THE EAST AND THE WEST.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 16 October 1925, Page 7

THE EAST AND THE WEST.

THE MENACE IN THE PACIFIC.

NEW ZEALAND’S BIG FUTURE PART.

“In TOO years New Zealand will have taken a foremost place; as a Greater Britain. Already we have made our mark in legislature and thought, and we have contributed to the world our quota of scientists and men of service. We stand for what, is best in the Old Land, especially our love of freedom.” Those were the closing remarks in an interesting ad,h.pSS bv Professor J. Macmillan Brown 'at Christchurch on “The Pacific Ocean • and the British F nil lire.” He dealt, with present day problems of the Pacific and of the o-reat future lying' before New Zeala,i:d°in adjusting these questions. PROSPECTS OF PEACE. Professor Brown said that the desire for universal peace was a very widespread one, but there were a good inauv dishonest and brigand communities! in the world. The suggested cure by some people was that- Great Britain should be unarmed if any of these nations should attack it, But that would lead to national chaos, and it would not be possible to do without armaments until there were no criminal nations, and no judges, gaolers anil policemen. In other words, there must be a change in human nature. Until that were, achieved, he was not among the pacifists. The human system seemed always to require competition. That being so, was it possible; to make Hie Pacific Ocean pacific indeed. All through history the Pacific had been isolated from the rest of • the worlds. The same was true in the ease of all the past civilisations of America, which had contributed nothing to general human progress. How were the East, and the West to be united? That was the great problem of the Pacific. One problem was the colour bar, but that was not a real barrier, because there were many white people in the East. A difficult problem was the difference in ethics. But the great difficulty was 1 the economic problem. COll- - only the fecundity of tlio East, it would be seen that there was a low standard of living. The Northern Chinese peasants and labourers represented perhaps the. most efficient human machine in the world. JThey were famine-disciplined, wiry and with small appetite. llow could any Western labourer hope to compete with them? “If the great floodgates of the Enrft. are opened,” he said, “we will be Orientalised in a century. There’s not a chance of our. standing against that Chinese flood, especially from the north.”

Factories were springing up .in China, and as the, pay was very low, Western nations would be utterly unable to compete with these cheap goods. The East and West faced each other over the Pacific. Ocean. The West was pressing on the East ,and the ring of Occidentals round the Orientals was almost complete. Was it any wonder that the Orientals were getting alarmed? They were practically told, that they must stay in the circle, in a sort of quarantine. Was it any wonder that the Orientals were frightened at this taboo? If the Chinese were allowed to settle in Northern Australia, they would soon drift to the towns. They were not pioneers- like tlie Westerners. Then the Chinese would cross; with the slum people, and so breed a hybrid of the worsb type.. It had been suggested, that the Europeans should withdraw from the East, That would show that the. Europeans were afraid. The Orientals would, push out and try to get into Occidental territory. That would result in one of the most embittered wars in all history, as the Europeans would be in danger of locing their dominance in the Pacific.

THE BOLSHEVIK MENACE. A dangerous influence in China was. the. Bolshevik propaganda. Tlie Bolsheviks wanted to use Chinn ns a lever against the West. They had got hold of Young China and persuaded it that now was tlie. time to wipe out the foreigner, while Europe was recovering from the war. ' The Chinese armies were of little account in war—• they were merely gangs of bandits. “Squeeze” was, in China, the univer-' sal 11th commandment. No Chinaman trusted, his neighbour. The Chinese admired the European institutions in China. If the Bolsheviks succeeded with their propaganda there would be no justice in China, there would be no tariff collected properly, and there would be the theft of millions of European money lent to develop China. There was no chance of China being developed if these Bolsheviks should succeed.,

WHOSE JOB ?

Professor Brown predicted that America would soon become a member of the League of. Nations, and would become intensely interested in other nations. During the years before she entered the war, America collected all the loose cash in the world, andi in time would have to invest that in other countries, so that, her interest in these other countries would increase. That would come, but it seemed to him that there was only one nation, in the world capable of dealing with the Pacific’s problems, and that was the British Empire. That was a, truly oceanic empire, flung round the whole world. It was, moreover, more likely to last than previous great empires, because its component parts articulated freely. There was Ho rigid, written constitution. And of all countries, New Zealand, was the, part of the Empire best fitted to tackle the Pacific problems. New Zealand would one day be a great naval Power, it would be in the vanguard in the settlement of Pacific problems. New Zealand was a replica of Britain, and if tlie Imperial mission had any gospel to preach it was to keep the breed pure.