"WHITE AUSTRALIA."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1735, 5 September 1919, Page 7

"WHITE AUSTRALIA."

POLICY TOWARDS JAPAN. QUESTION* OF RACIAL DIFFERENCE. STABILISE AUSTRALIA TO-DAY. IBy ADAH M'CAY, Special Commiuioncr of "The Sou," Sydney, and "The Herald," Melbourne.] XXVII. (Copyright.) IfoKIO, June 11. Jn Tokio I have seen the Prime Minister and one former Prime Minister; another former occupant of the highest political place, Count Terauchi, was too ill to be seen. I have taken pains to meet other leading men intimate with the diplomacy of their country—peers, professors, journalists. They all desired to dis-j cuss the policy adopted by Australia ;| and what reason was there why they j should*not? The very first question; put to the visitor by a newspaper reporter was: "What do you think of racial equality and of the attitude of Mr Hughes?" At a dinner given by the Japanese International Press Association it was announced that the puest would "talk about the Australian attitude." Why not? The guest said that he came to learn, not to teach. Successive interviews and successive discussions have revealed that the ~ policy of a "White Australia," with the necessity for Australia's prudent checking of immigration which might disturb her industrial stability, *is not challenged in Japan. At any rate, ■we can say that it is not openly challenged. Rather, it is accepted. The Prime Minister (Mr Hara) most readily embraced an opportunity to declare his views as the official head of the Japanese Government. He said that Japan did not desire to send emigrants into Australia; he spoke with emphasis of the action of the Japanese Government in refusing permits to emigrants offering to go to Australia or America. We know that this is partly a diplomatic arrangement; nevertheless, nothing could be more definite than Mr Hara's repudiation of anv desire in Japan to make a diplomatic attack upon Australian policy. As an Australian who is convinced that "White Australia" is at the very centre of our national aspiration, I was glad that good fortune had given me the opportunity to hear this precise assurance from the letting statesman of Japan. That garrulous, but exceptionally shrewd, old gentleman Marquis Okuma, twice Prime Minister, and still a powerful influence "oh the inside," did not go as far as Mr Hara. As was shown in the interview previously posted, he wanted to lecture the Australians upon their unwisdom if they carried an exclusive policy to extremes. But Murouis Okuma knows quite well the value of his phrases, and it is to be noted that his translator generally used an "if" # The Marquis did not give the minion that Australia had gone too far; he only feared that we mipht dp so: "and he urged that Australia should consider some sort of comrromise, comparable with the "gentlemen's agreement" between Japan and the United States. It is needless to say that the visitor listened to Marquis Okuma with much attention and without interr'»ntion, when the Marmiis gave this fp»herly advice. The Marquis is one of oleasantpst old sages one could meet in a lifetime. I have heard some journalistic friends call him a dear old humbug, but he poes ''neper than that. He was glad of thp chance to nreach to all Australia, and I pave the promise that his excellent sermon should be faithfully recorded.

But even Mnrouis Okuma. hinting tnat there misht be wavs and wavs of removing the "dfeferfion" barrier from Australian policy, was equallv in haste to praise our ambitions for national integrity. He saw that we vere a young country. He appreciated the energy we had shown, and the greatness towards which we aspired. It would-be fatal for us, he agreed, to ran the nsV of being overwhelmed, economically or raciaJlv. bv another nation than our own. To t«e Martpiis's visitor, at any rate. fMs swmcd the cardinal motive of Australian policv. His renlv to that was that it was "out of order" to go to extremes, and that Australia must not altogether isolate herself from the world. Several times in our interview he used the words "find some compromise," and the American compromise was obviously in his rund. Like the Prime Minister, and like every representative Japanese wijb whom this Question has been o'detlv discussed, he saw and understood Australia's ambition, and he c«n]d not. did not. deny that the ambit ion was legitimate. .A man who talked very j»"d freely on this theme was Count a member of the House of Peers, a great "club man," who ■"•as dubbed "Japan's dinner-table diplomat" at a function in his honour at the Tokio Club, the phrase b"iug hailed as a satisfactory descriDtion. He is closely in touch with Japanese diplomacv* and before h° left Tokio last week for a tour of America and Enrone he had interviews the leading statesmen, and an audience with the Emneror himself. He is far from being a Japanese Jingo. He denlores the menaces made towards China, especially those of Viscount Kato, Foreign Secretary during the war—menaces, he thinks which have steadilv accumulated for Japan the hostility of the one country whose friendship is recessary for Japan's commercial development. He admits that the existing factory system in Japan is evil, that profits are exorbitant and taxation is unfair, and he fears Bolshevism if Japanese labour is not more equitably rewarded. His plea Is that immigration laws operating pcainst the Japanese should be relaxed when Japan can demonstrate that her industrial conditions are as good as those of the restricting countries. It ls < at that point, of jcourse, that racial differences will have to be most deeplv and most philosophically considered. Count Soyeshima holds office in the "South Sea Association," whose chief purpose at the moment is to encourage Japan's commercial development in the Dutch Islands—a movement which causes the Hollanders no little uneasiness. He is undoubtedly representative of many Japanese who are interested in the future relations between Japan and Australia.

Men of his stamo, and men of the stamp of university nrofpssors and newspaper editors in Tokio, are swift to rpcoanise the economic logic in Australia's policy, and to concede

Australia's right to preserve the industrial standards which she has fixed, her right to develop along her chosen lines, -without excessive disturbances, from outside. I conceive that Australia would have no difficulty in enforcing a similar logic in any conclave of civilised nations. Further, even the foreigners in Japan, British or other, have been entertaining some kind of vague notion that the Australian policy is merely exclusive without rhyme or reason. The war helped them to think differently. Our contribution of 400,000 men, and our assumption of a debt of £300,000,000, have tended to make such men realise that the energy we seek to create in a "White Continent" may be of great value to the world.

Now, it is undeniable that immigration from Japan on any considerable scale would most violently disturb the course of Australia's development. Taken in the average, the Japanese workman is not the Compeer of the Australian. Many | thousands of excellent Japanese i workmen may be seen any day, and j they are apt and quick in many i technical branches of industry. Some of the Japanese chauffeurs I should class as diabolic in their aptitude for high speeds on winding mountain roads, with the forest on one side and the precipice on the other. But 1 the everyday Japanese artisan does '• not understand work as the Australian or the American understands it, with its shorter spells of much higher intensity. Accustomed to his small-scale intensive farming, as he is, with one pair of hands, young or old, male or female, to every few square yards, I cannot conceive a Japanese farmer taking on the single-handed tasks and responsibilities which our boys in the bush or on the plains accept as a matter of course. The Japanese, moreover, is not a pioneer. History has not made him one. Spaniards and Britons and Frenchmen and Dutchmen and Germans have opened up virgin territories with pioneering struggles, but Japan beyond all other energetic nations (for Japan has energy) has stayed at home. John Chinaman is a more hardy and resolute adventurer than his relative and neighbour, though John in days of modern progress has been too big and unwieldy to organise himself. Man for man, therefore, the Japanese is economically too unlike the Australian to make it safe for our young nation to risk mixing the two. With the mixture we could have no industrial and no economic stability. There could be no common standard, not evert a "common denominator," to use a rather vague but suggestive term.

The Japanese workman is not without spirit. His government, it is true, has.changed swiftly from a feudal form to a model which is more Prussian than British, and he has no union organisation as we understand it.. But he has his "guilds," and he knows how to offer a kind of passive resistance which serves the same purpose as a strike or an arbitration law. He does not move as fast and as far as an Australian workman, nor has he as much individual intelligence in his aims. Nevertheless, when he has good cause for dissatisfaction he "gets there"—more or less. Rather less than more, I fear. He can always defeat starvation. But he does not defeat wickedly long hours, asking him to try to keep up with a machine for as much time as he used to occupy in leisurely manufacture by hand. He does not defeat unspeakable housing, wherein it is natural and necessary that a whole family should live its life in one small room. He does not defeat a theory of universal labour which sends the small boy to school at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, and puts him to work with an employer at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and drives his sister into a germ-cursed factory compound when she is 14 or 15 years old. To-day it is quite impossible to think ,of mixing Australian and Japanese labour in one industrial system.

When you look at female labour, the theory of industrial fusion, or of maintaining Japanese and Australian conditions side by side, is stamped with mad incongruity. I do not wish to say anything whatsoever about the "morality" of Japan, using the .word "morality" in its narrow male-female application. It may even be argued that the Oriental's frank acceptance of sex-impulse as a fact is cleaner than some of the hideous results to which communities of European blood have clandestinely stumbled. Moreover, married life in Japan is a tender and happy relationship, though work be as arduous for the woman as for the man. But when woman becomes an industrial unit in this newlyenergised country, she is in a deplorable situation. For a generation she has been merely exploited. Thinking of the newer,* movements on behalf of women workers in Australia, thinking of the brave independence of our self-supporting girls, if becomes a sheer nightmare to dream of making Japanese and Australian workwomen earn their living side by side. It is not only for the sake of our workmen's pay, therefore, but for the sake of our very industrial stability, that our present policy becomes valuable. I fancy (from recollection) that the phrase "industrial stability'' was given me by Marquis Okuma. Whether or not, we face the question whether we shall maintain our industrial conditions as a progressive system, or let tnem become a mere welter; and the world will rfot ask us to do the latter.

Radical difference is profoundly important. As has been written before, it is hardly necessary to argue about equality, or inequality; about inferiority, or superiority. Racial difference is a fact created by history. It is not the fault of the European nations that while they were adventurously spreading all over the unoccupied territories of the earth the Asiatics—and particularly the Japanese—were staying at home. Asia has but newly wakened to the opportunities which Europe pioneered, which Europe created. There are portions of Russia wherein races have fused, just as in Spanish countries there was a slight fusion of other races—with doubtful benefit to the world's happiness; but it seems that history cannot jump, in this generation of world-wide readjustment, to a conclusion which may be possible at some distant date.

The Japanese themselves are no strangers to policies of economic exclusion. There are some Chinese at work in Japan, but the systematic introduction of more of them wouM result in strikes and riots and Japan* ese refusals to work; the plain reason being that the Japanese thinks that John Chinaman turns out too much work in a given time for too little pay. Nor is "racial pre-

judice" the exclusive property of Europeans; the Japanese has as much intense pride of race as any other man, and a good deal more than many peoples. Plainly Australia must maintain the essence of her "White" policy. But to prove its value, Australia has the duty of making her national position sound and stable, and she should accomplish the task before this living generation has passed away. "Development" is our answer to all the critics of our policy, and to all its possible antagonists. Stagnation within our own borders is our worst enemy. We have great opportunities, because we have a wide and rich territory, and a population much more homogeneous, much more even and equal in moral and intellectual quality than that of America, north or south. From a distance of many thousand miles, with the curious and acquisitive eyes of the Orient . surrounding him, a man finds it strange that the internal struggles of Australia are not more quickly composed. Over here the Japanese and the Russians alike declare that Australia has "gone Bolshevik," and they cannot comprehend why the Australian denies or disbelieves it.

With all Australia's energies working together we should have the finest chances on the planet, in comparison with our size. The whole world has agreed to grant us our own policy and our own ambition, and one judges that within present lifetime the world will not think otherwise. If that generation finds us developed and still stable, our whole future is our own.

Concerning our trade with Japan, and with the whole of Eastern Asia, there is much to be written. No reason exists to prevent a lively exchange of trade, no matter what the immigration policy may be. The many Japanese business men whom I have met have not shown interest in "White" diplomacy, whether for or against it; but they had much to say about wheat and wool and flour and meat and metals and coal. No doubt Australia will set up an effective tariff for the protection of her own efforts. But oversea trade will still exist, and we shall specially need export markets. Wherever Asia is found to be our most profitable market, it is suicide to neglect the opportunities. ■