NEW ZEALAND'S REALM

The responsibility added to New Zealand's burden is also a homogeneous one. In her administration of the Maori, New Zealand dispossessed them of their mana (prestige) but left to them their economic resources and their amenities. In the result she has provided the world with the only outstanding example of a native race being able to survive on terms of civic equality-and almost of social equalitywith the invading whites. So that the leading mind amongst the Maori to-day, the Hon. A. T. Ngata, M.A., LL.B., was able to congratulate the natives of German Samoa on coming under the same régime. The little nation of the Rarotongans had come inside the boundaries of the Dominion in 1901. New Zealand is now steward for the welfare of three branches of the Polynesians, and surely no people could offer such a hopeful prospect for their future.

Australia's dependencies are tropical, all lying between the equator and 12° south. New Zealand's are only subtropical. The Cook Islands-Rarotonga -are almost on the tropic of Capricorn, while Western Samoa is in 14° south. From the point of view of area and population New Zealand's new charge is tiny -1,000 square miles and 30,000 people, the close kin of the Maori and speaking a similar language.

THE POLITICAL SURVEY

South of the line, then, we have the two British Dominions with their dependencies. France has in the west, not far from Australia, the fine post of New Caledonia, with its valuable deposits of nickel and chrome ore; and in the east, half-way to Chili, the inconsiderable groups of Tahiti, Paumotu, and the Marquesas, with populations dwindled almost to extinction and resources languishing for labor. Right in the centre of the archipelagos Great Britain has the Crown Colony and entrepot of Fiji. Her high commissioner here has jurisdiction over the Gilbert and Ellice Colony to the north and the Tonga protectorate to the southeast, and shares with France the control of the New Hebrides, close to New Caledonia. The high commission is an anach

ronism since 1884, and the condominium in the New Hebrides is the one outstanding possibility of disagreement between Great Britain and France.

At Samoa, which is almost on the international time line, where you run suddenly from one day into the day before or the day after, the U. S. S. Narragansett in 1871 spied out the best harbor in the group at Pago-pago, and it was occupied under a treaty of 1878. It is really the only good harbor in Samoa, and it is little more than a harbor, but the Navy Department has run it and the island (Tutuila) so well that New Zealand is glad to take some lessons from them.

JAPAN COMES IN

North of the equator things are for the most part as they were. That is to say, America is still in possession of the great Asiatic group of the Philippines, waiting, like England in India, for the day when she may leave it to its own people. Can she ever do so? The United States possesses, as before, a string of steppingstones to the East-Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines. But she is now irrevocably an Asiatic power. The menace to her social structure in the Pacific States compels her, whether she likes or not, to keep her sword in the side of Asia at Manila. Even if the Filipinos were ready for her departure she must stay, for until the quarrel with the East is decided she can best defend herself, as England always did, on the coasts of her enemy.

Yet another difficulty arises from the Treaty of Versailles. Germany was never the enemy of the United States. But today Germany's possessions at Caroline, Marshall, Pelew, and Marianne, encircling Guam, are in the hands of Japan. The League of Nations does not grant sovereignty, nor does it permit the mandatory power to fortify. But it cannot forbid the people intrusted with a mandate from flooding the territory with its own nationals-its administrators, engineers, artisans, and laborers. Obviously Japan alone of the mandatory powers is able to do this, for only the Japanese can labor in such conditions. To-day we are told that the Japanization of the islands north of the equator is proceeding actively: that Japanese workers are flooding

the groups, Japanese goods are being dumped everywhere, and the Japanese tongue is being promoted, as French and German were elsewhere, by compelling its use in the mission schools. The Japanese can fill up with their own flesh and blood the vacancies left by the disappearing populations of the Pacific; we never can. Thus irresistibly the frontiers of Japan, which yesterday were safe in Asia, have been pushed forward three or four thousand miles across the Pacific toward Australia and New Zealand.

I shall never believe that this was necessary. Japan is an Asiatic power with an Asiatic outlook, and with no maritime traditions whatever. Her outlet was and is in Asia, in Siberia, Manchuria, and Mongolia, and if political barriers had not been erected against her expansion there she would never have stepped out into the Pacific. Those barriers were maintained by the Western powers in favor of Russia, though Russia's occupation of Siberia has never been even as well justified or as necessary as Australia's occupation of Australia.

THE WORKINGS OF TRADE

The war has effected a very distinct upheaval in the trade relations of the Pacific Ocean. Before 1914 the Germans had gradually built up in the Western Pacific, north and south of the equator, a very remarkable mechanism of communications and protection. Their ocean lines from Europe ended at Hongkong and at Sydney. Between these they had regular steamship services, transshipping at the termini products intended for Europe. Subsidiary lines ran through Manila, the Caroline and Marshall Islands, Gilbert and Ellice, Nauru (the phosphate deposit), Bismarck, and German New Guinea. Within the groups cutters and schooners collected copra and other produce and carried it to central loading-ports.

Then, by subsidies, rebates, and a preferential use of customs revenues, the lot of the British competitor was made as difficult as possible. On one occasion, in 1905, the British Government had to enter a diplomatic protest that these imposts were against the spirit of the reciprocal trade agreement of 1886. It won the day, and the British firm concerned

(the Australian ship-owners, Burns, Philip & Co.) were able once more to run to the German possessions. But by weapons less liable to exception the British competitors were gradually frozen out, and the whole carrying for the German possessions, with much of that for British New Guinea and the Gilberts, passed into German hands. By the German reticulation the copra of the region was pretty exhaustively monopolized for Germany, and it was transshipped at Sydney or Hongkong. In those days about 70,000 tons of copra, or, say, 15 per cent of the world's output, came from the Pacific generally, and Germany from this western area alone secured one-half of it for her own purposes.

COPRA AND LABOR

The smallness of the output of copra from the Pacific islands is due almost entirely to the lack of a labor supply. The cocoanut finds no more hospitable home anywhere than in these islands, and the quantity of nuts that one sees rotting on the ground is an indication of what the output might be were laborers available to harvest it. Unfortunately, the native populations, especially in Micronesia and Polynesia, are very sparse. The swarms of natives who were observed by Cook and Bougainville and Wilkes wrapped up in the industries of their own civilization are no more. Instead, each of the groups has only a few thousand natives, and they find it all too easy to live in luxury the whole year on the proceeds of a few weeks' work. And why should they work more?

Consequently white enterprisers in these Eastern groups have understood for decades past that they must find labor elsewhere. The first source of supply, for the plantations of Fiji, Samoa, and Queensland, was the islands of the Melanesian division, most of which even to-day are much more densely populated than those to the eastward. The Melanesians, who are negroid, are strong, faithful if properly treated, and not without a rather surprising mechanical aptitude. For cocoanut and sugar plantations they make excellent labor, but they lack the fine-fingered skill required for the more delicate work of cocoa-planting. For

some decades the Tanna boy from the New Hebrides, and the Solomon Island boy were the mainstay of the Pacific planters; but it soon became evident that even this supply, plundered by kidnappers and ravaged by disease, arms, and drink, would not serve the requirements for very long.

Fiji took alarm early, and in 1880 adopted a custom already in vogue in Mauritius and the West Indies, and brought in under indenture the first of a long procession of Hindu coolies. They were made free in the country on the expiry of their term of service, and with their descendants they now number more than 60,000. They form a third race in the colony, hated by the native Fijian, whom they promise soon to outnumber and eventually to dispossess, distrusted by the whites, who can only defeat their demand for political equality by remaining for all time a Crown Colony governed direct from Downing Street. Yet they furnish, under conditions which we may not like to contemplate, the requisite labor for the great sugar industry of this colony, just as in Hawaii, alongside a native population diminished to a few thousands, another overwhelming Asiatic immigration has come in to operate the production of sugar.

THE CONQUERING CHINESE

Gradually all the Melanesian islands came under control of one or other of the great Powers, and one by one they forbade their natives to go abroad to labor. The German Government openly reserved all the labor of Solomon and Bismarck for the needs of their own planters. The British Colonial Office came slowly to the same decision regarding the British Solomons. Struggling through a forest of labor scruples, it perceived that by forbidding natives to go abroad it might appear to be furnishing its own planters with labor at less than the ruling rate in the Pacific. Such a favor to its own planters it shuddered to confer, and for some years, accordingly, it allowed the German and French recruiter to take away its people. Now it is the general rule in the Solomons and throughout the islands that no boys shall go abroad to labor. The last Solomon boy was recruited long

since and went back from Samoa to his island in October, 1920.

The only other coolies who have been used on a considerable scale are Chinese. To-day they are the sinews of the cocoagrowing industry of Samoa, and if they were permitted to move about as free laborers they would supply all the needs of the eastern Pacific. The Chinese Government objects to their emigration as indentured labor. The Anglo-Saxon authorities of the Pacific object to their movement as free labor. In the Dominions it is anxiety for their own standard of life; in the islands it is a sense of duty toward their Polynesian wards.

The Chinese have come, then, only as indentured coolies, and year by year it is harder to get them from China, the only country to-day which will permit its people to go abroad to labor. As regards Samoa, strong objection has been made in the New Zealand Parliament that long indentures lead to unions between Chinese men and Samoan women and the rearing of a half-caste population. Undoubtedly there are such unions, and their most objectionable feature is that they may not be legalized, and that when eventually the coolie completes his term he must return to China and must leave his Samoan companion and their children as a burden on the tribe. Evidence acquits both the Chinese and the Samoan women of flagrant immorality. The former is a good husband, and the latter a chaste woman and a good wife. But obviously such conditions could not be condoned by an Anglo-Saxon Parliament, and New Zealand has taken the promptest steps to remedy the abuse. Arrangements have now been made for the married coolies to bring their own wives from China, and the unmarried will not be retained beyond their first term of three years. Owing to their poverty and ignorance of the language, it usually takes more than three years for them to form alliances with the natives.

If the supply of Chinese labor can be maintained, the fine German plantations in Samoa which have come into the hands of the New Zealand Government as an asset against the war indemnity, will continue, and will be a valuable source of revenue, enabling New Zealand to do her

NATURE'S DUTY TO MANKIND We have not yet solved the problem of making these islands produce what is required and what they can produce for the benefit of mankind. The most obvious service they can do is to add to the world supply of artificial butters by a great increase in the output of copra. The copra industry suits the mentality of the Polynesian native. He has lived all his life amongst cocoanuts and he understands them. His lack of mechanical knowledge is not serious. But the absence of the competitive instinct is. Life is so easily supported that the native cannot be relied upon to work in employment. Again, why should he? He comes of a stock of traditional communists. The gains of the individual are the common property of the tribe. Hence the Polynesian is only to be found as an efficient worker when he is away from his own island.

Yet three-fourths of the copra output of western Samoa is the product of native plantations. There is a great economic problem here, and to find a solution we have to inquire into the character of the Polynesian. He is a good father, and will never allow his children to want for food or clothing. Obviously, then, the incentive which will appeal best to the industry of the Polynesian is an increase in his family responsibilities. The New Zealand Government recognizes this, and recognizes, also, that the best way to maintain the purity of its subject races is to fully people their lands with them, so that immigrant labor will not be required. Accordingly it has taken steps to establish in Samoa and Rarotonga a thoroughly efficient medical service, charged to reduce the death-rate, and particularly the infant death-rate, by every possible means. Education is also being given a more competitive bent than has been followed by the missions throughout the hundred years that they have borne this vast burden. As the population increases, it is hoped that the pressure on the natural resources will increase, up to a certain point, the exportable surplus of

AMERICA'S LABOR PROBLEM

The labor problem facing the United States is quite a different one. America in the Pacific is largely an Asiatic power, with the advantages of Asia's great supply of labor. Even at Pago we find Filipino houseboys instead of Polynesians. In Hawaii it is the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Filipinos who supply the labor required and make of this Polynesian outpost an Asiatic stronghold. Out of 250,000 in all, more than 150,000 are Asiatics. In the Philippines true Asiatic. conditions prevail-a dense population, labor cheap and not unintelligent; consequently an abundant exportable surplus.

Before the war American trade with the Philippines was double the whole trade of the rest of the Pacific, including New Guinea. But of course the population was many times that of the rest of the ocean. Indeed, the estimated population of the whole of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, with New Guinea, is only 1,500,000. It was no grievance to the United States, therefore, that her share in the trade of the Southern Pacific was a small one. Great Britain and Germany took the lion's share and France what was left. America was without any of the random communications which such a trade requires and, moreover, she was without that far-flung army of lonely traders who live and die amongst the natives and uphold thereby the mana of Great Britain.

THE WAR REVOLUTION

But with the war came quite a new arrangement. Before the end of 1914 the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau had disappeared from the Pacific. Ipso facto the last German merchantman had to seek cover or surrender, and the rich harvest of German trade lay open to the conquerors. It commenced immediately to pass into British hands, by a perfectly natural process, and if the war had ended reasonably early England would have possessed the great bulk of the rich German commerce.

But the demand for tonnage elsewhere:

the gradual absorption of the British mercantile marine into the service of the Royal Navy and the essential carriage of munitions and food to Europe, deprived the British shipowner and trader of his opportunity. Vessels leaving Australia and New Zealand for England were forbidden to carry copra. They must fill up with troops, with foodstuffs, and with wool. And so the chance passed away. Copra, as the Australian Trade Commission shows, ceased to reach its natural market, Europe. It lay a derelict commodity. But not for long. It was already coming into demand in the United States as a raw material for the manufacture of margarine, for glycerine, and so on. Here was America's opportunity.

Hitherto the sailing-ships which carried Oregon pine to Australia and New Zealand from Seattle and Puget Sound had been returning to America in ballast. Now they began to pick up cargoes of copra on the route. A swarm of traders saw the chance, and a fleet of small schooners commenced to ply amongst the southern islands, buying copra wherever it was to be found and selling American manufactures to the natives. In 1917 one firm alone had fifteen schooners of 600 tons engaged in this traffic. In the space of merely a few months America had made good her hold on the complete copra output of the southern Pacific, and San Francisco became an important coprabuying centre. The mail lines crossing the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand joined in, lifting at Fiji, Samoa, and Tahiti consignments which British ships would not or could not touch. Australia could not compete for the copra, for her own consumption was very small and the British war regulations prevented her from transshipping any to Europe. The American invasion was hailed with delight by the dismayed planters and native growers, whose prospect of good prices was much improved thereby; but the shipping men and merchants of Australia and New Zealand were much disconcerted. It was an attack on their trade connections which they were for the moment powerless to resist. According to the Australian Trade Commission, "genuine apprehension was expressed that the foundations were being laid of a shipping

rivalry and a bid for trade which would be keen and permanent." And it was so.

Since the war ended the Australian and New Zealand shipping companies have been able to restore in some degree the connections which they had in 1914, but not altogether. American competition is well grounded, because trade tends to be reciprocal. A purchasing country tends to pay in its own manufactures rather than by the clumsy medium of cash. No more graphic illustration of this is to be found than the case of the south Pacific, and particularly the groups which are under British control. Take Fiji, the British Crown Colony. In 1913 the United States purchased only one-fifth per cent of the Fijian exports; in 1918, 25 per cent. Imports responded to this advance. In 1913 only one-eighteenth of the imports of Fiji came from the United States: in 1918 the proportion had advanced to one-tenth, and nearly onefourth of the total trade of this British colony was with America. As regards Tonga, a British protectorate, the New Zealand Trade Commission shows that "restrictions on British shipping have turned the tide of exports toward the United States. If the Tonga trade is to be turned in the direction of the British Empire now is the time for action. It would be regrettable if this valuable connection, which has taken years to foster, should be lost." In 1918 Tonga exported to the value of £170,000, and only £7,000 of this went elsewhere than to the United States. As to Samoa, in 1919 more than one-third of the imports came from the United States-not merely electrical machinery, perfumes, engines, and so forth, but even cheese, fish, fruits, and timber, the specialties of the governing country, New Zealand. Here again the trade commission urges that the greatest efforts should be put forth to swing the trade back into the old British channels. It is the same at Rarotonga, due here and everywhere to the destination of the copra output.

The New Zealand merchant, strange to say, is accused of the old trading fault of the English. He is inclined to say to his customer: "This is what we have. If you don't like it go elsewhere." Not so the Australian, who is much keener after busi