SEA POWER IN THE PACIFIC.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3297, 16 August 1911, Page 8

SEA POWER IN THE PACIFIC.

AUSTRALIA AND THE PANAMA CANAL. URGENT NEED OF POPULATION. CONCLUSIONS OF REAR-ADMIRAL MAHAN. . In an interesting article on “The Panama Canal and Sea Pow'er in the Pacific,” Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan, or the United States Navy (retired), discusses in the “Century Magazine” the effect Which the completion of the canal will have on Australasia. “The great English-speaking colonies of Australia and New Zealand will,” he says, “be immediately and directly aifected as to populating by the Panama Canal; but its influence upon Pacific America, including Hawaii, cannot be a matter of small importance to communities which share with equal fervor the determination that their land shall be peopled by men of European antecedents. This identity o-f feeling on the subject of Asiatic immigration between the' North American Pacific and Australia, both inheritors of the same political tradition, is certain to creato political sympathies, and may drag into a common action the nations of which each forms a part. This particular determination, in the midst of that recent prevalent unrest which is called the Awakening of the East, is probably the- very largest factor in the future of the Pacific, and one ’which eventually will draw in most of the West European nations in support of their present possessions in the East. “Immediately north of Australia, barricading it, as it were, from, west to east, is a veritable Caribbean of European tropical possessions—Sumatra, Java, to New Guinea—distributed between Germany, Great Britain, and Holland; while immediately north of them again come the Philippines, under American administration. It is needless to say that support to such distant dependencies means military sea power; but it is less obyious, until heeded, -that the tendency will impart a common object, which may go far towards composing present rivalries and jealousies in Europe. To none, however, can this interest be so vital as to Great Britain, because Australasia is not to her a dominion over alien races, as India is, and as are most European possessions in the East. The Australians and New Zealanders are her own flesh and blood, and should the question of support to them arise, the Panama Canal offers an alternative route not greatly longer to Eastern Australia, and shorter by over 1200- miles t-o New eZaland. It is, however, in the developed power of Pacific America that Australia in the future will find the significance of the Panama C'anal.

“The question of immigration is now engaging the aroused attention of the new Labor’ Government in Australia. Equally with our own Pacific slope, peopling will be there a large influence in the sea power of the Pacific. The question is felt to be urgent because much of the vast territory of Australia is empty. Excluding aborigines, the population is less than two to the square mile. In New' Zealand the proportion is only nine. The huge tropical district known as North Australia contains but 1000 whites. After a seeming attempt to coddle the labor question, to sustain high wages by discouraging immigration, Australia is awaking to the untenable and perilous situation in which a people is placed when they i.„.ther occupy nor by numbers can develop. It matters not for the moment whence the danger may come. From some quarter it will, soon or late; probably soon. Overcrowded millions not far off will not look indefinitely upon open pastures denied them only by a claim of pre-emption. An abundant population in possession is at once a reason and a force. AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE. “To those who do not follow' passing events which seem remote from ourselves, it should be of interest to xvcall —for it is cognate to our sub jet—that the year just passed has witnessed the visit to Australia and New Zealand of Lord Kitchener, the greatest military organiser and most distinguished British soldier now in active service. The object desired by the colonial Governments was that a scheme of defence, based upon territory, population, and resources, should be devised after personal examination by the man who, as Commander-in-Cliief in India, had recast comprehensively the military system upon which rests the defence of three hundred millions of epople, unci if a territory which in area is a continent. The broad detail of his recommendations have been made known through- the press, but are not here material.

"It is sufficient to say that since his departure a new ‘Labor’ Government of the Commonwealth has come into power and in all decisive", particulars has adopted his plan.- The popular preponderance behind this Government is sufficiently indicated by the name—Labor, [t is the first since the organisation of the Commonwealth- —the union of the several States—that' has possessed a homogeneous working majority; and it is significant of the future that the first care of a Labor Ministry has been to provide an' efficient military- organisation, and tp entertain measures for the development of a railway system which shall minister not only to economical development, but to national military security.

"In introducing the necessary legislation, the Minister for Defence, after fully adopting Lord Kitchener’s scheme attacked those who placed faith in arbitration. He declared that Australia would refuse to arbitrate about Asiatic seclusion, and must be prepared to maintain its own laws against attack. "Sea power, like other elements of national strength, depends ultimately upon pophlatiCn, upon its numbers and its characteristics. The great affect of the Panama Canal will be the indefinite strengthening. of the Anglo-Saxon institutions upon the north-east shores of the Pacific from Alaska to Mexico, by increase of inhabitants and consequent increases of shipping and commerce, to which will contribute that portion of present and future local production ■which will find cheaper access to the Atlantic by the canal than by the existing transcontinental or Great Lakes routes . . . This development of the North-east Pacific will have its correlative in the distant south-west, in the kindred commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand'; the effect of tfc canal tipon-these being not direct, tut reflected from the increased ponV:»/J orce of communities in sympathy vvith them,op.the decisive question of imnrrgfatio'n'^ >r> :Tlr6‘4ifesult will be to Europeanise these 'great districts in the broad sense which, recognises the European derivation of American populations. The Western Pacific will remain Asiatic, as it should. "The question awaiting and approaching solution is- the line of demarcation between the Asiatic and European elements in the Pacific. • The consideration advanced appear to indicate that it will be that joining Pacific America with Australia.' It is traced roughly through intervening points, of which Hawaii and Samoa are the most con-

,Sf»icuous; but ! there are ; outposts of the European and American tenure in positions like the Marshall and Caroline Islands, Guam, Hongkong, Kiau Chau, and others, just as there are now European possessions in the: Caribbean Sea, tn Bermuda, in Halifak, tomains of piast conditions. _ _ ■ “The: extensive district north of Australia, the islands of. Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New' Guinea, and others, wline Asiatic in poulation, are, like India, European in-political control. During the period of adjustment needed for the development of Pacific America amt Australasia, naval power, the military representative;of sea power, ivill be determinative. Tlie interests herein of Great- Britain and of the United States are preponderant and Coincident. By force of past history and present possessions the final decision of this momentous question depends chiefly upon them. Meantime, and because of this, the American navy should be second to none but the British.”