LETTERS OF AN ENGLISHMAN.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 June 1917, Page 4

LETTERS OF AN ENGLISHMAN.

THE NEW PACT FIG

(London Daily Mail.)

“ Germany laid her plans,” says Mr Hughes, in his foreword to Mr C. B. Fletcher’s illuminating book J; “ as carefully against Australia as she did against France and Belgium, against Russia aud Serbia, and against Great Britain herself. She laid her plans systematically and without ruth. She was unable always to distinguish between a state of peace and a state of war. Her colonies were military outposts, her subsidised commerce was an ill-con-cealed method of attack. And 0111 Ministers were so busy in finding for her the place in the sun which she affected to lack that they had no time to check her ' schemes or to safeguard the interests of our Empire.

Sixty years ago she opened her campaign amid the islands of the Pacific Ocean. She saw Australia, an empty continent, looking northward, like an outpost, upon Asia. And gathered about her were the mysterious islands, - then the halfdiscovered homes of romance, yet destined, as .the sanguine Grrmans believed, to fill the coffers of Hamburg and Berlin. So they set to work, did the their usual forethought and their familiar want of scruple. With the help of John CJmsar Godeffroy—a name surely meant for conquest —they established a firm, and in twenty years the firm boasted profitable centres all over the Pacific and had absorbed most of the trade of the islands.

The early travellers noted the firm’s dangerous rapacity. “ The house of Godeffroy’s of Hamburg,” wrote Miss Gordou-Cutnming in 1878, “were the grab-alls of the Pacific. They were unscrupulous, in all their ways. They supplanted other traders and secured thek’-OWn footing- by artfii'liy 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. For these useful imports they accepted payment in broad tracts of the most fertile land in Samoa.”

NO PAIR PLAY. When R. L. Stevenson wrote in 1802 “ the true centre of trouble ” was still the Germans firm, and this it remained until August 1014. But as yet Germany had ivp sure footing in the/Pacific Her traders were, to be sure, active and dishonest. Her flag flew nowhere in token of posses sion. And then our supine 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, 1

German Ncw-Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Marshall Islands, fell into their hinds and were administered with the brutality we might have expected Of the atrocities committed by the Huns in New Guinea Mr Fletcher forbears to speak. “ Germany’s policy in the Pacific,” lie says, “ lias been a mixture of bullying and palaver, threaded with cunning and unscrupulous double-dealing.” She took advantage of native simplicity to cheat and to steal. When she put her flag up in New Guinea she declared that all land-claims would be honoured, and then it was found that the natives had already agreed to dispossession for some worthless “trade.” • „ Thus wherever the Gt-i mans have gone tyranny and chicane 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 tlie enterprises of Britons and Australians have been checked by the craft of German companies and the of the German Government. There has been no fair play, on' reciprocity. And for the most part of the time the British Government has stood idlj bywith its hands folded in pious nntabipation of Germany’s will. When in ISS3 Mr Mcllwraith annexed (.part of New Guinea on behalf of Queensland, his action was resented a ft! tin impertinence ; yet his action sn nmoned the first convention of Australia and gave ns the land which the skill and wisdom of Sir William Macgregor have turned to excellent account. And even when the Germans, in defiance of their engagements, tried to exclude Australian trade from the Marshall Islands, the battle of Britain and the Dominions was fought

and won not by the British Govern- : ment but ' by the private firm of : Messrs Burns, Philp, & Go. And then the war put an end to Germany’s plots and plans in the Pacific. All the possessions, which she ; had fostered with care, and equipped with gigantic wharves and stores, far beyond tlie needs of commerce, and with wireless stations, designed for “ The Day,” fell into the hands of Australia and New Zea- ' land. If, as we believe will come to I pass, those possessions shall remain j with those who now hold them, what 1 will be their future ?. They have been wrested at last from Germany’s grip, a work which Mr Hughes likens to operating at a dentist’s chair, or,father like cutting the tentacles of an octopus with blows from an axe.” And when peace is signed it will need the wisest heads in tlie Empire to shape a proper policy and provide adequately for its carrying out. A NOIII.R HERITAGE. In 1883 Lord Roseberry said at Sydney that it was Australia’s destiny to be the trustee of the Pacific—“one of the greatest destinies,” he thought, “ that have ever been reserved for a powerful nati n.” That Australia and New Zealand will fulfil their destiny is not doubtful. But the problem which ( lies ahead of them and of us cannot bo solved without work aud good will. If Australia is to be the trustee, shall she alone be asked to find the money ? Should not Great Britain bear some part of .the expense? These are questions which must be asked with a full knowledge that the answers are deferred until after the war’ and they are asked now that when tlie moment of decision comes we shall ! not be taken unawares.

And even if these questions find a practical answer there are,others no less difficult behind them.' The Pacific Ocean is a tropical empire, which still awaits development, and withGHt- labour -it .cannot be developed. Australia, herself hrbrtter. need of labour and with room for millions of inhabitants, is powerless to help. And so we are confronted at once with an infinity of problems concerning native labour, native land tenure, and the rest. Take, for instance, the strange case of Fiji, which by its system of land tenure lias been prcseried for the Fijians,, who are so well off that they have no need to work, and in effect, do not work. Rather they are content to sit idly by while indentured Indians toil in the plantation'. That the Fijians would be all the better if they cultivated their own soil need not be disputed, ancl'it is. not clear why they should en joy the benefits of good government, as they do, if they make no sacrifice for it. But more than that, their idleness endangers their very existenceWhile they no longer increase and multiply, the number of Indian immigrants grows larger year by year,, and many of them elect to settle in Fiji when the time of their contract is over. Such are some of the problems which Mr Fletcher poses in his interesting book, and for which ho finds no answer. Yet answers mn-t be found for them all jvhen flic rmich-talk;ed-of hour of reconstruction strikes. And Mr Fletcher’s book is all the more valuable now because it warns our statesmen of the difficulties which presently they will

have to surmount. . Happily, such heroes as Dr George Brown and Lorimer Fison gathered the facts upon which a judgment may be formed; happily, Sir William MacGregor’s experience is here to lieljo us ; and, happily, we have at last an Imperial Conference, which will not shirk discussion. But, whatever happens, one thing is certain: the noble heritage of the Pacific must not) be permitted to lapse.