AUSTRALIA AND THE ASIATIC PERIL.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 120, 18 May 1912, Page 4

AUSTRALIA AND THE ASIATIC PERIL.

The voting of the Broken Hill miners on the Defence. Act should prove-.-a-useful''object-lesson to the workers 'of~New Zealand. It is true that the majority in favor o-f the compulsory service system was only about two hundred; but considering.that for some weeks past Broken < Hill had been simply overrun by noisy Socialists and professional "anti-militarist" agitators from Sydney and Adelaide, the fact that there was a majority at all in favor, of. the Act must be a-e----garded as distinctly satisfactory. Outside Australia, the Asiatic peril is well understood. The Northern Territory, that vast, practically unpopulated but fertile region, must ever.be a■ --temptation to the Chinese and Japanese; and sooner or later, so surely as night follows day and day follows niglit, the white Australian will have to be prepared to fight to keep his island continent white. In case of war, it would be the Australian worker who would first aid most severely suffer, and the obstinate blindness with which so many of the labor leaders refuse to perceive and recognise tlie dangers of the future is to our mind sometlinie; almost inconceivably wrong-headed. Fortunately, the future of national defence, not. j only in Australia^ but m Now Zealand, ■■does not rest with the. blatant. tubthumpers of the cities, but' with the

.<*reat majority of the colonists whose ; homes are on. the land. a?nd who. wise-r I Jy rercmisa that they hay*» soniethiug jto fio:lLt' for. A small if noisy

! minority in the cities may keep on Tinwiinor agf inst : bnt New Zealand is not ruled by the Sem-

pies, Webbs, and the Syndicalist Socialists, and if these, people do not wish to observe the law the best thing they can do is to leave the country'to those who take a pride in their citizenshix> and are prepared te do their share to defend their fa mil ■<?<■.

and their homes