TO-MORROW IN THE PACIFIC

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3104, 7 June 1917, Page 7

TO-MORROW IN THE PACIFIC

BRITISH POLICY AND GERMAN JIMS

HUN COMMERCIAL PIRATES (From the "Daily Mail.") "Germany laid her plans," says Mr. Hughes, in his foreword to Mr. C. 13. Fletcher's illuminating book "The New Pacific: JJritisit Poiicy and German Aims," "as ; carefully against Australia as she did against iVance and Belgium, against Kussia and Sorbin, and against Great Britain herself." She laid her plans systematically and without ruth. She was unable always to distinguish between a stats of peace and a state of war. Her colonies were military outposts, her subsidised commerce was an ill-concealed method of attack. And our Ministers were so busy in finding for her the place in the sun which she affected to lack that they had 210 time to check her schemes or to safeguard the iuterests of our Empire. A Rascally Firm. Sixty years ago she opened her campaign amid the islands of tho Pacific Ocean. She saw Australia, an empty continent looking northward, like an outpost upon Asia. And gathered about her were the mysterious islands, then ihe halt-discovered homes of romance, yet destined,, as tho sanguine Germans believed, to fill the coffers of Hamburg and Berlin. So they set to work, did the Germans, with their usual forethought and their familiar want of scruple. With tho. help of John Caesar Godeffroy—a name surely meant for conquest—they established a firm, and in twenty years tho firm boasted profitable centres all over the Pacific, and had absorbed most of the trade of the islands. The early traveller noted the firm's dangerous rapacity. "The house of Gddeffroy's _of Hamburg," wrote Hiss Gordon-Cumniing in 1878, "were 'the grab-alls of the Pacific. They were unscrupulous in all their ways. They supplanted other traders, and secured their own footing by artfully fostering the'intertribal disputes which were ever smouldering among the Samoans, and then liberally supplying the combatants with arms and ammunition from their own arsenal at Liege. Tor these useful imports they accepted payment in broad tracts of the most fertile land in Samoa." When E. L. Stevenson wrote in 1892 "the true centre of trouble" was still the German firm, and this, it leluained until August, 19U. . But as yet Germany had no sure footing in the Pacific. Her traders were, to be sure, active and dishonest. Her flag flew nowhere in token of possession. And then our supino Government permitted the Germans the freedom of annexation which they denied to the men of their own blood. Our adversaries were permitted to acquire a large empire in the South Seas. ; , German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Marshall Islands, fell into their hands, and were administered with -the brutality wo might havo expected. Of the atrocities committed by the Huns in New Guinea Mr. Fletcher forbears to speak. . "Germany's policy in tho Pacific," lie says, "has been n mixture of Ireilying anil palaver, threaded with cunning and unscrupulous douwo dealing." She took advantage of native simplicity to cheat and to steal. When she put her flag up in New Guinea she declared that nil land claims would 1)8 honoured, and then it was found that tho natives had already agreed to dispossession for some worthless "trade." Tyrants and Cheats. Thus 'wherever tho Germans have gone tyranny and chicanery have gone with them. They have enslaved the natives, swindled the white men, and been faithless always to their solemn engagements. Over and" over again (he enterprises of Britons and Australians have been checked by tho craft of Gorman companies and the subsidies of tho German Government. There hns been no fair play, no reciprocity. And for the most part of the lime the British Government lias stood idlv bv with its hands folded in pious anticipation of Germany's will. When in 18S3 Mr. M'llwraith annexed part of New Guinea on behalf of Queensland; his action was resented as an impertinence; vet his action summoned the first convention of Auslralia, and gave us the land which the skill and wisdom of Sir William MncgreMH- have turned to excellent account. Ami pvo " w ) lp " ,no c ' pl '" mans, in defiance or their 'engagements, -tried to exclude Australian trade from tho Marshall Islands, Ihe battle of Britain and the Dominions was fought and won not by the British Government, but Hv tho private firm of' Messrs. Burns, TMiilp and Co. And the" tho war nut an end lo Germany's plot'' and plans in the Pacific. 'All the possesions, which sh" had fostered with care, and equipped with gigan'ic wharves and stores, far beyond the need of commerce, and with wireless stations, de-' signed for "The Pay." Ml into the hands nf Australia and New Zealand. If, as we believe will come in nass. these possessions shall remain with those who now Mil Hieni. what will be lh»iv rnlnre? They have been wrnslcd "I la"' fro'" Germany's irrin, a work which Mr. Hiiehes likens lo "»ticrnlinc at a denlisl's chair. or ral.her like rntliii" the tentacles 0 r an octopus with blows from an axe." Ami when peace is signed it: will need the wisest heads in Uic Empire lo shape a proper policy and provide adequately for its Tarrying out.