OCEAN OF OMENS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

OCEAN OF OMENS

BY MATANGA

THE ALLURING PACIFIC v r I

Out into the vast Pacific, voyaging faster and farther than the Diomede will take her vice-regal passengers, New Zealand's thought has lately gone. It is a mental excursion we should oftener make. Even to know the islands linked politically to our own is worth while. To be on thinking terms with the whole of this great stretch of waters is better still, and for all its amazing vastness this is salutarily possible. In history it has played an impressive part; at present it is an engrossing arena of diverse purposes; into the future it looks with questioning eyes that try to measure hopes and fears. It is an ocean of omens, but the reading of them baffles while it attracts contemplation. Its yesterdays hold secrets not easily won by the most patient wresting of research. Its to-day has manifold perplexities. Its to-mor-rows will be decisive of many things for all the world, yet their accurate forecasting is beyond the shrewdest guess. Most of us know our Pacific only in patches, and these in meagre detail. Of inhabitants we have less understanding than of their dwelling-places, and these are little more than broken bits of imagination. To be acquainted in detail with this part or that is to be in peril of mistake about the rest, so multiplex is its human content and so confused the streams that placed it there and are now mingling their currents. Under our very eyes it is rapidly changing. In the fact that it holds many an uncharted space is a figure of the difficulties it presents to adventures of mind. Islets mysteriously emerge, are recorded, then as strangely disappear. So was it long agp, as much legendary folklore and the tales of mariners tell; so is it now, despite all that has been done to bring geographical certainty. All an alluring, tantalising symbol of the puzzles it offers for prophetic solution, not to be undertaken lightly or with dogmatism. And for New Zealand this means a call to alertness and openness of mind, as a condition of any service :it may progressively render to days when the harvest of influence is reaped, when quests of hope make harbour or suffer shipwreck, when deeds have made other and later deeds inevitable. The darkness following a long day of migratory occupation has settled, leaving only here and there a glimpse of ancient happenings, and where the fingers of dawn lift the veil a little no certitude is given. Of much yet to be we know no more than did Magellan what timje he entered this expanse and gave it the name it now wears with a difference. The Colossal Rim How fascinating is the great round rim of land that encompasses it! Trace it from the Horn, up the coast that Magellan saw leading into a misty north: the long, thin strip of Chile, then the ancient civilisation of Peru, with Bolivia lying behind barred from the sea. next Equador and Colombia, and at last the wisp of land now cut athwart at Panama. Half-told stories lurk all along that queer coast. To-day it yields trade—metals, guano, nitrates, rubber, cotton, sugar, chocolate, coffee, quinine—but is apart from the political stirrings in the colossal basin. Yet it had long a life of seething action, and some day again may make a mark in livelier things than story-books. Within memory it has seen Indians and Spaniards clash and cling, and thither China and Japan have sent hordes of adventurers, now seeking wealth in its mines. Their long sea-trek has meaning for the coming days. Crossing by Panama we touch a group of States taking on modern ways. Small they are, but not unimportant. They are "now strengthening their contacts with the "Western world. Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and the quaint little piece of political geography on the near Atlantic front called British Honduras—all mere names, perhaps, but they are often spoken in Geneva, and the Monroe Doctrine has proved powerless to keep them away. Mexico next, living a turbulent life of its own for all the watchfulness of Uncle Sam, and by its entry to the League daring to assert a defiance of American example. With others thereabouts, it demands a place in the horoEiCope of the Pacific. All have resources, material and human, and these will count by virtue of location. Hntry of Engish-speaking Folk So we reach the long littoral of the United States looking hopefully westward. California once held wide open a door to peoples on the far side of the Pacific. Labour above all else was wanted to exploit the riches of the Wild West, and thus it came, particularly from Japan. It can come thence 110 more. The door has been banged, bolted and barred. Yet this exclusion brings Japan to-day dangerously near, not in neighbourliness but in resentment, and a trouble so hurtful may develop ere long that only the painful surgery of war will be able to cure it. Here is food fnr grave thought. Northward again are Canada and Alaska, doininantly European in their population, like the lands from which they politically spring. They tell, as does the littoral of the United States, of the northern entry of Europe across the Atlantic, bringing a Teutonic element into the black-and-tan Pacific. What this will ultimately mean no mortal can anticipate. Already it has contributed a powerful factor of change. The eventual outcome can be hazarded, but there is 110 programme to guide performance. The Western Edge Crossing not far below the Arctic Circle, practically on it, we come to lands thickly occupied on Asia's front. Japan, unable to find agricultural sustenance for its teeming people, compelled to develop manufacturing industries and to seek outlets for the scores of thousands it cannot house and feed; the jutting land of Korea, whither so many of these Japanese have gone, as into Manchuria—scene of bitter contest with China; the Eastern Siberian stretch of Russia, long a place of disturbing influence in what was once known as the Far East; China, its coastal region, from old Peking (new Peiping) down to Canton, over-popu-lated throughout all the eastern provinoes emerging from hibernation and ambitious of national influence—one of the " hot-points " of international contact. Thence we pass on to old Anam (modern French Cochin China), to Siain, the Malay States and Singapore, and at last reach the Dutch East Indies, which long looked habitually westward back to their homeland in Europe, but are now turning to the Pacific. Australia completes the inhabited rim of the titanic basin—another entry of the masterful Briton—and in the polar south the white fringe of Antarctica leads round again to the Horn. It is a wonderful circle, unique 111 terrestrial measurement and so variegated in its peoples that it presents an epitome of the world's assorted cultures. This fact is made doubly impressive when the contained islands arc viewed, lor on them crucial experiments in union are taking place. They have a story within a story, and its modern chapter is only begun. How will it end? The answer to that question is not so certain as that this land of ours will be enduringly affected by what befalls.