The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1912. A FREE PEOPLE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 299, 14 June 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1912. A FREE PEOPLE.

There are in every nation cycles of intense energy and periods of decline. While Western nations have attained a maximum of energy and show evidence of decline (the desire to do less work, a distaste for exertion, calamitous diseases which are fathered by false civilisation and idleness) other nations have attained J their maximum of servility and lethargy and show evidences of mental and physical incline. In the white man's dealing with inferior races he uses them as toole for his own aggrandisement, but in the race for cash he is bound to implant principles that make inferior races competitors. Thus China is ambitious as a direct result of the schooling received from the "foreign devil." The Chinese has brains equal to those of the foreigner within his land, but he had no incentive to use them in the white man's way until the white man showed him how. Mr .Hwang, the Chinese Consul-General for Australia, lately voiced the aspirations of the New China when he stated that the people of the great empire desired to be as free as those of the Western nations. From the point of view of the Chinese, the Consul's contention that if China was open to the foreigner the foreigner's countries should be open to him was entirely sound. Every crowded nation pushes into new territory if able, and perfectly naturally. There are no people who have brought the instinct to leave the cradle of the race as the AngloSaxon. In his turn, however, he detests the idea of any other people seeking inlet for surplus population. He is perfectly justified from a self-protective point of view in closing his lands to the yellow man—if he is able. The yellow man does not close his country to the white man, because the white man is useful to him as an example of method, by following which the revitalised Mongol may conquer the earth. At present the intentions of the Chinese are apparently pacific. The suggestion contained in the remarks of Hwang is that Australia shall not be closed to the Chinese who wish to enter it. Hwang and the Chinese Government are aware that a vast proportion of Australian territory is far more suitable for a yellow race than a white race. Whatever race sticks to torrid Australia will become fitted to it ultimately by natural processes and by the gradual elimination of weak types that cannot survive. Already a type that is becoming distinct from the AngloSaxon of temperate climates is appearing in Queensland and tropical Northern Australia generally. There is no reason to believe that an aggressive, determined and continued effort to people Northern Australia with white men would be successful. The process, however, would be so slow as to be absolutely ineffective as a defence against a possible influx of yellow aliens. The point is that the Chinese have enough ready made population inured to the hardest conditions to

pvuplo tropical Australia The British Government has no sympathy with the anti-Asiatic ideals of Australasia and South Africa. The position is that vast spaces are wasting for want of population, and that to people it effectively is the prime necessity. Australia persists with a persistence born of fear (and it is a fear that no man need be ■whamed of) in declaring that Australia must be held by and for the white man. The introduction of largo numbers of Chinese into tropical Australia would not necessarily spell domination by the Chinese, but the danger is apparent. The alternative to a refusal of China's possible demand to he permitted to send its people to Australia is her armed demand for territory wherever she may require it. It is most improbable that China will force her hand now or at' any near future time, but there are strong indications that it may be impolitic sooner or later for a handful of people to demand that untold myriads should keep their hands off necessary territory. The lesson to be learnt is that if the white man cannot fill up empty lands he is selfishly preventing food supply to myriads who need it; and when it comes to a matter of sustenance there is no such thing as individual and collective conscience. The one simple fact remains: that the absolutely unoccupied lands of Australia, if held by China, would make starvation among the myriads of Chinese impossible. How long can one nation insist that portions of other nations must starve?