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PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC
by
FRANK FOX
Author of "Ramparts of Empire"
London
Williams & Norgate
14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden
1912
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
1. THE OCEAN OF THE FUTURE 1
2. RUSSIA IN THE PACIFIC 16
3. THE RISE OF JAPAN 31
4. CHINA AND THE TEEMING MILLIONS OF ASIA 47
5. THE UNITED STATES--AN IMPERIAL POWER 66
6. GREAT BRITAIN'S ENTRY INTO THE PACIFIC 85
7. THE BRITISH CONTINENT IN THE PACIFIC 100
8. NEW ZEALAND AND THE SMALLER BRITISH PACIFIC COLONIES 120
9. THE NATIVE RACES 136
10. LATIN AMERICA 147
11. CANADA AND THE PACIFIC 165
12. THE NAVIES OF THE PACIFIC 176
13. THE ARMIES OF THE PACIFIC 186
14. TREATIES IN THE PACIFIC 199
15. THE PANAMA CANAL 216
16. THE INDUSTRIAL POSITION IN THE PACIFIC 228
17. SOME STRATEGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 245
18. THE RIVALS 263
[Illustration]
PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC
CHAPTER I
THE OCEAN OF THE FUTURE
The Pacific is the ocean of the future. As civilisation grows and
distances dwindle, man demands a larger and yet larger stage for the
fighting-out of the ambitions of races. The Mediterranean sufficed for
the settlement of the issues between the Turks and the Christians,
between the Romans and the Carthaginians, between the Greeks and the
Persians, and who knows what other remote and unrecorded struggles of
the older peoples of its littoral. Then the world became too great to be
kept in by the Pillars of Hercules, and Fleets--in the service alike of
peace and war--ranged over the Atlantic. The Mediterranean lost its
paramount importance, and dominance of the Atlantic became the test of
world supremacy.
Now greater issues and greater peoples demand an even greater stage. On
the bosom of the Pacific will be decided, in peace or in war, the next
great struggle of civilisation, which will give as its prize the
supremacy of the world. Shall it go to the White Race or the Yellow
Race? If to the White Race, will it be under the British Flag, or the
flag of the United States, or of some other nation? That is the problem
of the Pacific.
Since Cortes first looked on the waters of the ocean from a peak in
Darien, since Balboa of Castile waded into its waters and claimed them
for the dominion of the King of Castile, events have rushed forward with
bewildering haste to transfer the centre of the world's interest to the
Pacific. Cortes in his day looked to a North Pacific coast inhabited by
a few wandering Indians. (The powerful national organisation of Mexico
had not extended its influence as far as the Pacific coast.) Now there
stretch along that coast the Latin-American Power of Mexico, doomed,
probably, to be absorbed before the great issue of Pacific dominance is
decided, but having proved under Diaz some capacity for organisation;
the gigantic Power of the United States with the greatest resources of
wealth and material force ever possessed by a single nation of the
world; and the sturdy young Power of Canada.
To the South, Cortes looked to a collection of Indian States, of which
Peru was the chief, boasting a gracious but unwarlike civilisation,
doomed to utter destruction at the hands of Spain. Now that stretch of
Pacific littoral is held by a group of Latin-American nations, the
possibilities of which it is difficult accurately to forecast, but which
are in some measure formidable if Chili is accepted as a standard by
which to judge, though, on the whole, they have shown so far but little
capacity for effective national organisation.
Looking westward, Cortes in his day could see nothing but darkness. It
was surmised rather than known that there lay the Indies, the kingdoms
of the Cham of Tartary and the great Mogul, lands which showed on the
horizon of the imagination, half real, half like the fantasy of a
mirage. To-day the west coast of the Pacific is held by the European
Power of Russia; by the aspiring Asiatic Power of Japan, which within
half a century has forgotten the use of the bow and the fan in warfare
and hammered its way with modern weapons into the circle of the world's
great Powers; by China, stirring uneasily and grasping at the same
weapons which won greatness for Japan; by a far-flung advance guard of
the great Power of the United States in the Philippines, won
accidentally, held grimly; by England's lonely outposts, Australia and
New Zealand, where less than five millions of the British race hold a
territory almost as large as Europe.
Sprinkled over the surface of the ocean, between East and West, are
various fortresses or trading stations, defending interests or arousing
cupidities. Germany and France are represented. The United States holds
Hawaii, the key to the Pacific coast of North America, either for
offence or defence. Great Britain has Fiji and various islets. The
Japanese Power stretches down towards the Philippines with the recent
acquisition of Formosa.
Here are seen all the great actors in European rivalry. Added to them
are the new actors in world-politics, who represent the antagonism of
the Yellow Race to the White Race. Before all is dangled the greatest
temptation to ambition and cupidity. Who is master of the Pacific, who
has the control of its trade, the industrial leadership of its peoples,
the disposal of its warrior forces, will be master of the world.
It is a problem not only of navies and armies (though with our present
defective civilisation these are the most important factors): it is a
problem also of populations and their growth, of industries, of the
development of natural resources, of trade and commerce. The Pacific
littoral is in part unpeopled, in part undeveloped, unorganised,
unappropriated. Its Asiatic portion must change, it is changing, from a
position which may be compared with that of Japan fifty years ago to a
position such as Japan's to-day. Its American and Australian portion
must develop power and wealth surpassing that of Europe. Under whose
leadership will the change be made? To discuss that question is the
purpose of this book: and at the outset the lines on which the
discussion will proceed and the conclusions which seem to be inevitable
may be foreshadowed.
At one time Russia seemed destined to the hegemony of the Pacific. Yet
she was brought to the Pacific coast by accident rather than by design.
Her natural destiny was westward and southward rather than eastward,
though it was natural that she should slowly permeate the Siberian
region. As far back as the reign of Ivan the Terrible (the Elizabethan
epoch in Anglo-Saxon history), the curious celibate military
organisation of the Cossacks had won much of Siberia for the Czars. But
there was no dream then, nor at a very much later period, of penetration
to the Pacific.
European jealousy of Russia, a jealousy which is explainable only with
the reflection that vast size naturally fills with awe the human mind,
stopped her advance towards the Mediterranean. In the north her ports
were useless in winter. In the south she was refused a development of
her territory which was to her mind natural and just. Thus thwarted,
Russia groped in a blind way from the Siberian provinces which had been
won by the Cossacks towards a warm-water port in Asia. At first the
movement was southward and filled England with alarm as to the fate of
India. Then it turned eastward, and in Manchuria and Corea this European
Power seemed to find its destiny. But Japan was able to impose an
effective check upon Russian ambitions in the Far East. At the present
moment Russia has been supplanted in control of the Asiatic seaboard by
Japan.
Japan has everything but money to equip her for a bold bid for the
mastery of the Pacific before the completion of the Panama Canal. Europe
has taught to Japan, in addition to the material arts of warfare, a
cynical faith in the moral value, indeed, the necessity, of war to
national welfare. She considers that respect is only to be gained by
war: that war with a European nation is an enterprise of small risk:
that in short her experience with the Russian Fleet was fairly typical
of war with any European Power. She believes that she has the most
thoroughly efficient army and navy, considering their size, in the
world; and has much to justify the belief.
This ambition and the warlike confidence of Japan constitute to-day a
more important factor in the problem of the Pacific than her actual
fighting strength. But the check to prompt decisive action on her part
is that of poverty. Japan is very poor. The last war, in spite of great
gain of prestige, brought no gain of money. Its cost bled her veins
white, and there was no subsequent transfusion in the shape of a Russian
indemnity. Nor are the natural resources of Japan such as to hold out
much hope of a quick industrial prosperity. She has few minerals. Her
soil is in the bulk wretchedly poor. From the territories control of
which she has won in battle--Manchuria and Corea--she will reap some
advantage by steadily ignoring the "open door" obligation in trade, and
by dispossessing the native peasantry. But it cannot be very great.
There is no vast natural wealth to be exploited. The native peasantry
can be despoiled and evicted, but the booty is trifling and the cost of
the process not inconsiderable since even the Corean will shoot from his
last ditch.
Japan is now seeking desperately a material prosperity by industrial
expansion. A tariff and bounty system, the most rigid and scientific the
world knows, aims to make the country a great textile-weaving,
ship-building, iron-making country. The smallest scrap of an industry is
sedulously nurtured, and Japanese matches, Japanese soap, Japanese beer,
penetrate to the markets of the outer world as evidence of the ambition
of the people to be manufacturers. But when one explores down to
bedrock, the only real bases for industrial prosperity in Japan are a
supply of rather poor coal and a great volume of cheap labour. The
second is of some value in cheap production, but it is yet to be found
possible to build up national prosperity on the sole basis of cheap
labour. Further, with the growth of modernity in Japan, there is
naturally a labour movement. Doctrines of Socialism are finding
followers: strikes are heard of occasionally. The Japanese artisan and
coolie may not be content to slave unceasingly on wages which deny life
all comfort, to help a method of national aggrandisement the purport of
which they can hardly understand.
The position of Japan in the Pacific has to be considered, therefore, in
the light of the future rather than of the present. At the time of the
conclusion of the war with Russia it seemed supreme. Since then it has
steadily deteriorated. If she had succeeded in the realisation of her
ambition to undertake the direction of China's military and industrial
reorganisation, the Japanese Power would have been firmly established
for some generations at least. But the defects in her national character
prevented that. Inspiring no confidence among the Chinese, the Japanese
found all attempts at peaceful assumption of a controlling influence in
China checked by sullen antipathy; and a forced assumption would not
have been tolerated by Europe. It will not be found possible, on a full
survey of the facts, to credit Japan with the power to hold a supreme
place in the Pacific. She is, even now, among the dwindling Powers.
China, on the other hand, has the possibilities of a mighty future.
To-day she is in the throes of nation-birth. To-morrow she may unbind
her feet and prepare to join in the race for supremacy. The bringing of
China into the current of modern life will not be an easy task, but it
is clearly not an impossible one. Before the outbreak of the present
Revolution (which may place China among the democratic Republics of the
world), the people of the Celestial Empire had begun to reconsider
seriously their old attitude of intolerance towards European
civilisation. To understand fully the position of China it is necessary
to keep in mind the fact that the actual Chinese nation, some
400,000,000 of people, enervated as were the Peruvians of South America,
by a system of theocratic and pacific Socialism, were subjected about
250 years ago to the sovereignty of the Manchus, a warrior race from the
Steppes. Since then the Manchus have governed China, tyrannously,
incompetently, on the strength of a tradition of military superiority
stronger far than the _Raj_ by which the British have held India. But
the Manchus--in numbers and in intellect far inferior to the
Chinese--forgot in time their military enterprise and skill. The
tradition of it, however, remained until the events of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries showed that the Manchu military power was
contemptible not only against the white foreigner, but also against the
Japanese _parvenu_. Patient China, finding her tyrant to be a weak
despot, revolts now, not only against the Manchu dynasty, but also
against the Conservatism which has kept her from emulating Japan's
success in the world.
At present the power of China in the Pacific is negligible. In the
future it may be the greatest single force in that ocean. Almost
certainly it may be reckoned to take the place of Japan as the chief
Asiatic factor.
Japan and China having been considered, the rest of Asia is negligible
as affecting the destiny of the Pacific except in so far as India can
serve as basis of action for British power. An independent Indian nation
is hardly one of the possibilities of the future. Religious, racial, and
caste distinctions make a united, independent India at present
impossible. Unless the British Power carries too far a tendency to
conciliate the talking tribes of the Hindoo peninsula at the expense of
the fighting tribes, it should hold India by right of a system of
government which is good though not perfect, and by reason of the
impossibility of suggesting any substitute. In the event of a failure of
the British Power, India would still, in all probability, fail to take a
place among the great nations of the earth. Either she would fall a
victim to some other nation or relapse into the condition, near to
anarchy, which was hers before the coming of the Europeans.
It is not possible to imagine to-day any European Power other than Great
Britain--with the possible exception of Russia--becoming strongly
established in the Pacific. France and Germany have footholds certainly.
But in neither case is the territory held by them possible of great
development, and in neither case is there a chain of strategic stations
to connect the Pacific colony with the Mother Country. The despatch of
the German "mailed fist" to Kiao-Chou in China some years ago is still
remembered as one of the comic rather than the serious episodes of
history. The squadron bearing to the Chinese the martial threat of the
German Emperor had to beg its way from one British coaling station to
another because of the lack of German ports.
The influence of South America in the Pacific need not yet be
calculated. It is a possible far-future factor in the problem; and the
completion of Trans-Andine railways may quickly enhance the importance
of Chili and Peru. But for the present South America can take no great
part in the Pacific struggle.
It is when British influence and American influence in the Pacific come
to be considered that the most important factors in the contest for its
supremacy enter upon the stage. Let us consider, for the nonce, the two
Powers separately.
The British Empire--holding Australia and New Zealand with an audacious
but thin garrison; having a long chain of strategic stations such as
Hong Kong and Singapore; having in India a powerful rear base for
supplies; holding a great part of the North-West Coast of America with a
population as yet scanty but beginning to develop on the same lines as
the Australasian people--is clearly well situated to win and to hold the
mastery of the Pacific. Such mastery would have to be inspired with
peaceful ideals; it could not survive as an aggressive force. It is
indeed the main strength of the British position in the Pacific that it
is naturally anxious, not for a disturbance but for a preservation of
the present state of things, which gives to the British Empire all that
a reasonable ambition could require. It is wise and easy to be peaceable
when one has all the best of the spoils.
For a secure British mastery of the Pacific, India would need to be held
with the military assistance of South Africa and Australia, and made a
great naval base; Australia and New Zealand would need to be populated
seriously; Canada would need to be guarded against absorption by the
United States and its new population kept as far as possible to the
British type; the friendship and co-operation of the United States would
need to be sought.
Turning next to the United States it will be recognised that she has in
a realised form all the force and wealth possible to an organised China
or a fully developed Australia. She has one hundred million people, who
have reached the highest stage of civilised organisation. Their material
wealth--and wealth counts for much in modern war--is almost
incalculable. Their national ambition has never been checked by defeat.
Lately it has been fed with foreign war and territorial conquest and it
has found the taste good. The American people face the future possessed
of all the material for a policy of aggressive Imperialism and with a
splendidly youthful faith in their own good motives, a faith which can
justify an action better than any degree of cynicism. There is as much
of the "old Adam" in them as in the peoples of any of the "effete
monarchies," and many circumstances seem to point to them as anxious to
take the lead among the White Races in the future.
As regards the Pacific, American ambition is clear. The United States
holds the Philippines at great expense of treasure and blood. She is
fortifying Honolulu, with the idea of making it a naval base "stronger
than Gibraltar."[1] She is cutting the Panama Canal and fortifying the
entrances with the probable purpose of giving to the United States a
monopoly of that gateway in time of war. With splendid audacity the
American despises secrecy in regard to his future plans. In New York
Naval Yard three years ago I was informed, with an amplitude of detail
that was convincing, of the United States' scheme for patrolling the
whole Pacific with her warships when the Canal had been finished.
Supposing, then, the United States to continue her present industrial
and commercial progress; supposing her to gradually tighten her hold on
the rest of the American continent; supposing her to overcome certain
centrifugal forces now at work, the problem of the Pacific, should the
United States decide to play a "lone hand," will be solved. It will
become an American lake, probably after a terrible struggle in which the
pretensions of the Yellow Races will be shattered, possibly after
another fratricidal struggle in which the British possessions in the
Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand, equally with Canada, will be forced
to obedience.
But is there any necessity to consider the United States and the British
Empire as playing mutually hostile parts in the Pacific? They have been
the best of friends there in the past. They have many good reasons to
remain friends in the future. A discussion as to whether the Pacific
Ocean is destined to be controlled by the American or by the British
Power could be reasonably ended with the query: Why not by an
Anglo-Celtic union representing both?
An Anglo-Celtic alliance embracing Great Britain, the United States and
the British Dominions, would settle in the best way the problem of the
Pacific. No possible combination, Asiatic, European, or Asia-European,
could threaten its position. But there are certain difficulties in the
way, which will be discussed later. For the present, it has only to be
insisted that both Powers are potential rather than actual masters of
the Pacific. Neither in the case of Great Britain nor of the United
States is a great Pacific force at the moment established. After her
treaty with Japan, Great Britain abandoned for a while the idea of
maintaining any serious naval strength in the Pacific. The warships she
maintained there, on the Australian station and elsewhere, had no
fighting value against modern armaments, and were kept in the Pacific as
a step towards the scrap-heap. That policy has since been reversed, and
the joint efforts of Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand directed
towards re-establishing British Pacific naval strength. At the
moment, however, the actual British naval force in the Pacific is
inconsiderable, if obsolete or obsolescent vessels are ruled out of
consideration. The United States also has no present naval force in the
Pacific that could contest the issue with even a fraction of the
Japanese navy. Clearly, too, she has no intention of attempting the
organisation of a powerful Pacific Fleet separate from her Atlantic
Fleet, but aims at the bolder policy of holding her interests in both
oceans by one great Fleet which will use the Panama Canal to mobilise at
an emergency in either.
If the resources of the present with their probable growth in the future
are taken into account, Great Britain and the United States will appear
as massing enormous naval and military forces in the Pacific. The
preponderance of naval force will be probably on the side of the United
States for very many years--since it is improbable that Great Britain
will ever be able to detach any great proportion of her Fleet from
European waters and her Pacific naval force will be comprised mainly of
levies from Australia and New Zealand, and possibly Canada, India, and
South Africa. The preponderance of military force will be probably on
the side of Great Britain, taking into count the citizen armies of
Australia and New Zealand (and possibly of Canada) and the great forces
available in India. Complete harmony between Great Britain and the
United States in the Pacific would thus give the hegemony of the ocean
to the Anglo-Saxon race. Rivalry between them might lead to another
result. In the natural course of events that "other result" might be
Asiatic dominion in one form or another.
These factors in Pacific rivalry will be discussed in detail in the
following chapters.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Since the above was written it is reported that the United States
has taken possession of Palmyra Island--once a British possession--to
the south of Honolulu, obviously for strategic purposes.