"HANDS OFF THE PACIFIC."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 300, 13 May 1911, Page 6

"HANDS OFF THE PACIFIC."

WHERE EAST AND WEST MEET. In an article on the future of the Pacific, Mr. W. Francis Ahern wrote recently in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Noted British publicists are pointing out that the Armageddon of the near future will be a great naval struggle for supremacy in the Pacific. It is not necessary to go far for the reason of this alarming prophecy. The struggle will probably arise over a claim by Japan to enjoy free access to the large unoccupied tracts of land with a seaboard to that ocean. In this coming struggle, Australia, New Zealand, and America must necessarily be deeply alarmed. At the present time there is just the faintest probability that the combat will be waged between the United States and Japan, but no one can say with confidence how long the British Dominions can escape being involved. Military success has exagger-l ated the intense patriotism and national pride, of the Japanese, who will not much longer endure the stigma placed upon them by the restrictive immigration laws of Australia and America. The people of the western slopes of Canada and United States have had a foretaste of the results of Japanese immigration. How would they enjoy the prospect of the whole of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains being seized and peopled by the Japanese? And, in such event, how long would they be able to keep the Oriental flood out of western Canada?

"Now this possibility is not at all remote. A French naval officer lately placed on record his deliberate conviction that, in the event of war between the two countries, the Japanese could take possession of the whole of the Pacific seaboard of the United States before she could take any effective steps to prevent them. Because the Americans know this conviction is a sensible argument there was recently formed the Pacific Slope Congress, which from its headquarters in San Francisco is urging the United States Government to create a powerful Pacific fleet. Admiral Evans says such a fleet is an urgent necessity, and however apathetic the authorities at Washington may be en the subject, no one who studies the question can d»ny that there is need for strong and immediate action on the lines indicated if America is not to suffer a serious humiliation.

"The imminence of the Japanese menace, so far as America is concerned, lies in the fact that the Hawaiian Islands, thrown out by Nature as a shield between America and Asia, have been so completely 'Japanned' that they may be said already to constitute a Japanese outpost for attack on the Pacific seaboard of America. These islands, instead of being a safeguard, may very easily provide a 'casus belli' whenever Japan is ready to take the offensive. They have a total population of 210,000, and of these over 70,000 are Japanese."