rankle somewhat because of fear that America has taken to herself too much credit for the accomplishment of victory. But then it gave that stimulus to navalism in the south that the Australians wanted; further, it gave birth to the movement for greater independence in Imperial affairs, which for twentyfive years had determined the policies of the several states.

It did not take the same turn in New Zealand. That little country continued in its more Imperialistic tendencies, was content to be a finger in the great hand of the Empire. In 1909, at the Imperial Conference, Sir Joseph Ward sprung a surprise by offering a battlecruiser to the Government without consulting his constituents at home. They were in a mood to make him pay for it himself when he returned, but later developments so justified him that he became a sort of political idol for a while. When the cruiser visited New Zealand in 1913, the excitement knew no bounds.

Then came the war. Germany was always regarded as a potential enemy. The colonies had always arched their backs at the proximity of German possessions in the South Seas. When in 1889 Samoa was the bone of contention, the colonies were rather eager to have America take it in preference to the Germans. Then as Japan came to the fore, America as a potential protector became more and more obvious to Australasians. The Panama Canal intensified that conviction. They looked forward to a combination of British and American power for the furtherance of peace as they conceived it should be maintained. This stimulated their consciousness of their own destiny in the Pacific. Suddenly they were brought close to the United States. The anti-Japanese riots in California, the annexation of Hawaii, the protectorate over the Philippines all pointed to Australasians lessons for their own guidance. They could not expect from England the same keen interest in racial questions which manifested itself in America. America demonstrated the dangers of having two unfriendly races like the white and the black together; Hawaii showed them that Asiatic immigration is a breeder of trouble. They do not seem to see that circumstances are not the same, that the pressure of population has become much more keen, that industrial conditions in the world to-day are altogether different from what they were when Great Britain refused to

have her American colonies put down the kidnapping of Africans; that America to-day has 110,000,000 people and has encouraged them to come from every country in Europe as Australia does not.

Australia looks only at the most obvious phases of the problem-that certain people are not happy together. Whether she overestimates her own strength against the pressure of changed conditions remains to be seen, but she is pursuing her own course with a certain steadfastness that is at once a pathetic blindness and a courageous self-assertion. In a country whose political outlook is essentially generous, whose labor experiments have been extremely costly to her, it strikes one as a great contradiction of principle. How can a labor government be so utterly opposed to the extension of ideal opportunities to laborers from other lands seeking to enjoy them? How can she be so utterly capitalistic on a national scale at the same time that nearly everything within her own ken is laboristic?

WHILE,

HILE, as has been shown, Australia has for twenty years pursued a course that threatens to lead toward separation from England, New Zealand has bound herself closer and closer. Australia, too, however, has been extremely shy of any semblance of rupture. She does not want to break away. She feels her isolation too much. But what she wants is, in a sense, the rights that American states have within the Union. She wants to pursue the "White Australia Policy" contrary to sentiment in England, to develop her own navy, to hold the whole continent against the time when full nationhood will have become a reality. In the recent war conscription was defeated because it was not certain what the turn of affairs in Europe might be. It was felt imperative that the men be not all gone and the continent left undefended. And that contingency was voiced by the Premier of Queensland as involving— Japan. To the outsider this seems like an extremely selfish procedure, but to enthusiastic young Australia, with the wide world before her, with a future that looks as promising as that of America, this seems the only logical thing to do. And as long as her imaginary enemies do not take the trouble to show by deeds that they are not enemies, that reasoning is not unjustifiable.

But a strange thing has happened to Australia. She has got what she was after, and now she hardly wants it. She fought for the Imperial Conference method of settling Imperial affairs. Australians have time and again declared that though part of an empire, they are a nation first and foremost. That the Empire represented too heterogeneous a list of peoples for them to forget that an Indian, though part of the Empire, is still an inferior as far as they are concerned. And she realized

that the Mother Country could not see eye to eye with her on that score. Yet she insists on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance remaining in some form acceptable to her and to America. How is that to be carried out? What has happened since Peace was declared?

THE PACIFIC MANDATES

AUSTRALIA and New Zealand were loud

est in their clamor against the return of the South Sea Islands to the Germans. New Zealand soldiers had taken Samoa; the Australian navy-what there was of ithad cleared the neighboring seas of German raiders. But though they asked that Germany be deprived of the possessions, and though the leaders thundered for a New Zealand mandate over Samoa and an Australian mandate over New Guinea, the people realized that they did not particularly care for the burden of looking after them. Great Britain has told them that she can no longer maintain that navy without their full share in its costs. Besides, the mandate over the islands is not going to be simple.

RESOURCES OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

BEFORE giving consideration to the de

velopments which not even the Australasians had anticipated, let us look upon the gains they have made. They have acquired some new possessions which make of them an empire within the Empire, as it were. The Islands of the South Pacific are to be ruled as though they were an integral part of New Zealand and Australia, yet they have their own facets. They afford certain commercial advantages: copra and cocoa and phosphate and agricultural products. But more important still are the advantages they afford as ports of call. Further, if the plan of linking the islands together by wireless is effected, they will become an outer frontier for the Antipodes of inestimable value. There is even a faint suggestion of binding them together into one separate governmental entity-a buffer state as it were between the big powers in the Pacific.

But what are these few assets compared with the greatly extended line of defence now left to the Dominion to keep up? What is that to the great problem of how to develop the native races? Australia is interested in developing Queensland, a tropical region, not the distant islands beyond. The question of labor is bad enough for themselves, without

having added regions to worry about. A further problem is, what will happen when the policy applied to island possessions will conflict with the course permitted by the law of the mandate? What is worse yet, the mandate over the South Seas has brought Japan closer by hundreds of miles to both New Zealand and Australia, and has thrown open the question of admission of Asiatic people to these islands. The Australasians feel that they are obliged to protect not only themselves from Asiatic competition, but the native races as well. These are some of the problems Australasia inherited from the Peace Conference.

How have they affected the relations of New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia with Great Britain? They have put a new strain upon the Empire as such; they have put an added strain upon the relations of Japan and Great Birtian; they have driven a wedge into the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

THE

A NEW SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

'HE Dominions are now conscious of their power, and are determined to wield it. They have made and are doing everything to continue to make friends of their own, by whom they mean to stand through thick and thin. At the Peace Conference they were not inferior to any of the deliberators, and signed the Peace Treaty as virtual members of the League of Nations.

"But," asks the Wellington Evening Post, "are the Dominions ever to cast an international vote against the Mother Country on a question relating, say, to the future of the Pacific regarding which their interests and wishes might rather harmonize with those of the United States?"

Mr. Massey, of New Zealand, on the other hand, held "that the Dominions had signed the Treaty not as independent nations in the ordinary sense, but as nations within the Empire or partners in the Empire."

consider constitutional changes," he adds: "It is painfully evident from articles which have appeared in the press and in magazines that to a certain type of mind, the Constitution of the British Empire is far from what it should be."

But though Hughes is to-day the leader of Australia, it is not because he has the country back of him. It is rather because there is unfortunately no better man on hand. He has never cared much for consistency, and even on the matter of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance there is a suggestion of yielding that makes one feel uncertain. He has declared that at the present conference, the question of a reorganization of the Government so as to give the Dominions direct share in the control of Imperial affairs is not even being thought of, but it is evident in his speech that that question is only going to be delayed because more pressing matters, such as the AngloJapanese Alliance and Imperial Naval Defence, must be dealt with first. In other words, as spokesman he realizes that "little" Australia, with its 5 million people and its vast continent, has asked too much from its parent to be left to stand alone. So he is pouring oil on the troubled waters by trying to devise an AngloJapanese Treaty "in such form, modified, if that should be deemed proper, as will be acceptable to Britain, to America, to Japan, and to ourselves." And that is what is most likely going to happen.

WHAT JAPAN THINKS OF THE ALLIANCE

UT there is a third consideration in this

BUT
But there question, and that is Japan.

whole

What is Japan going to say about it all? For some time the Japanese have been rather cool in their enthusiasm over the Alliance\ because it seems to them to have outlived! its usefulness and because Article 4 absolves Great Britain from assisting Japan in the event of war with America. The Osaka Asahi, one of the most influential journals, has boldly advocated its abrogation. The reasons for both British and Japanese indifference are obvious. Russia is out of the way. British mercantile interests are not at all satisfied with Japanese methods in China. The Alliance has been disregarded twice-when the Sino-Japanese Military Agreement was signed, and when the Twenty-one Demands were made. Furthermore, the Alliance never protected Japanese interests when they came in

conflict with the interests of the Colonies, nor has it prevented British interests from suffering in the Far East. The British are cool toward it; so are the Japanese. China is extremely antagonistic, because she deems herself to be the worst sufferer. She is the main point under consideration, yet she has not been consulted. Hence she sent Mr. Simpson, her British adviser, to America and to England, to arouse public opinion against its renewal.

JAPAN AND THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE

EVERTHELESS, Japan has been concerned enough for the renewal of the Alliance to make a departure from her agelong attitude toward the Imperial family that is extremely interesting if not illuminating. The present visit of Prince Hirohito, heir to the throne, while meant to widen his grasp of world affairs was certainly also intended to arouse public feeling in England in favor of Japan and the Alliance. This is the first time that any Japanese prince of the blood has left Japan. He has hob-nobbed with the common people, a thing unheard of in Japan. But if he succeeds in winning popular approval for the Alliance, it will doubtless be worth while from the Japanese point of view. Otherwise the risk would not have been justified, for such visits are not without their dangers. It is interesting to recall that when Nicholas, Czarevitch of Russia, made a tour of the world upon the completion of the Siberian railway in 1891, he passed through Japan. An attack upon his life by a Japanese policeman nearly brought down the wrath of the Czar upon Japan, and there was much explanation.

While Japan feels anxious to have the Alliance renewed, she argues that England is more in need of it than she. America, she says, has somewhat eclipsed England. The Japanese feel that England must now lean on Japan as never before. They felt this when the Alliance was formed. Count Hayashi, in his "Secret Memoirs," quotes a statement attributed to Marquis Ito, as follows: "It is difficult to understand why England has broken her record in foreign politics and has decided to enter into an alliance with us; the mere fact that England has adopted this attitude shows that she is in dire need, and she therefore wants to use us in order to make us bear some of her burdens. ." Ito was then playing Russia against England.

.

To-day England is being played against America, and the colonies are eager to utilize the feelings of Japan and America for a greater Pacific fleet and for their own augmented freedom within the Empire. There is much talk of a secret agreement existing between Japan and Great Britain. Even if there were, Great Britain would only be able to live up to it in the event of war between Japan and America, at the risk of losing her colonies. However, that need not be taken as a serious check, for though Great Britain wants her colonies, she does not want them well enough to forego all other considerations. On the other hand, a good deal of the proAmerican feeling in the Colonies cannot be accepted too easily, for when America remained neutral they forgot blood relationship in their criticism. To-day there are interpretations of the Alliance which would put Great Britain in exactly the same position toward her younger "daughters" for which she condemned America in 1914-17. But both the psychological and material elements in the situation all point to an absolutely united front in Australasia for America, in the event of the talked about war with Japan coming to a head. That is best illustrated by a statement in the (British) Japan Chronicle. Says the editor: "As we have repeatedly pointed out, it is unthinkable that Britain should join Japan in actual warfare with America. No Ministry in England which deliberately adopted such a policy would live for a single day." And the Colonies, from Canada to Australia, will echo that sentiment.

But it seems that with so much of the world vitally interested in maintaining peace in the Pacific there should be no difficulty at all in so doing. The Colonies are sincere in their desire for amity with America; nor is it merely a matter of common language. No one who has taken the trouble to inquire into Far Eastern affairs finds the handicap of language even the remotest cause of misunderstanding. Actions speak louder than words, and none but the ignorant can now mis-read what is going on in Asia.

Let but those actions coincide with promises made, with the spirit of the Alliance and with the constant expression of amity and goodwill, and we will see the mist of war in the Pacific clear as before the glories of the morning sun.