THE PACIFIC PROBLEM.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18164, 28 April 1921, Page 4

THE PACIFIC PROBLEM.

Quite a lot has been said of recent times anent ‘‘the shifting of the centre of the world’s interest to the Pacific,” and many prominent speakers and writers have predicted that the next great international conflict will be fought in the ocean by which the shores of New Zealand and Australia are lapped. Indeed, such utterances have, since the war, become mere commonplaces. The “Sydney Morning Herald” gives immediate point to these unpleasant predictions by expressing the opinion that already ‘‘we are being borne along rapidly to the epoch much prophesied about in quite recent days—the serious clash of international interests in the Pacific.” Our contemporary takes it for granted that we shall feel acutely the strain of the rivalry for the command of the Pacific archipelagoes. The German interest has been eliminated in favour of a British dominion interest—Australian and New Zealand—on the south of the equator, and of a Japanese and American interest on the north. The Asiatic interest (principally Japanese, as far as national prestige is implicated) has lung been there in the form of peaceful penetration. Japan has become a grekt industrial force, and is attracted by the w'ealth of raw material in the islands as strongly as any of the white Powers. So much,, is indisputable fact. The Japanese plea for

"equality of status” refers to trading rights in the Pacific islands quite as much as to residence in -white California or in white Australia; it is pressed with all the insistence of a proud people, which is beginning to feel its weight in the world, and whose national honour is as sensitive as that of any European Power. Accordingly, the Sydney “Herald” regards this Pacific islands dispute as being as nice a subject as could be found for settlement by the League of Nations or the International Association, which America proposes in its stead. “We cannot,” it says, “blind our eyes to the fact that the League of Nations, by the issue of the recent mandates, has not settled it-—at least not to the satisfaction of the United States. Will the League say now, for instance, what it really did decide l about Yap? If either Japan or the United States, as the case may be, should refuse to recognise the League’s decision, how liwatg will any League mandate remain unchallenged?” South of the equator there is another sort of discontent, and the Australian and New Zealand Governments cannot for much longer neglect to notice it. In the Solomon Islands and Fiji, and In Samoa (recently mandated to New Zealand) the long-existing though often dor-

mant agitation for federation and an increased measure of local govern-

ment is being assiduously revived. There was recently published by the same journal an interview -with a prominent American merchant of Samoa which indicated that the local prejudice against New Zealand control still survives; and, on the same gentleman's authority, so does the hope of a federation in one government with Tonga and Fiji. The planters of the Solomon Islands have formed an association, which recently issued the first number of a representative journal, the “Planters’ Gazette,” to advocate as leading reforms "a change in the system of administration of this group, which has outgrown the Protectorate stage,” and "an adequate measure of representative government.” The Suva Legislative Council (elective) of Fiji recently passed a ■ resolution.—“ That in the opinion of this Council, the interests of the Empire in the Pacific would best be served by a confederation of the British islands of the Western Pacific, governed and controlled from a common centre.” The common factor in the agitation in all these island centres is the growing difficulty in acquiring cheap labour, and in some cases any native labour at all. It would appear, therefore, that whatever may be said for or against the traders’ case for indentured labour (which means almost inevitably Asiatic labour), it must at least be adniitted that the white trader is genuinely afraid of the competition of such labour as is under Japanese control in neighbouring regions of the Pacific. He argues, “If we white planters are driven out of business by the Japanese, how are the British going to develop these islands, and how prevent them from being eventually overrun by the Japanese?” The settlement of these numerous and conflicting problems in the Pacific will not be easy, and among the white planters the exclusion policy, as applied by either the Commonwealth or by New Zealand, is not popular.