JAPANESE DESIGNS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 May 1938, Page 9

JAPANESE DESIGNS

AUSTRALIA’S OPEN SPACES. Japan’s designs on Australia are the subject of. two new works, just published. “Not improbably, the Japanese believe that the empty north and waterless west are just the areas in which the last British-Australians will be allowed to die out, after being driven from their homesteads,” writes Mr Sydney Upton in his book, “Australia’s Empty Spaces.” “On the other hand, the unendowed millions of Asiatics, united through the Bushido moral code, have an unshakeable belief in their destiny. They have no greater incentive to attack Australia than the comparative emptiness of the south and the east. “Japan is being inevitaby forced to turn to Australia and only those who will not face realities can doubt that the crisis is perilously near If ever a country needed a plan of development it is Australia.”

The author urges a continual and large-scale replenishment of the population from Britain.

Mr E. C. Eliot, who was a temporary private secretary to the Gover-nor-General of Australia, Lord Novar, in 1916-17, and later held important colonial appointments, describes in “Broken Atoms,” his experiences as Resident of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

The writer says: “I believe that one of the chief reasons why the Gover-nor-General wished me to be on his Staff was that I held strong views about Japan, which, during the war, made a special point of peaceful penetration in the Pacific.

“I am not alone in believing that her ulterior object was to get as near as possible to Australia, by making her way commercially down the islands.” .