A "WHITE RACIFIC."

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12817, 17 July 1912, Page 8

A "WHITE RACIFIC."

Rev. Henry Worrall, speaking from a long and intimate personal acquaintance with the Pacific Islands, says that "m Fiji the Indian is the coming' man." Already there are 50,000 Hindus m the Fiji group, and only 4000 Europeans, The native Fijian need scarcely be taken into accounts as his: race is rapidly dying putVand there seems to be no effective remedy for its decay. It is clear that the contest for the possession of the Fiji Islands has. already resolved itself into a fight between the European and the Oriental; and at the present moment the Asiatic element is iti' a majority of 10' or 11. to one. Remembering that Fiji, is a British Crown, colony, within four or five, days' steam oi Australia and New Zealand, these facts are certainly ominous" But, unfortunately, evidence to the same effect can be drawn from most of the other regions of the Pacific that are worth ; the tion of the civilised world. In. Hawaii, where the. climate is Quits as good as m , Fiji, and. the soil is- as fertile, the white population does not seem to make headway, .and the Japanese are the coming people. In New Caledonia, which is closer, still to Australia, it is not the Frenchman who . is superseding the Kanaka, but the Asiatic— the Tonkingese or the Japanese. Rich m mineral wealth and m. other natural resources, Noumea can never be peopled by the French, because their declining birthrate renders oversea colonisation impracticable. In New Britain and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago the Germans have invested a great deal of capital, and have done, some of t-he preliminai'y "spade-work" of colonisation. Yet Germans do riot settle there m large or increasing numbers, and the industrial work there is 'done practically ail by colored labor, ' native or. imported. But m. the German possessions m the vicinity. of Papua, as in- Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Solomon Islands, the supply of natives is failing, and it is becoming the practice to draw upon .the inexhaustible reservoirs of cheap Oriental labor. In whichever direction we look, across the Pacific we can gather evidence which seems > to. indicate that the white , races are already failing m the struggle for- survival there,- and that the future of Polynesia and the other tropical regions m the groat South Sea lies nut with tin; European or the deciidenft native, but with, tho aggressive and adventurous Oriental.