BY FRANK FOX   LONDON WILLIAMS & NORGATE 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1912 See larger image....

The Pacific is the ocean of the future. As civilisation grows and distances dwindle, man demands a larger and yet larger stage for the fighting-out of the ambitions of races. The Mediterranean sufficed for the settlement of the issues between the Turks and the Christians, between the Romans and the Carthaginians, between the Greeks and the Persians, and who knows what other remote and unrecorded struggles of the older peoples of its littoral. Then the world became too great to be kept in by the

Russia, for generations the victim of Asia, when at last she had won to national greatness, was impelled by pressure from the West rather than by a sense of requital to turn back the tide of invasion. That pressure from the West was due to a misunderstanding in which Great Britain led the way, and which the late Lord Salisbury happily described when he stated that England "had backed the wrong horse" in opposing Russia and in aiding Turkey against her. Russia, because she broke Napoleon's career

The misfortune of success has never been better exemplified in the world's history than in the results which have followed from the White Man's attempt to arouse Japan to an appreciation of the blessings of European civilisation. Our fathers and grandfathers of the middle nineteenth century battered at the barred and picturesque doors of the land of the Mikado with a vague idea that there was plunder, trade or some other tangible benefit to be got from dragging the quaint Yellow Recluse out of h

China is potentially the greatest Power on the western littoral of the Pacific. Her enormous territory has vast agricultural and mineral resources. Great rivers give easy access to some of the best of her lands. A huge population has gifts of patient labour and craftsmanship that make the Chinaman a feared competitor by every White worker in the world. In courage he is not inferior to the Japanese, as General Gordon found. In intelligence, in fidelity and in that common sense which teaches "hone

Following the map of the North-Western Pacific littoral, the eye encounters, on leaving the coast of China, the Philippine Islands, proof of the ambition of the United States to hold a place in the Pacific. It is a common fallacy to ascribe to the United States a Quakerish temperament in foreign affairs. Certain catch-words of American local politics have been given a fictitious value, both at home and abroad. "Republican Simplicity," "The Rights of Man," "European Tyranny," "Imperial Aggression

Off the coast of China at a point where, in a strategical map the "spheres of influence" of Japan and the United States and Germany would impinge, is the island of Hong Kong, the Far East station of the British Empire. Further south, in the Malay Peninsula, is Singapore, standing guard over the entrance to the Indian Ocean. On these two coaling stations British naval power in the North Pacific is based. The abandonment of either of them is unthinkable to-day, yet neither was taken possession of

Those who seek to find in history the evidence of an all-wise purpose might gather from the fantastic history of Australasia facts to confirm their faith. Far back in prehistoric ages, this great island was cut adrift from the rest of the world and left lonely and apart in the Southern Pacific. A few prehistoric marsupials wandered over its territory and were hunted by poor nomads of men, without art or architecture, condemned by the conditions of their life to step aside from the great onward c

A thousand miles east of Australia is another aggressive young democracy preparing to arm to the teeth for the conflict of the Pacific, and eager to embark upon a policy of forward Imperialism on its own account: with aspirations, indeed, to be made overlord of all the Pacific islands under the British Flag. New Zealand had a softer beginning than Australia, and did not win, therefore, the advantages and disadvantages springing from the wild type of colonists who gave to the Australian Commonwea

The native races of the South Pacific, with the possible exception of the Maori, will have no influence in settling the destiny of the ocean. Neither the Australian aboriginal nor the Kanaka—under which last general title may be grouped all the tribes of Papua, the Solomons, the New Hebrides and other Oceanic islands—will provide the foundation of a nation. It is one of the curiosities of world-history that no great race has ever survived which had its origin in a land south of the Equator. From

Probably it is a superior sense of racial responsibility and racial superiority which has kept the Anglo-Saxon colonist from mingling his blood with that of the races he made subject to him. He shows a reproduction in a modern people of the old Hebraic spirit of elect nationality. In truth; there may be advanced some excuse for those fantastic theorists who write large volumes to prove that ten tribes were once lost from Israel and might have been found soon after in Britain. If there were no ot

The existence, side by side, of two races and two languages in Canada makes it a matter of some doubt as to what the future Canadian nation will be. The French race, so far proving more stubborn in its characteristics than the British race in Canada, has been the predominant influence up to recently, though its influence has sought the impossible aim of a French-Canadian nation rather than a Canadian nation. Thus it was at once a bulwark of national spirit and yet an obstacle to a genuinely prog

The present year (1912) is not a good one for an estimate of the naval forces of the Pacific. The Powers interested in the destiny of that ocean have but recently awakened to a sense of the importance of speedy naval preparation to avert, or to face with confidence, the struggle that they deem to be impending. By 1915 the naval forces in the Pacific will be vastly greater, and the opening of the Panama Canal will have materially altered the land frontiers of the ocean. A statement of the naval f

The military forces available for service in the Pacific are those (1) of Russia; (2) of China; (3) of Japan; (4) of the United States; (5) of the British Empire including India; (6) of the Latin-American peoples of Mexico and South America. The great armies of France, Germany, and Austro-Hungary can have no voice in the destinies of the Pacific Ocean unless indirectly, as, for instance, through Germany or Austria helping or hindering a Russian movement in the Far East by guaranteeing or threate

There is one actual alliance between two Pacific Powers, Great Britain and Japan: an entente between Great Britain and Russia: and an instinct towards friendliness between Great Britain and the United States. There are several other possible combinations affecting the ocean in the future. But no Power of the Triple Alliance, nor yet France, can be considered a factor in the Pacific except in so far as it may help or hinder a Power already established there. Germany, for instance, might enter the

The poetry that is latent in modern science, still awaiting its singer, shows in the story of the Panama Canal. Nature fought the great French engineer, de Lesseps, on that narrow peninsula, and conquered him. His project for uniting the waterways of the Pacific and the Atlantic was defeated. But not by hills or distances. Nature's chief means of resistance to science was the mobilising of her armies of subtle poisoners. The microbes of malaria, yellow fever, of other diseases of the tropical ma

That our civilisation is based on conditions of warring struggle is shown by the fact that even matters of production and industry are discussed in terms of conflict. The "war of tariffs," the "struggle for markets," the "defence of trade," the "protection of our work"—these are every-day current phrases; and the problem of the Pacific as it presents itself to the statesmen of some countries has little concern with navies or armies, but almost exclusively comes as an industrial question: "Will o

Soundly considered, any great strategical problem is a matter of: 1. Naval and military strength; rarely exercised separately but usually in combination. 2. Disposition of fortified stations and of bases of supplies. 3. The economic and political conditions of countries concerned. Such phrases as the "Blue-water School of Strategy" are either misleading, inasmuch as they give an incorrect impression of the ideas of the people described as belonging to such a school, wrongly representing them as

The essential superiority of a White Race over a Coloured Race may fairly be accepted as a "first principle" in any discussion of world politics. There are numberless facts to be gathered from 2500 years of history to justify that faith, and there is lacking as yet any great body of evidence to support the other idea, that modern conditions of warfare and of industry at last have so changed the factors in human greatness that mere numbers and imitative faculty can outweigh the superior intellect