THE YELLOW PERIL ON THE PACIFIC.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 19 November 1907, Page 4

THE YELLOW PERIL ON THE PACIFIC.

"As one war cloud vanishes another looms visible in the distant horizon, now of the political, now of the economical variety. But of ail tjio dangers to peace which have disquieted statesmen and nations in modern times the 'Yellow Peril' is perhaps the most serious," writes Dr. E. J. Dillon in the September Contemporary Review. 'The Pacific question is the lock against which the pacific endeavours of The Hague Conference may be unable to prevail. Americans are resolved, consciously or unconsciously, to efioct the commercial conquest of the Far East. And if they lacked the deliberate intention they w<>.iM n. 1 11.■ the less aspire instinctively, perseveringly to the acquisition of commercial supremacy there. For it is an economic necessity. Whether, as some fancy, u tunnel will ultimately join the United States in the North with Asia, and Manila become a vast emporium for American manufactures to be exported to South China is a detail of no gieat importance. The cardinal fact is tile tendency of the people of the United States to look upon tnc Far East ai the special market for tneir industrial output and to become more and more dependent upon it. Industrial and < oiiinn rial supremacy there will become ill consequence a necessity, a matter of vital importance, and the struggle for it a struggle for life and death. And Japan is aud will remain the most serious competitor of the United Statcc. Probably in this rivalry rather than in any racial incompatibility lies the source of the dispute between the representatives ot the white and yellow peoples, the earliest phass of which is visible in California JAPANESE LABOUR CONDITIONS. "The Japanese are not only the most formidable competitors of the people ol America for the markets of the Far East, they are also the most serious rivals of every other people for any and every prize worth striving for. And they are this, not hecause they are iv whit worse than their neighbours, morally, intellectually, or physically, but in virtue of qualities which we have hitherto professed to esteem and cult'vate, but which we now h»ve reasoo to apprehend. In other words, the root of the raotter seems too deep for any of the surgical instruments known to diplomacy. Already the struggle has begun. For the Japanese, whose efiorts are methodical, do not allow the grass to grow under their feet. The strides they make are gigantic. The rapidity, for instance, with which industry was introduced into Nippon and cultivated and developed there is suggestive of the quasi-miraculous growth of the mango plant under the mysterious manipulations of the Oriental juggler. "They work under conditions not dreamed of by the European. There is no really vexatious workman's legislation, there is no costly responsibilities to bear, and low wages are paid which even African natives would sneer at. What they lacked in their island home the Japs have acquired in Korea, and within a few years the land of the Morning Calm, dotted over with factories, covered with a network of railways and governed by laws drafted or suggested by the wisest ,of living statesmen, Hirobunii Ito, may become the Lancashire of the Extreme Orient. And then? Will a conference sitting in the Huis ten Bosch, between The Hague and the ocean, cry 'Thus faT and no farther,' with reasonable hope oi be'ig heard and hearkened to?

CHINA'S COMING ARMY. "It should not be forgotten that this planet of ours contains in round numbers some 1520 millions of human beings struggling to keep body and soul together. Approximately 830 millions of these are in Asia, and only 690 millions scattered over the remainder of the globe. Consequently more than half the human race inhabits the old Continent whence our civilisation took its origin. What will happen when those masses awaken from the lethargy of centuries and grow conscions at once of their needs and their strength? Already China is rising slowly from the coma in which it was plunged. Having accepted Europe's advice and exhortations it is returning slowly to militarism, and there are children now living among us who may not die before China has an army of two millions to defend its vital interests, which assuredly will not be identical with those of the white men of Europe or the United States. And the more intelligent of these children will know that China's j transformation was the work of their own fathers."