty.
The Maori or native New Zealander was of a different type. The Maori was an immigrant to New Zealand. Some time back there was an overflow of population from the fertile sub-tropical islands of Malaysia. A tribe which had already learned some of the arts of life, which was of a proud and warlike character, took to the sea, as the Norsemen did in Europe, and sought fresh lands for colonisation. Not one wave, but several, of this outflow of colonists struck New Zealand. The primitive people there, the Morioris, could offer but little resistance to the warlike Malaysians, and speedily were vanquished, a few remnants finding refuge in the outlying islets of the New Zealand group. Probably much the same type of emigrant occupied Hawaii at one time, for the Hawaiian and the Maori have much in common. But whilst the perpetual summer of Hawaii softened and enervated its colonists, the bracing and vigorous climate of New Zealand had a precisely opposite effect. The dark race of the Pacific reached there a very high state of development.
The Maori system of government was tribal, and there does not seem to have been, up to the time of the coming of the White Man, any attempt on the part of one chief to seize supreme power and become king. Land was held on a communal system, andcultivated fairly well. Art existed, and was applied to boat-building, to architecture, to the embroidering of fabrics, to the carving of stone and wood. War was the great pastime, and cannibalism was customary. Probably this practice was brought by the Maoris from their old home. If it had not been, it might well have sprung up under the strange conditions of life in the new country, for New Zealand naturally possessed not a single mammal, not a beast whose flesh might be eaten. There were birds and lizards, and that was all. The Maoris brought with them dogs, which were bred for eating, but were too few in number to provide a satisfactory food-supply; and rats, which were also eaten. With these exceptions there was no flesh food, and the invitation to cannibalism was clear.
A more pleasant feature of the national life of the Maori was a high degree of chivalry. In war and in love he seems to have had very much the same ideas of conduct as the European of the Age of Chivalry. He liked the combat for the combat's own sake, and it is recorded as one of the incidents of the Maori War that when a besieged British force ran short of ammunition, the Maori enemy halved with them their supply, "so as to have a fair fight."
In his love affairs the Maori was romantic and poetic. His legends and his native poetry suggest a state of society in which there was a high respect for women, who had to be wooed and won, and werenot the mere chattels of the men-warriors. Since this respect for womenkind is a great force for civilisation, there is but little doubt that, if the Maoris had been left undisturbed for a few more centuries, they would have evolved a state of civilisation comparable with that of the Japanese or the Mexicans.
When Captain Cook visited New Zealand in 1769 the Maori race probably numbered some 100,000. The results of coming into contact with civilisation quickly reduced that number to about 50,000. But there was then a stay in the process of extinction. The Maori began to learn the virtues as well as the vices of civilisation. "Pakeha" medicine and sanitation were adopted, and the Maori birth-rate began to creep up, the Maori death-rate to decrease. It is not probable that the Maori race will ever come to such numbers as to be a factor of importance in the Pacific. But it will have some indirect influence. Having established the right to grow up side by side with the White colonists, possessing full political and social rights, the Maoris will probably modify somewhat the New Zealand national type. We shall see in New Zealand, within a reasonable time, a population of at least 10,000,000 of people, of whom perhaps 1,000,000 will be Maoris. The effect of this mixture of the British colonising type with a type somewhat akin to the Japanese will be interesting to watch. In all probability New Zealand will shelter a highly aggressive and a fiercely patriotic nation in the future (as indeed she does at present).
The Malay States bred a vigorous and courageous race of seamen, and Malay blood has been dispersed over many parts of the Pacific, Malays probably providing the chief parent stock both for the Hawaiians and the Maoris. But the Malay Power has been broken up to such an extent that a Malay nation is now impossible. Since the British overlordship of the Malay Peninsula, the Chinese have been allowed free access to the land and free trading rights; and they have ousted the original inhabitants to a large extent.
The Maori excepted, no race of Polynesia or Melanesia will survive to affect the destinies of the Pacific Ocean. Nature was cruelly kind to the Kanaka peoples in the past, and they must pay for their happiness now. In the South Pacific islands, until White civilisation intruded, the curse of Adam, which is that with the sweat of the brow bread must be won, had not fallen. Nature provided a Garden of Eden where rich food came without digging and raiment was not needed. Laughing nations of happy children grew up. True, wars they had, and war brought woe. But the great trouble, and also the great incentive to progress of life, they had not. There was no toiling for leave to live. Civilisation, alas! intrudes now, more urgent each year, to bring its "blessings" of toil, disease, and drabness of fettered life; and the Paradise of the South Sea yields to its advance—here with the sullen and passionate resentment of the angry child, there with the patheticlistlessness of the child too afraid to be angry. But, still, there survives in tree and flower, bird and beast, and in aboriginal man, much that has the suggestion rather of the Garden of Eden than of this curious world which man has made for himself—a world of exacting tasks and harsh taskmasters, of ugly houses and smoke-stained skies, of machinery and of enslaving conventions.
With the White Man came sugar plantations and cotton fields. The Kanaka heard the words "work" and "wages." He laughed brightly, and went on chasing the butterfly happiness. To work a little while, for the fun of the thing, he was willing enough. Indeed, any new sort of task had a fascination for his childish nature. But steady toil he abhorred, and for wages he had no use.
Some three years ago I watched for an hour or two, from the veranda of a house at Suva, a Fijian garden-boy at work. This was a "good" garden-boy, noted in the town for his industry. And he played with his work with an elegant naïveté that was altogether charming to one who had not to be his paymaster. Almost bare of clothing, his fine bronzed muscles rippled and glanced to show that he had the strength for any task if he had but the will. Perhaps the gentleness of his energy was inspired by the æsthetic idea of just keeping his bronze skin a little moist, so as to bring out to the full its satin grace without blurring the fine anatomical lines with drops of visible sweat. His languid grace deserved that itshould have had some such prompting. If a bird alighted on a tree, the Fijian quickly dropped his hoe and pursued it with stones, which—his bright smile said—were not maliciously meant, but had a purpose of greeting. An insect, a passing wayfarer, the fall of a leaf, a cloud in the sky, all provided equally good reasons for stopping work. Finally, at three a little shower came, and the "model boy" of Fijian industry thankfully ceased work for the day.
A gracious, sweet, well-fed idleness was Nature's dower to the Pacific Islander, until the White Man came with his work, as an angel with a flaming sword, and Paradise ended. Now the fruit of that idleness is that the Kanaka can take no part in the bustling life of modern civilisation.
In one British settlement, Papua, a part of New Guinea, the Australian Government is endeavouring to lead a Kanaka race along the path of modern progress. "Papua for the Papuans," is the keynote of the administration, and all kinds of devices are adopted to tempt the coloured man to industry. His Excellency, Colonel Murray, the Administrator of Papua, told me in London (where he was on leave) last year (1911) that he had some hopes that the cupidity of the Papuans would in time tempt them to some settled industry. They had a great liking for the White Man's adornments and tools, and, to gratify that liking, were showing some inclination for work. The effort is well meant, but probably vain. "Civilisation is impossible where the banana grows,"declared an American philosopher: and the generalisation was sound. The banana tree provides food without tillage: and an organic law of this civilisation of ours is that man must be driven, by hunger and thirst and the desire for shelter, to plan, to organise, to make machines, to store.
Every nation in the Pacific has the same experience. In the Hawaiian Group, the American Power finds the native race helpless material for nation-making. The Hawaiian takes on a veneer of civilisation, but nothing can shake him from his habits of indolence. He adopts American clothes, lives in American houses, learns to eat pie and to enjoy ice-cream soda. He plays at the game of politics with voluble zeal. But he is still a Kanaka, and takes no real part in the progress of the flourishing territory of Hawaii. Americans do the work of administration. Imported Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and others, are the coolies and the traders. The Hawaiian talks, basks in the sun, adorns himself with wreaths of odorous flowers, and occasionally declaims with the pathetic bleat of an enraged sheep at "American tyranny."
When White civilisation came to the South Pacific, the various islands held several millions of coloured peoples, very many of them enjoying an idyllically happy system of existence. To-day, 50,000 Maoris, beginning to hold their own in the islands of New Zealand, represent the sole hope of all those peoples to have any voice at all in the Pacific. Humanitarianeffort may secure the survival for a time of other groups of islanders, but the ultimate prospects are not bright. Probably what is happening at Fiji, where the Fijian fades away in the face of a more strenuous coolie type imported from India, and at Hawaii, will happen everywhere in the South Pacific.