The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1901. A White Australia.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10504, 27 November 1901, Page 2

The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1901. A White Australia.

It is no doubt highly desirable that the Australian people of the future ■should be as free from deleterious blood mixtures bb possible, and as closely approximating to the higher -type of Anglo-Saxon cum -CeHSc race as attainable. But how is this latter goal to be reached under present conditions on the island continent? The mixture of races in Australia of late years' has been increasingly bewildering, and in addition to the old-time cross with the aboriginal Australian, the Anglo-Saxons have for some years past mated with Chinese, Japanese, East Indiana, Negroes, Afghans, Pathans, Polynesians, and other branches of the coloured peoples of the earth, with the result that already in Queensland and other parts of Australia there are growing up young people who can only be, glassed as greatly "cross-bred." When these human mongrels come to marry and beget children it may easily be imagined what the resultant generation will be like ! But it is not so much the physical decadence of the coming Australian that has to be dreaded, as the moral; for it is certain that the vices of the East, which arc of the unmentionable type, will be grafted on to thouc of tuc West, which latter are mainly a craving- for intoxicants and a desire to possess what they have not earned. The Eastern nations are .rigid abstainers from intoxicating liquor, but so far from thifc abstention improving their morals, as might be expected from the statements of the Prohibitionists, the reverse is the cose, as the races who eschew alcohol make up for their selfdenial in that article by indulgence in narcotics, which leads to dishonesty, and hideous forms of 'physical vice. To graft these Eastern races on the AngloSaxon race in Australia simply means to atnalgamats^the worst vices of both, and to greatly deteriorate the coming generations of Australians. The problem is how to^Jmt a stop to the -evil? The proposaL'^o put an end to Kanaka labour importations for the Queensland sugar-cane cultivation 'has caused those engaged in this business to protest most vehemently against such a restriction, which they assert will destroy the Queensland sugar industry if carried out. The advocates of Kanaka labour in- that part of Australia talk very big on the question, and have even hinted at civil war in the event of the Federal Parliament carrying the Bill now before it for the exclusion of coloured indentured labour from the cane-fields of Queensland. There is no danger of such a war, as the bulk of the people of that State voted for Federation with their eyes oj>en to "the fact that the Commonwealth would be antagonistic to Kanaka and other coloured labour. It would not be at all difficult to legislate effectively against their landing in Australia, or to enforce such a law, but there is one race whose

members cannot be thus barred, viz., the Japanese, whose treaty with Britain gives them equal rights in' her possessions, as those they possess in the Unitod " States territory; - The Americans attempted to restrict the influx of Japs into Hawaii, which le,d to the Japanese Government intimating to that of the United States its intension of- excluding Americans from Japan if the people of -he latter were prevented from landing in American territory! The result was tlie rescinding of the United States ukase in Honolulu. Encouraged by this, the Japs would no doubt play tho same card were the Commonwealth Government to attempt

\o exclude them from Australia, or to impose a poll-tax on them. It is therefore certain that the influx of Japanese into Australia is not likely to be stopped, but that, on the contrary, it will increase, as the little brown man and woman seem to get" on -very well in that country, where they are already in many places pushing the AngloSaxon traders and workers aside. Even' at this early day in the history of the island continent there are nearly as many strange tongues spoken as at the building' of the Tower of Babel, which gives rise to the natural thought that the Australian vernacular of a century hence will bo a strange polyglot, and typical of the very -mixed race that shall have resulted from the present blending of the Anglo-Saxon and^coloured peoples in that country. The serious part of the subject iB the likelihood of this blend resulting in both j the .physical, and, mental deterioration \ of the coming Australian; nay, Aus- | tralasian, for it is certain New Zealand 'cannot escape some of the evils of this mixture of blood. At present the colonials hold a high place both mentally and physically in the world, and ought to jealously guard against anything calculated to lower their present standard in* either respect. How they are to do so effectively is" one of those prob-, lems hard of solution, as it is beset with interminable difficulties, not the leaßt of which are caused by the greed of capitalists eager. to benefit by the cheap labour of dark-Bkinned races. Will the people of the Commonwealth allow this to go on unchecked, or will they use their united efforts to create a white Australia, which shall in the future takes its place among the great , .nations of the earth? We hope so.