THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1909. "CONFLICT OF COLOUR."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9671, 20 December 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1909. "CONFLICT OF COLOUR."

I That the greater divisions of the human race have approximately located themselves, that the continents where coloured and white people respectively shall be established can be identified with some certitude, and consequently that the colours can be pictured as planted in position for a terrible and inevitable Armageddon, is a generalisation whicb has been propounded more than once. It is probably as liable to variation ventures in futures. This Jis already suggested by the tendency of|lndians, Chinese, I and Japanese to emigrate and form communities in countries theoretically dedicated to white civilisation. But it may prove roughly true that the real entrenchments of the coloured peoples will remain in Asia and Africa, where, especially in Asia, there areTvast spaces over which they can expand. That hypothesis naturally suggests Asia and Europe as final antagonists for world-wide dominion, a possibility which is very forcibly discussed by Mr Putnam Weale, the well-known, writer on Far Eastern conditions, in the November "World's Work," i Mr Weale's proposition is stated in that most impressive of all argument?, a fact. There are in Europe i about 453 millions of people, in Asia about 967 millions. Taking the world's population uver all, "the | odds against the white man" are I nearly two to one, since of a grand universal aggregate of 1,685 millions more than 1,000 millions are coloured. Immediately, however,, it is only Asia that is in question, and the Eastern odds atjainst the European West are even greater. There, too, military potentiality is asserting itself like some faculty long lapsed into

"innocuous desuetude" for want of use, but always only waiting the touch of the tinder "opportunity" to break into a fierce blaze. The Turks have been fighting people as lone as ] history has known them. Nothing j else brought them far west to hammer at the gates of Vienna and threaten Italy. The Japanese have given such proof of their valour and superb adaptability ti military organisation as has startled the wrrld. The Chinese only await their chance to organise. Practically all coloured peoples, as far as that goes, are native lighters. Mr Wesle pointedly recalls that on the one hand many coloured peoples' countries are under subjection by comparative handfuls of whites, while on the other there are in and pertaining to Asia six non-subjected countries—China, Japan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia, and Siam—whose united population is 568 millions., In the former case "the white man now proclaims the reign of justice and yet still acts, where his interests are at stake, as if he were subject to special laws," by enforcing himself, as ruler over people in their own land. The obvious dangerous possibility in this is that the ruled may be nerved by the military and independent national progress of other Asiatics to assert themselves. There is apparently nothing else for it as far as they ara concerned, for, should one white domination be j relaxed, there are other European nations only too ready to take it over and perhaps enforce it with even sharper severity. Nearer and farther Asiatics are prepared and preparing, if not for a greater destiny, to impress themselves upon the world as se 1 -sufficient. At the extremes (estimating Turkey as essentially Asiat.'c in spirit) are nations ready and indomitably resolute for any struggle that events may necessitate. "Asia is not content," says Mr Weale; "Asia begins to understand. If China, the other great representative of the politically free people,of Asia, is either led or forced quickly in the footsteps of Japan and Turkey, a very new era in the relations of Europa and Asia must soon commence. For the question—the discussion uf which has apparently only been adjourned sine die—of the status of the Asiatic in America, in Australia, and in South Africa, will certainly then be reopened, and its solution very possibly worked out in a most peculiar way in regions where the white man can least protect• himself —that is, in Asia itself." , There is the prospect that Asia for the Asiatics will be the cry, and that room must be made for people of the East who want it in new countries. The coloured peopl s increase in much (greater proportion, than the whites, and are seemingly immune from many diseases that occasionally devastate the European i stock. And it is pointed out, as bearing, importantly upon the futpre. that Europe is doubly incapable of united action. It is impossible to proclaim a halt in exploitation uf Asia, because, England having begun it, • there are other Powers which would , step in if it were dropped; and owing to the same European discordance and rivalry it is doubtful, to say the least, whether united repression could, be brought about if circumstances necessitated it. But that seems a questionable conclusion. The greater likelihood is that Armageddon would find all forces rallied to their standards. Like many others who ponder over the development and probabilities of the colours problem, Mr Weale deplores the AngloJapanese alliance on the ground that it deprived Great Britain of liberty of Asiatic action and enabled Japan to successfully prosecute the war with Russia, which was really the old. yet ever-new struggle of Asia against Europe. As to that, we should consider it quite questionable whether there was much to choose between Japanese domination of the far East and Russian predominance which would be essentially Asiatic in everything but the neutralised characteristic of colo'ir. The thought of Kussia sprawls! triumphant from the Baltic to the Pacific, her despotic h«?ad at St. Petersburg and her tentacles clutching the Farther East, is not an entrancing one to those who live in British liberty. It is to be admitted that, as Mr Weale says, since the Alliance there have been apprehensions in the Pacific—that "the Pacific seaboard of the North

American continent became much excited because of the new danger which has arisen;" while "Australia is openly nervous.'' But are these "new dangers?" The Asiatic danger is an old and grievous one in both America and Australasia. And suppose Russia has subdued Japan; what would have been the terrors to Australasia of a Russian 1 over-lordship in Asia that would almost certainly have driven and helped hordes of Asiatics to our coasts, which Great Britain, alone in her "splendid isolation," would I have had to keep clear if she could? For Australasia and Africa, as Mr Weale bluntly puts it, "are more than potential danger centres for the white man." They are vast, and their white populations are desperately scanty. Apart from what they can do for themselves as Europeans increase in them, their hope lies, paradoxically enough, in the probability that if the "conflict of the colours" is ever realised it will be more universal than'

national. And that is the dread eventuality which so many contemplate with natural horror, the inhuman Ufe-and-death clash of peoples who seem to have been destined to lie apart and never to fuse. For it is trje, however deplorable and irrational, that there ia, as Mr Weale asserts, "racial antipathy founded on colour—an animal-like instinct, if you will, but an instinct which must remain until the world becomes Utopia, an instinct which seems to forbid really trank intercourse and equal treatment." Civilisation seems to intensify that instinct, inciting the coloured peoples to greater aggressiveness and increasing the whites' aversion. Should its effects continue to thus widen the gulf, it is to befeared that the terrible "conflict of colour" is only a question of time.