WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 198, 23 May 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

As it seems there is no more land to be discovered in the Arctic polar explorers may be reduced to admitting that they really go up there for the fun of the thing.

America’s divorce rate is exceeding its marriage rate—this lends colour to the belief that-certain radiant film stars have had more divorces than marriages.

That the white man is going to the dogs, and that the coloured man is due presently to over-run the earth has been the burden on Mr. Lowthrop Stoddard's mind for a long time past. This morning Mr. Stoddard has broken into the cable news with a prediction that it is in Australia the coloured brother will first attempt to get into the saddle. One of ths curious things about Australia is that while it is tied up to Asia by a string of islands with' shorter sea gaps in between than Asiatic craft crossed with ease elsewhere from a very early date, yet Asia never took the least interest in this great empty laud at its back door. It is incredible that the 1 Asiatics never reached Australia, for the great East Indian islands alongside its northern coast teemed with Malays, and they were very far from being an unenterprising and stay-at-home race of men.

One of Britain’s Elizabethan navigators wrote 'home centuries back that the Javans were “the most valiant people in ’all the southern parts of the world; for they never fear any death.” Portuguese sailors of the sixteenth century remarked on the Javan reputation for seamanship. Said one Portuguese writer: "They have got many ships and great navigators, and many rowing galleys. They are great corsairs and mariners, and make arms of steel.” Said another: “They navigate to every part of the Eastern Archipelago, and say that formerly they used to navigate the ocean as far as Madagascar.” When Captain Matthew Flinders was exploring the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1802, he was surprised to encounter six Malay prows engaged in collecting trepang and beche-de-mer for the China market. Everything suggests that Asiatic seamen must long have had knowledge of Australia, but that the place seemed unattractive to them, and that they found nothing there to make anybody want to move in.

Now we have Mr. Stoddard very worried about half Asia wanting _to move south in a body. In his ’ Tide of Colour,”-he figured it out that there are about 1700 million people in the world, and that of these only 550 million are whites. The coloured people, who outnumber the whites by more than two to one, include about 500 million yellows, 450 million biouns 150 million blacks, and 40. million reds, or Indians, of the American continent. These figures, we are told, arc very disturbing to begin with, but there is worse to come, for the world is figured out to be getting more colouied everyday. It seems that the coloured man instead of spending Ins evening at the pictures stays at home and locks the cradle. Mr. Stoddard says the white races double in numbers every eighty years, the yellows and browns everv sixty years, and the blacks every fort; years. The future, obviously, threatens to be blacker than ever V e don’t know just where Mr. Stoddards statistics come from, and he doesnt teU us. It would naturally be a pity o step in the middle of a harrowing storv and go into wearisome details as to whether there are 500 million Lhior onlv 300 millions, and whether Hie view quoted by the "Statesmans Year Book” that the population of China has been almost statlonarj for a century is fact or bosh.

Mr. Stoddard very properly refuses to be drawn from the trail by red herrings of this sort. "The upshot J* 6 writes, Cis that the rising blood of colour finds itself walled in by white dvkes debarring it from many a promised land on which it would fain deluge its dusky waves. . . ■ For four hundred vears the white man had added continent to continent in his imperial progress, equipped with resistless seapower and a mechanical superiority that crushed down all local efforts at resistance. . . . Then came the Great War. . . . White solidarity was riven and shattered. And—fear of white power and respect for white civilisation together dropped away like garments outworn. Through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper: The East will see the West to bed. buch is the present status of the world s race-problem expressed in general terms” . - - And nobody, surely, can complain that Mr. Stoddard’s terms are not general enough.

The great point, naturally, is what we are to do about it all. We are at “The crisis of the ages. Mr. Stoddard assures us, and “time presses and the hour is grave.” First and foremost, he proclaims, "‘this wretched A ersailles business will have to be thoroughly revised”—just how is not quite so clear, even in Mr. Stoddard s pages. Then we must get out of the coloured man’s yard and see that he keeps out of ours—only Mr. Stoddard puts this idea in far more eloquent language than we can ever aspire to. Then, too, we have to breed superior stocks, ana “exorcise the lurking spectre of nuscegnation” to quote another of the handsome phrases that drip so readily from Mr. Stoddard's pen when he reallv gets going. “We have our task, lie concludes, as he and his reader f-iirlv weep on each others shoulder, “and God knows it is a hard one—the salvage of a shipwrecked world.

It is a great thing for mankind to have some one on hand like Mr. Stoddard to sound the clarion call and give us all the thrills of Domesday at ten and six a time. We can only hope that somebody will direct this gifted author's attention to the way the insects in their millions, quadrillions, and sextillions are busy eating the white man, the yellow man. the brown man, the red man. and the black man out of hearth and home, for we feel sure that, a book by Mr. Stoddard on the Great Bug War would be almost worth buying, let alone borrowing.

Master: Now, Smith Minor, what do seven times four make? Smith Minor (promptly): Twentyeight, sir. Master: Good. Smith Minor (sotto voce): Good? It's perfect!

“Why are vou calling your little boy ■Joseph"? I‘thought his name was ‘John.’” “‘John Joseph’ he was caL,ed after his two uncles, but the uncle called ‘John’ has gone bankrupt”