The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1911. GIVE AUSTRALIA TO GERMANY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 158, 3 January 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1911. GIVE AUSTRALIA TO GERMANY

Germany wants territory. Britain has much territory. A professor person in the Old Country, who has probably never fought for territory, would mak« the winning of territory very easyv for our cousins, because they have expressed a desire for a colonial empire. Quite a number of people will listen to the vox e of Professor Caldecott, who has calm'y suggested that a "white Australia" "would be more stable if Germany occupied the western half and Britain the eastern." The suggestion is simply amazing—amazing beyond the power of the average person to understand. ]n the whole world there has been no greater conquest than the conquest of Australia by the Briton, for if the blood of troops was not split in conflict with the original inhabitants of the vast country, the enormous difficulties find dangers of early settlement, the prodigious labori of the pioneers and the work that has been put into the country represent a victory for which neither Germany nor any other country can show a parallel in all history. After a century of slogging work in a hot climate, the people of Australia are enjoying a period of prosperity unknown in its vivid history. It has attracted the finest bone and sinew Britain could send to it, for in the earlier days Australia was no land for weaklings. The Australians, both born and imported, are without peer for energy and progressiveness in the whole world, despite what unreliable persons like Foster Fraser may say about them. Australia has, as we have lately noted, produced a type of its own, hard, la»k, stringy men, eminently fitted for the work the country has to do. It has plenty of sinew and plenty of brain; it is already artistic and imaginative, as well as intensely practical. It is a land of unkillable hope, of the greatest possible self-dependence, of unparalleled bravery. It has fought drought and bush fire and pestilence, and has won through and smiled. It has subdued the wilderness, and it has national asunknown in any outside the Aus-

tralian Commonwealth. It has welcomed the hard-working foreigner, for everywhere one may find small German communities, small Italian communities, and even small Swiss and French communities. But none of these foreign people really pioneered. They found a readymade country, dumped their bundles, and made a living. Without the colonising genius of the British people there could have been no foreign communities in Australia. Here, then, comes along a man who has probably never seen Australia, and speaks by the map, and who advises that Germany should be given possession of a country bought and peopled and planted by British people, who have given their blood and sweat to make the wilderness smile. The intolerable suggestion is tantamount to a suggestion that a man should toil hard and often in establishing a business, and that when it is paying he should hand half of it over to a stranger who has never done a tap towards building it up. The professor man coolly asks if a quarter of a million Westralians are entitled to prevent a great nation from taking its place under the Southern Cross? Are a few German officials and soldiers entitled to prevent Portugal or any other nation taking part of German East Africa? The Spectator, according to the cable, avers that Australia would fight to the last man to prevent the Germanising of Australia. It might be added that Australia would fight to the last woman, child and blackfellow to prevent the iniquity. The possibility that Germany might nibble at Australia has been discussed' in this column before, and the fact that Australia fills so slowly is one of the reasons why that very ambitious country should turn her eyes towards it. If it were conceivable by any possible arrangement that Germany be allowed, without any share in the arduous work of colonisation, to take over part of Australia as a going concern, it is conceivable that sparsely peopled portions of New Zealand might just as readily be handed over to the Kaiser in order to prevent him using that terrible mailed fist we hear so much about. The attitude of Au&tralianß to the proposition is exactly the attitude New Zealand would assume if it were mooted that Germany be awarded the North Island of New Zealand in order to keep her from hurting i our kith and kin at Home. The Spectator has said that if the Mother Country were to introduce a military race like the Germans into Australia there would be a bloody struggle for supremacy. That, of course, is perfectly true, but such a "wanton ecstacy" of giving on the part of the Mother Country would not only lead to a bloody,war, but it would at once disunite the Empire. There is not the shadow of a doubt that under such conditions both Australia and New Zealand would at once become republics and take upon. themselves the responsibilities of full nationhood. The freak suggestion of this professor that occupation by Germans is necessary to aid Australians in repelling the yellow races is so grotesque that even a New South Wales politician might see its absurdity. Germans have never shown a desire to go far afield in such proportions as the British. To forcibly fill part of Austrajia, with Germany might be possible to the "Man with the Steel Mitten," but it seems inconceivable that the peopling of Australia with Germans would be more rapid than the peopling of it by men and of British blood. The German is Lot partial to colonising under his own flag. He is not at all likely to serve the Kaiser on Australian soil, for when he does go to Australia he almost invariably does so to escape German dominancy and autocratic military methods. The idea of Australians, however they may be scattered, meekly giving up their landis and the labor of a hundred years to Germa'ny without protest is unthinkable, and if a time should come when Britain is partial to such a suggestion, the time for the Federation of New ZeaJand with the Comi monwealth will have come.