THE BRITISH CONTINENT IN THE PACIFIC
Those who seek to find in history the evidence of an all-wise purpose
might gather from the fantastic history of Australasia facts to confirm
their faith. Far back in prehistoric ages, this great island was cut
adrift from the rest of the world and left lonely and apart in the
Southern Pacific. A few prehistoric marsupials wandered over its
territory and were hunted by poor nomads of men, without art or
architecture, condemned by the conditions of their life to step aside
from the great onward current of human evolution.
Over this land the winds swept and the rains fell, and, volcanic action
having ceased, the mountains were denuded and their deep stores of
minerals bared until gold lay about on the surface. Coal, copper,
silver, tin, and iron too, were made plentifully accessible. At the same
time enormous agricultural plains were formed in the interior, but under
climatic conditions which allowed no development of vegetable or animal
types without organised culture by a civilised people.
Nature thus seemed to work consciously for the making of a country
uniquely fitted for civilisation by a White Race, whilst at the same
time ensuring that its aboriginal inhabitants should not be able to
profit by its betterment, and thus raise themselves to a degree of
social organisation which would allow them to resist an invading White
Race. In the year when Captain Cook acquired the Continent of Australia
for Great Britain, it was ripe for development by civilised effort in a
way which no other territory of the earth then was; and yet was so
hopelessly sterile to man without machinery and the other apparatus of
human science, that its aboriginal inhabitants were the most forlorn of
the world's peoples, living a starveling life dependent on poor hunting,
scanty fisheries and a few roots for existence.
It needs no great stretch of fancy to see a mysterious design in the
world-history of Australia. Here was a great area of land stuffed with
precious and useful minerals, hidden away from the advancing
civilisation of man as effectually as if it had been in the planet Mars.
In other parts of the globe great civilisations rose and fell--the
Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Chinese, the Greek, the Roman,--all drawing
from the bowels of the earth her hidden treasures, and drawing on her
surface riches with successive harvests. In America, the Mexican,
Peruvian and other civilisations learned to gather from the great stocks
of Nature, and built up fabrics of greatness from her rifled treasures.
In Australia alone, amid dim, mysterious forests, the same prehistoric
animals roamed, the same poor nomads of men lived and died, neither
tilling nor mining the earth--tenants in occupation, content with a bare
and accidental livelihood in the midst of mighty riches.
Australia too was not discovered by the White Man until the moment when
a young nation could be founded on the discovered principles of Justice.
To complete the marvel, as it would seem, Providence ordained that its
occupation and development should be by the one people most eminently
fitted for the founding of a new nation on the virgin soil.
The fostering care of Nature did not end there. The early settlers
coming to Australia not only found that nothing had been drawn from the
soil or reef, that an absolutely virgin country was theirs to exploit,
but also were greeted by a singularly happy climate, free of all the
diseases which afflicted older lands. Prolific Australia, with all its
marvellous potentialities, lay open to them, with no warlike tribes to
enforce a bloody beginning to history, no epidemics to war against, no
savage beasts to encounter. And they were greeted by an energising
climate which seemed to encourage the best faculties of man, just as it
gave to harvests a wonderful richness and to herds a marvellous
fecundity.
How it came to be that such a vast area of the earth's surface, so near
to the great Indian and Chinese civilisations, should have so long
remained unknown, it is difficult to understand. There is faint evidence
that the existence of the great Southern continent was guessed at in
very early days, but no attempt at exploration or settlement was made by
the Hindoos or the Chinese. When the Greeks, who had penetrated to India
under Alexander the Great, returned to their homes, they brought back
some talk of a continent south from India, and the later Greek
literature and some Latin writers have allusions to the tale. Marco Polo
(thirteenth century), during his voyages to the East Indies, seems to
have heard of a Southern continent, for he speaks of a Java Major, a
land much greater than the isle of Java (which he knew), and which was
probably either New Guinea or Australia. On a fifteenth-century map of
the world now in the British Museum there are indications of a knowledge
of the existence of Australia; and it is undoubtedly included in a map
of the world of the sixteenth century.
But there was evidently no curiosity as to the suspected new continent.
Australia to-day contains not the slightest trace of contact with
ancient or Middle Ages civilisation. Exploration was attracted to the
East Indies and to Cathay by the tales of spices, scents, gold, silver,
and ivory. No such tales came from Australia. It was to prove the
greatest gold-producing country of the world, but its natives had no
hunger for the precious metal, though it was strewn about the ground in
great lumps in some places. Nor did sugar, spice, and ivory come from
the land; nor, indeed, any product of man's industry or Nature's
bounty. Wrapped in its mysterious grey-green forests, protected by a
coast-line which appeared always barren and inhospitable, Australia
remained unknown until comparatively modern times.
In 1581 the Spaniards, under Magalhaes, reached the Philippine Islands
by sailing west from the South American coast. In the nature of things
their ships would have touched the coast of Australia. In 1606 De Quiros
and De Torres reached some of the Oceanian islands, and named one _Terra
Austrialia del Espiritu Santo_ (the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit).
As was the case with Columbus in his voyage of discovery to America, De
Quiros had not touched the mainland, but his voyage gave the name
"Australia" to the new continent.
The English were late in the work of exploring the coast of Australia,
though as far back as 1624 there is a record of Sir William Courteen
petitioning King James I. for leave to plant colonies in "Terra
Australis." In 1688, William Dampier, in the _Cygnet_, touched at the
north-western coast of Australia. The next year, in H.M.S. _Roebuck_, he
paid a visit to the new land, and, on returning to England, put on
record his impressions of its fauna and flora. It was in 1770 that
Captain Cook made the first landing at Botany Bay.
The British nation at the time could find no use for Australia. Annexed
in 1770 it was not colonised until 1787, when the idea was adopted of
using the apparently sterile and miserable Southern continent as a
depôt for enforced exiles. It was a happy chance that sent a "racketty"
element of British social life to be the first basis of the new
Australian population. The poachers, English Chartists, Irish Fenians,
Scottish land rebels (who formed the majority of the convicts sent to
Australia) were good as nation-building material.
There was work to do there in the Pacific, there is further work in the
future, which calls for elements of audacity, of contempt for
convention, which are being worked out of the average British type.
There could be no greater contrast between, say, a London suburbanite,
whose life travels along an endless maze of little gravel paths between
fences and trimly-kept hedges, and the Australian of the "back country,"
who any day may ride out solitary on a week's journey into a great
sun-baked wilderness, his life and that of his dog and his two horses
dependent on the accurate finding of a series of water-holes: his joy in
existence coming from the solitude and the desert, the companionship of
his three animals, his tobacco, and the thought of his "mate" somewhere,
whom he would meet after six months' absence with a handshake and a
monosyllable by way of greeting, and yet with the love of a fond
brother.
That London suburbanite gives the key to his kindly and softly
sentimental character in his subscription to a society which devotes
itself to seeing that the suburban house cat is not left shut up without
food when a family goes away on holidays. That Australian shows how far
he has reverted to the older human type of relentless purpose when, in
the pursuit of his calling, he puts ten thousand sheep to the chance of
death from thirst. It is not that he is needlessly cruel, but that he is
sternly resolute. The same man would share his last water with his dog
in the desert to give both an equal chance of life. He feels the misery
of beasts but says nothing, and allows it to interfere nothing with his
purpose.
There is a story of a clergyman coming to a back-country station in
Australia during the agony of a great drought. He asked of the squatter
permission to hold prayers for rain in the woolshed. The squatter turned
on him, fiercely gripping him by the arm.
"Listen!" he cried.
From all around came the hoarse, pitiful lowing and bleating of
thousands of animals dying of thirst and hunger.
"Listen! If the Almighty does not hear _that_, will he hear us?"
That is the type of man, bred from the wilder types of the British race,
who is the backbone of the Australian population, and who will be the
backbone of the resistance which the White Man will make to any overflow
of Asia along the Pacific littoral.
The Australian took instinctively to his task in the work of White
civilisation--that of keeping the Asiatic out of Australia. In the early
days of the goldfields, the Chinese began to crowd to the continent, and
some squatters of those days designed to introduce them as cheap and
reliable shepherds. The mass of the White population protested, with
riot and rebellion in some cases. At one time it seemed as though the
guns of British warships would fire on Australian citizens in
vindication of the right of Chinese to enter Australia. But maternal
affection was stronger than logic. The cause of "White Australia" had
its way; and by poll taxes and other restrictive legislation any great
influx of Asiatics was stopped. At a later date the laws regarding alien
immigration were so strengthened that it is now almost impossible for a
coloured man to enter Australia as a colonist, even though he be a
British subject and a graduate of Oxford University.
Around the ethics of the "White Australia" policy there has raged a
fierce controversy. But it is certain that, without that policy, without
an instinctive revolt on the part of the Australian colonists against
any intrusion of coloured races, Australia would be to-day an Asiatic
colony, still nominally held, perhaps, by a small band of White
suzerains, but ripe to fall at any moment into the hands of its
10,000,000 or 20,000,000 Asiatic inhabitants.
Instead of that, Australia is at once the fortress which the White Race
has thinly garrisoned against an Asiatic advance southward, and the most
tempting prize to inspire the Asiatic to that advance. There is not the
least doubt that, given Australia, Japan could establish a power
threatening the very greatest in Europe. Her fecund people within a
couple of generations would people the coast-line and prepare for the
colonisation of the interior. Rich fields and rich mines put at the
disposal of a frugal and industrious people would yield enormous
material wealth.
An organised China would put the island continent to even greater use.
But there Australia is, held by a tiny White population, which increases
very slowly (for men and women have the ideas of comfort and luxury
which lead to small families), but which is now fairly awake to the fact
that on the bosom of the Pacific and along its shores will be fought the
great race battles of the future.
It is curious for the peoples of Europe, accustomed to associate extreme
democracy and socialistic leanings with ideals of pacificism and
"international brotherhood," to observe the warlike spirit of the
Australian peoples. There are no folk more "advanced" in politics. Their
ideal is frankly stated to be to make a "working man's Paradise" of the
continent. Yet they are entering cheerfully on a great naval
expenditure, and their adoption of a system of universal training for
military service provides the only instance, except that of Switzerland,
where the responsibility of national defence is freely accepted by the
citizen manhood of the nation.
Universal training for military service in Australia, legally enforced
in 1909, was made inevitable in 1903, when in taking over the
administration of the defences the first Commonwealth Government
provided in its Defence Act for the levying of the whole male population
for service in case of war. That provision was evidence of the wholesome
and natural view taken by Australians of the citizen's duty to his
nation. It was also evidence of an ignorance of, or a blindness to, the
conditions of modern campaigning. Raw levies, if equipped with courage
and hardihood, could be of almost immediate usefulness in the warfare of
a century ago. To-day they would be worse than useless, a burden on the
commissariat, no support in the field. The logical Australian mind was
quick to recognise this. Within five years it was established that,
admitting a universal duty to serve, a necessary sequence was universal
training for service.
One argument the Australian advocates of universal service had not to
meet. In that pioneer country the feeling which is responsible for a
kind of benevolent cosmopolitanism, and finds expression in Peace
Societies, had little chance of growth. The direct conflict with Nature
had brought a sense of the reality of life's struggle, of its reality
and of its essential beauty. There is no maundering horror of the
natural facts of existence. Australian veins when scratched bleed red
blood, not a pale ichor of Olympus. The combative instinct is recognised
as a part of human nature, a necessary and valuable part. That
defencelessness is the best means of defence would never occur to the
Australian as being anything but an absurd idea. He recognises the part
which the combative instinct has played, the part it still must play in
civilisation: how in its various phases it has assisted man in his
upward path; how it has still some part to play in the preservation and
further evolution of civilisation.
The original fighting instinct was purely brutal--a rough deadly
scramble for food. But it undoubtedly had its value in securing the
survival of the best types for the propagation of the species. With its
first great refinement, in becoming the fight for mateship, the
combative instinct was still more valuable to evolution. The next step,
when fights came to be for ideas, marked a rapid growth of civilisation.
Exclude chivalry, patriotism, Imperialism, from the motives of the
world, and there would never have been a great civilisation.
A distinguished British statesman spoke the other day of the expenditure
on armaments as possibly a sign of "relapsing into barbarism." He might
more truly have described it as an insurance against barbarism--at once
a sign of the continued existence of the forces which made civilisation,
and a proof that the advanced races are prepared to guard with the sword
what they have won by the sword. The Pacific has seen the tragedy of one
nation which, having won to a suave and graceful civilisation, came to
utter ruin through the elimination of the combative instinct from its
people. The Peruvians had apparently everything to make life happy: but
because they had eliminated the fighting instinct their civilisation was
shattered to fragments in a year by the irruption of a handful of
Spaniards.
The Australian feels that safety and independence must be paid for with
strength, and not with abjectness. He does not wish to be another
Peruvian: and he builds up his socialistic Utopia with a sword in one
hand as was built a temple of Jerusalem.
Some doubt having arisen in the Australian mind, after a system of
universal training had been adopted, whether the scheme of training was
sufficient, the greatest organiser of the British Army, Field Marshal
Lord Kitchener, was asked to visit the Commonwealth and report on that
point. His report suggested some slight changes, which were promptly
adopted, but on the whole he approved thoroughly of the proposed scheme,
though it provided periods of training which seem startlingly small to
the European soldier. But Lord Kitchener agreed, as every other
competent observer has agreed, that the Australian is so much of a
natural soldier owing to his pioneering habit of life, that it takes but
little special military discipline to make him an effective fighting
unit.
Committed to a military system which will, in a short time, make some
200,000 citizens soldiers available in case of need, Australia's martial
enthusiasm finds expression also in a naval programme which is of great
magnitude for so small a people. In July 1909, an Imperial Conference on
Defence met in London, and the British Admiralty brought down certain
proposals for Imperial naval co-operation. _Inter alia_, the British
Admiralty memorandum stated:--
"In the opinion of the Admiralty, a Dominion Government desirous of
creating a Navy should aim at forming a distinct Fleet unit; and the
smallest unit is one which, while manageable in time of peace, is
capable of being used in its component parts in the time of war.
"Under certain conditions the establishment of local defence flotillas,
consisting of torpedo craft and submarines, might be of assistance in
time of war to the operations of the Fleet, but such flotillas cannot
co-operate on the high seas in the wider duties of protection of trade
and preventing attacks from hostile cruisers and squadrons. The
operations of Destroyers and torpedo-boats are necessarily limited to
the waters near the coast or to a radius of action not far distant from
a base, while there are great difficulties in manning such a force and
keeping it always thoroughly efficient.
"A scheme limited to torpedo craft would not in itself, moreover, be a
good means of gradually developing a self-contained Fleet capable of
both offence and defence. Unless a naval force--whatever its
size--complies with this condition, it can never take its proper place
in the organisation of an Imperial Navy distributed strategically over
the whole area of British interests.
"The Fleet unit to be aimed at should, therefore, in the opinion of the
Admiralty, consist at least of the following: one armoured cruiser (new
_Indomitable_ class, which is of the _Dreadnought_ type), three
unarmoured cruisers (_Bristol_ class), six destroyers, three submarines,
with the necessary auxiliaries such as depôt and store ships, etc.,
which are not here specified.
"Such a Fleet unit would be capable of action not only in the defence of
coasts, but also of the trade routes, and would be sufficiently powerful
to deal with small hostile squadrons, should such ever attempt to act in
its waters.
"Simply to man such a squadron, omitting auxiliary requirements and any
margin for reliefs, sickness, etc., the minimum numbers required would
be about 2300 officers and men, according to the Admiralty scheme of
complements.
"The estimated first cost of building and arming such a complete Fleet
unit would be approximately £3,700,000, and the cost of maintenance,
including upkeep of vessels, pay, and interest and sinking fund, at
British rates, approximately £600,000 per annum.
"The estimated cost of the officers and men required to man the ships
does not comprise the whole cost. There would be other charges to be
provided for, such as the pay of persons employed in subsidiary
services, those undergoing training, sick, in reserve, etc.
"As the armoured cruiser is the essential part of the Fleet unit, it is
important that an _Indomitable_ of the _Dreadnought_ type should be the
first vessel to be built in commencing the formation of a Fleet unit.
She should be officered and manned, as far as possible, by Colonial
officers and men, supplemented by the loan of Imperial officers and men
who might volunteer for the service. While on the station the ship would
be under the exclusive control of the Dominion Government as regards her
movements and general administration, but officers and men would be
governed by regulations similar to the King's Regulations, and be under
naval discipline. The question of pay and allowances would have to be
settled on lines the most suitable to each Dominion Government
concerned. The other vessels, when built, would be treated in the same
manner.
"It is recognised that, to carry out completely such a scheme as that
indicated, would ultimately mean a greater charge for naval defence than
that which the Dominions have hitherto borne; but, on the other hand,
the building of a _Dreadnought_ (or its equivalent), which certain
Governments have offered to undertake, would form part of the scheme,
and therefore, as regards the most expensive item of the shipbuilding
programme suggested, no additional cost to those Governments would be
involved.
"_Pari passu_ with the creation of the Fleet unit, it would be necessary
to consider the development of local resources in everything which
relates to the maintenance of a Fleet. A careful inquiry should be made
into the shipbuilding and repairing establishments, with a view to their
general adaptation to the needs of the local squadron. Training schools
for officers and men would have to be established; arrangements would
have to be made for the manufacture, supply, and replenishment of the
various naval, ordnance, and victualling stores required by the
squadron.
"All these requirements might be met according to the views of the
Dominion Governments, in so far as the form and manner of the provision
made are concerned. But as regards shipbuilding, armaments, and warlike
stores, etc., on the one hand, and training and discipline in peace and
war, on the other, there should be one common standard. If the Fleet
unit maintained by a Dominion is to be treated as an integral part of
the Imperial forces, with a wide range of interchangeability among its
component parts with those forces, its general efficiency should be the
same, and the facilities for refitting and replenishing His Majesty's
ships, whether belonging to a Dominion Fleet or to the Fleet of the
United Kingdom, should be the same. Further, as it is a _sine quâ non_
that successful action in time of war depends upon unity of command and
direction, the general discipline must be the same throughout the whole
Imperial service, and without this it would not be possible to arrange
for that mutual co-operation and assistance which would be
indispensable in the building up and establishing of a local naval force
in close connection with the Royal Navy. It has been recognised by the
Colonial Governments that, in time of war, the local naval forces should
come under the general directions of the Admiralty."
The Commonwealth of Australia representatives accepted in full the
proposals as set forth in the Admiralty memorandum. It was agreed that
the Australian Fleet unit thus constituted should form part of the
Eastern Fleet of the Empire, to be composed of similar units of the
Royal Navy, to be known as the China and the East Indies units
respectively, and the Australian unit.
The initial cost was estimated to be approximately:
1 armoured cruiser (new _Indomitable_ class). £2,000,000
3 unarmoured cruisers (_Bristols_) at £350,000. 1,050,000
6 destroyers (_River_ class) at £80,000 480,000
3 submarines (_C_ class) at £55,000 165,000
----------
Total £3,695,000
The annual expenditure in connection with the maintenance of the Fleet
unit, pay of personnel, and interest on first cost and sinking fund, was
estimated to be about £600,000, to which amount a further additional sum
would have to be added in view of the higher rates of pay in Australia
and the cost of training and subsidiary establishments, making an
estimated total of £750,000 a year.
The Imperial Government, until such time as the Commonwealth could take
over the whole cost, offered to assist the Commonwealth Government by an
annual contribution of £250,000 towards the maintenance of the complete
Fleet unit; but the offer was refused, and the Australian taxpayer took
on the whole burden at once.
Still not content, the Australian Government arranged for a British
Admiral of standing to visit the Commonwealth and report on its naval
needs. His report suggested the quick construction of a Fleet and of
docks, etc., involving an expenditure, within a very short time, of
£28,000,000. There was no grumbling at this from the Labour Party
Government then in power. "We have called in a doctor. We must take his
prescription," said one of the Australian Cabinet philosophically.
The Australian, so aggressive in his patriotism, so determined in his
warlike preparations, so fitted by heredity and environment for martial
exploits, is to-day the greatest factor in the Southern Pacific. His
aggressiveness, which is almost truculence, is a guarantee that the
British Empire will never be allowed to withdraw from a sphere into
which it entered reluctantly. It will be necessary to point out in a
future chapter how the failure, so far, of the Australian colonists to
people their continent adequately constitutes one of the grave dangers
to the British Power in the Pacific. That failure has been the prompting
for much criticism. It has led to some extraordinary proposals being
put forward in Great Britain, one of the latest being that half of
Australia should be made over to Germany as a peace offering! But, apart
from all failures and neglect of the past (which may be remedied for the
future: indeed are now in process of remedy), Australia is probably
potentially the greatest asset of the British race. Her capacity as a
varied food producer in particular gives her value. There is much talk
in the world to-day of "places in the sun." Claims founded on national
pride are put forward for the right to expand. Very soon there must be a
far more weighty and dangerous clamour for "places at table," for the
right to share in the food lands of the Earth. Populations begin to
press against their boundaries. Modern science has helped the race of
man to reach numbers once considered impossible. Machinery, preventive
medicine, surgery, sanitation, all have helped to raise vastly his
numbers. The feeding of these increasing numbers becomes with each year
a more difficult problem. Territories do not stretch with populations.
Even the comparatively new nation of the United States finds her food
supply and raw material supply tightening, and has just been checked in
an attempt to obtain a lien on the natural resources of the British
Dominion of Canada. Now, excluding manufactures, the 4½ million people
of Australia produce wealth from farm and field and mine to the total of
£134,500,000 a year. Those 4½ millions could be raised to 40 millions
without much lessening of the average rate of production (only mining
and forestry would be affected).
The food production possibilities of Australia make her of enormous
future importance. They make her, too, the object of the bitterest envy
on the part of the overcrowded, hungry peoples of the Asiatic littoral.
The Continent must be held by the British race. It would appear to be
almost as certain that it must be attacked one day by an Asiatic race.