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Title: The Pacific Triangle
Author: Greenbie, Sydney
Language: English
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THE PACIFIC TRIANGLE
[Illustration: ERUPTION OF VOLCANO ON THE ISLAND OF KYUSHU, JAPAN
To the world a symbol: to Japan a fact]
THE
PACIFIC TRIANGLE
BY
SYDNEY GREENBIE
AUTHOR OF "JAPAN: REAL AND IMAGINARY"
ILLUSTRATED
WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Printed in U. S. A.
TO BARRIE
WHO DID HIS BEST TO
PREVENT THE WRITING OF THIS
BOOK, IN THE HOPE THAT HE MAY
SOME DAY READ IT AND REPENT OF HIS SINS.
PREFACE
This book is an attempt to bring within focus the most outstanding
factors in the Pacific. With the exception of Chapter II, which deals
with the origin of the Polynesian people, there is hardly an incident in
the whole book that has not come within the scope of my own personal
experience. Hence this is essentially a travel narrative. I have
confined myself to the task of interpreting the problems of the Pacific
in the light of the episodes of everyday life. Wherever possible, I have
tried to let the incident speak for itself, and to include in the
picture the average ideals of the various races, together with my own
impressions of them and my own reflections. The field is a tremendous
one. It encompasses the most important regions that lie along the great
avenues of commerce and general intercourse. The Pacific is a great
combination of geographical, ethnological, and political factors that is
extremely diverse in its sources. I have tried to discern within them a
unit of human commonality, as the seeker after truth is bound to do if
his discoveries are to be of any value.
But the result has been an unconventional book. For I have sometimes
been compelled to make unity of time and place subservient to that of
subject matter. Hence the reader may on occasion feel that the book
returns to the same field more than once. That has been unavoidable. The
problems that are found in Hawaii are essentially the same as those in
Samoa, though differing in degree. It has therefore been necessary,
after surveying the whole field in one continuous narrative of my own
journey, to assemble stories, types, and descriptions which illustrate
certain problems, in separate chapters, regardless of their
geographical settings. If the reader bears this in mind he will not be
surprised in Book Two to find himself in Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, or New
Zealand all at once--for issues are always more important than
boundaries.
The plan of the book has been to give the historical approach to the
Pacific and its native races; then to take the reader upon a journey of
over twenty thousand miles around the Pacific. I hope that he will come
away with a clear impression of the immensity of the Ocean, of the
diversity of its natural and human elements, and the splendor and
picturesqueness of its make-up. Out of this review certain problems
emerge, the problems of the relations of native and alien races, of
marriages and divorces, of markets and ideals--problems that affect the
primitive races in their own new place in the world. But over and above
and about these come the issues that involve the more advanced races of
Asia, Australasia, and America--where they impinge upon each other and
where their interests in these minor races center. This is the logic of
the Pacific.
Though the importance of these problems is now obvious to the world, I
feel grateful to those who encouraged me while I still felt myself
almost like a voice crying in the wilderness, on the subject. I
therefore feel specially indebted to the editors of _North American
Review_, _World's Work_ and the _Outlook_, who first published some of
the material here incorporated. But so rapid has been the movement of
events that in no case has it been possible for me to use more than the
essence of the ideas there published. In order to bring them up to date,
they have been completely re-written and made an integral part of this
book. Two or three of the descriptive chapters have also appeared in
_Century Magazine_ and _Harper's Monthly_, for permission to reprint
which I am indebted to them.
There is a further indebtedness which is much more difficult of
acknowledgment. To my wife, Marjorie Barstow, I am under obligation
not only for her steadfast encouragement, but for her judgment,
understanding, and untiring patience, without which my career of
authorship would have been trying indeed.
SYDNEY GREENBIE.
Greensboro, Vermont,
August 4, 1921.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
HISTORICAL AND TRAVEL MATERIAL
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC 3
II THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES 15
III OUR FRONTIER IN THE PACIFIC 30
IV THE SUBLIMATED, SAVAGE FIJIANS 52
V THE SENTIMENTAL SAMOANS 79
VI THE APHELION OF BRITAIN 108
VII ASTRIDE THE EQUATOR 128
VIII THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS 143
IX OUR PEG IN ASIA 158
X BRITAIN'S ROCK IN ASIA 168
XI CHINA'S EUROPEAN CAPITAL 179
XII WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS 192
BOOK TWO
DISCUSSION OF NATIVE PROBLEMS--PERSONAL AND SOCIAL
XIII EXIT THE NOBLE SAVAGE 205
XIV GIVE US OUR VU GODS AGAIN! 222
XV HIS TATTOOED WIFE 237
XVI GIVING HEARTS A NEW CHANCE 254
XVII "THIS LITTLE PIG WENT TO MARKET" 265
BOOK THREE
DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS INVOLVING AUSTRALASIA,
ASIA AND AMERICA
XVIII AUSTRALASIA 281
XIX JAPAN AND ASIA 297
XX AMERICA 312
XXI WHERE THE PROBLEM DOVETAILS 330
XXII AUSTRALIA AND THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 347
XXIII POLITICAL ALLIES AND FINANCIAL CONSORTS 364
XXIV UNCHARTED SEAS 384
APPENDIX 395
INDEX 397
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Eruption of volcano on the island of Kyushu, Japan _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Map of the Pacific 16
Diamond head near Honolulu 20
The hulk of the German man-of-war, the _Adler_ 20
After seven days of sea--this emerged 21
Hilo, Hawaii 21
Even Fijians are loath to forget the arts of their forefathers 28
In giant canoes Heliolithic immigrants roamed the South Seas 29
There are only a few Chinese women in Hawaii 36
A sage in a china shop at Honolulu 36
Feminine propriety 37
Whoa! Let's have our picture taken 37
Miles away rose the fumes of Kilauea 44
The largest cauldron of molten rock on earth 44
A river of rock pouring out into the sea 45
Whirling eddies of lava undermining frozen lava projections 45
Where the tides turn to stone 48
A blizzard of fuming heat 48
The lake of spouting molten lava 49
A corner of Suva, Fiji 64
Food for a day's gossip 64
The long and the short of it 65
A Hindu patriarch 65
The scowl indicates a complex 68
Instructor of the Fijian constabulary 68
A Fijian Main Street 69
Little Fijians 69
One of the most gifted of Fijian chiefs 76
Cacarini (Katherine), the chief's daughter 76
Fijians dance from the hip up 77
A Fijian wedding 77
The street along the waterfront of Apia, Samoa 96
I thought the village back of Apia, Samoa, was deserted, but
it was only the noon hour 96
Tattooing of the legs is an essential in Samoa 97
Contact with California created this combination of scowl,
bracelets and boy's boots--but Fulaanu beside her was
incorruptible 97
Dunedin, New Zealand 112
Bridges are still luxuries in many places in New Zealand 112
The fiords and sounds of New Zealand 113
Lake Wanaka, New Zealand 113
The S. S. _Aurora_ 128
Mount Cook of the New Zealand Alps in summer 128
Circular quay, Sydney, Australia 129
Monument to Captain Cook 129
One of the oldest Australian residences is now a public
domain 144
The interior of a wealthy sheep station owner's home in
Melbourne 144
Australian blacks in their native element 145
An Australian black in Melbourne 145
Filipino lighters drowsing in the evening shadows 160
The docile water buffalo is used to walking in mud 160
One can throw a brick and hit seven cathedrals in Manila 161
Cool and silent are the mossy streets of the walled city
of Manila 161
In China drinking-water, soap-suds, soup and sewers all find
their source in the same stream 176
Shanghai youngsters putting their heads together to make
us out 176
This old woman is laying down the law to the wild young
things of China 177
China could turn these mud houses into palaces if she
wished--she is rich enough 177
Fujiyama 192
Sea, earth and sky 193
This Hindu has usurped the job of the chieftains' daughters 224
An Indian coolie village 224
A Maori Haka in New Zealand 225
A Maori canoe hurdling race 225
Three views of a Maori woman 240
A group of whites and half-castes in Samoa 241
A ship-load of "picture-brides" arriving at Seattle 241
A Maori woman with her children 241
Beauty is more than skin-deep 256
A half-caste Fijian maiden 257
A full-blooded Fijian maiden 257
Fijian village 272
Little fish went to this market 272
Good luck must attend these traders at the doors of the
cathedrals in Manila 273
A Fijian bazar is a red letter day 273
The mountains are called the Remarkables 284
The Blue Mountains of Australia 284
Australia denuding herself 285
Australia is not all desert and plain 288
People are small amidst Australia's giant tree ferns 289
Japan's first reaction to foreign influence 304
Second stage in Westernization 304
Third stage in Westernization 305
Fourth stage in Westernization 305
Lord Lansdowne and Baron Tadasu Hayashi 352
Prince Ito 352
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 352
Thomas W. Lamont 353
Wellington Koo 353
Yukio Osaki, M.P. and Ex-Minister of Justice 353
BOOK ONE
HISTORICAL AND TRAVEL MATERIAL
CHAPTER I
THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC
_The First Side of The Triangle_
1
... stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Exactly four centuries after the event immortalized by Keats, I
outstripped Balboa's most fantastic dreams by setting out upon the
Pacific and traversing the length and breadth of it. "It is a sight," we
are told, "in beholding which for the first time any man would wish to
be alone." I was. But whereas Balboa's desires were accomplished in
having obtained sight of the Pacific, that achievement only whetted
mine. He said:
You see here, gentlemen and children mine, how our desires are
being accomplished, and the end of our labors. Of that we ought to
be certain, for, as it has turned out true what King Comogre's son
told of this sea to us, who never thought to see it, so I hold for
certain that what he told us of there being incomparable treasures
in it will be fulfilled. God and His blessed Mother who have
assisted us, so that we should arrive here and behold this sea,
will favor us that we may enjoy all that there is in it.
The story of how far he was so assisted is part of the tale of this
book, for in all the wanderings which are the substance of my
accomplishment I can recall having met with but a half-dozen of Balboa's
kinsmen. Instead there are streaming backward and forward across the
Pacific descendants of men Balboa hated and of others of whom he knew
nothing.
Balboa was the first to see the ocean. He had left his men behind just
as they were about to reach the peak from which he viewed it. But he was
not the first to step upon its shores. He sent some of his men down, and
of them one, Alonso Martin, was the first to have that pleasure. Martin
dipped his sword dramatically into the brine and took possession of it
all as far as his mind's eye could reach. Yet to none of the men was
this vast hidden world more than a vision and a hope, and the accidental
name with which Magellan later christened it seems, by virtue of the
motives of gain which dominated these adventurers, anything but
descriptive. To be pacific was not the way of the kings of Castile; nor,
sad to say, is it the way of most of their followers.
What was it that Balboa took possession of in the name of his Castilian
kings? Rather a courageous gamble, to say the least. The dramatic and
fictional possibilities of such wholesale acquisition are illimitable.
In the mid-Pacific were a million or more savage cannibals; in the
far-Pacific, races with civilizations superior to his own. At that very
time China was extending the Great Wall and keeping in repair the Grand
Canal which had been built before Balboa's kings were chiefs. Japan was
already a nation with arts and crafts, and a social state sufficiently
developed to be an aggressive influence in the Oriental world, making
inroads on Korea through piracy. Korea was powerful enough to force
Japan to make amends. Four years after Balboa's discovery the Portuguese
arrived in Canton and opened China for the first time to the European
world. The Dutch were beginning to think of Java. It was hardly Balboa's
plan to make of all these a little gift for his king: his act was but
the customary flourish of discoverers in those days. Men who loved
romance more than they loved reality were ready to wander over the
unknown seas and rake in their discoveries for hire. Balboa, Magellan,
Drake, roamed the seas out of sheer love of wind and sail. Many a man
set forth in search of treasure never to be heard from again; some only
to have their passage guessed by virtue of the signs of white blood in
the faces of some of the natives. For two hundred years haphazard
discoveries and national jealousies confused rather than enlightened the
European world. But late in the eighteenth century, after a considerable
lessening of interest in exploration, Captain James Cook began that
memorable series of voyages which added more definite knowledge to the
geographical and racial make-up of the South Seas than nearly all the
other explorers put together. The growth of the scientific spirit and
the improvement in navigation gave him the necessary impetus. Imbued
with scientific interest, he went to observe the transit of Venus and to
make close researches in the geography of the Pacific. But to George
Vancouver falls the praise due to a constructive interest in the people
whose lands he uncovered. Wherever he went he left fruits and domestic
animals which contributed much to the happiness of the primitives, and
probably laid the foundation for the future colonization of these
scattered islands by Europeans.
Backward and forward across the Pacific through four centuries have
moved the makers of this new Atlantis. First from round Cape Horn,
steering for the setting sun, then from the Australian continent to the
regions of Alaska, these shuttles of the ages have woven their fabric of
the nations. Now the problem is, what is going to be done with it?
I suppose I was really no worse than most people in the matter of
geography when I set forth on my venture. Though the Pacific had lain at
my feet for two years, I seem to have had no definite notions of the
"incomparable treasures" that lay therein. Japan was stored away in my
mind as something to play with. Typee, the cannibal Marquesas--ah! there
was something real and vigorous! Then the South Sea maidens! Ideal
labor conditions in New Zealand! Australia was Botany Bay; the
Philippines, the water cure. Confucius was confusion to me, but
Lao-tsze, the great sage of China--in his philosophy I had found a
meeting-ground for East and West.
But I was sizzling with curiosity. I wanted to bring within my own range
of experience that "unplumbed, salt estranging sea" with its area of
seventy million square miles, equivalent to "three Atlantics, seventy
Mediterraneans," and--aside from the hundreds of millions of people
round its shore--the seventy-odd millions within its bosom. Yet of the
myths, the beliefs, the aspirations of these peoples, even the most
knowing gave contradictory accounts, and curiosity was perforce my
compass.
2
Something in a voyage westward across the Pacific gives one the sense of
a great reunion; it is not a personal experience, but an historic
sensation. One may have few incidents to relate, there may be only an
occasional squall. But in place of events is an abstraction from world
strife, a heading for the beginning of a cycle of existence--for Asia,
the birthplace of the human race. The feeling is that of one making a
tour of the universe which has lasted ten thousand centuries and is but
at the moment nearing completion. For eons the movement has been a
westward one. Races have succumbed to races in this westward reach for
room. Pursuing the retreating glaciers, mankind snatched up each inch of
land released, rushing wildly outward. After the birth of man there was
a split, in which some men went westward and became Europeans, some
eastward and became Asiatics. The Amerindians were the kick of that
human explosion eastward which occurred some time during the Wurm ice
age.
One cannot grasp the significance of the Pacific who crosses it too
swiftly. Every mapped-out route, every guide-book must be laid aside,
and schedules must cease to count. With half a world of water to
traverse, its immensity becomes a reality only when one permits oneself
to be wayward, with every whim a goal.
A fellow-passenger said to me, "My boss has given me two weeks'
vacation."
"Mine has given me a lifetime," I answered.
In that mood I watched the _Lurline_ push its way into the San Francisco
fogs and out through the fog-choked Golden Gate. The fogs stayed with us
a space beyond and were gone, and the wide ocean lay in every direction
roundabout us.
I was bound for Japan by relays. Unable to secure through passage to the
Land of the Rising Sun, I did the next best thing and booked for
Honolulu. There I planned to wait for some steamer with an unused berth
that would take me to Kyoto, Japan, in time to attend the coronation of
the Tenno, the crownless Emperor. After all, Honolulu was not such an
unfavorable spot in which to prepare my soul for the august sight of
emperor-worship on a grand scale, I thought.
And at last I was out upon the bosom of the Pacific, sailing without
time limit or fixed plan, sailing where did Cook and Drake and
Vancouver, and knowing virtually as little of what was about me as did
they. Our ship became the axis round which wheeled the universe, and
progress "a succession of days which is like one day." We went on and
on, and still the circle was true. We moved, yet altered nothing. When
the sky was overcast, the ocean paled in sympathy; when it was bright,
the whitecapped, cool blue surface of the sea abandoned itself to the
light. At night the cleavage between sea and sky was lost. Then we lost
distance, altitude, depth, and even speed. All became illusive--a time
for strong reason.
Then came a storm. The vast disk, the never-shifting circle shrank in
the gathering mist. From the prow of the ship, where I loved most to be,
the world became more lonely. The iron nose of the vessel burrowed into
the blue-green water, thrusting it back out of the way, curling it over
upon a volume of wind which struggled noisily for release. The blue
became deeper, the strangled air assumed a thick gray color and emerged
in a fit of sputtering querulousness. But the ship lunged on, as
unperturbed as the Bhodistava before Mara, the Evil One, sure that he
was becoming Buddha.
We were dipping southward and soon tasted the full flavor of the
luscious tropical air. The ship never more than swayed with the swells.
During the days that followed there was never more than the most
elemental squall. The nights were as clear and balmy as the days. For
seven days we danced and made merry to Hawaiian melodies thrummed by an
Hawaiian orchestra, or screeched by an American talking-machine, or
hammered by a piano-player. The warm air began to play the devil with
our feelings.
Thus seven days passed. I had taken to sleeping out on deck, under the
open sky. The moon was brilliant, the sea as smooth as a pond. I was
awakened by whispered conversation at five o'clock of that last day and
found a group of women huddling close on the forward deck. Their hair
was streaming down their backs, their feet were bare, and their bodies
wrapped in loose kimonos. Some of the officers were pointing to the
southwestern horizon, where a barely perceptible streak of smoke was
rising over the rim of the sea. It was from Kilauea, the volcano on the
island of Hawaii, two hundred miles away.
The air was fresh and balmy as on the day the earth was born. Rolling
cumulous clouds sought to postpone the day by retarding the rising sun.
Lighthouse lights blinked their warnings. Molokai, the leper island,
emerged from the darkness. A blaze of sunlight broke through the clouds
and day was in full swing. And as we neared the island of Oahu, a
full-masted wind-jammer, every strip of sail spread to the breeze, came
gliding toward us from Honolulu.
By noon we were in the open harbor,--a fan-spread of still water. The
_Lurline_ glided on and turned to the right and we were before the
little city of Honolulu. I can still see the young captain on the
bridge, pacing from left to right, watching the water, issuing quiet
directions to the sailor who transmitted them, by indicator, to the
engine-room. We edged up to the piers amid a profusion of greetings from
shore and appeals for coins from brown-skinned youngsters who could a
moment later be seen chasing them in the water far below the surface.
This, then, is progress. In 1778, Captain Cook was murdered by these
islanders. To-day they "grovel" in the seas for petty cash. One hundred
and forty years! Seven days!
3
But Hawaii was only my half-way house. I was still reaching out for
Japan. According to the advice of steamship agencies I might have waited
seven years before any opportunity for getting there would come my way.
At twelve o'clock one day I learned that the _Niagara_ was in port. She
was to sail for the Antipodes at two. By two I was one of her
passengers. Hadn't "my boss" given me a lifetime's vacation?
The world before me was an unknown quantity, as it doubtless is to at
least all but one in a million of the inhabitants of our globe. My
ticket said Sydney, Australia. How long would it take us? Two weeks?
What should we see en route? Two worlds? Here, in one single journey I
should cut a straight line across the routes of Magellan, Drake, Cook,
and into those of Tasman,--all the great navigators of the last four
hundred years. Here, then, I was to trace the steps of Melville, of
Stevenson, of Jack London,--largely with the personal recommendations of
Jack,--and of one then still unfamed, Frederick O'Brien. All the courage
in the face of the unknown, all the conflicts between the world
civilizations in their various stages of development, all the dreams of
romance, of future welfare and achievement, would unfold in my progress
southward and fall into two much-talked-of and little-understood
divisions--East and West. I was to discover for myself what it was that
Balboa and his like had taken possession of in their grandiloquent
fashion and were ready to defend against all comers. Yet the flag at the
mast was not Balboa's flag, nor Tasman's, and the passengers among whom
fate had wheeled me were, with one exception, neither Spanish nor Dutch,
but British. As long as I moved from San Francisco westward and as long
as I remained in Honolulu, I was, as far as customs and people were
concerned, in America. But from the moment I considered striking off
diagonally across the South Seas in the direction of the Antarctic I was
thrown among Britons. The clerk in the steamship office was Canadian,
the steamer was British, the passengers were British, and the cool,
casual way in which the _Niagara_ kicked herself off from the pier and
slipped out into the harbor was confirmation of a certain cleavage. For
there was none of the gaiety which accompanies the arrival and departure
of American vessels,--no music, no serpentines, no cheering. We just
took to our screws and the open sea as though glad to get away from an
uncordial "week-end." This was a British liner that was to cut across
the equator, to climb over the vast ridge of earth and dip down into the
Antipodes. We were to leave America far behind. Henceforward, with but
the single exception of tiny Pago Pago, Samoa, we could not enter an
American owned port,--and on this route would miss even that one. And
now that mandates have become the vogue, there is in all that world of
water hardly an important spot that does not fly the Union Jack. The
sense of private ownership in all that could be surveyed gave to the
bearing of the passengers an air of dignity which was not always latent
in the individual.
Meanwhile the ship pressed steadily on, coldly indifferent, fearless and
emotionless. We were nearing the equator, and the days in its
neighborhood steeped us all in drooping feebleness. Climate gets us all,
ultimately. We forgot one another beneath the heavy weight of
nothingness which hangs over that equatorial world. Sleep within my
cabin was impossible, so I had the steward bring me a mattress out on
deck. At midnight a heavy wind turned the air suddenly so cold that I
had to secure a blanket. The wind howling round the mast and the
flapping of the canvas sounded like a tragedy without human agency. The
night was pitch-black and the blackness was intensified by intermittent
streaks of lightning. But there was no rain.
It was Tuesday, yet the next day was Thursday. Where Wednesday went I
have never been able to find out. We had arrived at the point in the
Pacific where one day swallows up another and leaves none. The European
world, measuring the earth from its own vantage-point, had allotted no
day for the mid-Pacific, so that instead of arriving at Suva, Fiji, in
proper sequence of time, we were both a day late and a day ahead. We had
cut across the 180th meridian, where time is dovetailed.
That afternoon we sighted land for the first time in seven days. Alofa
Islands, pale blue, smooth-edged, were a living lie to reality. A
peculiar feeling came over me in passing without touching terra firma.
It was like the longing for the sun after days and days of gray, the
longing for rain in the desert. It was the longing for the return to the
actualities of life after days on the unvariable sea. And presently I
was in Fiji, and the _Niagara_ sailed on without me. Once again I
changed my course to wander among the South Seas and leave Sydney for
the future.
Yet even on land he who has been brought up on a continent cannot escape
a feeling of isolation, the consciousness of being completely surrounded
by water. After you have had the deep beneath you for seven days, and
again seven days, you begin to feel that even the islands are but
floating in the same fluid. The fact that you cannot go anywhere without
riding the waves, and that it takes two whole days by steamer to get
from Fiji to Samoa, and four from Fiji to New Zealand, and then four
again between New Zealand and Australia, a water-consciousness takes
possession of you, and the islands become mere ledges upon which you
rest occasionally. Something of the joy of being a bird on the wing is
the experience of the traveler in the Pacific seas.
Imagine, then, my delight and surprise, early one morning on my return
trip from Samoa to Fiji, to find the _Talune_ sidling up to an unknown
isle considerably off our course. It was, we were told, the island of
Niuafoou, and was visited every month or so to deliver and take off the
mails. It was a chill morning. Everything was blue with morning cold.
The waves dashed in desperation against the cliffs. Glad was I that we
were not run ashore, for I have never yet been able to see the virtue in
ice-cold sea-water. Fancy our consternation when down slid a native,
head first, from the bluff half a mile away into the water, as we slide
into a swimming-pool. For a moment he was lost behind the tossing
crests. Then we saw him coming slowly toward us, resting on a plank and
paddling with his free hand, seeming like a tremendous water-spider.
Tied to a stick like to a mast was a tightly wrapped bundle of mail. The
_Talune_ kept swerving like an impatient horse, waiting for the arrival
of that amphibian. When he came alongside he dropped the little bundle
into a bucket let down to him at the end of a rope, and kicked himself
away. A second man arrived with a packet,--the parcels-post man of
Niuafoou. A third came merely as an inspector. Meanwhile, on the bluff
the whole community had gathered for the irregular lunar event.
Or, days later, after my second call at Fiji as the ship pressed
steadily on toward Auckland, New Zealand, we passed the island of Mbenga
where dwell the mystic fire-walkers so vividly portrayed by Basil
Thomson in his "South Sea Yarns." I wished that I had had a "callous" on
my habits in cleanliness to protect me from the unpleasantnesses of the
vessel, as have those Fijian fire-walkers on their soles, then I should
have been happier. Their soles are half an inch thick. I should have
needed a callous at least two inches thick to endure the _Talune_ more
than the six days it took us to get from Samoa to Auckland.
Early in the morning of the fourth day of our journey from Suva, Fiji,
we passed the Great Barrier Island, which stands fifty miles from
Auckland. We crept down the Hauraki Gulf, passed Little Barrier Island,
and entered Waitemata Harbor, where we dropped anchor, awaiting the
doctor's examination. Just from the tropics, I was taken by surprise to
find the wind biting and chill as we went farther south, and here at the
gates of Auckland the coat I had unnecessarily carried on my arm for
months became most welcome. Before I could adjust myself to the new
landing-place, I had to readjust my mind to another fact which had never
been any vital part of my psychology,--that henceforth the farther south
I should go the colder it would feel, and that though it was the sixth
of November, the longer I remained the warmer it would become. In the
presence of such phenomena, losing a thirteenth day of one's month while
crossing the 180th meridian was a commonplace. The habits of a short
lifetime told me to put on my coat, for winter was coming. But here I
had come amongst queer New Zealanders who told me to unbutton it, even
to shed it, for spring, they assured me, was not far behind.
And then for the first time in months I felt the spirit of the
landlubber work its way into my consciousness again. I had cut a
diagonal line of 6,000 miles across a mysterious, immeasurable sea, and
my reason, my heart and my body longed for respite from its benumbing
influence. I had seen enough to last me a long time. I fairly ached for
retirement inland, for sight of a cool, still lake, for contact with
snow-capped mountain peaks. More than all else, I yearned for the cold,
for the scent of snow, for the snug satisfaction of self-generated
warmth. My soul and my body seemed seared and scorched by the blazing
tropical sun under the wide, unsheltered seas. Later, when I should be
"well" again, I thought, I would risk the climb up over the equator, the
curve of the world that lies so close to the sun.
And now that I was settled I had time to reflect on all I had seen. I
had cut a diagonal line through the heart of the Pacific, and had seen
in succession the various types of native races--the Hawaiians, the
Fijians, the Samoans--while all about me were the Maories. So I reviewed
and classified my memories before I started north on another diagonal
course which led me among the transplanted white peoples of Australia
and Asia. Yet one question preceded all others: whence came these
Pacific peoples and when? The answer to that must be given before
specific descriptions of the South Sea Islanders can be clear.
CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES
1
Not even the speed of the fastest steamer afloat can transport the white
man from his sky-scraper and subway civilization over the hump of the
earth and down into the South Seas without his undergoing a
psychological metamorphosis that is enchanting. He cannot take his
hard-and-fast materialistic illusions along with him. Were he a
passenger on the magic carpet itself, and both time and space
eliminated, the instant he found himself among the tawny ones he would
forget enough of square streets and square buildings, square meals and
square deals, to become another person. Upon that cool dewdrop of the
universe, the Pacific, the giant steamer chugs one rhythmically to rest
and one dreams as only one in a new life can dream, without being
disturbed by past or future.
One slumbers through this adolescent experience with the smile and the
conceit of youth. At last one arrives. The enormous ship, upon whose
deck have shuffled the games of children too busy to play, slips away
from the pier and is swallowed up in the evening twilight. Left thus
detached from iron and certainty, one wonders what would happen if there
never should be iron and certainty again in life. What if that ship
should never return, nor any other, and the months and years should lose
track of themselves, and memory become feeble as to facts and fumble
about in hyperbolic aspirations? What if the actualities that knotted
and gnarled one's emotions, or flattened them out in precise
conventions, should cease to affect one's daily doings? What if, for
you, never again were there to be factories and dimensions of purse, or
ambitions that ramble about in theories and ethics, but only the need of
filling one's being with food and converting it into energy for the
further procuring of food, and the satisfaction of impulses that lead
only to the further vent of impulse,--and in that way a thousand years
went by? What would the white man be when the lure of adventure and
discovery suddenly revealed him to a world phenomenally different from
the one he left behind in the bourn of his forgotten past?
As I let myself loose from such moorings as still held me in touch with
my world, the wonder grew by inversion. When the _Niagara_, wingless
dinosaur of the deep, slid out into the lagoon beyond, I felt overcome
with a sense of drooping loneliness, like one going off into a trance,
like one for whom amazement is too intoxicating.
It had not been that way in Hawaii, for there already the grip of the
girder has made rigid the life of nature and the people. But down
beneath the line one could still look over the corrugated iron roofs of
sheds and forget. Everywhere in the Fiji or the Samoan islands something
of antiquity cools one's senses with unheard questionings. Instantly one
wants to know how it happens that these people came to be here, what
accident or lure of paleolithic life led them into this isolation. One
cannot get away from the feeling--however far inland one may go--that
the outer casings of this little lump of solid earth beneath us is a
fluent sea, a sea endless to unaided longing. Homesickness never was
like that, for ordinary homesickness is too immediate, too personal. But
this longing for contact which comes over one in the mid-Pacific islands
is universal; it is a sudden consciousness of eternity, and of the atom.
One begins to conceive of days and events and conditions as absolutely
incompatible with former experience. One's mind is set aglow with
inquiry, and over and over again, as one looks into the face of some
shy native or some spoiled flapper, one wonders whence and how. And a
slight fear: what if I, too, were now unable ever to return, should I
soon revert to these customs, to the feeling of distance between men and
women, to the nakedness, not so much of body as of mind?
That was what happened to Tahiti, to Maoriland, to Hawaii, to the
popping peaks of illusive worlds which to ante-medieval isolated Europe
could not exist because it did not know of them. For thousands of years
these innumerable islands in the Pacific had been the habitation of
passionate men, of men who had come out in their vessels from over
_Kim's_ way with decks that carried a hundred or more persons; persons
who doubtless also entertained themselves with games because too busy to
play; persons with hopes and aspirations. A thousand and more years ago
the present inhabitants of Polynesia may have dreamed of rearing a new
India, a wider Caucasia, just as the Pilgrims and the persecuted of
Europe dreamed, or the ambitious Englanders of New Zealand. Welcomed
here and ejected there, they passed on and on and on, as far as Samoa
and Tahiti. And slowly the film of forgetfulness fixed their
experiences. The big ships and the giant canoes rotted in the harbors.
They had come to stay. The sun was burning their bridges behind them.
What need for means of going farther? Eden had been found. And the soft,
sweet flesh of young maidens began, generation after generation, to be
covered with the tattooings of time, the records of the number of times
the race had been reborn. So, while the nakedness of youth was being
clothed, mind after mind stored up unforgettable tales of exploit and of
passion, till fancy sang with triumph over things transitory, and tawny
men felt that never would they have to wander more.
Is not this the history of every race on earth? Has not every nation
gloated over its antiquity and its security? Was not permanence a
surety, and pride the father of ease? And have not song and story been
handed down from generation to generation, or, with the more skilled and
the more proud races, been graved in stone or wax or wood? And have not
the more mighty and the more venturesome come over the pass, or over the
crest and invaded and conquered and changed?
So it was when Polynesia awoke to see that which could only be a god,
because fashioned in the form of its own imaginings, swept by its
gorgeous sails into view,--the ship of Captain Cook. Thus the racial
memories that had lain dormant in the Polynesians for centuries were
revived by Europeans. Narrative renders vividly their surprise and
wonder, especially on seeing the vessel girt in iron such as had drifted
in on fragments from the unknown wrecks and had become to these natives
more precious than gold.
It seems to me that in the hearts and minds of heliolithic man when he
ventured eastward across the chain of islands which links, or rather
separates, Polynesia and Melanesia from its home in Asia, he must have
felt just as Cook and Vancouver and Magellan felt. Bit by bit I picked
up those outer resemblances which give to men the world over their basic
brotherliness. They may hate one another justly, but they cannot get
away from that fraternity. And they generally reveal relationship when
they least expect it.
Thus, as we kicked our way up the smooth waters of the Rewa River, Fiji,
in a launch laden with black faces and proud shocks of curly hair, mixed
with sleek people of slightly lighter-hued India, a suggestion of the
origin of these people came to me. As these alien Indians, so must have
come these native negroids. I should have felt successful in my method
of inquiry, hopeful of feeling my way into a solution of this wondering,
had not an outrigger canoe dragged itself across our course with a
dilapidated sail of bark-cloth.
"Where did they learn to sail?" I asked the white skipper.
"They have always known it," he answered. "But you seldom see these
sails nowadays."
I wanted to take a snap-shot of it, but the lights of evening, as those
of tradition, were against me, and we were clipping along too rapidly.
The last example of an art which brought the whole race eastward was
being carelessly retained.
A few days later I caught another glimpse of a past that was working my
sun-baked brain too much. We were going up the river in a comfortable
launch, some missionaries and I, their unknown guest. We were about
twenty or thirty miles up the Rewa. With us was a young native who spoke
English rather well. I plied him with questions, but his shyness and
reticence, so characteristic of isolated human beings, inhibited him. At
last he spoke, with an eye to my reactions, of the methods of warfare
along the palisades of the river.
"In my boyhood days," he said, "nobody knew anything of his neighbor.
People lived just a mile apart, but you white people were not much
stranger to us than they were to one another. There was constant war. We
children were afraid to venture very far from our village."
"Has that always been the way?"
"I suppose so, but I don't know," and that was all I could get out of
him. Yet it has not always been so, for nothing is always so among
people, and the Melanesian-Fijians in many cases have welcomed and
received among them Samoans and Tongans, races distinctly different from
them. There is a definite separation, however, between ourselves and the
Fijians that is obvious even to the casual tourist, and affords no easy
solution of the whence and why.
Not so among the Polynesians as in Samoa, where one instantly feels at
home. That which attracted me to the Fijian was his incompatibility,
his unconscious aloofness, his detachment.
There is, however, not much greater difference between some of the races
in the Pacific and the white men than there is between any two of the
European peoples themselves. There is less difference between an
Hawaiian and a Maori, though they are separated by nearly four thousand
miles of unbroken sea, than there is between an Englishman and a
Frenchman with only a narrow channel between them. In the Pacific, the
chain of relationship between races from New Zealand to Hawaii is
somewhat similar to that running north and south in Europe. The
variation becomes similarly more pronounced in the latitudinal
direction. In other words, the diversity existing between European and
Turk is something akin to that between Samoan and Fijian,--from the
point of view of appearances.
Something of the kinship of peoples scattered over the millions of
square miles of Pacific seas becomes evident, not so much in their own
features and customs as in the way in which they lend themselves to
fusion with the modern incoming nomads of the West. Something of the
possible migrations said to have taken place in that unromantic age of
man somewhere back in Pleistocene days may be grasped from the streams
that now flow in and become part of the life of the South Pacific.
Scientists detect in the Melanesian-Fijian slight traces of Aryan blood
without being definite as to how it got there. When I ran into a little
fruit shop in Suva, just before sailing, to taste for the last time the
joys of mummy-apple, I glimpsed for a second the how. For the proprietor
was a stout, gray-haired, dark-complexioned individual from the island
of St. Helena. In a vivid way he described to me the tomb of Napoleon,
spicing his account with a few incidents of the emperor's life on the
island. Should no great flood of Europeans come to dilute the present
slight infusions, the centuries that lie in waiting will perhaps
augment this accidental European strain into some romantic story. In a
thousand years it would not at all be impossible for this story of
Napoleon to become part of Fijian legend, and for children to refer to
that unknown god of war as their god and the father of their ideals.
This genial islander from St. Helena will puzzle anthropologists and
afford them opportunities for conjecture, fully as much as the evidence
of Aryan and Iberian races in Asia and the islands east of it does
to-day.
[Illustration: DIAMOND HEAD, NEAR HONOLULU
Once a volcano, now a fortress]
[Illustration: THE HULK OF THE GERMAN MAN-OF-WAR, THE _ADLER_
Wrecked in the hurricane of 1889 at Samoa]
[Illustration: AFTER SEVEN DAYS OF SEA--THIS EMERGED]
[Illustration: HILO, HAWAII
An oasis in the desert of the Pacific]
Or the wail of the Indian, into whose shop I strayed to get out of the
sun, at the downfall of "his" empire, may be the little seed of thought
out of which the aspirations of a Fiji reborn will spring.
2
According to the traditions of almost every race on earth, the place of
its nativity is the cradle of mankind. Nor does mere accident satisfy.
In nearly every instance not only is the belief extant among natives
that their race was born there, but that, be the birthplace island or
continent, it came into existence by some form of special creation as an
abiding-place for a chosen people. The Japanese _kami_, Izanagi and
Izanami, were commissioned by the other gods to "make, consolidate, and
give birth to the drifting land." "According to the Samoan cosmogony,
first there was Leai, nothing; thence sprung Nanamu, fragrance; then
Efuefu, dust; then Iloa, perceivable; then Maua, obtainable; then
Eleele, earth; then Papatu, high rocks; then Maataanoa, small stones;
then Maunga, mountains. Then Maunga married Malaeliua, or changeable
meeting-place, and had a daughter called Fasiefu, piece of dust." The
more primitive Melanesians, the Fijians, and the Australoids are less
definite in their conceptions of whence they came, having in many cases
no traditions or myths to offer.
With all our scientific inquiry, we are to-day still lost in the maze of
probable origins of various races. The birthplace of man is as much of a
mystery as it ever was. Ninety years ago, Darwin said of the South
Pacific: "Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat
near to that great fact--that mystery of mysteries--the first appearance
of new beings on this earth." And in 1921 Roy Chapman Andrews set out
upon a third expedition to Mongolia in search of relics and fossils of
the oldest man. He writes:
With the exception of the Java specimen, all fossil human fragments
have been discovered in Europe or England. Nevertheless, the
leading scientists of the day believe that Asia was the early home
of the human race and that whatever light may be thrown upon the
origin of man will come from the great central Asian plateau north
of the Himalaya Mountains.
Thus his antiquity will doubtless interest man to his dying day. Slogans
epitomizing the spirit of races fan the flames of human conflict.
Conflict wears down the differences between them, or shatters them and
scatters them to the whirling winds. Doubtless the records which seem to
us so lucid and so permanent will vanish from the earth in the next
half-million years, and our descendants will mumble in terms of vague
tradition expressions of their beginning. Or perhaps their linguistics
will make ours vulgar and primitive by comparison. Possibly, if our
progress and development are not impeded, the hundreds of tongues now
spoken on this globe will seem childishly incomplete, and in their stead
will be one extremely simple but flexible language spoken in every islet
in the seas.
What our present world will seem to the man of the future, the world of
the Pacific, wreathed in races of every hue--Asia, Australasia, the
Americas--seems to us now. In the wide spaces of the Pacific we have
several thousands of islands, anchored at various distances from one
another in about seventy million square miles of sea. Grouped with a
healthy regard for the freedom of individual needs there are enough
separate races, speaking separate languages and abiding by separate
customs, to make the many-colored map of Europe seem one primary hue by
comparison. Yet all the romance which brightens the pages of European
history and its intake of Asiatic culture is ordinary beside the
mysterious silence that steeps the origin and age of the cultures of the
Pacific. There, beneath the heavy curtain of unknown antiquity, dwell
innumerable people who, if they are not the Adams and Eves of creation,
have wandered very little from the birthplace of the human race. It
seems as though the overflow of living creatures from the heart of Asia
had found an underground channel back into the Garden of Eden, like some
streamlet lost in the sands of the seashore, but worming its way into
the very depths below. Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, are the names
by which we know them. The drawer of water, as he lets his bucket down
to the farthest reaches of the wells of antiquity, finds in his vessel
evidence of kinship with races now covering the whole of Europe. Romance
has it that the Amerindians are descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel
and Mormon missionaries are carrying that charm among the Polynesians.
They are very successful in New Zealand among the Maories. Like a great
current of warm water in the sea, the Polynesian races have run from
Hawaii to Samoa, the Marquesas, Tahiti, and Maoriland. How they got
there is still part of conjecture.
To most of us, the South Seas mean simply cannibals and naked girls.
Dark skins and giant bodies are synonymous with Polynesians. The
grouping of these peoples into Poly-Mela-Micronesian has some scientific
meaning which, if not esoteric and awe-inspiring, slips by our
consciousness as altogether too highbrow to deserve consideration. Or we
are satisfied with pictures such as Melville and O'Brien have given us,
pictures that as long as the world is young will thrill us as do those
of Kinglake and Marco Polo. But, those of us who have gone beyond our
boyhood rhymes of "Wild man from Borneo just come to town" and have been
White Shadows ourselves, are keenly interested in the whence and the why
of these people. Can it be that Darwin was right? Have we approached the
spot whereon man made his first appearance on the earth? Or are others
right whose soundings divulge a hidden course that gives these people a
birthplace ten thousand miles away, in central Asia? Is it that all the
people of the world were first made men on land that is now beneath the
waters of the Pacific,--men who, because of geological changes, fell
back across Asia, leaving scattered remnants in the numerous island
peaks now standing alone in that sun-baked world? "There is ground for
the belief," says Griffith Taylor,[1] "that the Pacific Ocean was
smaller in the Pleistocene period, being reduced by a belt of land
varying in width from 100 to 700 miles." Or are the further calculations
more accurate,--that there have been constant migrations of people from
Asia?
[1] Griffith Taylor: _Geographical Review_, January, 1912, p. 61.
Slowly scientists are groping their way through legend. No one who has
been among the South Sea people, and those of the western Pacific
islands, can help being impressed with certain remarkable likenesses
between them and European people. Present-day anthropologists are at
variance with the old evolutionary school which believed in "a general,
uniform evolution of culture in which all parts of mankind
participated." "At present," according to Franz Boas, "at least among
certain groups of investigators in England and also in Germany,
ethnological research is based on the concept of migration and
dissemination rather than upon that of evolution." In connection with
Polynesia and the Pacific peoples, it seems to be fairly well known that
they drifted from island to island in giant canoes. They had no sails
nor compass, but, guided by stars and directed by the will of the winds,
they roved the high seas and landed wherever the shores were hospitable.
During ages when Europe dreaded the sea and hugged the land, when the
European universe consisted of a flat table-like earth and a dome-like
heaven of stars,--even before the vikings ventured on their wild
marauding excursions, the Polynesians made of the length and breadth of
the Pacific a highway for their canoes. "Somewhat before this (450
A. D.) one bold Polynesian had reached polar ice in his huge war
canoe."[1] Our Amerindians dared the swiftest rapids in their frail bark
canoes; but what was that compared with the courage and love of freedom
which sent this lone Polynesian out upon the endless waters of the
Pacific? Some day a poet will give him his deserving place among the
great heroes.
[1] Griffith Taylor: _Geographical Review_, January, 1912, p. 61.
Dr. Macmillan Brown tells us that the Easter Islands were once the
center of a great Pacific empire. Here men came from far and wide to pay
tribute to one ruling monarch. He builded himself a Venice amid the
coral reefs, with canals walled in by thirty feet of stone. Fear of the
control over the winds which this monarch was said to possess, and
superstitious dread of his ire brought the vassal islanders to him with
their choicest possessions, though he had no military means of
compelling respect. This monarch, like the Pharaohs who built the
pyramids, must have had thousands of laborers to have been able to cut,
shape, and build the giant platforms of stone or the great canals which
are referred to as the Venice of the Pacific. It must have taken no
little engineering skill so to adjust them to one another as to require
no mortar to keep them together. In the Caroline Islands, now under
Japanese mandate, there still stand remains of stone buildings of a
forgotten day's requirements.
These relics of unknown days make it reasonably certain that after
having been "shot" out from the mainland, the early people of the
Pacific reached all the way across to the island of Savaii, in the
Samoan group, and later as far as Tahiti. Why they did not go on to the
Americas is hard to say. Perhaps the virginity of the islands and the
congenial climate offered these artless savages all they desired. Beyond
were cold and drudgery. Here, though labor and war were not wanting,
still there was balmy weather. Probably they were the tail-end of the
great migration of the Wurm ice age. More venturesome than most, and
having arrived at lands roomy enough for their small numbers, they must
have called themselves blessed in that much good luck and decided to
take no further chances with the generosity of the gods.
Linguistic and ethnological data link the Polynesians with the
Koreans, Japanese, Formosans, Indonesians, and Javanese. Legends
and genealogies show that about the dawn of our era the early
Polynesians were among the Malay Islands. By 450 A. D. they had
reached Samoa and by 850 A. D., Tahiti.... In 1175 A. D. the
primitive Maoriori were driven out of New Zealand to the Chatham
Isles. No doubt New Zealand was first reached several hundred years
before this. Tahiti seems to have been a center of dispersal, as
Percy Smith has pointed out in his interesting book "Hawaiki." We
must, however, remember that Melanesians preceded the Polynesians
to many of these islands at a much earlier date.[1]
[1] Griffith Taylor: _Geographical Review,_ January, 1921.
However, mutation is the law of life. Even these small groups split into
smaller factions. Some went south to the islands of the Antipodes and
called themselves Maories; others went north of the equator and called
themselves Hawaiians. The physical distribution of all the races in the
Pacific, rooting, as we have seen, in Asia, represents a virile plant
the stem of which runs eastward and is known as Micronesia and
Melanesia, with the flowers, in all their diversified loveliness,
Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Maoriland.
What made them what they are? How is it that being, as it seems, people
of extraction similar to that of Europeans, they have remained in such a
state of arrested development? How is it that they became cannibals,
eaters of men's flesh? Again the answer is not far to seek. Just like
the Europeans, they followed the line of least resistance, having as yet
developed no artificial or brain-designed weapons against the stress of
nature. Europeans, in time of great famine, have not themselves been
above cannibalism. In our Southern States we have isolated mountaineers
to show us what men can revert to. And in northern China to-day,
essentially Buddhist and non-flesh-eating, cannibalism was reported
during the famine last year.
But Europe had what Polynesia did not have. Driven by the force of
necessity out of continental Asia, Polynesia hid itself away in the
cracks and crannies of the Pacific; Europeans spread over a small
continent and broke up into innumerable warring and learning tribes.
Backward and forward along peninsular Europe, men communicated to one
another their emotional and objective experiences. The result has been a
culture amazing only in its diversity,--amazing because, with contact
and interchange of racial experiences, the coursing and recoursing of
the same blood, stirred and dissolved, it is amazing that such diversity
should persist.
But in Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia,--in all the distant land-specks
of the Pacific,--contact was impossible in the larger sense. Though
canoes did slide into strange harbors or drift or row in and about the
atolls, they afforded at most romantic stimuli to these isolated groups.
Infusion of culture was very difficult. At most, these causal meetings
added to or confused the stories of their origin. And in a little time
the different island groups forgot their beginnings.
Presently, the pressure upon their small areas with the limited food
supply began to make itself felt. Some method had to be devised for the
limitation of population and to keep in food what few numbers there
were. There seem to have been no indigenous animals anywhere in the
islands. Darwin found only a mouse, and of this he was uncertain as to
whether it really was indigenous. Except for a few birds, and the giant
Moa which roamed the islands of New Zealand, animal life was everywhere
insufficient to the needs of so vital a people as were these. But much
less is heard to-day of the cannibalism said to have run rampant among
them. It is even disputed. The fruits of the tropics, doubtless rich in
vitamines, are peculiarly suited to the sustenance of so spirited a
race.
3
The Polynesians found in the various islands they approached, during
that slow, age-long migration eastward, tribes and islanders inferior to
themselves. So did the Europeans in their movement westward. The
primitive Caucasians remained and mixed slightly along the way, leaving
here and there traces of their contact. And their ancestors in Asia
forgot their exiled offspring.
With the landing of Cook at Tahiti, at Poverty Bay, at Hawaii, the
counter invasion of the Pacific began. For over a hundred years now the
European has been injecting his culture, his vices, his iron exactitude
into the so-called primitive races. These hundred years make the second
phase of civilization in the Pacific. It might have been the last. It
might have meant the reunion of Caucasic peoples, their blending and
their amalgamation, and the world would have lived happily ever after.
But the eternal triangle plays its part in politics no less than in
love, and the third period, the period of rivalry and jealousy, of
suspicion and scandal, of still-born accomplishment in many fields has
set in. And tragedy, which men love because it is closest to truth, is
on the stage.
[Illustration: EVEN FIJIANS ARE LOATH TO FORGET THE ARTS OF THEIR
FOREFATHERS
F. W. Caine, Photo]
[Illustration: IN GIANT CANOES HELIOLITHIC IMMIGRANTS ROAMED THE
SOUTH SEAS
Photo, H. Winkelmann]
The third period dates largely from the discovery and the awakening
of Japan. It is the blocking of the European invasion of the Pacific,
and the institution of a counter move,--that of the expansion of Asia
into the Pacific,--which will be treated in the last section of this
book.
To-day, Polynesia is barely holding its own. Its sons have studied
"abroad," they have been in our schools and universities, they have
fought in "our" war. Rapidly they are putting aside the uncultured
simplicity of adolescence. For long they treasured drifts of iron-girded
flotsam which the waves in their impartiality cast upon their shores;
to-day iron is supplanting thatch, and a belated iron age is reviving
their imaginations, just as iron guns and leaden bullets shattered them
a century ago. In the light of their astonishment, _Rip Van Winkle_ is a
crude conception; Wells has had to revise and enlarge "When the Sleeper
Wakes" into "The Outline of History." No man knows what is pregnant in
the Pacific; nor will the next nine eons reveal the possibilities.
Chapter III
OUR FRONTIER IN THE PACIFIC
1
Honolulu marks our frontier in the Pacific. Honolulu has been conquered.
If the conquest is that of love, then the offspring will be lovely; if
of mere force, or intrigue, then Heaven help Honolulu! As far as outward
signs go, we are in a city American in most details. The numerous
trolleys, the modern buildings, the motor-cars, the undaunted Western
efficiency which no people is able to withstand has gripped Hawaii in an
iron grip. True that the foreign (that is, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese,
Portuguese) districts are steeped in squalor, but this is old Honolulu.
The new is a little Los Angeles with all its soullessness, and it has
taken all the illusions of modern civilization to accomplish it. The
first illusion was that the natives would be better off as Americans
than as Hawaiians; the second, that Hawaiians were lazy and Japanese and
Chinese were necessary; the third, that cleanliness is next to
godliness. How have these things worked out? The Hawaiians are in the
ever-receding minority, the Japanese in the unhappy majority, and
enjoyment of cleanliness has made most men forget that it is only _next_
to something else. If the invited are coming to Honolulu expecting
money-grabbers to turn to poetry and petty politicians to philosophy,
they had better save their fares. If readers of magazines expect to find
a melting-pot in which all the ingredients are dancing about with their
arms round one another's neck, they had better remain at home.
For the first and foremost effect of the tropics is to individualize
things. In colder climes people huddle together to conserve warmth; here
they give one another plenty of space. Virtually one of the first things
the new-comer does is to name and separate things from the mass. Every
little thing has its personality. Plants grow in profusion, but each
opens out to its utmost. One is much more inclined to ask what this
flower is called in Honolulu than in America, for each stands out, and
one stands out to each. Honolulu exudes moisture and fragrance, stirring
the passions as does the scent of a clean woman. It limbers up one's
reasoning faculties and arouses one's curiosity.
On the street every Chinese and every Japanese comes in for his share of
attention. One begins to single out types as it has never occurred to
one to do in New York. In Honolulu all intermingle, flower in a sort of
unity, but in the very mass they retain their natural variations. The
white people are ordinarily good, they have mastered the technique of
life sufficiently and play tolerably well to an uncritical audience.
While the Hawaiian policeman in charge of the traffic stands out in bold
relief because the dignity and importance of his position have stiffened
the easy tendencies of his race,--he is self-conscious. Monarch of
Confusion, arrayed in uniform, tall and with the manner of one always
looking from beneath heavy eyebrows, it is said that he causes as much
trouble as he allays. But that is mere prejudice. Who would dare ignore
his arm and hand as he directs the passing vehicle? He fascinates. He
commands. His austere silence is awe-inspiring. When he permits a driver
to pass, there is a touch of the contemptuous in that relinquishment.
Nor dare the driver turn the corner till, in like manner, this human
indicator points the direction for him. The finger follows now almost
mockingly, until another car demands its attention, and it becomes
threatening again.
One hears of the all-inclusive South Seas as though it were something
totally without variation. The average tourist and scribe soon acquires
the South-Sea style. But the more discriminating know full well that the
expressions which describe one of the South Sea islands fall flat when
applied to another. "Liquid sunshine" is a term peculiarly Hawaiian. It
would never apply to Fiji, for instance, for there the words
"atmospheric secretion" are more accurate. Hence, it is more than mere
political chance that has made Hawaii so utterly different from the
Philippines and the litter of South Seas.
Honolulu is essentially an American city. The hundreds of motor-cars
that dash in and about the streets do so just as they would in "sunny
California." The shops that attract the Americans are just like any in
America,--clean, attractive, with their best foot forward. So
meticulous, so spotless, so untouchable are they that the soul of the
seeker nearly sickens for want of spice and flavor. To have to live on
Honolulu's Main Street would be like drinking boiled water. One imagines
that when the white men came thither, finding disease and uncleanliness
rampant, they determined that if they were to have nothing else they
would have things clean. All newcomers to Oriental and primitive
countries cling to that phase of civilization with something akin to
terror. Generally they get used to the dirt. They have not done so in
Honolulu. It may be that mere distance has something to do with the
different results, but certain it is that Manila, under American control
just as is Honolulu, has none of these prim, not primitive, drawbacks.
Twenty years of American rule have done little really to Americanize
Manila, while they have utterly metamorphosed Honolulu.
The man-made machine has now outlived the vituperation of idealists. The
man-made machine is running, and even the most romantic enjoys life the
better for it. Clean hotels, swimming-pools within-doors, motor-cars
that bring nature to man with the least loss of time and cost of
fatigue,--these are things which only a fool would despise. But one
longs for some show of the human touch, none the less, and cities that
are built by machine processes are, despite all their virtues, not
attractive. At least, they are not different enough from any other city
in the modern world to justify a week's journey for the seeing. One
hears that steamers and trains and airplanes are killing romance. That
is so, but not because they in themselves conduce to satiety, but
because they destroy indigenous creations and substitute importations
and iron exactitude. Within the next few generations there will, indeed,
be a South Seas, indistinguishable and without variety. Honolulu is an
example. But Honolulu is not Hawaii! It is only a bit of decoration. So
we shall leave this phase of Hawaii for consideration at a time when,
having seen the things native to the Pacific, we reflect upon the
meaning and purport of things alien.
In Hawaii, we are told,--and without exaggeration,--one can stand in the
full sunshine and watch the rain across the street. So, too, can one
enjoy some of the material blessings of modern life, yet be within touch
of nature incomparably exquisite.
2
He was only a street-car conductor. Every day he journeyed from the
heart of Honolulu, like a little blood corpuscle, through arteries of
trade hardened by over-feeding, in a jerking, rocking old trolley car,
to the very edge of Manoa Valley. His way lay along the fan-shaped plane
behind the sea, and was lined with semi-palatial residences and Oahu
College. Palms swayed in the breeze, and the night-blooming cereus slept
in the glittering sunlight upon the stone walls. He was only a
street-car conductor, furnished with his three spare meals a day and his
bed, but he fed along the way on sweets that no street-car conductor in
any other place in the world has by way of compensation. He was carved
with wrinkles and his frail frame bent slightly forward, but his heart
was young within him, and he acted like a plutocrat whose hobby was
gardening and whose gardens were rich with the finest flowers on earth.
The delight he took in the open country, barely the edge of which he
reached so many times a day, was pathetic. When I asked him to let me
off where I could wander on the open road, he beamed with pleasure and
delight, and told me where I should have to go really to reach the wild.
There may be other places in the world as beautiful and even more so,
but no place ever had such a street-car conductor to recommend it. And
no recommendation was ever more poetic and inspiring than this,--not
even that of the Promotion Committee of Honolulu.
And, strange to say, I have never been guided more honestly and more
truthfully than when that street-car conductor advised me to go to Manoa
Valley. I lived an eternity of joy in the few hours I spent there. I
knew that not many miles beyond I should again be blocked by the sea. I
could not see it because of the hills which spend three hundred and
sixty-five days of every year dressing themselves in their very best and
posing before the mirror of the sky. Not more than one or two natives
passed me, nor did any other living creature appear. I could only
romance with myself, refusing to be fooled by the talk about fair
maidens with leis round their necks. I was certain that back home there
were maidens whose beauty could not be equaled here; whose soft, white
skins and shapely forms were never excelled by tropical loveliness. But
I was just as certain that there was nothing at home that compared to
nature as it is lavished upon man here in Hawaii, and especially in
Manoa Valley.
We all have our compensations, and I have even shown preference for a
return to the joys of genuine human beauty which the maker of worlds
gave to America, and to leave to the mid-Pacific verdure and altitudes
whose combination stirs my mind with passionate adoration to this very
day. Still, I shall ever be grateful to that wizened street-car
conductor for having suggested that I visit his little valley, which he
himself can enter only after paying a penalty of sixteen journeys
between Heaven and Honolulu every day, carrying the money-makers
backward and forward. Perhaps he does not regard it as a penalty.
Perhaps he feels himself fully compensated if one or two of his human
parcels asks him where may be found the Open Road.
3
Sullen and less concerned with emotional or spiritual values was the
driver of the motor-bus whom we exhumed one day from the heart of
Honolulu's "foreign" section. He evidently regarded nature on his route
as too great a strain on his brakes, though he, too, must have felt that
compensation was meted out to him manifold. For few people come to
Hawaii and leave without contributing some small share to his support,
as he is the shuttle between Honolulu and Kaneohe, and carries the
thread of sheer joy through the eye of that wondrous needle, the Pali.
At the Pali one senses the youth and vigor of our earth. Its peak,
piercing the sky, seems on the point of emerging from the sea. It has
raised its head above the waters and stands with an air of contempt for
loneliness, wrapped in mist, defying the winds. The world seems to fall
away from it. It has triumphed. There is none of that withdrawing
dignity of Fujiyama, the great man who looks on. The Pali imposes itself
upon your consciousness with spectacular gusto, like the villain
stamping his way into the very center of the stage and gazing roundabout
over a protruding chin.
The palm-trees bow solemnly before changeless winds, in the direction of
Honolulu, which lies like an open fan at the foot of the valley near the
sea. Color is in action everywhere,--spots of metallic green, of
volcanic red, filtered through a screen of marine gray. Honolulu lies
below to the rear; Kaneohe, beyond vast fields of pineapple, before us;
the sea, wide, open, limitless except for the reaches of the heavens,
binding all. And then there is an upward, circular motion,--that of the
rising mists drawn by the burning rays of the sun pressing landward and
dashing themselves into the valley and falling in sheets of rain upon
the earth. Wedged into a gully, as though caught and unable to break
away, was a heavy cloud,--but it was being drained of every drop of
moisture as a traveler held up by a gang of highway-men.
This circular motion is found not only in inanimate nature. Once, at
least, it has whirled the Hawaiians into tragedy. Here, history tells
us, Kamehameha I (the fifth from the last of Hawaii's kings) hurled an
army of native Oahu islanders over this bluff, back into the source of
their being. Without quarter he pressed them on, over this pass; while
they, unwilling to yield to capture, chose gladly to dash themselves
into the valley below. One is impressed by the striking interplay of
emotion with sheer nature. The controlling element which directs both
man and mountain seems the same. States and stars alike emerge, crash,
and crumble.
We rolled rapidly down into the valley past miles and miles of pineapple
fields. Then we came, as it were, to the land's end. Nothing sheer now
before us, nothing precipitate. A bit of freshness, of coolness, and an
imperceptible tapering off. The sea.
[Illustration: A SAGE IN A CHINA SHOP AT HONOLULU]
[Illustration: THERE ARE ONLY A FEW CHINESE WOMEN IN HAWAII]
[Illustration: WHOA! LET'S HAVE OUR PICTURE TAKEN
We don't know whether we're Hawaiian, Chinese or American, but who
cares. Giddap!]
[Illustration: FEMININE PROPRIETY
Oriental and Occidental versions]
Here at Kaneohe dwelt Arthur Mackaye, brother of the poet, whose name
was vaguely known to me. He was slender, bearded, loosely clad, with
open collar but not without consciousness and conventionality,--a
conventionality in accordance with prescribed notions of freedom.
Refreshing, cool as the atmosphere roundabout, distinct from the
tropical lusciousness which is the general state of both men and nature
in and about Honolulu, the personality of this lone man--this man who
had flung everything aside--was a fit complement to the experience of
Manoa Valley and the Pali.
He conducted a small sight-seeing expedition on his own. The proprietor
of a number of glass-bottomed launches, he took me over the quiet waters
of the reefs. Throwing a black cloth over my head to shield me from the
brilliant sky, I gazed down into the still world within the coral reefs.
There lay unimaginable peace. What the Pali affords in panorama, the bay
at Kaneohe offers in concentrated form. Pink-and-white forests twenty to
forty feet deep, with immense cavities and ledges of delicate coral,
fringe the shore. Fish of exquisite color move in and out of these giant
chambers, as much at home in one as in another. Droll, sleepy sponges,
like lumps of porous mud, lie flat against the reefs, waiting for
something edible to come their way. Long green sea-worms extend and
contract like the tentacles of an octopus in an insatiable search for
food.
An unusual silence hangs over the memory of that trip. I cannot recall
that the unexpected companion I picked up in Honolulu said anything; the
lonely one who furnished the glass-bottomed boat certainly said nothing;
the fish and sponges emphasized the tone of silence associated with the
experience. But the Pali shrieked; it was the one imposing element that
defied stillness. And below it is Honolulu, where silence is not to be
found.
4
For the Honolulu spirit is averse to silence. Honolulu is the most
talkative city in the world. The people seem to talk with their eyes,
with their gait, with their postures. Night and day there stirs the
confusion of people attending to one another's wants. One is in a
ceaseless whirl of extraverted emotions. One cannot get away from it.
The man who could be lonely in Honolulu would have to have his ears
closed with cement. If New York were as talkative as Honolulu, not all
of America's Main Streets together would drown it out.
For Honolulu teems with good-fellowship. It is the religion of Honolulu
to have a good time, and every one feels impelled before God and Patria
to live up to its precepts. Everybody not only has a good time but talks
having a good time. Not that there are no undercurrents of jealousy and
gossip. By no means. The stranger is let into these with the same gusto
that swirls him into pleasurable activities. It is a busy, whirligig
world. Even the Y.M.C.A. spirit prevails without restraint. I had found
the building of the association very convenient, and stopped there. That
put the stamp of goodness on me, but it did not exclude me from being
drawn into a roisterous crowd that danced and drank and dissipated
dollars, and heaved a sigh of relief that I did not preach to it. Its
members were glad that I was just "stopping" at the Y. They didn't see
how I could do it, but that was my affair. If I still managed to be a
good fellow,--well, I belonged to Honolulu.
Charmian London had given me a note of introduction to a friend, Wright,
of the "Bulletin." Wright was a bachelor and had a little bungalow
across from the Waikiki Hotel on the beach. There we met one evening. It
had every indication of the touch of a woman's hand. It was neatly
furnished, cozy, restful. Two nonchalant young men came in, but after a
delightful meal hurried away to some party. Wright and I were left. What
should we do? Something must be done.
He ordered a touring-car. We whirled along under the open sky with a
most disporting moon, and it seemed a pity we had none with us over whom
to romanticize. Quietly, as though we were on a moving stage, the world
slipped by,--palms, rice-fields ashimmer with silver light. Through
luxuriant avenues, we passed up the road toward the Pali. Somewhere
half-way we stopped. The Country Club. A few introductions, a moment's
stay, and off we went again, this time to avoid the dance that was to
take place there. Slipping along under the moonlight, we made our way
back to Waikiki beach, dismissed the car, and took a table at Heinie's
which is now, I understand, no more.
But we had only jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. Others, bored
with the club dance, had come to Heinie's for more fling than dancing
afforded. The hall was not crowded, so we were soon noticed. Mr. Wright
was known.
"They want us to come over," he said. "Just excuse me a moment."
Presently he returned. I had been specifically invited over with him. I
accepted the invitation. Then, till there were no more minutes left of
that day, we indulged in one continuous passing of wits and wets. Before
half the evening was over, I was one of the crowd in genuine Honolulu
fashion, and nothing was too personal for expression.
But one there was in the group to whom all her indulgences were
obviously strange, though she seemed well practised. She was a romantic
soul, and sought to counteract the teasing of the others. Her
deprecation of whisky and soda was almost like poor Satan's hatred of
hell. She vibrated to romantic memories like a cello G string. When she
learned that I was westward bound, she fairly moaned with regret.
"China!--oh, dear, beloved China! I would give anything in the world to
get back there!" she exclaimed, and whatever notions I had of the Orient
became exalted a thousandfold. But my own conviction is that she missed
the cheap servants which Honolulu lacks. In other words, there were
still not enough leisure and Bubbling Well Roads in Honolulu, nor the
international atmosphere that is Shanghai's. But that is mere
conjecture, and she was a romantic soul, and good to look at.
But there were two others in the crowd who did not, in their hilarious
spirits, whirl into my ken until some time afterward. Their speed was
that of the comet's, and what was a plodding little planet like myself
to do trying to move into their orbit? They were not native daughters of
Honolulu; most of their lives they had spent in California, which in the
light of Hawaii is a raw, chill land. There they carried on the drab
existence of trying to earn a living,--just work and no play. But
evidently they had never given up hope. They were tall, thin, fair, and
jolly. They invested. They won. It was only two thousand dollars. They
earned as much every year, no doubt, but it came to them in instalments.
Now they had a real roll. _Bang_ went the job! American industry, all
that depended on their being stable, honest producers, the smoothness of
organization, was banished from their minds. Let the country go to the
dogs; they were heading for Honolulu for a good time. And when they got
there they did not find the cupboard bare, nor excommunication for being
jobless.
For as long as two thousand dollars will last where money flows freely
(and there are plenty of men ready to help stretch it with generous
entertainment) these two escaped toilers from the American deep ran the
gamut of Honolulu's conviviality. Night after night they whispered
amorous compliments in the ears of the favorite dancers; day after day
they flitted from party to party. I had met them just as their two
thousand dollars were drawing to a close, but the only thing one could
hear was regret that they could not possibly be extended. Honolulu was
richer by two thousand; they were poorer to the extent of perpetual
restlessness and rebellion against the necessity of holding down a job.
Yet the "Primer" published by the Promotion Committee tells us that
Hawaii is "not a paradise for the jobless." These folk had no jobs, yet
they certainly felt and acted and spoke as though they were in Paradise.
Witness the arrivals and departures of steamers. The crowds gather as
for a fête or a carnival. Bands play, serpentines stream over the ship's
side, and turn its dull color into a careless rainbow. Hawaiian women
sell leis, necklaces of the most luscious flowers whose scent is enough
to empassion the most passionless. But as to jobs,--why, even the
longshoremen seem to be celebrating and the steamer moves as by
spirit-power.
Visit Waikiki beach, and every day it is littered with people who enjoy
the afternoon hours on the tireless breakers. Go to the hotels, and
hardly an hour finds them deserted. The motor-cars are constantly
carrying men and women about as though there was nothing in the wide
world to do. Even those who are unlucky enough to have jobs attend to
them in a leisurely sort of way. Yet these jobless people hold up their
hands in warning to possible immigrants that there is no room for them,
that "Hawaii is not a paradise for the jobless."
5
Who, then, does the work of the island? It is obvious that it is being
done. There isn't another island in the whole Pacific so modernized, so
thoroughly equipped, so American in every detail, so progressive and
well-to-do. It is the most sublimated of the sublime South Seas. One
wonders how white men could have remained so energetic in the tropics,
but one is not long left uninformed. Honolulu is an example of a most
ideal combination of peoples, the inventive, progressive, constructive
white man with the energetic, persistent, plodding Oriental. Without the
one or the other, Honolulu would not be what it is; both have
contributed to the welfare of the islands in ways immeasurable.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find the Oriental elements as much
in evidence as the Occidental. One hardly knows where one begins and the
other ends. As spacious and individualized as are the European sections,
so the Asiatic are a perfect jumble of details. The buildings are drab,
the streets are littered, the smells are insinuating, the sounds
excruciating.
A most painful noise upon an upper balcony of an overhanging Chinese
building made me come to with a sudden clapping of my hands against my
ears. As noise goes, it was perfect,--without theme or harmony. It could
not have been more uncontrolled. What consolation was it that in China
there was more of it! Gratitude awakened in me for the limitations a
wise joss had placed upon the capacities of the individual. Yet men are
never satisfied. These Chinese weren't, and combined their energies.
What one man couldn't accomplish, several could at least approach. So we
had a band. I should certainly never have thought it possible, myself.
However, they were trying to achieve something. It was neither gay nor
mournful; nor was it sentimental. What purpose could it possibly have
served? Surely they had no racial regrets or aspirations, they who
played it! The bird sings to his mate, but what mate would listen to
such tin-canning and howling, and not die?
To me there was something charming in this shamelessness of the Chinese,
something childlike and naïve. I had never realized the meaning of that
little rhyme,
I would not give the weakest of my song
For all the boasted strength of all the strong
If but the million weak ones of the world
Would realize their number and their wrong.
The thought is almost terrifying when applied to the teeming hordes of
the world, whether of Asia, Europe, or the South Seas. If sheer numbers
are any justification of supremacy, God had better take His old world
back and reshape it nearer something rational. One becomes conscious of
this welling up of the world in Hawaii. Not that the Chinese and the
Japanese haven't the same right to life and to its fulfilment in
accordance with latent instinct and ability, with all its special racial
traits and customs, but one doesn't just exactly see how numbers have
anything to do with it. Yet here are the Chinese and Japanese slowly,
quietly, persistently out-distancing the white by a process of doubling
in numbers, where mentality and ingenuity would doubtless fail.
One hears much about the progress of the Orient. That is, white folk
talk much about the way in which the East is taking to Western ways, and
call that progress. One would not expect that sort of progress to
proceed with any great velocity in the East itself, but it is only
necessary to observe the ingrowing tendencies of life in Hawaii, however
superficially, to see how foolishly optimistic is the expectation of
such progress. For even in Hawaii, where everything has had to be built
afresh, where everybody is an alien--with very few exceptions--and where
the dominant element is European, the East is still the East, and the
West the West. There is a slight overlapping, but not enough to make one
lose one's way,--to make a white man walk into a Chinese restaurant and
not know it. The fastidious white man whose curiosity gets the better of
him, moves about the Chinese and Japanese districts fully conscious of
his own shortcomings. He is less able to feel at home there than the
Oriental on the main street; but why doesn't the Oriental build for
himself a main street?
I was abroad early one Sunday morning, headed for the Chinese section.
Lost in thought, I went along, gazing on the ground. Had Charlie
Chaplin's feet suddenly come into my range of vision I should not have
been more surprised than I was when two tiny shoes, hardly bigger than
those of a large-sized doll, and with some of that stiff, automatic
movement of the _species mechanicus_, dissipated my reflections. I
raised my eyes slowly, as when waking, up, up, up,--hem of skirt,
knees, waist-line, flat bosom, narrow shoulders, sallow face, and slit
eyes! A Chinese woman! She was as big as a fourteen-year-old girl, but
her feet were a third of their due proportion. How many thousands of
years of natural selection went into the making of those little feet?
Yet she was a rare enough exception to astound my abstracted mind. About
her strolled hundreds of others of her race, who would have given much
of life to possess those two little feet.
Differences abound in Hawaii. The Chinese is no twin brother of the
Japanese. In fact, there is probably as much relationship between the
Hawaiian and the Japanese as there is between these two "Oriental"
races. The major part of the Japanese being Malay and the Polynesian
Hawaiians having at least lived with the Malays some hundreds of years
ago and infused some of their Caucasic ingredients into them, there is
more of "home-coming" when "Jap" meets "Poly," than when he meets
"Chink." But notwithstanding proximity and propinquity, over which
diplomatic letter-writers labor hard, when the Chinese and the Japanese
and the Hawaiian come together, the Hawaiian "vanishes like dewdrops by
the roadside," the Chinese jogs along, and the Japanese runs motor-cars
and raises children. The Japanese obtrudes himself much more upon the
life of the community than the other two races, but with no more
relinquishment of his own ways. He drives the cars and he drives white
men to more activity than they really enjoy. And the Hawaiian sells
necklaces of luscious flowers under the shaded porticoes of the
buildings along the waterfront.
[Illustration: MILES AWAY ROSE THE FUMES OF KILAUEA
During the day they were ashen and at night like rose dawn]
[Illustration: THE LARGEST CAULDRON OF MOLTEN ROCK ON EARTH
Eight hundred feet below it seethed]
[Illustration: A RIVER OF ROCK POURING OUT INTO THE SEA
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
[Illustration: WHIRLING EDDIES OF LAVA UNDERMINING FROZEN LAVA
PROJECTIONS
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
Aside from the adoption of our trousers and coat and hat, and a few
other unimportant aspects of our civilization, the observer on the
streets of Honolulu sees no mingling of races. The only outward sign of
this mixing is the Salvation Army. There, large as life, with the
usual circular crowd about them, stood these soldiers of misfortune,
praising the Lord in English. A row of unlimited Oriental offspring upon
the curb; a few grown-ups on the walk; a converted Japanese who looked
as though his Shinto father had disowned him; a self-conscious white boy
who confessed to having been converted just recently; two
indifferent-looking soldiers; a distrustful-looking leader and a
hopeless-visaged white woman. Twenty feet away, a saloon. I wonder what
the Salvation Army is going to do now that that object of attraction is
no more.
As far as Honolulu was concerned, it seemed to me that barter and trade
were more intoxicating to the majority than was drink. The world
everywhere about seemed a-litter with boxes and bales and shops and
indulgences. How much of all the things exchanged, how many of the
things for which these people toil endlessly, are worth while or
essential, or even truly satisfying? The dingy stores, their only worth
their damp coolness; the huddling and the innocent dirt; the
inextricable mesh of little things to be done,--only the Chinese sage
who posed for my camera in front of his wee stock of yarns was able to
tell their value to life. His long, thin, pointed beard, his lack of
vanity in accepting my interest in him, his genial smile and fatherly
disinterestedness symbolized more than anything I saw in Honolulu the
virtue and endurance of race. Beside the eager, grasping Japanese and
the rolling, expanding white men, he looked like the overtowering
palm-tree that seems to grow out of the monkey-pod in the park.
6
To a creature from another world, hovering over us in the unseen ether,
watching us move about beneath the sea of air which is life to us,
Honolulu would seem like a little glass aquarium. The human beings move
about as though on the best of terms with one another. Some look more
gorgeous than others, but from outward appearances they are as innocent
of ill intentions against one another as the aquatic creatures for which
Hawaii is famous, out in the cool, moist aquarium at Waikiki.
Kihikihi, the Hawaiians call one of them, and his friends the white folk
have christened him Moorish Idol. I don't know what Kihikihi means, but
as to his being an idol, I can't accept that for a moment, except in so
far as he deserves to be idolized. For about him there is no more of
that static, woodeny thing which idols generally are than there is about
Pavlowa. Yet he is only a fish, and not so very large at that. He is
moon-shaped, but rainbow-hued. He is perhaps three-quarters of an inch
across the shoulders, but six inches up and down, and perhaps eight from
nose to the ends of his two tails. And so he looks like a three-quarter
moon. Soft, vertical bands of black, white, and egg-yellow run into one
another on both sides, and a long white plume trails downward in a
semicircle. He is the last word in form, translucent harmony of color
and of motion. He moves about with rhythmic dignity and grace. At times
his eyes bulge with an eagerness and self-importance as though the world
depended on him for its security. Though he is constantly searching for
food, he does not seem avaricious; and while he admits his importance,
he is not proud.
Kihikihi has a rival in Nainai, who has been given an alias,--Surgeon
Fish, light brown with an orange band on his sides. Nainai is heavier
than Kihikihi, more plump. His color, too, is heavier and therefore
seems more restrained. It is richer and hence stimulates envy and
desire.
Lauwiliwili Unkunukuoeoe has no aliases, thank you, but he has a snout
on which his Hawaiian name could be stamped in fourteen-point type and
still leave room for half a dozen aliases. Only a water-creature could
possess such a title as this and keep from dragging it in the mud.
Knowing that he would be called by that appellation in life, his Creator
must have compensated him with plenty of snout.
But it is better to have one long snout than eight. And though no one
would give preference to any devil-fish, this long-snouted creature is
the rival by an inverse ratio of that eight-snouted glutton. The
octopus, the devil of the deep, is an insult to fishdom. The Moorish
Idol and this Medusa-like monster in the same aquarium make a worse
combination than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This ugly, flabby, boneless
body, just thick skin and muscle, with a large bag for a head,--eight
sea-worms extending and contracting in an insatiable search for food is
the paramount example of gross materialism. If only the high cost of
living would drive to suicide this beast with hundreds of mouths to
feed, the world might be rid of a perfidious-looking monster. But his
looks do him great injustice, and were the Hawaiian variety--which is,
after all, only squid--to disappear, the natives would be deprived of
one of their chief delicacies. At the markets--that half-way house
between aquaria and museums--numerous dried octopus, like moth-eaten
skins, lie about waiting for the housewife's art to camouflage them. But
I shall have something to say elsewhere about markets and museums, and
now shall turn, for a moment, to more startling wonders still.
7
An artist is delighted if he finds a study with a perfect hand or a
beautiful neck; or, in nature, if a simple charm is left undisturbed by
the confusion of human creation. Yet at night as our ship passed the
island of Maui, it seemed to me that all the sweet simplicities that
make life worth while had been assembled here in the beginning of the
world and left untouched. The moon rose on the peak of the cone-shaped
mountain, and for a time stood set, like a moonstone in a ring. The
pyramid of night-blue earth was necklaced in street lights, which
stretched their frilled reflections across the surface of the sea; and
just back of it all lay the crater of Haleakala, the House of the Sun.
At sunrise next morning we were docked at Hilo on the island of Hawaii,
two hundred miles from Honolulu. There was nothing here impressive to
me, despite the waterfalls. For two and a half hours we drove by motor
over the turtle-back surface of Hawaii toward Kilauea. Tree-ferns,
palms, and plantations stretched in unending recession far and wide. A
sense of mystery and awe crept slowly over me as we neared the region of
the volcano. At eleven we arrived at the Volcano House.
Yet, in a mood of strange indifference I gazed across the five miles of
flat, dark-brown frozen lava which is the roof of the crater.
Ash-colored fumes rose from the field of fissures, like smoke from an
underground village. Sullen, sallow vapors, these. Sulphur banks, tree
molds cast in frozen lava, empty holes! Nothing within left to rot, but
fringed with forests and brush, sulphur-stained or rooted in frozen
lava. Everywhere promise of volcanic fury, prophecy of the end of the
world.
The road lay like a border round the rim of an antique bowl which had
been baked, cracked, chipped, but shaped to a usefulness that is beauty.
All day long we waited, watching the clouds of gray fumes rise steadily,
silently, and with a sad disinterestedness out of the mouth of the
crater.
Frozen, the lava was the great bed of assurance, a rock of fearlessness.
It seemed to say to the volcano: "I can be indifferent. Down there, deep
down, is your limitation. Rise out of the pit and you become, like me,
congealed. There, down in that deep, is your only hope of life. This
great field of lifeless lava is proof of your effort to reach beyond
your sphere. So why fear?" And there was no fear.
[Illustration: A BLIZZARD OF FUMING HEAT
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
[Illustration: WHERE THE TIDES TURN TO STONE
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
[Illustration: THE LAKE OF SPOUTING MOLTEN LAVA
In the volcano of Kilauea. At night the white here shown is pink
and terrifying
Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]
As night came on the gray fumes began to flush pink with the reflection
of the heart of the crater. We set out in cars for the edge. Extinct
craters yawned on every side, their walls deep and upright. Some were
overgrown with green young trees, but as we came nearer to the living
crater, life ceased. Great rolls of cloud-fumes rose from the gulch to
wander away in silence. What a strange journey to take! From out a
boiling pit where place is paid for by furious fighting, where pressure
is father of fountains of boiling rock, out from struggle and howling
fury, these gases rose into the world of living matter, into the world
of wind and water. Out of the pit of destruction into the air, never
ceasing, always stirring down there, rising to where life to us is death
to it. The lava, seething, red, shoots aimlessly upward, only to quell
its own futile striving in intermittent exhaustion.
We stood within a foot of the edge. Eight hundred feet below us the lava
roared and spit. In the night, the entire volcano turned a pink glow,
and before us lay three-quarters of a mile of Inferno come true. The red
liquid heaves and hisses. Some of it shoots fully fifty feet into the
air; some is still-born and forms a pillar of black stone in the midst
of molten lava. From the other corner a steady stream of lava issues
into the main pool, and the whole thumps and thuds and sputters and
spouts, restless, toiling eternally.
On our way to the crater we were talkative. We joked, burnt paper over
the cracks, discussed volcanic action, and expressed opinions about
death and the probability of animal consciousness after death. But as we
turned away from the pit we fell silent. It was as though we had looked
into the unknown and had seen that which was not meant for man to see.
And the clouds of fumes continued to issue calmly, unperturbed, with a
dreadful persistence.
Just as our car groped its way through the mists to the bend in the
road, a Japanese stepped before us with his hands outstretched. "Help!"
he shouted. "Man killed." We rushed to his assistance and found that a
party of Japanese in a Ford had run off the road and dropped into a
shallow crater. Down on the frozen bed below huddled a group of men,
women, and children, terrified. As we crawled down we found one Japanese
sitting with the body of his dead companion in his arms, pressing his
hot face against the cold cheek of his comrade. A chill drizzle swept
down into the dark pit. It was a scene to horrify a stoic. To the
wretched group our coming was a comfort the richness of which one could
no more describe than one could the torture of lava in that pit over
yonder.
Japanese are said to be fatalists. They hover about Kilauea year in and
year out. One man sat with a baby in his arms, his feet dangling over
the volcano. Playfully he pretended to toss the child in, and it
accepted all as play. The same confidence the dead man had had in the
driver whose carelessness had overturned the car. And now it seemed that
his body belonged in the larger pit at which he had marveled not more
than half an hour earlier.
As I look back into the pit of memory where the molten material,
experience, has its ebb and flow, I can still see the seething of rock
within a cup of stone, the boiling of nature within its own bosom. Where
can one draw the line between experience past and present? Wherever I
am, the shooting of that fountain of lava is as real as it was to me
then; nor can conglomerate noises drown out the sound of lava pouring
back into lava, of undermined rock projections crashing with a hissing
sound back upon themselves. It is to me like the sound of voices when
King Kamehameha I forced the natives of the island of Oahu over the
Pali, and the group of terrified Japanese were like the fish in the
coral caves at Kaneohe when aware of the approach of a fish that feeds
upon them.
Yet there is a sound rising clear in memory, perhaps more wonderful even
than the shrieking of tortured human beings or the hissing of molten
lava. As I stood upon the rim of Halemaumau there arose the vision of
Kapiolani, the Hawaiian girl who, defying superstition, ventured down
into the jaws of the crater and by her courage exorcised Kilauea of its
devils. What in all the world is more wonderful than frailty imbued with
passion mothering achievement? Kapiolani may be called Hawaii's Joan of
Arc. Unable to measure her strength with men, she defied their gods. A
world of prejudice, all the world to her, stood between her and Kilauea.
Courage triumphant had conquered fear. In defiance of her clan and of
her own terror, she was the first native to approach the crater, and in
that she made herself the equal of Kilauea. As she cast away the
Hawaiian idols, herself emerged an idol.
CHAPTER IV
THE SUBLIMATED, SAVAGE FIJIANS
1
Fiji is to the Pacific what the eye is to the needle. Swift as are the
vessels which thread the largest ocean on earth, travelers who do more
than pass through Fiji on their way between America and the Antipodes
are few. Yet the years have woven more than a mere patchwork of romance
round these islands. In climate they are considered the most healthful
of the South Sea groups, though socially and from the point of view of
our civilization they do not occupy the same place in our sentiments as
do Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Sandwich Islands. Largely, I
suppose, because of the ethnological accident that planted there a race
of people that is farther from Europeans than the Polynesians. The
Fijians are Melanesians, a negroid people said by some to be a
"sub-branch" of the Polynesians. They have been slightly mixed through
their contact with the Tongans and the Samoans, but they are not
definitely related to either and full mixture is unlikely.
A century ago a number of Australian convicts escaped to Fiji. They
brought to these savage cannibal islanders all the viciousness and
arrogance of their type, and imposed themselves upon the primitive
natives. The effect was not conducive of the best relations between
white people and natives, nor did it have an elevating influence upon
the latter. However, despite their cannibalism and their unwillingness
to yield to the influence of our benign civilization, the Fijians are a
people in many ways superior to both the Polynesians east of them and
the true Melanesians or Papuans to the west. They are more moral; they
are cleanly; their women occupy a better position in relation to their
men; and in character and skill they are superior to their neighbors. I
was impressed with this dignity of the Fijians, conscious and
unconscious, from the time I first laid eyes on them. I felt that,
notwithstanding all that was said about them, here was a people that
stood aloof from mere imitation.
Yet such is the nature of reputation that when I announced my intention
of breaking my journey from Honolulu to Australia at Fiji, my
fellow-passengers were inclined to commiserate with me. They wondered
how one with no special purposes--that is, without a job--could risk
cutting loose from his iron moorings in these savage isles. Had they not
read in their school geographies of jungles and savages all mixed and
wild, with mocking natives grinning at you from behind bamboo-trees,
living expectations of a juicy dinner? They warned me about dengue
fever; they extolled the virtues of the Fijian maidens, and exaggerated
the vices of the Fijian men. The word "cannibals" howled round my head
as the impersonal wind had howled round the masts of the steamer one
night. But the adventurer soon learns that there is none so unknowing as
the average globe-trotters (the people who have been there); so he
listens politely and goes his own way.
When, therefore, I got the first real whiff of tropical sweetness, mixed
though it was with copra and mold, all other considerations vanished.
From the cool heights the hills looked down in pity upon the little
village of Suva as it lay prostrate beneath the sun. If there was any
movement to be seen, it was upon the lapping waters of the harbor, where
numerous boats swarmed with black-bodied, glossy-skinned natives in that
universal pursuit of life and happiness. As the _Niagara_ sidled up to
the pier and made fast her hawsers, these black fellows rushed upon her
decks and into the holds like so many ants, and what had till then been
inanimate became as though possessed.
2
I had been under the impression that the natives were all lazy, but the
manner of their handling of cargo soon dissipated that notion. Further
to discredit the rumor-mongers, three Fijians staged an attempt to lead
a donkey ashore which would have shamed the most enthusiastic believer
in the practice of counting ten before getting angry and trying three
times before giving up. The Fijian is as indifferent to big as to little
tasks, and seems to be alone, of all the dwellers in the tropics, in
this apathetic attitude toward life. There is none in all the world more
lazy, indolent, and do-nothing than the white man. As soon as he comes
within sight of a native anywhere, that native does his labor for him;
you may count on it.
So it was that with fear and trembling I announced to the stewards that
I had a steamer trunk which I wanted ashore with me. They grunted and
growled as the two of them struggled with it along the gang-plank and
dropped it as Atlas might have been expected to drop the earth, and
stood there with a contemptuous look of expectation. I took out two
half-dollars and handed one to each. The sneer that formed under their
noses was well practised, I could see, and they took great pains to
inform me that they were no niggers, they would not take the trunk
another foot. There it was. I was lost, scorned, and humiliated. Why did
I have so much worldly goods to worry about? Just then a portly Fijian
stepped up. Beside him I felt puny, doubly humble now. Before I had time
to decide whether or not he was going to pick me up by the nape of the
neck and carry me off to a feast, he took my trunk instead. Though it
weighed fully a hundred and sixty-five pounds, it rose to his
shoulders--up there a foot and a half above me--and the giant strode
along the pier with as little concern as though it were empty. The two
stewards stood looking on with an air of superiority typical of the
white men among colored.
I cannot say that mere brawn ever entitles any man to rank, and that the
white generally substitutes brain for brawn is obvious. But I failed to
see wherein they justified their conceit, for to men of their type the
fist is still the symbol of their ideal, as it is to the majority of
white men. And as I came away from the ship again that afternoon I found
a young steward, a mere lad, standing in a corner crying, his cheek
swollen and red. I asked him what happened. "The steward hit me," he
said, trying to restrain himself from crying. "I thought I was through
and went for my supper so as to get ashore a bit. He came up and asked
me what I was doing. I told him, and he struck me with his fist." Yet
the stewards thought themselves too good to do any labor with black men
about. No ship in a tropical port is manned by the sailors; there they
take a vacation, as it were.
From the customs shed to my hotel the selfsame Fijian carried my trunk
majestically. I felt hopeful that for a time at least I should see the
last of stewards and their ilk. But before I was two days in Suva I
learned that shore stewards are often not any better, and was happy to
get farther inland away from the port for the short time I could afford
to spend in the tropics.
Meanwhile, some of the younger of my fellow-passengers came on shore and
began doing the rounds, into which they inveigled me. From one store to
the other we went, examining the moldy, withered, incomplete stocks of
the traders. Magazines stained brown with age, cheap paper-covered
novels, native strings of beads formed part of the stock in trade. We
soon exhausted Suva.
At the corner of the right angle made by Victoria Parade and the pier
stood a Victoria coach. A horse slept on three legs, in front of it,
and a Hindu sat upon the seat like a hump on an elongated camel. We
roused them from their dozing and began to bargain for their hire. Six
of us climbed into the coach and slowly, as though it were fastened to
the ground, the horse began to move, followed by the driver, the
carriage, and the six of us. For an hour we continued in the direction
in which the three had been standing, along the beach, up a little
knoll, past corrugated-iron-roofed shacks, and down into Suva again; the
horse stopped with the carriage behind him in exactly the same position
in which we had found them, and driver and beast went to sleep again.
Much is heard these days about the effects of the railroad and the
steamer and the wireless telegraph on the unity of the world, but to
those travelers and that Hindu and to the Fijians whom we passed en
route, not even the insertion of our six shillings in the driver's
pocket has, I am sure, as much as left the faintest impression on any of
us except myself. And on me it has left the impression of the utter
inconsequence of most traveling.
Thus Suva, the eye of Fiji and of the needle of the Pacific, is
threaded, but there is nothing to sew. The unexpected never happens.
There are no poets or philosophers, no theaters or cabarets in Suva, as
far as mere eye can see,--nothing but smell of mold and copra (cocoanut
oil).
In Suva one cannot long remain alert. The sun is stupefying. The person
just arrived finds himself stifled by the sharp smells all about him as
though the air were poisoned with too much life. The shaggy green hills,
rugged and wild in the extreme, show even at a distance the struggle
between life and death which moment by moment takes place. Luxuriant as
on the morning of creation, the vegetation seems to be rotting as after
a period of death. In Suva everything smells damp and moldy. You cannot
get away from it. The stores you buy in, the bed you sleep in, the room
you eat in,--all have the same odor. The books in the little library
are eaten full of holes through which the flat bookworms wander as by
right of eminent domain. Offensive to the uninitiated is the smell of
copra. The swarms of Fijians who attack the cargo smell of it and
glisten with it. The boats smell of it and the air is heavy with it. If
copra and mold could be banished from the islands, the impression of
loveliness which is the essence of the South Seas would remain
untainted. Yet to-day, let me but get a whiff of cocoanut-oil from a
drug store and I am immediately transported to the South Seas and my
being goes a-wandering.
3
I seldom dream, but at the moment of waking in strange surroundings
after an unusual run of events my mind rehearses as in a dream the
experiences gained during consciousness. When the knuckles of the
Fijian--and he has knuckles--sounded on my door at seven to announce my
morning tea, I woke with a sense of heaviness, as though submerged in a
world from which I could never again escape. At seven-fifteen another
Fijian came for my laundry; at seven-thirty a third came for my shoes.
Seeing that it was useless to remain in bed longer, I got up. I was not
many minutes on the street before I realized the urgency in those
several early visits. Daylight-saving is an absolute necessity in the
tropics, for by eight or nine one has to endure our noonday sun, and
unless something is accomplished before that time one must perforce wait
till late afternoon for another opportunity. To keep an ordinary coat on
an ordinary back in Suva is like trying to live in a fireless cooker
while angry. Even in the shade one is grateful for white duck instead of
woolens, so before long I had acquired an Irish poplin coat. Yet Fiji is
one of the most healthful of the South Sea islands.
Owing to the heat, most likely--to give the white devils their
due--procrastination is the order of life. "Everything here is 'malua,'"
explained the manager of "The Fiji Times" to me. "No matter what you
want or whom you ask for it, 'wait a bit' will be the process." And he
forthwith demonstrated, quite unconsciously, that he knew whereof he
spoke. I wanted to get some information about the interior which he
might just as easily have given me off-hand, but he asked me to wait a
bit. I did. He left his office, walked all the way up the street with me
to show me a photographer's place where I should be able to get what I
was after, and stood about with me waiting for the photographer to make
up his mind whether he had the time to see me or not. There's no use
rushing anybody. The authorities have been several years trying to get
one of the off streets of Suva paved. It has been "worked on," but the
task, turned to every now and then for half an hour, requires numerous
rest periods.
In Fiji, every one moves adagio. The white man looks on and commands;
the Indian coolie slinks about and slaves; the Fijian works on occasion
but generally passes tasks by with sporty indifference. Yet there is no
absence of life. Beginning with the noise and confusion at the pier,
there is a steady stream of individuals on whom shadows are lost, though
they have nothing on them but their skins and their sulus. The Fijian
idles, allows the Indian to work, happy to be left alone, happy if he
can add a shilling to his possessions,--an old vest, a torn pair of
trousers of any shape, an old coat, or a stiff-bosomed shirt sans coat
or vest or trousers. Tall, mighty, and picturesque, his coiffure the
pride of his life, he watches with a confidence well suited to his
origin and his race the changes going on about him.
Thus, while his island's fruits are being crated and carted off by the
ship-load for foreign consumption, he helps in the process for the mere
privilege of subsidized loafing. All the fun he gets out of trade in the
tropics seems to be the opportunity of swearing at his fellows in
fiji-ized versions of curses taught him by the white man. Or he stands
erect on the flat punt as it comes in from regions unknown, bearing
bananas green from the tree, the very picture of ease and contentment.
Yet one little tug with foreign impertinence tows half a dozen punts,
depriving him even of this element of romance in his life.
Still, there is nothing sullen in his make-up. A dozen
mummy-apples--better than bread to him--tied together with a string,
suffice to make his primitive heart glad. Primitive these people are;
their instincts, never led astray very far by such frills and trappings
as keep us jogging along are none the less human. Unfold your camera and
suggest taking a picture of any one of them and forthwith he straightens
up, transforms his features, and adjusts his loin-cloth; nor will he
forget to brush his hair with his hand. What a strange thing is this
instinct in human nature anywhere in the world which substitutes so much
starch for a slouch the moment one sees a one-eyed box pointing in his
direction! None ever hoped to see a print of himself, but all posed as
though the click of that little shutter were the recipe for perpetual
youth.
The motive is not always one of vanity. Generally, at the sound of the
shutter, a hand shoots out in anticipation of reward. In the tropics it
is no little task to bring oneself together so suddenly, and the effort
should be fully compensated. The expenditure of energy involved in
posing is worthy of remuneration. Nevertheless, vanity is inherent in
this response. The Fijian is a handsome creature, and he knows it. He
knows how to make his hair the envy of the world. "Permanent-wave"
establishments would go out of business here in America if some skilled
Fijian could endure our climate. He would give such permanence to
blondes and brunettes as would cost only twenty-five cents and would
really last. He would not plaster the hair down and cover it with a net
against the least ruffle of the wind. When he got through with it it
would stand straight up in the air, four to six inches long, and would
serve as an insulator against the burning rays of the sun unrivaled
anywhere in the world. While I squinted and slunk in the shade, the
native chose the open highway. Give him a cluster of breadfruit to carry
and a bank messenger with a bag of bullion could not seem more
important.
The Fijians, notwithstanding the fact that they take less to the
sentimental in our civilization than the Samoans, are a fine race. Their
softness of nature is a surprising inversion of their former ferocity.
What one sees of them in Suva helps to fortify one in this conclusion; a
visit farther inland leaves not a shadow of doubt. And pretty as the
harbor is, it is as nothing compared with the loveliness of river and
hills in the interior.
I was making my way to the pier in search of the launch that would take
me up the Rewa River, when a giant Fijian approached me. He spoke
English as few foreign to the tongue can speak it. A coat, a watch, and
a cane--a lordly biped--he did not hesitate to refer to his virtues
proudly. He answered my unspoken question as to his inches by assuring
me he was six feet three in his stocking feet (he wore no stockings) and
was forty-five years old. For a few minutes we chatted amicably about
Fiji and its places of interest. There was never a smug reference to
anything even suggestive of the lascivious--as would have been the case
with a guide in Japan, or Europe--yet he cordially offered to conduct
and protect me through Fijiland. Had I had a billion dollars in gold
upon me I felt that I might have put myself in his care anywhere in the
world. But I was already engaged to go up the Rewa River and could not
hire him. Cordially and generously, as an old friend might have done, he
told me what to look for and bid me have a good time.
4
I took the launch which makes daily trips up the Rewa. The little vessel
was black with natives--outside, inside, everywhere, streaming over to
the pier. It was owned and operated by an Englishman named Message. Even
in the traffic on this river combination threatens individual
enterprise. "The company has several launches. It runs them on schedule
time, stopping only at special stations, regardless of the convenience
to the Fijians. It is trying to force me out of business," said Mr.
Message, a look of troubled defiance in his face. "But I am just as
determined to beat it."
So he operates his launch to suit the natives, winning their good-will
and patronage. It was interesting to see how his method worked. No
better lesson in the instinctive tendency toward coöperation and mutual
aid could be found. He had no white assistant, but every Fijian who
could find room on the launch constituted himself a longshoreman. They
enjoyed playing with the launch. They helped in the work of loading and
unloading one another's petty cargo, such as kerosene, corrugated iron
for roofing (which is everywhere replacing thatch), and odd sticks of
wood. And the jollity that electrified them was a delightful commentary
on this one white man's humanity.
Delight rides at a spirited pace on this river Rewa. The banks are
seldom more than a couple of feet above the water. The launch makes
straight for the shore wherever a Fijian recognizes his hut, and he
scrambles off as best he can. Here and there round the bends natives in
_takias_ (somewhat like outrigger canoes with mat sails, now seldom
used), punts, or rowboats slip by in the twilight.
The sun had set by the time all the little stops had been made between
Suva and Davuilevu, the last stopping-place. Each man, as he stepped
from this little float of modernism, clambered up the bank and
disappeared amid the sugar-cane. What a world of romance and change he
took into the dark-brown hut he calls his own! What news of the world
must he not have brought back with him! A commuter, he had probably gone
in by that morning's launch, in which case he spent three full hours in
"toil" or in the purchase of a sheet of corrugated iron or a tin of oil.
He may have helped himself to a shirt from somebody's clothes-line in
the spare time left him. One thing was certain, there were no chocolates
in his pockets, for he had no pockets, and I saw no young woman holding
a baby in her arms for daddy to greet.
Yet even from a distance one recognized something of family affection.
To enter and examine closely would perhaps have made a difference in my
impressions. I was content with these hazy pictures, to see these
dark-skinned people merge with their brown-thatched huts curtained by
shadows within the cane-fields. When night came on all was dissolved in
shadow, and voices in song rose on the cool air.
5
The Rewa River runs between two antagonistic institutions. At Davuilevu
(the Great Conch-Shell) there is a mission station on one side and a
sugar-mill on the other. Both are deeply affecting the character and
environment of the Fijians, yet the contrast in the results is too
obvious to be overlooked by even the most casual observer.
As I stepped off the boat a young New Zealander whose cousin had come
down with us on the _Niagara_ and whom I had met the day of our arrival
in Suva, came out of a building across the road. He was conducting a
class in carpentry composed of young Fijian students of the mission.
They were so absorbed in their work that they barely noticed me, and the
atmosphere of sober earnestness about the place was thrilling. From
time out of mind the Fijians have been good carpenters, the craft being
passed down from generation to generation within a special caste. Their
shipbuilding has always been superior to that of their neighbors, the
Tongans. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the main
department here should be that of wood-turning, and some of the work the
students were doing at the time was exceptionally fine.
The buildings of the mission had all been constructed with native labor
under the direction of the missionaries. They were simply but firmly
built, the absence of architectural richness being due fully as much to
the spirit of the missionaries as to the lack of decorativeness in the
character of the natives.
However, there was something to be found at the mission which was
harshly lacking at the sugar-mill. The students moved about in a
leisurely manner, cleanly and thoughtful; whereas across the river not
only were the buildings of the very crudest possible, but the Hindus and
the Fijians roamed around like sullen, hungry curs always expecting a
kick. Those who were not sullen, were obviously tired, spiritless, and
repressed. Their huts were set close to one another in rows, whereas the
mission buildings range over the hills. The crowding at the mill, upon
such vast open spaces, gave the little village all the faults of a
tenement district. Racial clannishness seems to require even closer
touch where space is wide. The very expanse of the world seems to
intensify the fear of loneliness, so men huddle closer to sense somewhat
of the gregarious delights of over-populated India. But there is also
the squeezing of plantation-owners here at fault, and the total
disregard of the needs of individual employees.
The mill is worked day and night, in season, but it is at night that
one's reactions to it are most impressive. The street lamps, assisted by
a dim glow from within the shacks, the monotonous invocation of prayer
by Indians squatting before the wide-open doors, the tiny kava
"saloons," and the great, giant, grinding, grating sugar-mills crushing
the juice out of the cane and precipitating it (after a chain of
processes) in white dust for sweetening the world, are something never
to be forgotten. The deep, pulsating breath of the mill sounded like the
snore of a sleeping monster. Yet that monstrous mill never sleeps.
The sound did not cease, but rather, became more pronounced after I
returned that night. Deeply imprinted on my memory was the figure of a
sullen-looking Indian at his post--small, wiry, persistent--with the
whirring of machinery all about him, the steaming vats, the broken
sticks of cane being crunched in the maw of the machine. The toilers
sometimes dozed at their tasks. I was told that once an Indian fell into
one of the vats in a moment of dizzy slumber. The cynical informer
insisted that the management would not even stop the process of turning
cane into sugar, and that into the tea-cups of the world was mixed the
substance of that man. My reflection was along different lines,--that
into the sweets of the world we were constantly mixing the souls of men.
6
But unfortunately those who look after the souls of these men at the
mission are apt to forget that they have bodies, too, and that body is
the materialization of desire. There is something wonderful, indeed, in
the sight of men known to have been of the most ferocious of human
creatures going about their daily affairs in an attitude of great
reverence to the things of life. And reverence added to the extreme
shyness of the Fijian is writ large in the manner of every native across
the way from the mill. Sometimes I felt that there was altogether too
much restraint, too much checking of wholesome and healthy impulses
among them for it to be true reverence. That was especially marked on
Sunday morning, when from all the corners of the mission fields gathered
the sturdy black men in the center of the grounds where stood the little
church.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF SUVA, FIJI
The unexpected happened--the cab moved]
[Illustration: FOOD FOR A DAY'S GOSSIP]
[Illustration: THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT
My Fijian guides]
[Illustration: A HINDU PATRIARCH
On board the launch going up the Rewa River, with shy Fijians all
about]
They were a sight to behold, altogether too seriously concerned to be
amusing, and to the unbiased the acme of gentleness. There they
were--muscular, huge, erect, and black, their bushy crops of coarse hair
adding six inches to their heads; dressed in sulus neatly tucked away,
and stiff-bosomed white shirts over their bodies. Starched white shirts
in the tropics! And the Bible in Fijian in their hands. In absolute
silence they made their way into the church, the shuffle of their unshod
feet adding intensity to that silence. When they raised their voices in
the hymns it seemed to me that nothing more sincere had ever been sung
in life. But then something occurred which made me wonder.
From the Solomon Islands had come on furlough the Rev. Mr. Ryecroft and
his delicate wife. He was a man of very gentle bearing and great fervor.
He and his plucky wife had suffered much for their convictions. All men
who really believe anything suffer. The missionary is as much anathema
in his field as the anarchist is in America, and is generally as violent
an agent for the disruption of custom. Mr. Ryecroft rose to speak before
the congregation. He spoke in English and was interpreted by the
missionary in charge. He told of his trials in the Solomon Islands, and
appealed for Fijian missionaries to go back with him and save the
blood-thirsty Solomons. I watched the faces of these converted Fijians.
Some of them were intent upon the speaker, repugnance at the cruelties
rehearsed coming over them as at something of which they were more
afraid as a possible revival in themselves than as an objective danger.
Some, however, fell fast asleep, their languid heads drooping to one
side. I am no mind-reader, nor is my observation to be taken for more
than mere guess-work, but I felt that there were two conflicting
thoughts in the minds of the listeners, for while Mr. Ryecroft was
urging them to come arrest brutality in the Solomons there were other
recruiters at work in Fiji for service in Europe. While one told that
the savage Solomon Islanders swooped down upon the missionary compound
and left sixteen dead behind them, in Europe they were leaving a
thousand times as many every day, worse than dead. To whom were they to
listen!
That afternoon Mr. Waterhouse, one of the missionaries, asked me to give
the young men a little talk on my travels, he to interpret for me. I
asked him what he would like to have me tell them and he urged me to
advise them not to give up their lands. I complied, pointing out to them
how quickly they would go under as a race if they did so. The response
was more than compensating.
The outlook is all the more reassuring when you sit of an evening as I
did in the large, carefully woven native house, elliptical in shape,
with thatched roof and soft-matted floors, which serves as a sort of
night school for little tots. The children, who were then rehearsing
some dances for the coming festival, sat on tiers of benches so built
that one child's feet were on a level with the shoulders of the one in
front. Like a palisade of stars their bright eyes glistened with the
reflections of the light from the kerosene lamps hanging on wires from
the rafters. Lolohea Ratu, a girl of twenty, educated in Sydney,
Australia, spoke to them in a plaintive, modulated voice, soft and low.
All Fijian voices are sad, but hers was slightly sadder than most of
them, tinged, it seemed, with knowledge of the world. She had studied
the Montessori method and was trying to train her little brothers and
sisters thereby. But she was not forgetful of what is lovely in her own
race, primitive as it is, and was preparing these children in something
of a compromise between native and foreign dances. Round and round the
room they marched, the overhanging lamps playing pranks with their
shadows. Others sat upon the mats, legs crossed, beating time and
clapping hands in the native fashion. Their glistening bodies and
sparkling, mischievous eyes, their response to the enchanting rhythm and
melody borrowed from a world as strange to them as theirs is to us,
showed their delight. I wondered what strange images--ghostly pale
folk--they were seeing through our songs. Perhaps the music was merely
another kind of "savage" song to them, even a wee bit wilder than their
own. On the following day they were to sing and dance to the amazement
of their skeptical elders.
Thus does Fijian "civilization" steer its uncertain course between the
two contending influences from the West--the planters and the
missionaries--just as the river Rewa runs between them over the jungle
plains, struggling to supplant wild entangling growths with earth
culture.
7
And that "civilization" leans at one time toward the mill and at another
toward the mission. Frankly, Fiji grows more interesting as one gets
away from these two guy-wires and floats on the sluggish river. My
opportunity of seeing that Fiji which is least confused by either
influence came unexpectedly. The missionaries generously invited me to
go with them up the river in their launch early Monday morning.
Everywhere along the banks of the broad, deep stream stood groups of
huts and villages amid the sugar-cane fields. I gazed up the wide way of
the river toward the hazy blue mountains which stood fifty miles away.
They seemed to be a thousand miles and farther still from reality. The
Himalayas which lured the Lama priest and _Kim_ could not have been more
enticing. Because of the cloying atmosphere of the day, this distant
coolness was like an oasis in the desert, and I longed for some phantom
ship to bear me away on the breeze.
For twenty miles we glided on through cane plantations, banana- and
cocoanut-trees, and miniature palisades here and there rising to the
dignity of hills. We landed, toward noon, at a village which stood on a
little plateau,--quiet, self-satisfied, though in no way elaborate. The
best of the huts stood against the hill across the "street" formed by
two rows of thatch-roofed and leaf-walled huts. It belonged to the
native Christian teacher. He turned it over to us, himself and his wife
and baby disappearing while we lunched. Much of our repast remaining,
the missionary offered it to the teacher, but I noticed that he looked
displeased and turned the platter over to the flock of children which
had gathered outside,--a brood of little fellows, their bellies bulging
out before them, not even the shadow of a garment covering their
nakedness.
I returned to the hut a little later for my camera, not knowing that any
one was there. Inside, in one corner, lay the teacher's wife, stretched
face downward, nursing her baby, which lay on its back upon the soft
mats. She smiled, slightly embarrassed, and I withdrew. Here, then, was
the place where civilization and savagery met.
There were few Fijians in the village, mostly children and several old
women. A Solomon Islander, who had got there during the days when
blackbirding or kidnapping was common, moved among them. He had quite
forgotten his own language and could not understand Mr. Ryecroft when
the missionary spoke to him. An elderly man beckoned to me from his hut
and there offered to sell me a heavy, ebony carved club that could kill
an ox, swearing by all the taboos that it was a sacred club and had
killed many a man in his father's time.
[Illustration: INSTRUCTOR OF THE FIJIAN CONSTABULARY
At Suva]
[Illustration: THE SCOWL INDICATES A COMPLEX
For he is not quite certain that the missionaries are right about that
club not being a god]
[Illustration: A FIJIAN MAIN STREET
The corrugated iron-roofed shack is the one we ate our lunch in]
[Illustration: LITTLE FIJIANS
The only things some of these had on were sores on the tops of their
heads]
A narrow path climbing the hill close behind the village led us to a
view over the long sweep of the river and its valley. The utmost of
peace and tranquillity hung, without a tremor, below us. Twenty huts
fringed the plateau, forming a vague ellipse, interwoven with lovely
salvias, coleuses, and begonias. The village seemed to have been caught
in the crook of the river, while a field of sugar-cane filled the plain
across the stream, the shaggy mountains quartering it from the rear.
Distant, reaching toward the sun, ranged the mountains from which the
river is daily born anew.
As our launch chugged steadily, easily down-stream, and the evening
shadows overstepped the sun, Fiji emerged fresh and sweet as I had not
seen it before. The missionaries, till then sober and reserved, relaxed,
the men's heads in the laps of their wives. Sentimental songs of long
ago, like a stream of soft desire through the years, supplanted precept
in their minds, and I realized for the first time why some men chose to
be missionaries. It was to them no hardship. The trials and sufferings
were romance to their natures, and the giving up of everything for
Christ was after all only living out that world-old truism that in order
to have life one must be ready to surrender it.
8
Next day Mr. Waterhouse and I wandered about the village of the sugar
factory. At the bidding of several minor chiefs who had described a
circle on the mats, we entered one of the dark huts by way of a low
door. In a corner a woman tended the open fire, and near an opening a
girl sat munching. The room was thick with smoke, the thin reeds
supporting the roof glistening with soot. Everything was in order and
according to form. They were making _kava_ (or _ava_ or _yangana_), the
native drink. This used to be the work of the chieftain's daughter, who
ground the ava root with her teeth and then mixed it with water. The law
doesn't permit this now; so it is crushed in a mortar (_tonoa_).
Specialization has reached out its tentacles even to this place, so that
now the captain of this industry is an Indian.
The ava mixed, it was passed round in a well-scraped cocoanut-shell cut
in half. As guests we were offered the first drink. Extremely bitter, it
is nevertheless refreshing. After I made a pretense of drinking, the
bowl was passed to the most respected chief. With gracious
self-restraint he declined it. "This is too full. You have given me
altogether too much." A little bit of it was poured back, and he drank
it with one gulp. He would really have liked twice as much, not half,
but there is more modesty and decorum among savages than we imagine. In
fact, our conventions are often only atrophied taboos.
But the women, not so handsome nor so elegantly coifed as the men, were
excluded from a share in the toast. They were not even part of the
entertainment. The sexes seldom meet in any form of social intercourse.
The boys never flirt with the girls, nor do they ever seem to notice
them. In public there is a never-diminishing distance between them. A
world without love-making, primitive life is outwardly not so romantic
as is ours. The "romance" is generally that of the foreigner with the
native women, not among the natives themselves.
The daughter of the biggest living Fijian chief wandered about like an
outcast. She wore a red Mother-Hubbard gown, and nothing else. Her hair
hung down to her shoulders. Having gone through the process of
discoloration by the application of lime, according to the custom among
the natives in the tropics, it was reddish and stiff, but, being long,
had none of the leonine quality of the men's hair. Andi Cacarini (Fijian
for Katherine), daughter of a modern chief, spoke fairly good English.
She wasn't exactly ashamed, but just shy. The better class of Fijians,
they who have come in contact with white people, all manifest a timid
reticence. Andi Cacarini was shy, but hardly what one could call bashful
or fastidious. She posed for me as though an artist's model, not at all
ungraceful in her carriage or her walk.
The male Fijian is extremely timid, but none the less fastidious. The
care with which he trains and curls his hair would serve as an
object-lesson to the impatient husband of the vainest of white women.
This doesn't mean that the Fijian man is effeminate in his ways, but he
is particular about his hair. The process of discoloring it is exact. A
mixture of burnt coral with water makes a fine substitute for soap. When
washed out and dried, the hair is curled and combed and anointed. From
the point of view of sanitation, the treatment is excellent, and from
that of art--just watch the proud male pass down the road!
No matter where one goes in Fiji--or any of the South Sea Islands--the
dance goes with one. Here at Davuilevu one afternoon in the hot,
scorching sun, the natives gathered on the turf for merrymaking. It was
no special holiday, no unusual event. To our way of thinking it is a
tame sort of dance they do. We hear much of the freedom between the
sexes in the tropics, and one gains the impression that there are
absolutely no taboos. But just as there is nothing in all Japan--however
delightful--to compensate the child, or even grown-ups, for the lack of
the kiss, so none of the Fijian dances fill that same emotional
requirement which with us is secured through the embrace of men and
women in the dance. From the Fijian point of view, the whirling of
couples about together must be extremely immodest, if not immoral.
Sitting in a double row, one in front of the other, were oiled and
garlanded Fijians. Behind them and in a circle sat a number of singers
and lali-players. As they began beating time, the oiled natives began to
move from side to side rhythmically. Their arms and bodies jerked in a
most fascinating and interpretative manner. No voices in the wide world
are lovelier than the voices of Fijians in chorus; no other music issues
so purely as the Fijian music from the depths of racial experience.
Sometimes the dancers swung half-way round from side to side, with arms
akimbo, or extended their arms in all directions, clapping their hands
while chanting in soothing, melodious deep tones.
Judging from what I heard of the music of the Tongans, the Samoans, and
the Fijians, I give the prize to the Fijians for richness of tone. More
primitive than the plaintive Tongans, the Fijian music is a weird
combination of the intellectual, the martial, and the industrial,--more
fascinating than the passionate, voluptuous tunes and dances of the
Samoans and the Hawaiians. The Polynesians, probably because of their
close kinship with the Europeans, are much more sentimental in their
music. The Fijian is more vigorous and to me more truly artistic.
No study, it seems to me, would throw more light on the history and
unity of the human race than that of the dance and music. Why two races
so far apart as the Japanese and the Maories of New Zealand should be so
strikingly alike in their cruder dances, is hard to say. And the Fijians
seem in some way the link between these two. The Fijian doubtless
inherits some of his musical qualities from his negroid mixture, but he
has certainly improved upon it if that is so. He has no regrets, no
sentimental longings, and in consequence his songs are free from racial
affectation.
The Fijians always sing. The instant the day's work is done and groups
form they begin to sing. Half a dozen of them sit down and cross their
legs before them, each places a stick so that one end rests lightly on
one toe, the other on the ground; and while they tap upon these sticks,
others sing and clap hands, swaying in an enchantment of loveliness. One
carries the melody in a strained tenor, the others support him with a
bass drawl. Once in a while an instrument is secured, as a flute, and
the ensemble is complete. Even the tapping on the stick becomes
instrumental in its quality.
As the day draws to a close, from the cane-fields smoke rises in all
directions. The plantation workers have gathered piles of cane refuse
for destruction. Like miniature volcanoes, these, with the coming of
darkness, shine in the lightless night. It makes one slightly sad, this
clearing away of the remnants of daily toil, this purification by fire.
Then the sound of that other lali (the hollow tree-trunk), once the
war-alarum or call to a cannibal feast, now at Davuilevu the invitation
to prayer, the dampness, and the sense of crowding things in
growth,--this is what will ever remain vivid to me.
9
Poor untroubled Fijians! This simple love of harmony, a majestic sense
of force and brutality,--yet, withal, so naïve, withal so easily
satisfied, so easily led. Once a foreigner met a native who seemed in
great haste and trembling. The native inquired the time, in dread lest
he miss the launch for Suva. In his hand he carried a warrant for his
own arrest, with instructions to present himself at jail. When the
foreigner told him that it was up to the jailer to worry about it, he
seemed greatly shocked. One of the missionaries had been asked to keep
his eye on a friend's house. In the absence of the owner, the missionary
found a Fijian in the act of burglarizing. When questioned it was found
that the native wanted to get into jail, where he was sure of three
meals and shade, without worry. This is almost worthy of civilized man,
by whom it is perhaps more commonly practised.
But the kind of jail in which men were at that time incarcerated was not
enough to frighten the most liberty-loving individual. Because of the
humidity and dampness, the structure was left open on one side, only
three substantial walls and a roof being practical. Before the white man
got full control and the native had some iron injected into his nature,
it was not an arduous life the prisoners led. The missionary told me
that once the head jailer was found sitting out of sight, with the
officer in charge of the prisoners, tilting his chair against the wall
of the jail. The prisoners had been ordered to labor. The officer in
charge was to execute the command. Between puffs of tobacco, he would
shout: "Up shot!" and rest a while; then "Down shot!"--more rest. Not a
prisoner moved a muscle, the weights never rose from the ground. The men
were deep within the shadows. The period of punishment over, they were
ordered into their heaven of still more rest and more shade.
From our way of thinking, these are flagrant deceptions. But to the
Fijian (and to most South Sea races) the inducements for greater
exertion are simply non-existent. His revelries have been tabooed, his
wars have been stopped, his native arts are in constant competition with
cheap importations from our commercialized, industrialized world. What
is there, then, for him to do? Little wonder that his native
indifference to life is growing upon him. His conception of life after
death never held many horrors. Even in the fierce old days it was easy
for a Fijian to announce most casually that he would die at eight
o'clock the following day. He would be oiled and made ready, and at the
stated time he died. Most likely a state of catalepsy, but he was buried
and none thought a second time about it. One boy was recently roused
from such a condition and still lives.
The only means of counteracting this apathy are education and the
awakening of ambition through manual training and the teaching of
trades. This, the head of the mission told me, was his main object.
Missionary efforts, according to one man, were directed more to this
purpose than to the inculcation of any special religious precepts. And
there is no question that that will work. The will to live may yet
spring afresh in the Fijian.
From the nucleus formed by the mission is growing a more elaborate
educational system. Recently the several existing schools have been
amalgamated under a new ordinance. A proposal in reference to a more
efficient system of vernacular or sub-primary schools was embodied in a
bill put before the legislative council. A more satisfactory method of
training teachers was deliberated upon. The Fijians are, it is seen,
outgrowing the kindergarten stage, but the grown-ups are largely
children still.
10
A fortnight after I landed in Suva I was steaming for Levuka, the former
capital of the islands, situated on a much smaller land-drop not many
hours' journey away. These are the only two important ports in the
group, and inter-island vessels seldom go to one without visiting the
other. Levuka is a much prettier place than Suva. Its little clusters of
homes and buildings seem to have dug their heels into the hillside to
keep from sliding into the sea.
Along the shore to the left stood a group of Fijian huts,--a suburb of
Levuka, no doubt. Only a few old women were at home, and one old man.
Nothing in the wide world is more restful to one's spirit than to arrive
at a village which is deserted of toilers. Nothing is more symbolic of
the true nature of home, the village being more than an isolated home,
but a composite of the home spirit which is not tainted by any evidence
of barter and trade.
On the other side of Levuka, however, was an altogether different kind
of village, that of the shipwrights. Upon dry-docks stood the skeletons
of ships, fashioned with hands of love and ambition. In such vessels
these ancient rovers of the sea wandered from island to island,
learning, teaching, mixing, and disturbing the sweetness of nature, with
which no race on earth was more blessed.
The _Atua_, on which I had sailed from Suva, was a fairly large
inter-island steamer that made the rounds of all the important groups.
She was bound for Samoa, whither I had determined to go. There is no
better opportunity of getting a glimpse of the contrast between the
natives of the various South Sea islands than on board one of these
inter-island vessels. They are generally manned by the natives of one of
the groups,--in this case, the Fijians. These men handle the cargo at
all ports, and remain on board until the vessel returns to Fiji en route
to the Antipodes. They feed and sleep on the open deck and make
themselves as happy and as noisy as they can. A gasoline tin of tea,
baked potatoes, hard biscuit, and a chunk of fat meat, which is all
placed before them on the dirty deck (they are given no napkins),--that
is Fijian joy.
After their work, which in port sometimes keeps them up till the morning
hours, these strange creatures, untroubled by thought, stretch
themselves on the wooden hatchway and sleep. There I found them at
half-past five in the morning, all covered with the one large sheet of
canvas and never a nose poking out. Air! Perhaps they got some through a
little hole in the great sheet. Some stood and slept like tired,
overworked horses.
One queer Fijian with turbaned head grinned in imitation of none other
than himself, a vague, undefined curiosity rolling about in his skull.
He followed me everywhere, his white eyes staring and his mouth wide
open. Here was a future Fijian statesman in the process of formation.
His nebular, chaotic mentality was taking note of a creature as far
removed from his understanding as a star from his reach.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE MOST GIFTED OF FIJIAN CHIEFS
But who said that the wearing of hats causes baldness (?)]
[Illustration: CACARINI (KATHERINE), THE CHIEF'S DAUGHTER
In her filet gown of Parisian simplicity]
[Illustration: FIJIANS DANCE FROM THE HIP UP]
[Illustration: A FIJIAN WEDDING
Puzzle: find the bride. No, not the one with the hoop-skirt; that's
the groom]
One white soldier, an elderly man, wished to protect himself from the
wind, and asked a Fijian to haul over a piece of canvas. The black
man did so, but when the boatswain saw it, he was enraged. The Fijian
took all the scolding, said never a word, and quickly replaced the
sheet. As the boatswain moved away, the soldier handed the native a
cigarette, saying: "Have one of these, old sport. One must expect
reverses in war." The native grinned and felt the row was worth while.
There were Tongans, Indians, Samoans, and whites on board, and though
these are nearer kin to us, I liked the Fijians most. Yet the Tongans
are an attractive lot, refined in feature, in manner, and in person.
Perhaps that is why they have the distinction of being the only South
Sea people with their own kingdom, a cabinet, and a parliament.
The noise the Fijians make while in port is excruciating. It is
something unclassifiable. They roll their r's, shout as though mad with
anger, and then burst out in childish laughter at nothing. These boyish
barbarians enjoy themselves much more in yelling than they would in
chorus with a Caruso. How torrential is the stream of invective which
issues against some fellow-laborer! With what a terrific crash it falls
upon its victim! But how utter the disappointment when, after one has
expectantly waited for a scrap, a gurgle of hilarity breaks from the
throats which the moment before seemed such sirens of hate and malice!
And so they toil, happy to appear important, busy, honestly busy,
loading the thousands of crates of green bananas, the cargo which passes
to and fro. Happier than the happiest, sharing the scraps of a meal
without the growl so common among our sailors, each always seems to get
just what he wants and helps in the distribution of the portions to the
others. The missus never bothers him, no matter how long he is away, and
instantly labor ceases the group is "spiritualized" into a singing
society and the racial opera is in full swing.
I had anticipated relief at their absence when the steamer set off for
the colder regions south. Yet something pleasant was gone out of life
the moment the ship steamed out. The sailors moved about like pale
ghosts who had mechanically wandered back to a joyless life. The white
man's virtues are his burdens. His tasks are done so that he may
purchase pleasure. The ship was orderly, everything took its place, even
the cursing and yelling came within control. We were heading again for
civilization.
I felt somewhat like the old folks after their wish had rid the town of
all mischievous little boys, and my heart strained back for an inward
glimpse of the life behind. The smell of mold and copra returned; the
damp beds; the cool, clear night air; the moonlight upon the shallow
reefs; dappled gray breakers, playing upon the shore as upon a child's
ocean; in the dark, along Victoria Parade, the shuffle of bare feet in
the dust, the dim figures of tall, bushy-haired men and slim, wiry
Hindus; the thud of heeled boots on the dry earth. And far off there,
the sound of the lali, the singing of deep voices, the vision of an
earthly paradise,--shattered by the sighting of land ahead.
CHAPTER V
THE SENTIMENTAL SAMOANS
1
On the _Niagara_ was a troupe of Samoan men and women who had been to
San Francisco demonstrating their arts at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition.
This, our meeting on the wide, syrup-like tropical sea seemed to me
almost a welcome, a coming out to greet me and to lead me to the portals
of their home. They were en route to Suva, Fiji, where they were to
await an inter-island vessel to take them to Samoa. They were traveling
third class, and the way I discovered them is not to their discredit. We
were becoming more or less bored with life on deck, the games of ship
tennis and quoits being too obviously make-believe to be entertaining.
At times I would get as far away from the gregarious passengers as
possible, and again a number of us would gather upon the hatchway and
read or chatter. It was a thick latticed covering, and the warm air from
below none too agreeable. But with it rose strains of strange melodies,
as from Neptune's regions of the deep. Peering down, we espied a number
of Samoan men and women, lounging upon the floor of the hold. We took
our reputations in our hands and made the descent.
There were big, burly men and broad, sprawling women, half-naked and
asleep. One could see at a glance that they had been spoiled by the
attention they had received while on exhibition at the fair, but the
freedom of life among third-class passengers somewhat softened the
acquired stiffness, and they relaxed again into native ways. Hour by
hour, as the vessel moved southward, they seemed to come back to life,
to thaw out as it were, while we were wilting by degrees.
The scene was one which could have been found only in tropical waters
under the burning sun. Smoke, bare feet, nakedness, people fat with the
sprawly fatness which is the style of the South Seas, unwashed
sailors,--a medley of people and cargo and steamer stench. But also of
the sweetly monotonous song of the Samoan girl, the swishing of the
water against the nose of the ship in the twilight without, and the
steady push of the vessel toward the equator.
I whiled away many a pleasant hour, learning a few of the native words
in song and gossip. It is hard to distinguish one native from the other
at first, but Fulaanu stood out above the rest like a creature
over-imbued with good-nature. She was flat, flabby, with a drawl in
speech that had the effect not only in her voice but her entire bearing
of a leaning Tower of Pisa. Her body bent backward, her head was tilted
up, and her long, prominent nose also slanted almost with pride. She was
an enormous girl, plain, soft, with absolutely no fighting-spirit in
her, but she stood her ground against all masculine advances with a
charm that was in itself teasingly alluring. She was always flanked on
each side by a sailor. They pretended to teach her the ukulele, they
proffered English lessons, they found one excuse after another for being
near her, and she never shooed them away; but I'd swear by all the gods
that not one of them ever more than held her hand or leaned lovingly
against her.
Yet Fulaanu was as sentimental a maiden as I have ever laid eyes on. She
was constantly drawling some sentimental song she had learned in
California, the ukulele was seldom out of her hands, she never joined in
any of the card games going on constantly roundabout her, and she was
always ready to swap songs with any one willing to teach her.
"I teach you my language," she said to me, and slowly, with twinkling
eyes, she pronounced certain words which I repeated. We had often taught
French to our boys at our little school in California in that way,--the
Marseillaise, for instance,--and the method was not strange to me. She
used the song method, too, an old English song that was just then the
rage in Samoa. The English words run somewhat like this:
And you will take my hand
As you did when you took my name;
But it's only a beautiful picture,
In a beautiful golden frame.
I'm sure I have them all muddled, but let me hum this tune to myself and
immediately Fulaanu, the hold, Fiji, Samoa, and all the scents and
sounds of savagedom come instantly to my mind. For everywhere I went
they were singing this song, through their noses but with all the
sentimental ardor of the young flapper; as at a summer resort in America
when a new song hit has been made, the sound of it is heard from
delivery boy to housemaid and as many different renderings of it as
individual temperament demands.
There was Setu, too,--tall, straight, with that easy grace known only
among people free of clothes. Setu spoke English very well, and was as
companionable a chap as one could pick up in many a mile. But Setu's
heart was not his own; he stood guardian over a treasure he had found in
San Francisco. Not an American girl, no, sir! These savage boys did not
play the devil in our land as our savages do in theirs. But Setu was the
personification of chivalry, and, what was more, he was in love. To look
at him and then at her was to despair of human instinct of natural
selection. How an Apollo of his excellence should have been unable to
find a more handsome objet d'amour, I cannot imagine. She was short,
well rounded, with a head as square as Fulaanu's was oblong, and a nose
as snubby as Fulaanu's was romanesque. She was evidently committed, body
and soul, to Setu for she was as devoid of charm for the others as
Fulaanu was full of it. And so all day long, Setu and his sweetheart
hugged each other in a corner, as oblivious of the presence of a
ship-load of people as though they had been ensconced in a hut of their
own. They were evidently taking advantage of proximity to civilization,
for such immodest behavior is not frequent in the tropics. Civilization
had taught the savages some things at least. Whenever Setu was free from
love-making, he would spare a moment to me, and on those rare occasions
he stirred my spirit with promises of guidance in his native island that
threatened to exhaust my funds.
The romantic associations we have with the South Seas were in this group
reversed, for to these primitive people the greatest romance imaginable
came with their journey to America. There young people from different
islands met and fell in love with one another; there, under the benign
influence of American spooning, one couple was married, and there their
first baby was born,--an American subject, brought back to Pago Pago
(American Samoa) to resume his citizenship. There they learned true
modesty, which comprised stockings and heavy boys' shoes; the art of
playing solitaire, in which one fat, matronly-looking woman indulged all
day as though she had been brought along as chaperon and felt herself
considerably out of it; and even en route for home they were learning
the art of striking by calculation and without passion or frenzy.
I was sitting on the hatch with Fulaanu, who was strumming away on her
ukulele, when a ring was formed in the middle of the hold and a young
white man began boxing with a Samoan. The white boxer was obviously an
amateur, bearing himself with all the unpleasant mannerisms of his
profession,--a haughty, pugnacious, overbearing self-conceit. He had
every advantage in training over his antagonist, whom he peppered
vigorously. He kept it up when it was evident that the young Samoan was
going under. One last blow and the fellow doubled over, bleeding from
nose and mouth. It took ten minutes to bring him round. In the
meanwhile, the victor of the unfair bout strutted around as though he
had accomplished something remarkable.
It was interesting to see the effect this had on the "primitive"
Samoans. There was consternation among them; a hush came over the hold.
The vibration of the steamer and the splashing of the water against its
iron side alone broke the stillness. The Samoan girls, though they did
not grow hysterical, were most decidedly displeased, turning in disgust
from the sight of blood. Yet according to our notions they are
primitive, and the fact is that a few generations ago they were savages.
But they were not long in distress. The spell of the equatorial sun was
upon them, and they soon relaxed. There upon mats, as in their own huts,
lay rows of fat, large, voluptuous men and women; nor was there even a
rope to separate the sexes as in an up-to-date Japanese bath. They
seemed to sleep all day, in shifts governed by impulse only. A woman
would rise and move about a while, then go back to lounge again.
Enormous, broad-shouldered and black mustached men would snore gently,
rise and inspect life, and decide that slumber was better for one's
soul. But Fulaanu lounged with her ukulele, surrounded by amorous
sailors who gazed longingly into her eyes.
One night we arranged for a meeting of the "classes." We promised the
Samoans a good collection if they would come and dance for us on deck.
We invited the first-class folk to come, too. They stood as far to one
side of us as was consonant with first-class dignity represented by an
extra few pounds sterling in the price of the ticket. But for a moment
we forgot that there were class and race in the world.
It was not one of those interminable revelries one reads about, that
begin with twilight and end with twilight. On the contrary, it was a
little squall of entertainment, one that breaks out of a clear sky and
leaves the sky just as clear in a trice. There was no occasion for
self-expression here. They had been asked to dance for our
entertainment, not for theirs. There we stood, ready to applaud; there
they were, ready to be applauded, to receive the collection promised. It
was another little thing they had picked up in our world, from our
civilization,--the commercialization of art. Our artists, scribes, and
entertainers have been considerably raised above prostitution of their
talents by a certain commercialization, by the translation of their
worth in dollars and cents; and we need a little more of it to free art
from bondage to patronage. But in the tropics, where the dance and
jollity are no private matters, there is something sterile in
commercialization. No doubt to the natives there is little difference
between a woman giving herself for gain and a man dancing for the money
there is in it without the whole group becoming part of the performance:
the dancer feels that his purchaser, his public, is cold and
unresponsive. And so it seemed to me at this dance. They finished, they
expected their money, they got it and departed, and there seemed
something immoral to me in the exploitation of their emotions.
What a different lot they were one night when I visited the little house
they rented in Suva while waiting for the _Atua_ to arrive from New
Zealand and take them on to Samoa. There it was song and dance out of
sheer ecstasy: life was so full. They were again in their home
atmosphere, and their voices only helped swell the volume of song which
issued forth everywhere about,--an electrification of humanity all along
the line, in village after village.
They hung about the pier before sailing for Samoa till after midnight,
singing sentimental songs and hobnobbing with the Fijians. The Fijian
constable joined them with a flute, and the lot of them tried to drown
out the voices of the natives loading and unloading cargo. Not until
notice was given that the ship was about to get under steam did they
think of going aboard. They looked as though ready for rest, but by no
means dissipated, by no means weary. The spell of song was still upon
them.
When we woke next morning, we were tied up to a pier at the foot of the
hills of Levuka. But I have already dwelt upon the features of this
former capital, and am only concerned with it here as it was reflected
in the eyes of the Samoans. Levuka to me was one thing; to them it was
quite another. The moldy little stores afforded them more interest than
the village to the left, or the shipyards to the right which were to my
Western notions commendable.
I followed in the wake of these gliding natives as we left the steamer.
They looked neither to the right nor to the left, but wended their ways,
like cattle in the pasture, straight toward the shops. Into one and out
the other they went, bargaining, pricing, buying little trinkets and
simple cloths, chatting with the Fijians as though friends of old.
Setu's sweetheart and the pretty mother of the young American citizen,
who was left in the care of the fat "chaperon," set off by themselves
through the one and only street of Levuka. It was obvious that they were
quite aware of whither they were going,--so direct was their journey. My
curiosity was roused and I wandered along with them. They said never a
word to me, nor objected to my presence. We turned to the left, off into
a side street that began to insinuate its way along the bed of a stream
lined with wooden huts and shacks. Some of these were fairly well
constructed, with verandas, like the houses of a miniature American
town, garlanded in flowers. Just above the village, where the stream
began to emerge from behind a rocky little gorge, the two women turned
in at a gate to a private cottage. A bridge led across the stream to
the little house, the veranda of which extended slightly over the
stream. Beneath, in a corner formed by a projecting boulder, lay a quiet
little pool of water--clear, cool, fresh and deep.
Without asking permission from the owners, the women began slowly,
cautiously to wade into the pool. Seeing that I had no thought of going,
they put modesty aside, slipped the loose garments down to their waists
and immersed themselves up to their necks. One of them was tattooed from
below her breasts to her hips; the other's breasts alone bore these
designs. They dipped and rose, splashed and spluttered, but there was
none of that intimacy with their own flesh which is the essence of
cleanliness and passion in our world. There was no soap, no scrubbing.
It was something objective, almost, a contact with nature like looking
at a landscape or listening to a storm.
Presently some of the inmates of the cottage, evidently well-to-do
Fijians, came out to greet them. I could not tell whether they were
friends or not, but the women were invited in,--and I turned into town
through back roads and alleys that were just like the back roads and
alleys anywhere in the world.
That afternoon we steamed out again for Apia, Samoa. The sea was
disturbed somewhat and gave us various sensations; but the vile odors
that threatened my nautical pride never changed.
Most of the Samoans were under the weather. They did not look cheerful,
and all song was gone out of them. Setu and his sweetheart were here
even more inseparable than on the _Niagara_. She was not very well and
stretched out on the bench on the edge of which he took his seat. In her
squeamish condition she could hardly be expected to pay much attention
to proprieties she had acquired in less than a year's residence in
America. Her sprawly bare feet on several occasions made too bold an
exit from beneath the loose Mother-Hubbard gown she wore, and each time
Setu would draw the skirt farther over them, affectionately pressing
them with his hand. This one instance, exceptional as it was, made me
notice more consciously the absence of that public intimacy which is the
bane of the prude with us. Not all the charm of the tropics which is so
real to me can take the place of the cleanliness of the West, the
tenderness of clean men and women in public, to be observed even on our
crowded subways, the loveliness of white skin tinged with pink and
scented with the essence of flowers.
I did not see them again before we arrived at Samoa the next day; the
sea was too choppy. But in the afternoon Setu came out with a pillow
held aloft over his head, and declared he would take a nap. There was
childish glee in his face at the prospect, and he stretched out on the
hard deck in perfect ease. And long after I ceased to figure in his
fancies, the beaming, sparkling eyes and merry grin seemed to light up
the soul within him.
Toward sundown we passed the first island of the group,--Savaii, the
largest. It lay at our left, Mua Peak emitting a sluggish smoke from
reaches beyond the depth of the waters which had nearly submerged it,
and as the sea made furious charges into blow-holes or half-submerged
caverns, the earth spit back the invading waters with an easy contempt.
At our right lay the island of Manono, much smaller, and nearer our
course. Shy Samoan villages hid in little ravines, almost afraid to show
their faces.
Shortly after eight o'clock we neared the island of Upolu. The troupe of
Samoans came out on deck with the eagerness in their eyes that marks
such arrivals at every port of the world. The lights of the village of
Apia pricked the delicate evening haze. One strong, steady lamp, like a
planet, shone from above the others. Setu called to me eagerly, his
right hand pointing toward it.
"That is from Vailima, Stevenson's home," he said, with some pride.
When at last we anchored just outside the reefs before Apia, these
natives, who had grown close to one another during the year of their
pilgrimage, began bidding one another farewell before slipping back to
the little separate grooves they called home. The women kissed one
another, cheek touching cheek at an angle, a practice common both at
meeting (_talofa_) and at parting (_tofa_). But with the men they only
shook hands. Then, clambering over into canoes, they were borne across
the reefs to their homes. And as long as Polynesia is Polynesia there
will echo the stories of this journey to the land of the white man and
all children will know that what the white man said about his lands is
true.
2
The reader who has never entered a strange port nor come home from
foreign lands will not be able to imagine the psychological effect of my
entry of Samoa. Not only did the thousands of eyes of the natives seem
to turn their gaze upon me, but it seemed, and I was quite sure, that at
least two thousand pale faces with as many bayonets were fixed upon me.
Samoa was under occupation. I asked the captain of the forces what I
could do to avoid trouble.
"See that you don't get shot," he said. I assured him there was nothing
nearer my heart's desire, and, seeing that I looked harmless, he
ventured to reassure me: "Oh, just keep away from the wireless. That's
all." I had come to see the natives, not electric gymnastics, so I found
it very easy to keep away from the wireless.
What there was of Apia was essentially European and lay along the
waterfront. Here stood the three-story hotel, built and until then
managed by Germans. Diagonally across from it and nearer the water's
edge, was a two-story ramshackle building even then run by Germans. The
little barber to whom I had been directed spoke with a most decided
German accent. He cut and shampooed my hair, but let me walk out with as
much of a souse on top of my head as I ever had in a shower-bath.
Wherever I went were Germans,--and yet they said the islands were under
occupation. Turn to the right and there, back off the street within a
small compound that seemed to lie flat and low, was a German school
still being conducted by black-bearded German priests. But to the left,
within the dark-red fence, stood the dark-red buildings of the German
Plantation Company, closed, and the little building that once was the
German Club had become the British Club; while at the other end of the
street were the office buildings of the military staff, where once ruled
the German militarists. In between, in a little building a block or two
behind the waterfront, was the printing-office,--where, strange to say,
the daily paper was still being printed in both German and English. With
the few structures that filled in the gaps between these outposts we had
small concern. They were the nests of traders, the haven of so-called
beach-combers and the barracks and missionary compounds. And alien Samoa
is at an end.
Mindful of the mild instructions not to get myself shot, I took as
little interest in the details of occupation as was compatible with my
sense of freedom; but this course was precarious, for at the time any
one who was not with us was against us. However, details of such
differences must be reserved for a later chapter. Here we are interested
in Samoa itself. But in my very interest in the place I struck a snag,
for every other day Germans were being deported or coraled for
attempting to stir up a native uprising. Still, inasmuch as I could not
acquire the language in so short a time, I felt secure, and took to the
paths that led to the Stone Age as a Dante without a love-affair to
guide him.
The island is hemmed in by coral reefs on the edge of which the waves
break, spreading in foam and gliding quietly toward shore. As they sport
in the brilliant sunlight, it seems as though the sea were calling back
the life lost to it through evolution. The tall, gaunt palms which lean
toward the sea, bow in a humble helplessness. There, a quarter of a mile
out, upon the unseen reefs, lies the iron skeleton of the _Adler_, the
German man-of-war which was wrecked on the memorable day in 1889. Such
seems to be the fate of the Germans: even their skeletons outlive
disaster. But the sea has been the protector of the natives. It would be
interesting to speculate as to what course events about the South Seas
would have taken had not that hurricane intervened. The natives are
indifferent to such speculations; for, as far as they were concerned,
one turn was as good as another. Borne over the swelling waves from
island drift to island drift, the ups and downs of eternity seem to
leave no great changes in their lives.
Roaming along the waterfront to the left of Apia with the sun near high
noon, all by myself, I met with nothing to disturb the utter sweetness
and glory of life about. I wavered between moods of exquisite
exhilaration and deep depression. Bound by the encircling consciousness
of the occupation, the sense of wrong done these natives who had neither
asked for our civilization nor invited us to squabble over their
"bones," I felt that but for the presence of the white man this would
have been the loveliest land in the world. For here one becomes aware of
nature as something altogether different from nature anywhere else. That
distant pleading of the sea; the gentle yielding of the palms to the
landborn breezes,--there was much more than peace and ease; there was
absolute harmony. But where was man?
I became restless. Nature was not sufficient. I went to seek out man,
for at that hour there was none of him anywhere about. I was, for all
intents and purposes, absolutely the only human being on that island.
Every one else had taken to cool retreats. But where should I go? I
wondered. I knew no one, and the sense of loneliness I had for a while
forgotten came back to me with a rush. For a moment I was again in
civilization, again in a world of fences and locked doors. "I will go
and look up Setu," I thought. "He promised to guide me about Samoa. I
have his address. I'll look up Setu." So I turned back toward the hills
and in among the palm groves, where I could see the huts of the village
of Mulinuu, where Setu lived.
When I arrived I realized why I had suddenly become conscious of my
loneliness. Throughout the village there wasn't a soul abroad. The domes
of thatch resting on circles of smooth pillars were deserted, it seemed,
and the fresh coolness that coursed freely within their shade was
untasted. Nowhere upon the broad, grassy fields beneath the palms was
there a walking thing; and I was a total stranger. It was slightly
bewildering, as though I were in a graveyard, or a village from which
the inhabitants had all gone. I approached one of the huts and found, to
my satisfaction, that there was a human being there. It was a woman,
attending to her household duties. She was just under the eaves on the
outside, beside the floor of the hut, which was like a circular stage
raised a foot or two above the ground, and paved with loose shingles
from the shore. I hardly knew how to approach her, not thinking she
might know my language.
"Good afternoon," she said in perfect English. "Sit down." The shock was
pleasant. So there were no fences or doors to social intercourse in
Samoa, after all. Still, I must find Setu. I asked her where I could
locate his home. Before directing me, she chatted a while and assured me
that I could go to any one of the huts about and make myself
comfortable. I was not to hesitate, as it was the custom of the country
and in no way unusual. She was a fine-looking woman, robust and tall,
genial and attentive, as housewifely a person as could be found
anywhere. I have since had occasion to talk with many a housewife in New
Zealand and Australia when searching for private quarters and cannot say
that their manners, their dress, their regard for a stranger's welfare
in any way exceeded those of this woman who had nothing to offer me but
rest and no wish for reward but my content.
Taking her directions, I turned across the village to where she said
Setu could be found. Beneath the shade of a palm squatted a group of men
who when they spied me called for me to come over to them. Had I not
been on curiosity bent, I should have regarded their request as sheer
impudence, for when I arrived they wanted me to employ them as guides.
It was amusing. Instead of running after hire, they commanded the
stranger to come to them. It was too comfortable under the spreading
palm branches. I told them that I had arranged with Setu to guide me and
was in search of him. They began running Setu down. He was
untrustworthy, they assured me, and would charge me too high a price.
Then they asked me what my business was, what Setu had said, when he was
going,--everything imaginable. But never an inch would they move to show
me the way to Setu's house. I wandered about for a while, inquiring of
one stray individual and another, but no one had seen Setu, and at last
I learned that he had left the village early that morning for his
father's place, far inland, and would not return. Setu had gone back on
me. He had promised to call for me with his horse and buggy and convey
me over the island. But Setu had forsaken me, and there was nothing to
do but to make the best of the day right there.
Taking the word of the well-spoken woman, I approached the most
attractive-looking hut, where sat a number of people roundabout the
pillars. It was a mansion-like establishment even to my inexperienced
judgment of huts. It was roofed with corrugated iron instead of thatch,
and the pillars were unusually straight and smooth. The raised floor was
very neatly spread with selected, smooth, flat stones four to five
inches in diameter, and framed with a rim of concrete. Fine straw mats
lay like rugs over a polished parquet floor at all angles to one
another, and straw drop curtains hung rolled up under the eaves, to be
lowered in case of rain or hurricane. The floor space must have been at
least thirty-five feet in diameter, and it was plain that each
inhabitant occupied his own section of the hut round the outer circle.
I was cordially greeted and invited to rest, which I did by sitting on
the ground with my legs out, and my back to a pillar for support. From
the quiet and decorum it was evident that the householders were
entertaining guests. Each couple or family sat upon its own mats. There
were twelve adults and three children. It happened that the man who
greeted me and bade me be seated was the guest of honor, a gentleman
from Rarotanga, passing through Samoa on his way to Fiji. He was a very
refined-looking individual, and made me feel that the Rarotangans were a
superior race, but the contrary is true. However, his regular features
and courtly manners were a distinction which might well have led to such
a supposition. His handsome wife, who sat with him, was as retiring as a
Japanese woman, and as considerate of his comfort.
The others were set in pairs all round the hut. At the extreme left were
two women, sewing; opposite us, a man and woman apportioning the
victuals; to my right, a man and a woman grinding the ava root
preparatory to the making of the drink. Farther way squatted a very fat
woman, with barely a covering over her breasts, which were full as
though she were in the nursing-stage. The children moved about freely
neither disturbing nor being curbed. In the center of the company sat
two men, one evidently the head of the family, with his back up against
a pillar, the other his equal in some relationship.
The dinner was being served by a portly individual, a man who could not
have been exactly a servant, yet who did not act as though he were a
member of the family. He passed round the ample supply of fish, meats,
and vegetables on enamel plates, his services always being acknowledged
graciously. No one looked at or noticed his neighbor, but indulged with
the aid of spoon or finger as he saw fit, and had any made a _faux pas_
there would have been none the wiser. That, I thought, was true
politeness.
Dinner over, the remains were removed and each person leaned back
against the nearest pillar. After a slight pause, the eldest man, he in
the center of the hut, clapped his hands, and uttered a gentle sound, as
one satisfied would say: "Well! Let's get down to business." But it was
nothing so serious or so material as that. It was ava-drinking time. The
polished cocoanut bowl was passed round, by the same old waiter, to the
man whose name was called aloud by the head of the household, and each
time all the rest clapped hands two or three times to cheer his cup. It
was like the Japanese method of "ringing" for a servant, not like our
applause. Then fruits were passed around. Cocoanuts, soft and ripe, the
outer shell like the skin of an alligator pear and easily cut with an
ordinary knife, were first in order, after which the companion of the
man in the middle of the hut, like a magician on the stage, drew out of
mysterious regions an enormous pineapple which may have been thirty
inches in circumference. It might have had elephantiasis, for all I
knew, but it was the cause of the only bit of disharmony I had noticed
during the entire time I rested with them. The man to whom it fell to
dispense its juicy contents--he who had sat unobtrusively beside the
head of the house now found it necessary to stretch his legs in order
the better to carve the fruity porcupine. The shock to my sense of form
the moment I caught sight of those legs was enough to dissipate my
greediest interest in the pineapple. They were twice the size of the
fruit, and as knotty. He was suffering from elephantiasis of the legs,
poor man,--a disease, according to the encyclopædia, "dependent on
chronic lymphatic obstruction, and characterized by hypertrophy of the
skin and subcutaneous tissue." Morbid persons seem to enjoy taking away
with them photographs of people affected by this hideous disease in
various parts of the body, but it was enough for me that I saw this one
case; and sorry enough was I that I saw it at that quiet, peaceful hut,
from which I should otherwise have carried away the loveliest of
memories.
For as soon as the meal was over, and the ava-drinking at an end,
pleasures more intellectual were in order. Neighbors began to arrive,
including the fine woman who had urged me to rest wherever I wished. As
each new guest appeared, he passed round on the outside and shook hands
with those to whom he was introduced, finally finding a quiet corner.
When the interruptions ceased, the head of the house began to speak in a
low, reflective tone of voice. All the others relaxed, as do men and
women over their cigarettes. My Tongan neighbor acted as interpreter for
me, being the only person present who could speak English. The head of
the house was telling some family legend, the point of which was the
friendship between his forefathers and the fathers of this Tongan guest.
Then one at a time, quietly, in a subdued tone, each one present
expressed his gratitude for the hospitality extended, or recited some
family reminiscence. There wasn't the slightest affectation, nor the
semblance of an argument. Here, then, was Thoreau's principle of
hospitality actually being practised. As each one spoke he gazed out
upon the open sky decorated with the broad green leaves of the palm.
Sometimes the listeners smiled at some witticism, but most of the time
they were interested in a sober way. Last of all arose the companion of
the head of the house, upon his heavy, elephantine legs, and in a
dramatic manner--probably made to seem more so by the tragic distortion
of his limbs--related a story, several times emphasizing a
generalization by a sweep of the hands toward the open world about.
A gentle breeze crept down from the hills and swept its way among the
pillars of this peaceful hut and skipped on through the palms out to
sea. As far as the eye could reach through the village there was no sign
of uncleanliness, no stifling enclosures, no frills to catch the unwary.
The afternoon was well-nigh gone when I moved reluctantly away from this
charmed spot. Slowly life was becoming more discontented with ease and
bestirred itself to the satisfaction of wants. A few hours of toil, in
the gathering of fruits, and one phase of tropical life was rounded out.
It might be more pleasant to believe that that is the only side, but
such faith is treacherous. The life of the average South Sea islander is
as arduous as any. Fruits there are usually a-plenty, but they must be
gathered and stored against famine and storm. Be that as it may, the
open life, the things one has which require only wishing to make them
one's own, the uncramped open world,--by that much every man is
millionaire in the tropics, and it is pleasant to forget if one can that
there is exploitation, despoliation, and oppression as well, both of
native and of alien origin. But for the time at least we may as well
enjoy that which is lovely.
3
That night I witnessed the usual events at the British Club. The
substance of the evening's conversation, every word of which was in my
own language, was quite foreign to me. It comprised "Dr. Funk" and
his special services in counteracting dengue fever. The aim and object
of every man there seemed to be to make me drink, quite against my will.
A visiting doctor added the weight of his learning to induce me to turn
from heedlessly falling a victim to fever by engaging "Dr. Funk." I was
inclined to dub him "Dr. Bunk," but why arouse animosity in the tropics?
there is enough of it.
[Illustration: THE STREET ALONG THE WATERFRONT OF APIA, SAMOA]
[Illustration: I THOUGHT THE VILLAGE BACK OF APIA, SAMOA, WAS
DESERTED, BUT IT WAS ONLY THE NOON HOUR]
[Illustration: CONTACT WITH CALIFORNIA CREATED THIS COMBINATION OF
SCOWL, BRACELETS AND BOY'S BOOTS--BUT FULAANU BESIDE HER WAS
UNCORRUPTIBLE]
[Illustration: TATTOOING OF THE LEGS IS AN ESSENTIAL IN SAMOA]
But I couldn't help contrasting in my own mind the little gathering on
the shingle-paved floor of that corrugated iron hut with the more
elaborate club that changed its name from German to British with no
little hauteur. More than once I wished that I had had command of the
language of those people in the hut where allegory, mixed with
superstition but seasoned with gentle hospitality--and not rum--was the
order of the day.
Weary of refusing booze and more booze, I set off for the shore. Though
military order forbade either natives or Germans or any one else without
a permit to be out after ten o'clock, I had had no difficulty in
securing a permit to roam about at will, day or night. The new military
Inspector of Police strolled out with me and we took to the road that
led out of Apia to the left, past the barracks, past the school, and the
church, past all the crude replicas of our civilization.
"Oh, how I loathe it all!" said Heasley to me. "God, what wouldn't I
give to be back with my wife and kiddies! This everlasting boozing, this
mingling with people whom I wouldn't recognize in Wellington, being
herded with the riffraff of the world. They talk of the lovely maidens.
Tell me, Greenbie, have you seen any here you'd care to mess about with?
The tropics!--rot!"
I saw that I had to deal with a frightfully homesick man, and there was
no point in running counter to him. The fact that to me the tropics were
lovely only when seen as an objective thing, not as something to feel a
part of, would have made little impression on his mind. He was
condemned to an indefinite sojourn, whereas I was foot-loose, had come
of my own free will, and was going as soon as I had had enough of it. To
him the daily round of drink and cheap disputes, the longing for his
wife and kiddies, the heat, the mosquitos, the mold, the cheap beds and
unvaried fare, the weeks during which the British troops had virtually
camped on the beach in the steady downpouring tropical rains; the
inability to dream his way into appreciation of South Sea life; the
necessity of looking upon the natives as possible rebels; suspicions of
the few Germans there, suspicions of every new-comer, suspicions of even
the death-dealing sun,--no wonder there was nothing romantic about it to
him!
But as we wandered along, chatting in an intimate way, as only men gone
astray from home will chat when they meet on the highways of the world,
he seemed to grow more cheerful. Time and again he told me what a relief
I was to him, how being able really to talk freely with me was balm to
his troubled spirit. I knew that an hour after my departure he would
forget all about me, that there was nothing permanent in his regard,
that I really meant nothing to him beyond an immediate release for his
pent-up mind,--but I felt that he was sincere.
As we kicked our way along the dusty road we came to a stretch where the
palm-trees stood wide apart. The smooth waters covered the reefs, and a
million moonbeams danced over them. Within the palm groves camp-fires
blazed beneath domes of moon-splattered thatch, and from all directions
deep, clear voices quickened the night air. We of the Northern lands do
not know what communal life is. We move in throngs, we crowd the
theaters, we crowd the summer resorts,--but still we do not know what
communal life is. We are separate icicles compared with the people of
the tropics. Only to one adrift at night within a little South Sea
village is the meaning of human commonalty revealed. It seemed to touch
Heasley as nothing had done before. After our little conversation he
appeared relieved and receptive. We wandered about till long after
midnight, long after the village had sung itself to sleep, even then
reluctant to take to our musty beds.
Thus did one day pass in Samoa, and every day is like the other, and my
tale is told.
4
I tapped one man after another in Samoa for some personal recollections
of Stevenson, but without success. At last I heard of an American trader
who had been an intimate friend of R. L. S. and knew more about him than
any other. So to him I went. He was a round-headed, red-faced, bald
individual in the late fifties, deeply engrossed in the sumptuous
accumulations he had made during more than a quarter-century of
residence in Samoa. His reactions to my declaration of interest in
Stevenson made me think he was turning to lock his safe and order his
guard, but instead he really opened the safe and dismissed all pretense.
In other words, he realized, it seemed to me, that he had another chance
of adding luster not to Stevenson, but to himself. Stevenson he
dismissed with, "Well, you know, after all he was just like other men.
Often he was disagreeable, ill-tempered," etc. The thing worth while was
the fact that _he_ had written a book about Stevenson, in which _he_ had
exhausted all he knew of the man, so why did I not read that and not
bother him about it! I felt apologetic, almost inclined to bow myself
out, backward, when he announced that he too had written stories of the
South Seas. My interest was whetted. I asked to be shown. He drew from
among his bills and invoices a packet of manuscripts, and handed one to
me to read. I thought of Setu and his enthusiasm at the recognition at
sea of the light from Vailima, and felt that, as far as Stevenson's own
life went, Setu was, to me at least, more important.
Notwithstanding all the cynics who laugh at those who come to Samoa to
climb to Stevenson's grave, I was determined to make the ascent. I could
get no one to make it with me. At five o'clock in the morning I mustered
what energy I had left from the North, ready to spend it all for the
sake of seeing Stevenson's grave. By six, the wind was already warm and
dragged behind it heavy rain-clouds. Hot and brain-fagged, I pressed on,
my body pushing listlessly forward while my mind battled with the
temptation to turn back. Near the end of European Apia I turned toward
the hills, into a wide avenue cut through the growths of shaggy palms.
Suddenly opening out from the main street, it as suddenly closes up, an
oblong that dissipates in a narrow, irregular roadway farther on. It was
too overgrown to indicate any great usefulness, yet in the history of
roads, none, I believe, is more unique. In the days when Samoa was the
scene of cheap international squabbles among England, France, Germany,
and America, Stevenson, the Scotsman, mindful of the fate of Scotland
and of the similarity between his adopted and his native land, stood by
the natives as against the foreign powers (Germany in particular). He
took up the challenge for Mataafa, courageously cuddled these children
while in prison, and won their everlasting good-will. Later, as a mark
of gratitude, they decided voluntarily to build a wide road to Vailima,
Stevenson's home. Their ambitions did not live long. The road was never
finished. But this is indicative not of diminished gratitude, but of the
overwhelming hopelessness of their situation in face of foreign pressure
and native temperature.
For everything in the tropics seems on the verge of exhaustion, a keen
enthusiasm in life which finds its ebb before it has reached high tide.
Only a supreme endeavor, a will sharper than nature, can overcome the
spirit of non-resistance which condemns native life from very birth. And
it was the remnant of determination bred in another climate that
carried me on toward the remains of the object of that gratitude which
this road symbolized.
Vailima was four miles from Apia, hidden within a rich tropical growth
well up the mountain side. Half the time I rested in the shade, taking
my cue from my idol that it was better to travel than to arrive. No one
was about, except here and there a child in search of fruit dropped from
the tall trees. Presently I came to a set of wooden buildings on the
road which upon investigation turned out to be the temporary barracks
for the guard of Colonel Logan, commander of the forces of occupation.
The soldiers directed me most cordially to a path near the barracks, and
there a board sign announced the way to "STEVENSON'S GRAVE."
Crossing a creek and turning to the right, I found myself immediately at
the foot of Mount Vaea. At this juncture lay a small concrete pool
obviously belonging to the cottage, well-preserved and clean. So was the
path upward. Strange contrasts here, for both pool and path were the
result of the private interest of the German Governor of Samoa who,
despite Stevenson's bitter opposition to German possession of the
islands, had generously had the path cleared and widened so that lovers
of the great man might visit his tomb with ease. It had been neglected
for ten years until this German reclaimed it.
For a decade the grave lay untended. At the moment of death, the silence
is deep. The pain is too fresh. Out of very love neglect is justifiable,
for it is the train of dejected mourners who cannot think of niceties.
But then come the "knockers at the gate," they who know nothing of the
frailties of men and revel in an immortality that is memory.
I paused frequently during that half-hour climb. Cooing doves called to
one another understandingly across the death-like stillness which filled
the valley below. From the direction of Apia came the sound of the
lali, which seemed only to quicken mystery into being. I breathed more
heavily. There, alone on the slopes of that peak, with the only thing
that makes it memorable beneath the sod on the summit, I felt strangely
in touch with the dead. The isolation gave distinction to him who had
been laid there, which no monument, however superb, can give in the
crowded graveyard. The personality of the departed hovers round in the
silence.
Still, the thought of death itself is alien here. Fear is barren. One
climbs on with an easy, smiling recognition of the summit of all
things,--not as death, but as life. Oh, the sweet silence that muffles
all!
A strange relapse into the ordinary came to me as I reached the top. I
took a picture of the tomb, gazed out across the hazy blue world
about,--and thought of nothing. I was not disappointed, nor sad. Had I
found myself sinking, dying, I believe that it would not have ruffled my
emotions any more than the flight of a bird leaves ripples in the air.
Below, five miles away, the waves broke upon the reefs and spread in
smooth foam which reached endlessly toward the shore. "It is better to
travel than to arrive," they seemed to say to me across the void.
The red hibiscus was in bloom around the tomb. A sweet-scented yellow
flower made the air heavy with its rich perfume. The trees speckled the
simple concrete casing over the grave with their restless little shadow
leaves. The spot was cool and free from growths. And it was, then, a
symbol of a quarter of a century made real.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.
Savage, child, romancer, literary stylist,--all have been under the
influence of this wandering Scotsman, and the manner of showing him love
and gratitude has been not in imitation only. At Monterey in California
he was nursed by an old Frenchman through a long period of illness; in
semi-savage Samoa men untutored in our codes of affection beat not a
path but a road to his door, and carried his body up the steep slope of
Mount Vaea. And the month before I stood beside his tomb, the ashes of
his wife and devoted helpmate were deposited beside him by his
stepdaughter, who had journeyed all the way from California to unite
their remains.
Tusitala, the tale-teller, the natives called him, and in the sheer
music of that strange word one senses something of the regard it was
meant to convey. And in the years to come, when Samoans become a nation
in the Pacific, part of the Polynesian group, Tusitala will doubtless be
one of the heroes, tales of whose beneficence will light the way for
little Polynesians growing to manhood.
It was becoming too hot up there on the peak for me before
breakfast-time was over, so I slipped down into the valley. At the
barracks the soldiers invited me to have a bite with them. The simple
porridge, the crude utensils, the bare benches would elsewhere after so
long a walk and so steep a climb have been a Godsend; but here, in the
tropics, it seemed that more would have been a waste of human life. The
sergeant-at-arms asked me if I should like to have some breadfruit. He
stepped out into the yard and gathered a round, luscious melon-like
fruit which, when cut, opened the doors of alimentary bliss to me. The
trees grow in bisexual pairs, male and female, the female tree bearing
the fruit.
The sergeant then took me to Vailima, Stevenson's last home, now the
residence of the governor-general. It was, of course, stripped of
everything which once was Stevenson's, and had acquired wings and
porticos, gaunt and disproportioned. I could not work up any sentimental
regret at this change, for that is what Stevenson himself would have
wished. The best way to preserve a thing is to keep it growing.
Stevenson worked here for four years; others may tamper with it for
four hundred years without completely obliterating the character given
it by its first maker.
When I entered I was somewhat surprised at the hangings on the walls.
Pictures of the kaiser, pretty scenes along the Rhine, German
castles,--what had they to do with Stevenson? what with Colonel Logan
and British occupation? The chambers are so large and the woodwork is so
somber that these pictures fairly shrieked out at one, like a flock of
eagles in high altitudes. I felt almost guilty, myself, simply for being
in the presence of such enemy decorations, and remarked about them to my
guide.
"The colonel won't touch them," he said, respectfully. "They are the
property of the German Governor, and till the disposition of the islands
is finally settled, the colonel won't move them. He's a soldier,
y'know."
We came out again upon the veranda just in time to see Colonel and Mrs.
Logan arrive in their trap. He was tall, straight, an icy chill of
reserve in his bearing. Mrs. Logan was a pretty young woman, as warm and
cordial as he was stiff. He preceded her up the steps and was saluted by
the sergeant with the explanation of my presence.
"Am showing this gentleman round a bit," he said.
"Has he had a look round?" said the colonel, perfunctorily, saluted
stiffly, and passed by as though I didn't exist. As Mrs. Logan came up
behind she suppressed a smile that threatened to make her face still
more charming, and the two passed within.
I smiled to myself. How should I have been received had Stevenson come
up those steps that day? To the colonel there was nothing in my journey
to the tomb. Nor was there anything in it to the soldiers at the
barracks. Yet the fact that I had been there made me one of them.
"How'd ye like it?" asked a soldier on my return, with the same manner
as though I had gone to see a cock-fight. "Blaim me if Oi'd climb that
yer 'ill on a day as 'ot as this to see a dead man's grave."
They asked me if I'd like to take a swim in the stream Stevenson liked
so well, and on the strength of my great interest three of them got
leave to accompany me. They winked to me when the sergeant agreed. We
wandered along, jumping fences, crossing a grassy slope, and cutting
through a spare woods. The bamboo-trees creaked like rusty hinges. Cocoa
plantations stood ripe for picking. The luscious mango kept high above
our reach, so that we were compelled to devise means of getting at it.
The soldiers seemed concerned about my seeing everything, tasting
everything, learning everything the place afforded. We chatted sociably,
plunging about in the stream, with only a few stray natives looking on.
Then we made our way back as leisurely as possible, they being in no
hurry to return to the barracks. How I got back to Apia I haven't the
faintest recollection.
5
I had set out to see the world without any definite notion of whither I
was drifting. I had bartered the liquid sunshine of Hawaii for Fiji's
humid shade, and twisted a day in a knot between Suva and Apia so that I
hardly knew whether or not Fiji was more devilishly hot than Samoa. And
then for four days I endured the stench of ripening bananas in the hold
of a resurrected vessel which, if ships are feminine, as sailors seem to
believe, was decidedly beyond the age of spinsterhood. I was headed for
New Zealand. Little wonder, then, that when I found that we had finally
arrived with our olfactory senses still sane and were about to land in a
real country with real cities and a social life dangerously near
perfection, I felt as though I were coming to after ether.
When I suddenly found myself alone on the streets of Auckland, a sense
of the icy chill of reserve in civilization came over me. The weeks in
the tropics were of the past. There, though the faces were more than
strange to me and the speech quite unintelligible, there was a sense of
human kinship which stole from man to man through the still air. There
was the lali thumping its way across the valley; the chatter of voices
by day, the mutter of voices by night when the people gathered beneath
their thatched roofs; the gradual infusion of native melody with the
swish of palms and the hiss of the sea; call answering call across the
village; songs with that deep, primitive harmony which effects a ferment
of emotion not in one's heart, but in the pit of the stomach. In such a
place, the word _alone_ has no meaning. One cannot be a stark outsider.
Everything is done so freely and sociably that even the stranger,
despite thousands of years of restraint in civilization, merges into an
at-one-ment known to no group in our world.
Social life in New Zealand (as in all white communities) contained no
such admixture. Not even on Sunday, on which day I landed, did the
crowds that sauntered up and down the street, present any kindred
closeness. People just sauntered back and forth across the three or four
business blocks known as Queens Street. The sweeps and curves and
windings which were its offshoots made a short thoroughfare look
picturesque, but they were just flourishes. They did not lead to
anything. And one immediately returned to Queens Street.
There, the wheeled traffic having been withdrawn, the people leaving
church flooded the wide way, coursing up and down in what seemed to me
an utterly aimless journey between the monument at the upper fork in the
street and the piers at its foot. As a white man's city goes, in the
three-story structures and spacious business fronts, and the massing of
architecture tapering in an occasional turret, there was stability
enough in the appearance of things.
There were jolly flirtations, girls singly and in pairs, some mere
children in short skirts, gadding about with eyes on young men whom they
doubtless knew, and of whom they seemed in eternal pursuit. Groups
gathered for political or religious argument; platitudes and
pleasantries were exchanged, some interesting, some dull, seldom truly
cordial. A vague suspicion one of another was manifest in every
relationship.
Suddenly the crowd vanished. A few persistent ones hung about the lower
extremity of the street or lurked about the piers, spooning. The street
became deserted. Not a sound from anywhere. No joyous singing under the
eaves, no flickering lamp-lights beneath thatched roofs. Blinds drawn,
doors locked. Sunday evening in civilization! I had returned.
CHAPTER VI
THE APHELION OF BRITAIN
1
There are no holy places in New Zealand, none of the worn and curious
trappings of forgotten civilizations to search out and to revere. There
are no signposts which lead the wanderer along, despite himself, in
search of sacred spots; no names which make life worth while. Whom shall
he try to see? Is there a Romain Rolland or a Shaw, or an Emerson to
whom he could bow in that reverence which invites the soul rather than
bends the knee?
There are only boiling fountains and snow-packed ranges and wild-waste
places to which neither man nor beast go willingly. Yet an unknown urge
pushes one on, that urge which from time immemorial has impelled saint
in search of salvation, and age in search of youth, as well as youth in
search of adventure, to the most inaccessible reaches of the world. All
of us bring back accounts of what we've seen, but which of us can answer
why we went?
First impressions in older countries are generally confusing. Ages of
accumulations pile up, covered with the dust of centuries which has gone
through innumerable processes of sifting. But the stranger in the
Antipodes is plunged into a bath of youth. Every aspect of the country
is young. The volcanoes are mostly extinct, but about them lurks the
warmth of the camp fire just died down. In mountain, bush, and plain
something of the childhood of Mother Earth is still felt; at most, an
adolescence, rich in possibilities. One almost feels that the very
rivers are only the remnants of the receding floods after the rising of
the land from beneath the sea. There is nothing old anywhere. Instead of
being disappointed at the apparent paucity of man-made products, one is
greatly surprised that so little and young a country should have so
much. There is room, much room, ample acres which lie fallow, the winds
of opportunity blowing over them, wild with abandon.
New Zealand, as I said, was a kind of resting-place. It was the point
where the lines of interest in the native peoples of the Pacific, and
those of the efforts of the white men, intersected, just as later I was
to find a point of intersection between the white men and the Orientals
at Hongkong. For here the new social life of the South Pacific, and the
remnants of the old races of the Pacific equally divide the attention.
I had some little difficulty locating Auckland from the steamer, so many
suburbs littered the forty miles of irregular bluff which surrounds the
harbor. The homes upon the hills seemed reserved and unambitious. There
were no streams of smoke from factory and mill. One felt, at the moment
of arrival, that were it morning, noon, or night, whatever the season,
Auckland would still be the same, and New Zealand would continue to be
proud of the resemblance the youngest of its cities has for its parent.
All seemed quiet, restful and inactive.
If all these were inactive, not so the human elements. Their rumblings
on localisms were to be heard even before we landed. As a new-comer, I
was made aware of Wellington, the capital, and its winds; of the city of
Christchurch and its plains; of prides and jealousies which provincial
patriots acclaimed in good-natured playfulness. Dunedin's raininess was
said to have been a special providence for the benefit of the Scotch who
have isolated themselves there. The wonders of this place and the beauty
of that broke through the mists of my imagination like tiny star-holes
through the night.
2
I had returned to civilization, and though all my instincts settled into
an assurance which was comforting, a feeling that dengue fever was no
more, that damp and moldy beds and smell of copra would not again be
mingled with my food and slumber, still, I knew I was not a part of it.
Almost immediately my mind began moving spiral-like, outward and upward,
to escape. I was to do it all in a month. I was to see Auckland, with
its neighbor, Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano; I was to visit the other
large cities,--vaguely their existence was becoming real to me,--I was
to penetrate at least some of New Zealand's dangerous bush, to see the
primitive-civilized lives of the native Maories. But, strange to say,
return to civilization had the identical effect on me that return to
primitive life is said to have on the white man. It entered my being in
the form of indolence. I did not want to move. I wanted to rest. To stay
a while in that place, to make myself part of the life of the city, to
remain fixed, became a burning desire with me. And days went by without
my being able to stir myself on again.
The life in the Dominion was conducive to ease and dreaming. Nobody
seemed in any hurry about anything, least of all about taking you in.
Every one went upon a way long worn down by the tread of familiar feet.
The conflicts of pioneer aggressiveness were over. The differences
between the aboriginal and the foreign elements were lost in the
overpowering crowding in of the alien. The stone and wooden structures,
the railways and the piers, the homes wandering along over the hills as
far as the eye could see, completely concealed that which originally was
New Zealand.
I spent one month wandering up and down Auckland's one main street, and
I can assure you it was like no other main street in the world, except
those of every other city in New Zealand. There were the carts and the
cars by day, and the clearing of the pavement of every vehicle for
pedestrian parades by night. There were the carnivals and the fêtes on
Queens Street, and on every other royal highway during the summer
months; and during the two hours which New Zealanders require for lunch,
there was nothing to be done but to lunch too. And then on Sunday nights
there was the confusion of cults and isms each with its panacea for
spiritual and social ills. Nobody was expected to do anything but go to
church; hence the street cars didn't run during church hours, and the
bathing-places were closed. And after ten o'clock it was as impossible
to get a cup of tea outside one's own home as it is to get whisky in an
open saloon in New York to-day.
On the _Niagara_ I had been assured by a young lady from New Zealand
that we Americans didn't know what home life was and that she would show
me the genuine thing when I got to her little country. She did, and I
have been most grateful to her for it. It was sober and clean and quiet,
and I accepted with great satisfaction every invitation offered me,
because it was a thousand times better than being alone on the deserted
streets. But the good Lord was wise when He made provision for one
Sunday a week, as His human creation could hardly endure it more
frequently; and that is what one might say of New Zealand home life. It
is all that is good and wholesome, all that is necessary for the rearing
of unobstreperous young, but red blood should not be made to run like
syrup, though I quite agree with my New Zealand friend that it should
not be kept at the boiling-point, either. Our evenings were usually
spent in quiet chatting on safe generalities interspersed with home
songs and nice cocoa; and at ten o'clock we would separate. I hope that
my New Zealand friends will not feel hurt at what I say. Let them put it
down to my wild-Americanism. But home life on a Sunday evening was not
worth going all the way diagonally across the Pacific to taste.
Hence, a month in Auckland was quite enough for me. By that time the
call of the mountains and lakes had come to me, and in natural beauty
New Zealand can rival any other country of its size I have ever been to,
except Japan. In answering that call I accepted the swagger's account of
how life should be lived and took to the open road. In the year that
followed I filled my memory with treasures that cannot be classified in
any summary. From Auckland in the North Island to Dunedin in the South
Island I journeyed on foot through three long months, zigzagging my way
virtually from coast to coast, dreaming away night after night along the
great Waikato River, holding taut my soul in the face of the mysteries
of the hot-springs districts, and quenching feverish experiences upon
the shores of placid cold lakes and beneath snow-covered peaks of
mountain ranges thirteen thousand feet high; gripping my reason during
long night tramps in the uninhabited bush (forests) or in Desolation
Gully, forty miles from nowhere. I know what wild life in New Zealand
is, as well as tame. It is not all that it used to be when men left
their home lands for that new start in life which Heaven knows every man
is entitled to, considering what our notions of childhood are and the
eagerness of man to pounce upon any one who has not reached
insurmountable success.
[Illustration: DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND
From the belt of wild wood that girdles the city]
[Illustration: BRIDGES ARE STILL LUXURIES IN MANY PLACES IN NEW
ZEALAND]
[Illustration: THE FIORDS AND SOUNDS OF NEW ZEALAND
The pride of the Dominion
Post Card. J. B. Series No. 205]
[Illustration: LAKE WANAKA, NEW ZEALAND]
In between I saw the courageous struggles these selfsame men have gone
through and are still enduring in order to make of the whole of New
Zealand what it is as yet only in parts. Those parts are rich farm
lands, with swiftly scouting motor-cars used by great capitalist-farmers
who have more than one station to look after. It is a strange phenomenon
of New Zealand life that the small farm towns are generally much more
alert and progressive than the big cities. The New Zealanders build
houses that look like transplanted suburbs from around New York, and
bring to their villages some of the love of plant life that the
city-dweller is soon too sophisticated to share. They draw out to
themselves the moving-picture theaters, which are now the all-possessing
rage in the Dominion as elsewhere, and read the latest periodicals with
the interest of the townsman. There are over a thousand newspapers in
the Dominion, which for a population of a million is a goodly number,
though one cannot regard this as too great an indication of the
intellectual advancement of the people. Yet literacy is the possession
of the farmer as much as and frequently more than the city-dweller in
New Zealand. His children go to school even if they have to use the
trains to get there; free railway passes on these are accorded by the
Government. And on the whole the farmer's life in New Zealand is richer
than that of most rural communities. But the struggle is still great. I
have seen some who do not feel that the promise is worth it.
Though each of the big cities in the Dominion has its own special
characteristics, they are all considerably alike. The three chief ones
are all port cities of about 80,000 inhabitants each, and except for the
fact that Dunedin in the far south is essentially Scotch and somewhat
more stolid than the rest, and Wellington in the center is the capital
of the Dominion and therefore suspicious, one may go up and down their
steep hills without any change in one's social gears. The colonial
atmosphere is at once charming and chilling. There is a certain sobriety
throughout which makes up for lack of the luxuries of modern life. But
one cannot escape the conviction that regularity is not all that man
needs. Everything moves along at the pace of a river at low
level,--broad, spacious, serene, but without hidden places to explore or
sparkling peaks of human achievement to emulate. One paddles down the
stream of New Zealand life without the prospect of thrills. One might
be transported from Auckland in the north to Wellington or Dunedin in
the south during sleep, and after waking set about one's tasks without
realizing that a change had been made.
Every city is well lighted; good trams (trolley-cars) convey one in all
directions, but at an excessively high fare; the water and sewerage
systems are never complained of; the theaters are good and the shops
full of things from England and America. There are even many fine
motor-cars. But there are few signs of great wealth, though
comparatively big fortunes are not unknown. It is rumored that
ostentation is never indulged in, as the attitude of the people as a
whole is averse to it.
On the other hand, neither are there any signs of extreme poverty,
though it exists; and slums to harbor it. While the usual evils of
social life obtain, the small community life makes it impossible for
them to become rampant. Every one knows every one else and that which is
taboo, if indulged in, must be carried out with such extreme secrecy as
to make it impossible for any blemish to appear upon the face of things.
In these circumstances, one is immediately classified and accepted or
rejected, according as one is or is not acceptable. Having recognized
certain outstanding features of the gentleman in you, the New Zealander
is Briton enough to accept you without further ado. There is in a sense
a certain naïveté in his measurement of the stranger. He is frank in
questioning your position and your integrity, but shrinks from carrying
his suspicions too far. He will ask you bluntly: "Are you what you say
you are?" "Of course I am," you say. "Then come along, mate." But he
does not take you very far, not because he is niggardly, but because he
is thrifty.
As a result of this New Zealand spirit I found myself befriended from
one end of New Zealand to the other by a single family, the elder
brother having given me letters of introduction to every one of his
kin,--in Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, and
Dunedin. And with but two or three exceptions I have always found New
Zealanders generous and open-hearted. Wherever I went, once I broke
through a certain shyness and reserve, I found myself part of the group,
though generally I did not remain long, because I felt that new
sensations could not be expected.
My one great difficulty was in keeping from falling in love with the New
Zealand girls. Rosy-cheeked, sturdy, silently game and rebellious, they
know what it is to be flirtatious. For them there is seldom any other
way out of their loneliness. Only here and there do parents think it
necessary to give their daughters any social life outside the home. In
these days of the movies, New Zealand girls are breaking away from
knitting and home ties. But even then few girls care to preside at
representations of others' love-affairs without the opportunity of going
home and practising, themselves. Hence the streets are filled with
flirtatious maidens strolling four abreast, hoping for a chance to break
into the couples and quartets of young men who choose their own manly
society in preference to that of expensive girls. I have seen these
groups pass one another, up and down the streets, frequent the
tea-houses and soda fountains, carry on their flirtations from separate
tables, pay for their own refreshments or their own theater tickets; but
real commingling of the sexes in public life is not pronounced.
At the beaches! That is different. There the dunes and bracken are alive
with couples all hours of the day or night during the holiday and summer
seasons. Thence emerge engagements and hasty marriages, nor can parental
watchfulness guard against it.
3
The most difficult thing in all my New Zealand experiences was to
reconcile the latent conservatism of the people with their outstanding
progressiveness. It would be easy to assert without much fear of
contradiction that notwithstanding all the talk of radicalism in the
matter of labor legislation there is little of it in practice in the
Dominion. The reason for this is twofold. First, New Zealand, unlike
Australia and America, was not a rebellious offshoot of England, not a
protest against Old-World curtailment. Quite the contrary, it was made
in the image of the mother country, and natural selection for the time
being was dormant. Furthermore, it was simple for labor to dominate in a
country where labor was to be had only at that premium.
Nowhere in the whole Dominion did I come across concrete evidence of
awakened consciousness on the part of the masses to their opportunities.
None of that feverish haste to raise monuments of achievement to
accompany the legislative enactments which have given New Zealand an
illustrious place among the nations. True, the country is young; true,
there are not enough people there to pile creation on creation. But that
is not it. It is that they are not keyed up to any great notions of what
they ought to expect of themselves, but are content with what freedom
and leisure of life they possess.
Throughout the length and breadth of the two islands, islands more than
two thirds the size of Japan, there isn't an outstanding structure of
any great architectural value; there isn't a statue or a monument of
artistic importance; there is hardly a painting of exceptional quality;
nor, with all the remarkable beauty of nature which is New Zealand's, is
there any poetic outpouring of love of nature that one would expect from
a people heirs to some of the finest poetry in the world. Even British
India has its Kipling and its Tagore. With all the excellence of their
efforts to solve the problem of the welfare of the masses, New
Zealanders show no excessive largeness of heart in the sort of welcome
they extend to labor of other lands. Here, it would seem, is a land
where the world may well be reborn, where there is every opportunity for
the correction of age-long wrongs that have become too much a part of
Europe for Europeans to resent them too heartily. Yet what is New
Zealand doing and what has it done in seventy-five years to approximate
Utopia?
This is not meant as a criticism of New Zealand; rather is it meant to
let New Zealand know that the eyes of the world are upon it and expect
much from it. Possession may be nine points of the law; but the
utilization of opportunity which possession entails is the tenth point
toward the retention of that which one has.
Babies are cared for better in New Zealand than any other place in the
world, yet boys and girls still receive that antiquated form of
correction, corporal punishment, and thought of letting the youth find
his own salvation, with guidance only, not coercion, is still alien to
the New Zealand pedagogic mind. Women have had the vote for over
twenty-five years, but the freedom of woman to seek her own development,
to become a factor in the social life of the community apart from the
man's, is still a neglected dream. And young women are dying of ennui
because they aren't given enough to do. The country is fairly rich, with
its enormous droves of sheep, great pastures full of cattle, its
coöperative capitalistic farming-schemes; but the human genius for
beauty and self-expression must find opportunity in Britain or America.
And even the old romance of pioneer life is virtually of the past. In
all my wanderings I came across only one home that made me throw out my
emotional chest to contain the spirit of the pioneer life of which we
all love to hear. It was a house as rough as it was old, laden with
shelving and hung with guns, horns, and lithographs, and cheered by a
blazing open fire,--an early virility New Zealand has now completely
outgrown. The house must have been fifty years old, to judge from the
Scotsman living there. He was keen, alert, and quick, a most
interesting opponent in discussion, most firm in his beliefs without
being offensive. Here, in the very heart of one of the earliest of New
Zealand's settlement districts in the South Island, he lived with his
family; and something of the old sweetness of life, the atmosphere of
successful conquest, obtained. And ever as I dug down into New Zealand's
past, I found it charming. The present is too steeped in cheap machine
processes to be either durable or really satisfying.
Discouraging as this may sound, he who has lived in the little Dominion
and has learned to love its people and their ways, hastens to contradict
his own charges. For in time, as one becomes better acquainted, one
finds a healthy discontent brewing beneath that apathetic exterior. Just
as the Chinese will do anything to "save face" so the Briton will do
anything not to "lose face." He loses much of his latent charm in so
restricting himself, but when assured that a new convention is afoot and
that it is safe for him to venture forth with it, he will do so with a
zest that is itself worth much.
Furthermore, there is in the atmosphere of staid New Zealand life a
passion for the out-of-doors which is worth more than all the Greenwich
Village sentiment twice over. Girls are always just as happy in the open
and more interesting than when indulging in cigarettes and exposing
shapely legs in intellectual parlors. Given twenty million people
instead of one New Zealand would blossom forth into one of the loveliest
flowers of the Pacific.
4
In the Auckland (New Zealand) Art Gallery hangs a picture representing
the coming of the Maories to New Zealand. Their long canoe is filled
with emaciated people vividly suggesting the suffering and privation
they must have undergone in coming across the mainland some four hundred
years ago. Venturing without sail or compass, these daring Polynesians
must have possessed intrepid and courageous natures.
Yet at the time I was in that gallery the place was full of stifled
boyish laughter. A half-dozen little tots, with spectacles and
school-bags, one with blazing red hair, had come to see the pictures.
They were not Maori children, but the offspring of the white race, which
less than a hundred years ago came in their sailing-vessels and
steamers, with powder and lead, and took with comparative ease a land
won by such daring travail.
I had heard much of these natives,--idyllic tales of their charm and the
lure of their maidens. Those lovely Maori girls! I expected to see them
crowding the streets of Auckland. But they were conspicuous by their
absence. Occasionally a few could be seen squatting on the sidewalks,
more strangers to the city than I, more outstanding from the display of
color and manner which thronged Queens Street than any American could be
in so ultra a British community as dominates New Zealand. Where are the
Maories? I wondered. Upon their "reservations" like our own Amerinds, or
lost to their own costumes and even to their own blood and color?
I had returned to Auckland from a visit with a friend whose wife was
Maori, in the company of her nephew. He carried with him a basket of
eels as a gift to his mother, and walked up the street with me. At a
corner he was hailed by a dark-skinned man in a well-cut business suit,
and said, "There is my father. I must leave you." In another moment he
was in a large touring car and was whizzed away by his Maori father at
the wheel. No wonder I hadn't been able to see any Maories.
I visited a school where Maori boys are being encouraged to artificial
exercises,--sports, hurdle-jumping, running. I watched them make ready,
eager for the petty prizes offered. Off went their shoes, out went their
chests, expanded with ancestral joy. In their bare feet, still as tough
as in former days before they were induced to buy cowhides, they
skipped over the ground, filled for the moment with the glory of being
alive. Their faces broke out in fantastic, native grimaces and
contortions as though an imaginary enemy confronted them. But alas, they
were seeking him in the wrong direction! The enemy comes with no spears,
and no clang, but he is more deadly. He is not without but within. He
makes them cough. They fall behind.
"They do not last long," said the Briton who was instructing them. "They
are dying rapidly of consumption. As long as we keep them here in school
they are all right. Finer specimens of human physique could not be found
anywhere. But as soon as they return to their _pas_, and live in the
squalor of the native villages, they return to all the old methods of
life and soon go under."
I set out on my tramp through New Zealand. At Bombey, a few days' jaunt
from Auckland, I met an old settler, whose accounts of the great and
last war of the redcoats with the fierce fighters of Maoriland dated
back to our own Civil War, 1861-64. Until that time both Maories and
Britons said, with few exceptions, "Our races cannot mix. One or the
other of us must give away." Naturally, the Maories had the prior claim,
but they finally yielded, surrendering their lands to the aliens at
Ngaruawahia, "The Meeting of the Waters," that little hamlet lying in
the crotch between the beautiful Waikato River and one of its
tributaries. And henceforward, the two races were constrained to meet,
and rush down together into that green sea of human commonalty, albeit
one of them contributes the dominant volume.
Maori legend has it that the Maories are the descendants of the great
_Rangatira_ (chief) who was the offspring of a similarly great _Tanewa_
(shark). He was born in the dark southern caves of the Tongariro
Mountains, and the spirits of their ancestors have always dwelt along
the broad Waikato. Along this river I wandered for many days, but I
found few of the Rangatira's descendants. If one is quiet and alone the
voice of the great Tanewa will call softly through the marsh rushes from
out of the heart of the quivering flax. It is peaceful and encompassing,
modest and almost afraid. I heard it and I am sure those Maories hear it
who are not too engrossed in the scramble after foreign trinkets. It
said: "The last mortal or man descendant of mine will be the offspring
of a Pakeha-Maori (a white man who lives among the Maories) who will
live in the cities and rush about in motor-cars, but I shall remain in
the marshes, the calm rivers, and near the glittering leaves of flax."
A few miles farther on I came to Huntley, and hearing that there was a
native village across the Waikato River, I turned thither by way of the
bridge. I overtook two _wahines_, slovenly, indolent, careless in their
manners. They spoke to me flippantly. They wanted to know if I was bound
for the missionaries' place. This led to questions from me: Why were
they turning Mormon? Which sect did they prefer? But I could obtain
answers only by innuendo. I left these two women behind and found three
others chasing a pig in an open field, three boys bathing a horse in the
deep river. All about the village was strewn refuse; vicious dogs slunk
hungrily about,--neglect, neglect, on every hand. But instead of flimsy
native huts there were wooden shacks with corrugated iron roofs, the
longer to remain unregenerate, breeders of disease and wasters of human
energy.
But the more elaborate native village at Rotorua, at the other end of
the island, where visitors are frequent, was more up-to-date and
cleaner. And on a little knoll was a model of an old Maori _pah_, such
as was used in the days before guns made it possible to fight in ambush
and in the valleys, and brought the sturdy savages down not only from
their more wholesome heights but from their position of vantage as a
race.
Here I met an odd sort of article in the way of human ware. Only
seventeen, he was twice my size, and lazy and pliable in proportion. He
would come into my room and just stay. With a steady, piercing, yet
stolid and almost epileptic stare, cunning, yet not shrewd, not steady,
nor guided by any evident train of thought, he would watch me write. I
was a mystery to him, and he frankly doubted the truth of things I told
him.
First he said I had the build of a prize-fighter; then, perhaps on
thinking it over, he doubted that I had ever done any hard work in my
life. As to himself, he said he loved to break in wild horses. His
father, according to one tale, was wealthy; two of his brothers were
engineers on boats. But he hated study. He was altogether lacking in any
notion of time, but he was not lazy. He was even ready to do work that
was not his to do.
One afternoon he was in a most jovial mood. He was about to have a tent
raised in which he would spend the summer, instead of the hotel room
allotted to the help. He was full of glee at the prospect. Primitive
instincts seemed to waken in him. But there was a sudden
reaction,--whimsical. We had stepped upon the lawn which afforded an
open view across Lake Rotorua.
"Strange, isn't it," he said without any preamble, "how money goes from
one man to another, from here to Auckland and to Sydney? So much money."
He became reminiscent: "Maories didn't know a thing about money. They
were rich. See, across this lake,--that little island,--the whole was
once a battle-field. The Maories went out in their canoes and fought
with their battle-axes. What for? Oh, to gain lands. But now they are
poor. Things are so dead here now. Nothing doing." A moment later he was
called and disappeared. It was the only time he was ever communicative.
The tent had roused in him racial regrets.
One evening he came up to my door and told me there was a dance at the
hall, and that he was going to it. Again that strange revival of racial
memories, but these of hope and prospect, came into his face, "I'm going
to take my 'tart' (girl) with me," he announced. And later in the
evening, as I sat alone, watching the moon rise over the lake, the
laughter of those Maories rang out across the hills.
Though I wandered for many miles, running into the hundreds, the number
of Maori villages and people I came across were few and far between. Yet
records show that once these regions were alive with more than a hundred
thousand fighting natives. At Rotorua, the hot-springs district in the
North Island, the _pah_ was in exceptionally good condition, but it was
so largely because the New Zealand Government has made of the place one
of its most attractive tourist resorts and the natives are permitted to
exact a tax from every visitor who wishes to see the geysers. Elsewhere
the villages are dull, dreary, and neglected: the farther away from
civilization, the worse they get. The consequence is not surprising.
According to the census of 1896, there were 39,854 people of the Maori
race: 21,673 males, 18,181 females, of which 3,503 were half-castes who
lived as Maories, and 229 Maori women married to Europeans. The Maori
population fell from 41,993 in 1891 to 39,854 in 1896, a decrease in
five years of 2,139. But in 1901 it had risen to 43,143, going steadily
up to 49,844 in 1911, and dropping to 49,776 in 1916 on account of the
European war.
There was considerable discussion in the New Zealand Parliament on the
question of whether the Maories should be included in the Draft Act,
most white men declaring that a race which was dying, despite this
seeming increase, should not be taxed for its sturdiest young men in a
war that was in truth none of its concern. But the Maories--that is,
their representatives--objected, saying they did not wish to be
discriminated against. Among the young men, however, I found not a few
who were inclined to reason otherwise. So it was that while I was
talking to the young fellows who were washing their horse in the
Waikato, one of them said to me:
"Yes. Years ago the white men came to us with guns and cannon and powder
and compelled us to give up our warfare, which kept us in good condition
individually and as a race. We put aside our weapons. Now they come to
us and tell us we must go to Europe and fight for them." And he became
silent and thoughtful.
As I came back into Huntly from my visit to the _pah_ I passed the
little court-house, before which was a crowd of Maories. Some of the
_wahines_ sat with shawls over their heads smoking their pipes as though
they were in trousers, not skirts. I chatted with the British Bobby who
stood at the door, asking him what was bestirring Maoriland so much.
"Oh, that bally old king of theirs has been subpoenaed to answer for his
brother. The blighter has been keeping him out of sight so that he won't
be taken in the draft."
"But," I protested--democrat though I was, my heart went out to the old
"monarch"--"can't the king get his brother, the archduke and possible
successor to the throne, out of performing a task that might hazard the
foundation of the imperial line?"
"King be damned! Wait till we get the blighter in here," said the
servant of the law, pressing his heels into the soft, oozy tar pavement
as he turned scornfully from me.
5
A few days later I was cutting my way through a luxuriant mountain
forest above Te Horoto in the North Island, listening to the melodious
_tui_, the bell-bird, and to the song of the parson-bird in his black
frock of feathers with a small tuft of white under his beak, like the
reversed collar of a cleric. No sound of bird in any of the many
countries I have been to has ever filled me with greater rapture than
did this. There are thousands of skylarks in New Zealand, brought from
England, but had Shelley heard the _tui_ he might have written an ode
more beautiful even than that to the "blithe spirit" he has
immortalized. Yet, like the human natives, these feathery folk have
vastly decreased since the coming of the white man. No wonder Pehi Hetan
Turoa, great chief of a far country on the other side of the island, in
complaining of the decay of his race, said: "Formerly, when we went into
a forest, and stood under a tree, we could not hear ourselves speak for
the noise of the birds--every tree was full of them.... Now, many of the
birds have died out."
Enraptured with the loveliness of the native bush and the clear, sweet
air, I pressed up the mountain side with great strides. Presently I
passed a simple Maori habitation. It was about noon. Seeing smoke rise
out of an opening in the roof, indicating that the owners were at home,
I entered the yard. My eyes, full of the bright, clear sunlight, could
not discern any living thing as I poked my head in at the door, but I
could hear a voice bidding me enter. I stepped into a sort of
antechamber, a large section of the hut with a floor of beaten earth and
a single pillar slightly off the center supporting the roof. Gradually,
as my eyes became accustomed to the subdued light, I saw an aged couple
within a small alcove on the farther side. An open fire crackled in the
center of its floor. The old woman sitting on her bed-space, was bending
over the flame, fanning it to life. The old man, who was very tall, lay
on a mat-bed to the right, his legs stretched in my direction. The two
beds, the fire, and the old couple took up the entire space of the
alcove,--a sort of kitchenette-bedroom affair like our modern "studio"
apartments.
"Where are you from?" asked the old man, after I had seated myself
before the fire. "America," I said. My reply evoked no great surprise in
him.
"The village is quiet," I said. "Where are the people?"
"Oh, down in the valley, working in the fields."
"Don't you go out, too?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm too old now. My legs ache with rheumatism. I go no more. Let
the young fellows work. Stay and have tea with us," he urged.
I looked at their stock. They did not seem to have any too much
themselves, and the old woman seemed a little worried. I knew that the
heart of the hostess was the same the world over, so I assured them I
had had my meal, and only wished to rest a while away from the sun. The
old woman showed relief.
We chatted as cordially as it is possible where tongues cannot fully
make themselves understood. I learned that the man was an old chief. He
could not fall in with the times, acknowledged his inability to direct
the affairs of this strange world, and only asked for rest and quiet,
and the respect due one of his position. He did not expect to live long,
nor did he much care. "These are not days for me," he said with a smile.
He did not speak of the former glories of his race. Doubtless he could
not exactly make up his mind whether to look before or after: if there
were great chiefs before, are there not big M.P.'s now?
The fire was burning low, and I knew that the old woman would have to go
for more wood unless she hurried with the preparation of her meal, and
that as long as I was there I was delaying her. So I rose to go. The old
man excused himself for not rising by pointing to his lame legs. She saw
me to the gate, and as I struck down the road she waved her hand after
me in farewell, and remained behind the screen of trees round which I
veered.
Down in the valley lying almost precipitately below me were a number of
natives working in their fields; but my road led me on to the cities,
and it is there that the future of this race hangs in the balance.
Some months later, while I was living in Dunedin in the far south of the
South Island, the newspapers came out in a way almost American, so
exciting was the bit of news. The editorial world forgot all decorum and
dignity and pulled out the largest type it had on hand. It was announced
that the Maori priest, Rua, was caught. Several persons were wounded and
one, I believe, was killed in the process. The priest was treated with
no respect and little consideration and thrown into prison,--all because
he believed in having several wives as his men-folk always had, if they
were chiefs and priests, and was trying to put a little life into his
race, trying to stir it up to casting out these "foreign devils." He had
built himself a temple that was an interesting work of art, but it holds
worshipers no more, even though the priest has since been released. His
efforts to rouse his people failed. Such efforts are only the reflex
action of a dying race.
CHAPTER VII
ASTRIDE THE EQUATOR
_The Second Side of The Triangle_
Dark is the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this world of Time:
God's way is in the sea, and His path in the great deep.--Carlyle.
1
More than a year went by before I began drawing in the radial thread
that held me suspended from the North Star under the Southern Cross,--a
year replete with lone wanderings and searching reflections. During all
those months not a single day had passed without my surveying in my
mind's eye the reaches of the Pacific that lay between me and the
Orient. Roundabout New Zealand I had become familiar with the Tasman Sea
looking toward Australia, on the shores of which I had spent some of the
most mysterious nights of my life; on Hawkes Bay looking out toward
South America; and across the surging waters of Otago Harbor at Dunedin,
looking in the direction of the frozen reaches of Antarctica.
Once staid Dunedin was thrilled by a wireless S.O.S. from the direction
of the South Pole. The _Aurora_, Shackleton's ship which had gone down
to the polar regions, was calling for help. She had snapped the cables
which tied her to land when the ice-packs gave way and had drifted out
to sea. Fortunately, most of the officers and crew were at the moment on
board, but sixteen men were left marooned. To add to the prospect of
tragedy, the ice smashed the rudder, and a jury-rudder, worked by hand
from the stern deck, had to be improvised. With these handicaps the
vessel made her way slowly till within five hundred miles of New
Zealand, the reach of her wireless. Here she was rescued by a Dunedin
tug and brought to Port Chalmers.
[Illustration: THE S. S. _AURORA_
Just arrived at Port Chalmers, N. Z., from the South Pole]
[Illustration: MOUNT COOK OF THE NEW ZEALAND ALPS IN SUMMER]
[Illustration: CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
A whirl of pleasure-seeking and business]
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK
At Botany Bay, Australia]
I made friends with the mate and the chief engineer and gained access to
their superb collection of Emperor Penguin skins and an unusual number
of photographs. Months afterward they wanted four men to complete the
crew necessary for another journey south and I was tempted to join them,
but tallow and bladder and a repressed pen were the negatives, while
China and Japan were the positives. So I sailed away with the rising sun
in the direction of the great West that is the Far East. Crisp and clear
in the bright morning air shone the towering peaks of the New Zealand
Alps as I sailed toward Australia and to Botany Bay,--not, however,
without being nearly wrecked in the fog which had gathered in Foveaux
Strait, which separates Steward Island from the South Island in New
Zealand. Bluff, the last little town in New Zealand, is said to have the
most southerly hotel in the world. I saw it.
2
Four days from Bluff to Melbourne on a sea that seemed on the verge of
congealing into ice. It was not cold, yet autumn-like. And the
passengers seemed the fallen leaves. The stewards maintained the
reputation for impudence and unmannerliness of the Union Steamship
Company crews, but I had grown used to that, and thanked my stars that
this was the last coupon in the ticket I had purchased in Honolulu more
than a year before. Of human incidents there was therefore none to
relate.
But chill and melancholy as that Southern sea was, there hovered over it
a creature whose call upon one's interest was more than compensating.
Swooping with giant wings in careless ease, the albatross followed us
day in and day out. Always on the wing, awake or asleep, in sunshine or
in storm, the air his home as the water is to fish, and earth to mammal.
Even the ship was no lure for him by way of support. He followed it,
accepted whatever was thrown from it, but as for dependence upon it,--no
such weakness, you may be sure. His sixteen feet of wing-spread moved
like a ship upon the waves, like a combination of a ship and sails.
Swift, huge, glorious, unconsciously majestic, he is indeed a bird of
good omen. How he floats with never a sign of effort! How he glides atop
the waves, skims them, yet is never reached by their flame-like
leapings; simulates their motion without the exhaustion into which they
sink incessantly.
The albatross had left us, and now the swarming is his artistry, so
refined his "table manners." He does not gorge himself as does the
sea-gull, nor is he ever heard to screech that selfish, hungry,
insatiable screech. Silent, sadly voiceless, rhythmic and symbolic
without being restrained by pride of art, he exemplifies right living.
He is our link between shores, the one dream of reality on an ocean of
opiate loveliness wherein there is little of earth's confusion and pain.
For the traveler he keeps the balance between the deadly stability of
land life and the dream-like mystery of the sea. But for him it were
impossible to come so easily out of an experience of a long voyage. Away
down there he is the only reminder of reality. Which explains the
reverence sailors have for him and their superstitious dread of killing
him. It is like the dread of the physician that his knife may too
sharply stir the numbed senses of his patient under anæsthesia.
Land may be said to begin where the albatross is seen to depart. He
knows, and off he swoops, ship or no ship to follow and to guide; back
over the thousand miles of watery waste, to measure the infinite with
his sixteen-foot wings, glide by glide, with the speed of a twin-screw
turbine. Only when the female enters the breeding season does she seek
out a lost island to rear her young. Independent of the sea, these birds
are utterly confined to it, a mystery floating within mystery.
The albatross have left us, and now the swarming gulls abound. Why they
are dignified with the Christian name "Sea" when they are such homely
land-lubbers, is a question that I cannot answer. Pilots, rather, they
come to see us into the harbor, or, with their harsh screeching, to
frighten us away.
But something within me would not know Australia, nor any lands, just
then. Perhaps it was that my unconscious self was still with the
albatross; for strange as it may seem I could not sense any forward
direction at all that day, but only one that pointed backward,--toward
home. Try as I would to realize myself on my way to Australia, still my
mind persisted in pointing toward America. Not until we got the first
sight of land ahead was my soul set right. Then it was the Sister
Islands, Wilson's Promontory, the Bass Straits, with Tasmania barely in
sight, Cape Liptrap, and finally Port Phillip. And Australia was on all
fours, veiled in blue,--a thin rind of earth steeped in summer splendor.
Flag signals were exchanged with the lonely pilot-ship that hung about
the entrance. All being well, we passed on, crossing that point at the
entrance where five strong water-currents meet and vanquish one another,
turning into a smooth, glassy coat of treachery. The _Wimmera_ hugged
the right shore of the largest harbor I have ever seen. In places the
other shore could not be seen with the naked eye. But it is very shallow
and innumerable lights float in double file to guard all ships from
being stranded.
Just as we entered, the sun set. A stream of color unconstrained
obliterated all detail as it poured over the point of the harbor,
filling the spacious port. Clots of amber and orange gathered and were
dissipated, softened, diffused, till slowly all died down and were
gone. Darkness and the blinking lights of the buoys remained.
Two big ships, brilliantly lighted, flinging their manes of smoke to the
winds, passed, one on its way to Sydney, the other to Tasmania and
Adelaide in the south. Far in the distance ahead we could see the string
of shore lights at Port Williamson. It took us three hours to overtake
them, and we arrived too late to receive pratique. For half an hour the
captain and the customs carried on a conversation with blinking lights.
The winches suddenly began their rasping sound, and the anchor dropped
to the bottom. We did not debark that night.
3
I spent nearly six months in Melbourne and Sydney, those two eastern
eyes of that wild old continent, and for the first time in a twelvemonth
the sense of security from the sea obtained. For a fortnight I occupied
a little shack on Manly Beach, near Sydney, but oh, how different it was
there from the sand-dunes on the shores at Dunedin, in New Zealand! In
the Dominion one had to hide within the interior to get away from the
sea: on the beach one felt about to slip into Neptune's maw. But at
Manly, Bondi, Botany Bay, the sea might hammer away for another eternity
without putting a landlubber off his ease.
But we shall return to Australia in another section. The sea is still
much in the blood, there is still a vast length that lies close to Asia
and marks off another line of our imaginary triangle. Here are no
landless reaches, but all the way to Japan one passes strip after strip,
as though some giant earthquake had shattered part of the main.
Months afterward I took passage once more, this time on the _Eastern_,
bound for Japan.
There was no mistaking the side of the world I was on and the direction
of my journey from the moment I stepped upon the pier to which the
_Eastern_ was made fast. Hundreds of Chinese, with thousands of boxes
and bundles, scurried to and fro in an ant-like attention to little
details. Then as the steamer was about to depart, mobilization for the
counting of noses took place, and veritable regiments of emaciated
yellow men lined the decks. Here and there a fat, successful-looking
Chinese moved round the crowd, an altogether different-looking species,
more as one who lives on them than as one who lives with them. On the
dock stood several groups waiting to wave farewell to their Oriental
kin. One of these groups was composed of a stout white woman with two
very pretty Eurasian daughters,--as handsome a pair of girls as I saw in
Australia. Their father was a well-to-do Chinese merchant taking one of
his regular trips to China. In Australian fashion they were ready for a
mild flirtation, spoke Australian English with Australian slang, and,
aside from their pater, they were native to all intents and purposes.
And in Australia they remained.
Of those who departed, the major number likewise remained native--though
to China--despite years and years of residence in Australia. It is a
one-sided argument to maintain that because of that the Chinese are
unassimilable. There is no ground for such a deduction, because they
arrived mainly after maturity, and the Chinese could challenge any white
man to become one of them after he has fully acquired his habits and
prejudices. But we had not been many minutes at sea before it was our
misfortune to find that we had among us a Chinese boy who was born and
brought up in New Zealand and was just then going to China for the first
time. Here I had ample opportunity of observing the assimilability of
the Oriental. And here I bow before the inevitable.
He had assimilated every obnoxious characteristic of our civilization,
the passion for slang, the impertinence, the false pride, the bluff
which is the basis of Western crowd psychology. He was not a
Chinese,--that he denied most vehemently,--he was a New Zealander, and
by virtue of his birth he assumed the right to impose his boyish
larrikinism upon all the ship's unfortunate passengers. He banged the
piano morning, noon, and night; he affected long, straight black hair,
which was constantly getting in his way and being brushed carefully back
over his head; and he took great pains to make himself as generally
obnoxious as possible. He was not that serious, struggling Chinese
student who comes to America afire with hope for the regeneration of his
race. He was a New Zealander, knew no other affiliations, had no
aspirations, and lorded it over "those Chinese" who occupied every bit
of available space on the steamer.
In his way he was also a Don Juan, for he hovered over the young
half-Australian wife of a middle-aged Chinese merchant who was taking
her back to China for her confinement. She was morose, sullen, as
unhappy a spirit as I have seen in an Oriental body. Obviously, China
held few fine prospects for her. She was seldom seen in her husband's
company, for he was generally below playing fan-tan or gambling in some
other fashion. And the Australian half of her was longing for home. It
seemed to devolve upon our young Don Juan to court this unhappy
creature, and court her he did. But she had no resilience, no flash, her
Chinese half-self offering him as little reward for his pains as a cow
would offer the sun for a brilliant setting.
I expected any hour of the day to see that woman throw herself into the
sea, or that husband stick a knife into the bold, bad boy, but nothing
happened; the husband and the wife were seemingly oblivious of the
love-making, and all went well.
Besides the Chinese crew and passengers there were perhaps a dozen white
people, including the officers. An old English army captain whose
passport confirmed his declaration that he was seventy-three years old,
was taking a little run up to Japan. His only reason was that Japan was
an ally, hence he wanted to see it. Such is the nature of British
provincialism. Otherwise, there were but two or three young Australians
bound for Townsville, and the stewardess. Somewhere along the coast we
picked up a Russian peasant, who with his wife had been induced to
emigrate to Australia, but who was now going home to enlist. As though
there weren't already enough men in Russia armed with sticks and stones!
At still another port we commandeered a veritable regiment of Australian
children, colloquially called larrikins. These were bound for the
Philippines, where their father had preceded them some months before.
Their exploits deserve an exclusive paragraph.
Suddenly, out of a clear sky, there would be a shriek like the howl of a
dingo on the Australian plains. There would be a rush to the defenses by
an excited female,--the mother. There would follow such a slapping as
would delight the English Corporal Correction League, except that it
wasn't done cold-bloodedly enough. And thereafter for half an hour there
was bedlam all around. After exhaustion, a new series of pranks set in.
This time they were playing a "back-blocks" game which entailed a
hanging. One of them needs must be hanged, and was rescued just in time
by an ever-swooping mother. After hours of hunger-stimulating escapades
on deck, the dinner-bell sent them scurrying down into the saloon.
Before any of us had time to be seated all the fruit on the table was
divided according to the best principles of individual enterprise.
Beginning with the first thing on the menu, they went down the sheet,
leaving nothing untasted; nor did it matter much whether it was
breakfast or dinner,--steak enough for a meal in itself comprised the
entrée. And the littlest kept pace with the biggest. Nor did afternoon
and morning tea escape them. Fully stoked up, they were ready for
another beating and another hanging on deck.
In contrast were the little Chinese children,--quiet, shy, never
spanked; and though they put away enough within their Oriental
bread-baskets, one never saw that same wild struggle for existence which
told the tale of life on an Australian station better than anything I
wot of.
We had now reached Brisbane, 519 miles from Sydney, a distance which
took the _Eastern_ from noon of the 8th to sunrise of the 10th of
October to negotiate. And from the outer channel to the docks on the
Brisbane River we steamed till half-past one in the afternoon. Here we
were "beached" in the mud when the tide went out and had to wait
twenty-four hours before floating out again. In the meantime we picked
up two more gems,--mature larrikin this time. One of them was so drunk
he couldn't see straight, the other was sober enough to bring him on
board. Unfortunately for me, they were placed in my cabin, and from then
on, after the youngsters had turned the day into chaos, these two would
come in to sleep, and the cursing, the spitting, the reference to women
with which they consoled their souls, would have shocked the most
hardened beach-comber, I am sure.
To avoid annoyances I explored every nook and corner of the vessel. At
last I discovered a sanctuary on the roof of the unused hospital. It
could not be called a model of order and comfort, for various air-tanks
and stores of sprouting potatoes belittered it. But it was like the holy
of holies to me, for there I might just as well have been on a lone
craft of my own. No sound reached me from any living thing,--except an
occasional extra-loud shriek from the youngsters. Above and about me
there was nothing to obstruct my view, and within, absolute peace.
On the following day we were on the Great Barrier Reef, grayish green in
color, languid in temperament, shallow and therefore dangerous in
make-up. Numerous islands, neutral in color and sterile of vegetation,
seemed to stare at us and at one another in mute indifference. For the
first time the storied reality of being stranded on a desolate island
came home to me. As I sat watching this filmy show, I became conscious
of a familiar something in the world about me, be it warmth or color, a
something which immediately brought the picture of Santa Anna Valley in
California back to mind. Sometimes we come across a face we feel certain
we have seen before: that was the case with the atmosphere along the
Great Barrier Reef. The setting is that of the island home of _Paul and
Virginia_. Near and far, lowly and majestic, in generous succession on
each side, were islands and continent,--an avenue wide, spacious, and
clear. Occasional peaks along the mainland recalled old-fashioned
etchings,--dense clouds, heaven-reaching streaks and shafts of
twice-blended astral blue; rain-driven mountain fiords.
Early one day, an hour before dawn, the _Eastern_ moored before Magneta
Isle with her stern toward Townsville, as though ready for instant
flight, if necessary. With an early-morning shower of filthy words, one
of my cabin-mates pulled himself together and dressed. Shortly afterward
he slipped over the side of the ship into a tossing and pitching launch
and was rushed to Townsville. His rousing me at that hour was the only
thing I had reason to be grateful to him for in our short acquaintance.
For the world was exquisitely beautiful in its delicate gown of night.
Dawn was but waking. Four-o'clock stupor superintended the easy
activities. A few lights in a corner, a bolder and more purposeful flash
from a search-light, and all set in twilight. A ring of islands--the
Palm Isles--stones set in a placid bay. That was all I saw of
Townsville.
And perhaps it is just as well. It may have been "ordained" that my
ignorance obtain, be the city's virtues and its right to fame what they
may. What if I had gathered closer impressions, added meaningless
statistics or announced the prevalence of diphtheria throughout
Queensland, or discovered the leading citizen of Townsville to an
apathetic world? But it may be of interest to hear that Townsville
claims one distinction. It is the Episcopal See of Australia and the
seat of the Anglican Bishop and possesses a cathedral.
4
On the afternoon of the following day a heavy wind or squall came up.
This time the ship did not defy it. No foolhardy resistance here. The
reefs are too near and they stretch for thirty miles seaward. Again we
anchored. The horizon contracted like a noose of mist; it stifled one.
The ship seemed to crouch beneath the winds. An hour, and the anchor was
heard being lifted and the propellers were slowly revived to action. A
little later we anchored again. A light was hoisted to the stern mast
and twilight lowered on a calm gray sea. Distant little flat islands
loomed through the mist. Two sailing-vessels at anchor, moored in
companionship, rested within an inlet. A gentle swish, a murmur of human
voices, and our little world was swaying gently upon a curious world.
And there we remained all night.
As the sun gave notice of day, we moved off, and all day the sea was so
still that but for the vibration of the screws it would have been hard
to realize that the ship was in motion. Here we came to where the jagged
coastline has run down. Tiny islets, flat and low, most of them but a
landing-place for a few tropical trees. Summer calm, with barely a
ripple of the sea. That night we anchored again, having come, it was
said, to the most dangerous pass on the reefs.
Ten days after having left Sydney we arrived at the last port in
Australia, Thursday Island. A cloudy morning had turned clear for us,
but on ahead to the northwest hung heavy mists. Because of these, I was
later told by two soldiers on guard atop the mountain fortification,
they could not see us coming. They saw our smoke, but the steamer was
hidden from them by mist. Then suddenly we shot into view. All the while
we had been in the clearest sunshine, the sea glassy and the flying-fish
darting about. It was no place for speed. We moved just fast enough to
leave the scene undisturbed. And thus we stole into Torres Straits.
Of all the numerous harbors I have entered in the Pacific, none, with
the exception of the Inland Sea in Japan, is more picturesque than that
at Thursday Island. Shelter, space, and depth, and stillness! One's eyes
sweep round this pearly promise with greed for its beauty. Seventy-five
sail-boats, their sailless masts swaying with the swells, are anchored
on the reefs. It is Sunday and they are at rest, but what enchantment
lies hid in those folded sails! I wish for the power to utter some word
which could put them to flight; but that remains for Monday, when "the
word" is spoken.
And on Monday, too, immediately upon leaving port at ten o'clock, the
ship's time was returned to standard time, leaving Australia and its
"bunkum" daylight-saving time behind. Thence we lived again by "dinkum"
time. The ship about-faced and left the channel the same way it had
entered, and shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea.
5
From that day until I reached Japan it was all I could do to keep track
of the seas we passed through,--Arafua, Banda, Molucca, Celebes, Sulu,
China, and the Inland Sea.
As we neared the equator again, there was nothing to disturb the
peaceful splendor of life, except the little hoodlums on board. About
sixty miles south of it a tiny creature, like a turtle, sailed along the
still surface; the flying-fish blistered the water, the scars broadened
and healed again just as the sportive amphibians pierced it and
disappeared. What a contrast to the albatross!
Then the miracle occurred. From the west, hidden from me by the ship,
the sun reached to the eastern clouds, dashing them with pink and bronze
and blue. I could not tell where the horizon went to, and was roused to
curiosity as to what kind of sunset could effect such lovely tints. It
wasn't a sunset, but a sunfall, a revelation. Where suggestion through
imitation glistened on the eastern side, daring prodigality of color
swept away emotion on the western side. It was neither saddening nor
joyous. It was a vision of a consciousness in nature as full of
character, as definitely meaningful and emotional as a human face. There
was something almost terrifying in the expression of that sunset face.
One could read into it what one felt in one's own soul. And a little
later a crescent moon peeped over the horizon.
At about midnight of the seventeenth day after leaving Sydney we crawled
over the equator, and no home-coming ever meant more to me than seeing
the dipper again and the Northern stars. During all those days nothing
wildly exciting had happened at sea; but just after we left the equator
we passed a series of water-spouts--six in all--which formed a
semi-circle east, south, and west. The spout to the east seemed to me to
be at least two or three hundred feet high, and tremendous in
circumference. It drew a solid column of water from the sea far into a
heavy black cloud. On the sea beneath it rose a flutter of water fully
fifty feet high, black as the smoke produced by a magician's wand. Weird
and illusive, the giants beggared description as they stalked away to
the southeast, like animated sky-scrapers.
Then we reached Zamboanga, the little town on the island of Mindanao of
the Philippines. From there, for twelve hours, we crept long the coast
till we entered Manila Harbor.
There remained but two days' voyage before I would reach Asia, the
object of my interest for years, and of all my efforts for two. But it
was not so easy as all that, for two days upon the China Sea are worth a
year upon the Atlantic. Riding a cyclone would be riding a hobby-horse
or a camel compared with the Yellow Sea, and though I was the only
passenger who missed only one meal during the whole period, I was beaten
by the seventy-three-year-old English captain,--who managed all but half
a meal. The sea would roll skyward as though it were striving to stand
on end and for a moment the ship would lurch downward as though on a
loop-the-loop. Sometimes it seemed as though the world were turning
completely over. Yet I was told this was only normal, and that typhoons
visit it with stated regularity. The China Sea is "the very metropolis
of typhoons."
A month had well-nigh gone before we reached Hong-Kong, the British
portal to Cathay, a month of dreamy weather. Only one thing more,--a
thing more like a scene in the Arabian Nights. Toward the end of the
journey I discovered where the five hundred Chinese whose noses had been
counted when we left Sydney had gone. Going forward, I looked over into
an open hatchway, down into the hold, and there was a sight I shall
never forget. These hundreds of deck passengers were all in a muddle
amid cargo, parcels, hundreds of birds in cages, parrots, a
kangaroo,--yet oblivious of everything. For the entire voyage nothing
that I tell of could possibly have come within their ken, as during
those days their minds were bent on one thing and one alone,--on playing
fan-tan. There in the bottom of the hold hundreds of gold sovereigns
passed from hand to hand in a game of chance. And at last they were to
be released, to spread, a handful of sand thrown back upon the beach.
As for myself, with my arrival at Hong-Kong and a visit to Shanghai
ended the longest continuous voyage I had made upon the Pacific, and the
second side of that great Pacific Triangle was drawn. But meanwhile let
me review in detail the outposts of the white man in the far
Pacific--the lands I had passed on the white man's side of the triangle,
ending in Hong-Kong, where white man and Oriental meet.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS
1
In the normal course of human variation, there should have been
virtually no change of experience for me in going from New Zealand to
Australia, notwithstanding the twelve hundred miles of sea that separate
them. And though the sea is hardly responsible, there was a difference
between these two offshoots of the "same" race for which distance offers
little explanation. To me it seemed that regardless of the pride of race
which encourages people to vaunt their homogeneity, the way these two
counterparts of Britain have developed proves that homogeneity exists in
wish more than in fact. It seems to me that the New Zealander has
developed as though he were more closely related to the insular
Anglo-Saxon, and the Australian as though he were the continental strain
in the Englishman cropping out in a new and vast continent. However,
this is sheer conjecture. All I can do is to offer in the form of my own
observations reasons for the faith that is in me.
From the moment that I set foot in Australia I felt once again on a
continent. Melbourne is low, flat, and gave me the impression of
roominess which New Zealand cities never gave. They, with the exception
of Christchurch on the Canterbury plains, always clambered up bare brown
hills and hardly kept from slipping down into the sea. But in Australia
I felt certain that if I set out in any direction except east I could
walk until my hair grew gray without ever coming across a mountain. It
was a great satisfaction to me that first day, for it was intensely hot
and I had a heavy coat on my arm and two cameras and no helmet. Added to
my difficulties was the cordiality of an Australian fellow-passenger who
was determined that I should share with him his delight at home-coming.
He was a short, stout, olive-skinned young man of about twenty-three who
had a slightly German swing in his gait and accentuated his every
statement with a diagonal cut outward of his right hand, palm down.
He lured me from one end of Melbourne to the other, made me lunch with
him at a vegetarian restaurant,--which is a very popular resort in
Melbourne,--introduced me to Cole's Book Arcade, to the Blue-bird Tea
Rooms, where fine orchestral music flavors one's refreshments, to the
latest bank building and even to the station of the railway, which
"carries the largest suburban passenger traffic of any in the world."
"Meet me under the clock," is the Melbournian motto. How they can all do
so is beyond me, for the half-dozen stone steps that lead to the narrow
doors at the corner of the station could not, I am sure, afford a
rendezvous for more than thirty people at one time; yet the old clock
ticks away in patience,--the most popular and most persistent thing in
Melbourne.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE OLDEST AUSTRALIAN RESIDENCES IS NOW A PUBLIC
DOMAIN]
[Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF A WEALTHY SHEEP STATION OWNER'S HOME IN
MELBOURNE]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIAN BLACKS IN THEIR NATIVE ELEMENT
A. A. White, Brisbane]
[Illustration: AN AUSTRALIAN BLACK IN MELBOURNE
Out of his element but happy none the less]
I had so much trouble keeping pace with this Australian, who seemed to
grow more energetic the hotter it became, that I was grateful when he
said he would have to leave me, and I was alone again. Then I realized
for the first time that I could really like Melbourne; that it had long,
broad, spacious streets with clean, fresh-looking office and
department-store buildings, that even the narrower side streets were
clean and inviting, and that the street cars were propelled by cables
and not by trolley wires. So easy were these cars and so low that no one
ever waited for them to stop, but hopped aboard anywhere along the
street. Melbourne was to me a perfect bath in cleanliness and
orderliness,--just what a city ought to be. Even in the very heart of
the city the homes had a suburban gentility about them, and there were
no unnecessary noises, no smoke, and no end of pretty girls. The people
were a joy to look at. Something of the tropical looseness in both dress
and flesh, as though their skins were always being fully ventilated,
made them attractive. The New Zealanders made me feel as though I were
in a bushel of apples; the Australians, carefully packed yellow plums. I
have never enjoyed just being on the street more than I did in
Melbourne.
On Bourke Street, in the very midst of the pushing crowd, a soft-voiced
lad approached me for some information and strutted off, tall in his
self-confidence. Victorian belles, tall, graceful, russet-skinned, plump
but not flabby, moved with a fine air of self-reliance. On closer
acquaintance, I found that these girls were not silent and opinionless
as were most of the New Zealand girls. Whatever the issue before the
public, they had their defined opinions concerning it, and they were not
sneered at by the men. Then, too, there was a companionship between the
boys and girls, without reserve, that was balm to my soul after the year
in New Zealand.
Melbourne was the home of Madame Melba, and in consequence the city is
the most musical of any I lived in in the Antipodes. Even the babies
sing operatically on the streets, and the voices one hears from open
windows are not the head-voices of prayer-meetings, but those of people
who seem to know the value of the human larynx.
During the two weeks that I was in Melbourne, I was, whenever I chose, a
guest of the Master of the Mint, Mr. Bagg, who was the uncle of a New
Zealand girl of my acquaintance; lunched, dined and afternoon tea-ed
with his family whenever I felt like it; was rushed to the theater to
see an old pioneer play; and went to attend public meetings at which the
mayor and the prime minister spoke; visited the beaches, and knew the
joy of the most refreshing companionship it was my good-fortune to meet
with in all my wanderings,--though there were others. And it was so with
whomever I met in Melbourne, from the clerk in the haberdashery, who
acquainted me with the jealousy that exists between Sydney and
Melbourne, to the woman in whose home I roomed on Fitzroy Park, or the
young couple with the toddling baby and the glorious sheep-dog, who
engaged me in conversation on the lawn near the beach at St. Kilda.
And so I still see Melbourne in memory as a place I should enjoy living
in. I was often alone, but never lonely in it. And I see it from its
Botanic Gardens, with the broad Yarra Yarra River slowly cleaving it in
two, its soft, semi-tropical mists hanging over it, its temperate
climate, its cleanliness and its low, rolling hills where it hides its
suburbs.
I didn't go to see Adelaide, in South Australia, because I was destined
to live in Sydney, in New South Wales.
2
It is more than mere accident that Victoria has broader-gaged railways
than New South Wales, and that travelers from one state to the other
must get off at Albury and change, or between New South Wales and
Queensland to the north of it. It is not mere accident, I am sure, for
there is a like difference in the width of streets between Melbourne and
Sydney.
Sydney is hilly, exposed, bricky, and crowded, and though it is the
premier city of Australia, it grows without changing. There is a
conservatism about it which, in view of the activity of Australians, is
inexplicable. Sydney is almost an old city. Its streets wind as though
the settlers had been uncertain of the prevailing winds; and the hills
tend to give it an appearance of huddling. The red roofs of the
cottage-like houses, and their architectural style give it a European
tone, slightly like an English city. It has none of the fresh,
"hand-me-down" regularity of the American, nor the sober coziness of the
English, village. Every street leads one to the center of the city, and
wind as it will there is hardly any relief from commonplaceness. The
thoroughfares are crowded with street cars which cross and
circumambulate, some of the main streets are too narrow for more than
single-track lines. Yet instead of seeing the earlier error and trying
to correct it by prohibiting the erection of buildings on the present
curb lines, the authorities have permitted one of the finest office
buildings in the city--the Commonwealth Bank Building, to be placed on
the same line as the rest of the old structures. It is hardly to be
expected that such methods will ever broaden the streets.
There are no tenements in Sydney, in the New York sense of the term, but
the average home as I saw it on my usual rounds in search of quarters,
was ordinary. The rooms were small, and there were few conveniences.
But this is Sydney proper. Newer Sydney, with its suburbs and homes
along the numerous peninsulas projecting into the waters of Port
Jackson, is modern, clean, and airy, and really convenient. Man is a
lazy animal and prone to dote on nature's beauties, neglecting his
responsibilities to nature. Sydney, proud of its harbor, builds there
and forgets its city-self. There are no fine structures to speak of, no
monuments, no art, and even the library has to borrow a roof for itself
in a building essentially excellent but neglected as a municipal white
elephant. But there is a municipal organ in the Town Hall, and that
makes up for much that is wanting in Sydney.
I took up my quarters across the water from Sydney, and from there I
could see the city through the glory-lens, its harbor. Little
peninsulas, crossed in but a few minutes, project into the waters of the
harbor, making it look like an oak-leaf and affording sites for the
splendid homes that have been built there. Crowding is impossible;
views of the water may be had from all angles. And here, in a borrowed
nest, I sat for hours perched above the water, noting and gloating over
its moods and character. What charm it works, when in the blood-red
streaks of sunset the tidal floods cool the peaceful turquoise; when the
busy little ferries of day become fairy transports with streaks of
shimmering light as escort, moving across the still waters; when on
Sunday morning Sydney across the way relaxes, amazing with revelations.
With street and sky-line clear, quiet hangs in the air; or on more windy
days, myriad whitecaps royne at the numerous ships which cross and
recross one another's paths. In one direction, industry is idealized; in
others, nature and beauty lie naked, above idealization.
For two weeks I lived out at Manly Beach, nine miles by ferry from
Sydney, and went in and out every day. The Heads lie to the right, and
as we made our way across, the swells from the sea beyond rolled the
little ferry teasingly. At times, when the swells were heavier and the
crowds excessive, a sort of panic would spread over them, but some of
the inevitable minstrels that swarm the streets and by-ways of Sydney,
would counteract contagion with music and song.
The beaches are always crowded. Annette Kellerman is Australian, and
somehow, whether as cause or effect, Sydney people are the most
amphibious folk in the world. They seem to live in the water. Every
spare hour is spent on the wide stretches of sand that lie warm and
white in the blazing sun. But nothing takes precedence over the harbor
in the adoration of Sydneyites.
Sydney is known for its gaiety, yet I was lonely in Sydney,--bitterly
so. Perhaps people are too gay to think of others, perhaps their gaiety
made me exaggerate my loneliness. "Nothing like the Australian larrikin
when he gets going," you will be told. But what struck me was the latent
distemper that lurked beneath much of the hilarity that I saw in Sydney.
Australia is not very different from any of us,--a little more
imitative, a little more outspoken, a little more gruff, a little more
youthful. But wildness is not specially Australian; nor is bluntness;
nor yet youthfulness. The Australian is perhaps a little more reckless,
individually or _en masse_, than the people of other lands, but he puts
up with the same social inconveniences; he reasons falsely at times and
gets fooled; he gloats over the spectacular, becomes intensely excited
over nothing,--and suddenly relapses. In a crowd he sometimes becomes
belligerent, yet is easily led and easily relinquishes. But, above all
else, he is gregarious. And it is because of this that he takes you in
in Sydney,--and drops you out before you have known what has happened to
you. Hence he is an inveterate sportsman, a heavy drinker, a perpetual
gambler at the races,--faithful to his whimsicalities.
Intellectually he is a fanatic, but tolerates all sorts of fanaticisms.
A Sunday morning on the beautiful grounds of the Public Domain is enough
to convince you that Sydney would welcome the most freakish freak in the
world, imprison him for the fun of it, then sympathize with him if he
dies in prison, as did the famous naked man, Chidley. I have seen Sydney
men who seemed to me men without hearts, as soft and gentle as women in
the face of another man's hurt. Yet when a well-known army officer stole
funds that belonged to wounded soldiers and their needy families, I
heard respectable Sydney men say they were glad he got away with it. I
have seen girls at carnivals, who at ten o'clock went about tickling
strange men under the chin, snarl at them at eleven and order them to
"Trot along, now." I have heard Australians say harsh things of
themselves in criticism, but true loyalty is widely prevalent among
Australians. An Australian always wants a mate, "some one who would
stick like lead" if he were up against it. The self-criticism comes
rather from the more thoughtful Australians, who, looking out upon the
future, want to see their country hold on to the prize it has won, and
grow and become a leader in the affairs of the Pacific.
But though Sydney and Melbourne are the leading cities of the
commonwealth, he who has to judge of the nation by them wonders where
that leadership is to come from. The love of pleasure is a sign of
health in any people; and Australia is in that sense most healthful.
Material progress is the next best indication of the state of a nation;
and Australia is universally prosperous. But it is in the outlook on
life that a country justifies its existence and insures itself against
decay. Until the war, all reports of Australia on that score were
negative. Provincialism, of the most ingrowing kind, obtained. Every
state thought chiefly of itself; every city of itself only; every
district of none other than itself. But with the war Australia took a
tremendous leap forward. For the first time in her history, her men had
a chance to leave the land which intellectually was little more than a
sublimated prison to them. Half a million men left Australia for Europe
and other sections of the globe. And if Australia knew what she was
about she would now send the rest of her men and women abroad with the
same end in view,--the education of the people for the place they occupy
in the world.
Much criticism is flung at Australia because her young men and women are
inclined to enjoy life rather than burden themselves with a succeeding
generation. If the beginning and end of life is reproduction, then that
is a just criticism. But the welfare of the living is as important as
the welfare of civilization. The greatest criticism is not that people
will not bear children in the face of trying economic conditions, but
that, having exceptionally favorable circumstances, they show no special
inclination to become parents, and that nothing is being done to create
conditions under which the bearing of young would be no handicap. But
that requires an intellectual outlook which is at present wanting in
the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. There is an over-emphasis of
pleasure _per se_, a lack of seriousness in the concerns of life.
Sydney lures men and women from the back-blocks and makes them feel
human again, makes them forget the plains are sear, and that manliness
is next to cleanliness. It affords dull station-owners a chance to mix
with folk where sweetness and refinement, and not crudeness, is the
order of the day and of life. It takes men and women who have been told
that to increase and multiply is the only contribution they can make to
the welfare of the community and shows them that there is something in
life besides that. So when I think of what Sydney means to the world
that lies behind it I cannot refrain from offering my contribution of
praise. But then I ask myself and Sydney what it has done to make the
back-blocks better, what it is doing to build up the country, and the
fact becomes evident that it is only draining it. Fully 51 per cent of
the inhabitants of Australia live in cities. It is for these cities to
lay railroads and highways and to open the vast continent; and that can
be done only by putting prejudices aside, by adding to recreation real
creation and a soberness in the affairs of life which alone will win for
Australia its place in the affairs of the Pacific.
What, socially and individually, then, is the contribution of Australia
to the civilization of the Pacific? Is her position to be one of eminent
leadership commensurate with the welfare of the individual members of
the Commonwealth, or is their joyousness going to make her citizens
forget ambition and their ruling destiny? This much must not be
forgotten,--that born as a convict colony, Australia has more than
justified itself; that the term "convict colony" is now no more
applicable to Australia than it is to Virginia. That handicap
notwithstanding, Australia to-day is as far advanced as any nation in
the world. The people do not generally take to higher mathematics, to
philosophical thinking, or to science, but illiteracy is rare in
Australia. Given a continent wherein nothing of civilization was to be
found, Australia has made of it, in a little more than a century, a land
productive, healthful, and promising. Much praise is due Japan for what
she has accomplished along material lines in seventy years; how much
more praise is due Australia for what she has done in about the same
time!
3
As one journeys north along the Australian coast, life begins to thin
out. Fate must have been in a comic mood when it apportioned me my
experiences as I was leaving that island continent, for in Brisbane it
allotted me an august funeral, and in Thursday Island it sent a
missionary out to "attack me." Thereby hang two tales.
I had walked what seemed to me fully two miles from the pier in the
Brisbane River to the heart of town and was rather overheated. My
septuagenarian Englishman trudged along by my side. When we arrived in
the central thoroughfare I took note of the fact that things looked
fresh and clean, that there was a tendency toward pink paint, but that
otherwise I might have saved myself the journey. Alas, it was Saturday
afternoon, and a half-holiday! Leaving my venerable comrade behind, I
strode along at my own pace in search of adventure, my camera across my
shoulder. I had taken to a hilly side street, and must have looked like
a professional tourist. Absorbed in seeking, I was startled by an
appealing voice behind me. Turning, I found the owner of that voice
gazing intently at my camera.
"That's a camera you have there, sir."
I admitted my guilt, wondering what crime lurked in the possession of a
camera.
"I've been trotting all over town trying to find a photographer, sir,
but their shops are all closed. Would you mind coming along with me,
sir, and taking a picture of a funeral as the mourners come out of
church. Lady ---- is so anxious to have a picture of them just leaving
church. The deceased, sir, her husband, was a very much beloved
gentleman, a prominent official, and devoted to the church in which now
lie his remains, and she would be so pleased if you would come and taik
a fouto for her." In his excitement, he slipped into the use of cockney,
so prevalent in Australia. I threw out my chest and thought to myself:
"See here, old man, do you think I've lived in New York and London and
Paris, and Sydney, and ---- to be sold a gold brick in Brisbane? But
I'll show you I'm game." And I followed him up the street. But sure
enough, there at the top of the hill, from an imposing church, emerged a
funeral, posing to be taken. It did not matter to this man that I told
him my ship was in port only for the day and that before I could
possibly make a print I should be either in China or Japan. But just
then Fate thought she was carrying the joke too far and sent along a
native son with a camera, and I was released. I set out for the ship.
In the little gullies that lie along the way were shacks or cottages,
raised on piles, with inverted pans between them and the floor beams.
White ants were eating to pulp these supports. We were in the tropics
again.
Fate must have chuckled. She is fond of practical jokes. The next time
she tried one on me, I was in Cairns. Having entered Australia on the
ground floor, Melbourne, I suppose Cairns might be said to be the
fifth-story window. I left the ship the moment she was made fast, keyed
up with expectation of seeing the tropics again. Ashore, the spirit
hovering about tropical villages took me in hand. No better guide can be
found on earth. With a voice subdued, it urged me to pass quickly
through the town, which was still asleep except for the saloons and
their keepers. The spirit leading me complained of that other spirit
which leads and captures most men in the tropics. My spirit, happy to
have a patron, offered me luxurious scenes, melodious sounds, and mellow
colors,--happy in receiving a grateful stranger. While pressing through
the little village, I noticed the mission type of architecture of the
post-office; the concrete columns guarding the entrance of the newspaper
office; the arched balconies of a hotel; the delicate, dainty cottages
raised on wooden piles, the verdure hiding defects, and the main
building lost in a massive growth of yellow flowers overgrowing roof and
all. A small opening for entrance and a pugnacious corner were the only
indications of its nature as a residence. Then there were a "School of
Arts" and a double-winged girls' school. The whole town was pretty and
in concord with the scenes about.
But I was not held. I pressed on toward the hills, to the open road.
_Allons!_ But alas! I betrayed myself by doubting the "spirit of the
tropics" which was guiding me. I resorted to a tiny mortal for
information, and in that way angered the spirit, which instantly
deserted me. Not content with whisperings, I had sought definition,
asked for distance,--Where? Whence? How? And I lost!
He was a little man, with worn shoes from the holes of which peeped
stockingless feet. In the early morning he had slipped on shoes which
would not deprive him of the dew. He had covered his little legs with a
dark pair of dirty trousers, his body with a soiled white coat, and his
mind with misunderstood scripture. His bulging eyes betrayed his inward
confusion.
Upon inquiring, he informed me that the road led to the hospital and
would take me fifteen minutes to negotiate. Then he wanted to know if I
came off the _Eastern_. "Any missionaries on board?" he asked. "I don't
know," I answered. "I suppose that is something you don't trouble much
about." I agreed. "Ah, that's just it. Don't you know the Bible says,
'Be prepared to meet thy Maker?' How do you know but what any moment you
may be called?" "Well, if I am, I have lived well enough to have no
fear." "Yes, that is just it. You live in carnal sin. You have no doubt
looked upon some woman with lustful eyes this very morning. I sin, too,
every moment." Heaven knows I had not been tempted. I hadn't seen any
woman to look at, and nothing was further from my mind just then. And so
it was,--sin, assumption and condemnation. I talked with him a few
minutes, asserted my fearlessness, the consciousness of a reasonably
good life. But nothing would do. The poison of fear with which he
contrived to wound me I now had to fight off. I had come out all joy and
happiness in the new day, the loveliness of life. If worship was not on
my lips it was in my heart, and he had tarnished it. He brought thoughts
of sin and death to my mind, which, at that moment, if at any time in my
life, was free from selfishness and from unworthy desires.
I cut across to the sea,--not even an open avenue being fresh enough for
me now. It was as though I had suddenly inhaled two lungfuls of poison
gas and struggled for pure air. I turned back to the boat, not caring to
go too far lest she leave port. A tropical shower poured its warm water
over me as though the spirit of the tropics felt sorry, and forgave me.
I returned to the ship, and quarter of an hour later we were moving out
into the open sea again.
4
The next and last time that I landed on Australian soil was at Thursday
Island, one of the smallest of the Prince of Wales group, north of Cape
York Peninsula, in the Torres Strait. German New Guinea (now a British
mandatory) lies not far away. There is not much of a village and most of
the buildings are made of corrugated iron. But there was not at that
time that stuffy, damp odor which pervades Suva; nor, in fact, was there
much of that mugginess that is Fiji. Yet it is only eleven degrees from
the equator, whereas Fiji is thirteen. The street is only a country
road, and dozens of goats and kids pasture upon it. The few stores
(closed on Sunday) were not overstocked. There are two large churches.
One was built from the wreckage of a ship that had some romantic story
about it which I cannot recall. There was also another institution, the
purpose of which I could not discern. It was musty, dirty, dilapidated,
with shaky chairs and shelves of worm-eaten books. I suppose it was a
library. Hotels there were galore, and though bars were supposed to be
closed on Sunday, a small party of passengers succeeded in striking a
"spring."
I wandered off by myself. Slowly the great leveler, night, crept into
the heart of things, and they seemed glad. Orientals and natives from
New Guinea lounged about their little corrugated iron houses, obedient
to law and impulse for rest. Japanese kept off nakedness with loose
kimonos. One of them lay stretched upon the mats before the open door,
reading. Others squatted on the highway. Tiny Japanese women walked
stiffly on their wooden _geta_ as they do in Japan. Tiny babies wandered
about alone like wobbling pups. Upon the sea-abandoned beach groups of
New Guinea natives gathered to search for crabs or other sea-food. A cow
waded into the water to cool herself. And the sail-boats, beached with
the receding tides, lunged landward.
Peace and evening. Nay, more. There is not only indolent forgetfulness
here; there is more than mere ease in the tropics: there is affluence in
ease. A something enters the bone and sinew of moving creatures which
awakens and yet satisfies all the dearest desires. And nothing remains
when night comes on but lamplight and wandering white shadows.
Late that night I returned to the ship. Deep, familiar sounds revived my
memory of Fiji, on the other line of my triangle. A chorus of New Guinea
voices,--rich, deep, harmonious, and rhythmic--rose from a little boat
beside us. In it were a half-dozen natives, squatting round a lantern,
reading and singing hymns in their own tongue. Such mingled sadness with
gladness,--one does not know where one begins and the other ends. Shiny
black bodies crouching and chanting. Hymns never seemed more sincere,
more earnest.
They were waiting there for midnight to come, when Sunday ends for them,
and toil begins. The ship must be loaded. Then voices will rattle with
words and curses. All night long they labored with good things for other
men. When I came out in the morning they breakfasted on boiled yams and
turtle, a mixture that looked like dough. Instead of using their
fingers, they employed sharp pointed sticks, doubtless in imitation of
Japanese chop-sticks. Progress!
Shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea, and saw Australia no
more.
CHAPTER IX
OUR PEG IN ASIA
1
Venturing round the Pacific is like reincarnation. One lives as an
Hawaiian for a spell, enters a state of non-existence and turns up as a
Fijian; then another period of selflessness, and so on from one isle to
another. From such a period of transmigration I woke one morning to the
sight of Zamboanga, and knew myself for a moment as a dual
personality,--a Filipino and an American in one. All day long we hugged
the coast of the islands of the group--Mindanao, Negros, Panay, Mindoro,
Luzon--the cool blue surface of the choppy sea between us and reality.
After so many days' journey along the coast of Australia, through sea
after sea, it seemed unreasonable to require a turn of the sun in which
to outstrip a few Oriental islands. Then we swung to the right. Ahead of
us, we were told, lay Manila, but even the short run to that city seemed
interminable. At last the unknown became the known. A red trolley-car
emerged from behind the Manila Hotel. Life became real again.
Our ship had hardly more than buoyed when a fleet of lighters surrounded
her,--flat, blunt, ordinary skiffs; long, narrow, peculiar ones. The
former I thought represented American efficiency; the latter, Filipino
whimsicality. The Filipino craft were decorated in black, with
flourishes and letters in red and white. Over their holds low hoods of
matting formed an arch upon which swarmed the native owners. How
business-like, yet withal attractive. And business became the order of
the night.
From beneath the matted hoods of the lighters flickered glimmers of
faint firelight. Life there was alert, though quiet. It hid in the
shadows of night; confined in the holds, dim candles and lanterns
quivered: peace reigned before performance. A quiet harbor; moon and
stars and mast-lights above; a cool, refreshing breeze. That was my
first night in Manila Harbor.
Morning. Not really having stretched my legs in nearly three weeks,
since sailing from Sydney, Australia, I naturally felt in high spirits
upon landing. The mists which hung over Manila quickened my pace, for I
knew that before I could see much of that ancient town they would be
gone, dissipated by the intense heat of the tropical sun. I was eager to
put on my seven-leagued boots to see all that I had selected years
before as the things I wanted to stride the seas to see. But I soon
discovered that I was only a clumsy iron-weighted deep-sea diver. All
round the Pacific I had traveled alone. I wanted no mate but freedom.
But the three weeks _en route_ from the Antipodes, on board a small
liner whose major passenger list was made up of monosyllabic Oriental
names drove me, willy-nilly, into the companionship of the
septuagenarian English captain.
2
On account of the keying down of my reactions to the tempo of
seventy-three plus British sedateness, I wrote many things in my book of
vistas that seem to me now mere aberrations. Just to indicate what the
effect was I shall confess that as I approached the Walled City I
conceived of myself as almost a full-fledged Don Quixote storming the
citadel of ancient aggression. But my elderly Sancho Panza held me back
lest the shafts of burning sunlight strike me down.
Standing before the gates of antiquity, even the most haughty of human
beings moves by instinct back along the line of the ages, like a spider
pulling himself up to his nest on his web. Round the black stone wall
which encircles the old Spanish city, that which was once a moat is now
a pleasant grass-grown lawn. The wall itself, still well preserved, has
been overreached by two-story stone houses with heavy balconies which
seem to mock the pretenses of their "protector." Outwardly, things look
old; within change has kept things new. Mixed with surprised curiosity
at two Antipodes so close together comes a feeling of contact with
eternity, the present of yesterday linking itself with the antiquity
which is to be.
A long, narrow street stretched across the city. Spanish buildings
tinted pink and delicately ornamented, lined the sides. White stone
buildings, chipped and seamed with use and age, lined the way. Broad
entrances permitted glimpses of sumptuous patios, refreshed by tropical
plants; low stone steps leading up to dark vault-like chambers; windows
barred but without glass,--spacious retreats built by caballeros who
thought they knew the value of life. Indeed, they knew how to build
against invasion of the sun and the Oriental pirate, but not against the
invasion of time. Perhaps they live better as Spaniards to-day than they
lived as conquerors yesterday.
Here, within the walled city, everything looks as though change were not
the order of eternity. Everything is as it was, yet nothing is so.
Trolley-cars clank, motor-cars of the latest models throb quietly,
pony-traps and bullock-carts stir the ancient quiet. One wonders how so
much new life can find room to move about in such narrow streets with
their still narrower sidewalks that permit men to pass in single file
only, and angular corners and low buildings. But there they are, and
there they bid fair to remain. Even the unused cathedrals, whose doors
are here and there nailed shut, stand their ground. Some of them even
close the street with their imposing fronts, the courage of fervent
human passion in their crumbling façades.
[Illustration: FILIPINO LIGHTERS DROWSING IN THE EVENING SHADOWS]
[Illustration: THE DOCILE WATER BUFFALO IS USED TO WALKING IN MUD]
[Illustration: ONE CAN THROW A BRICK AND HIT SEVEN CATHEDRALS IN
MANILA]
[Illustration: COOL AND SILENT ARE THE MOSSY STREETS OF THE WALLED
CITY OF MANILA]
At that early hour there was little sign of human life. Into some of the
cathedrals native women crept for prayer. Here and there a confined
human being passed across the glassless windows; here and there a
tourist flitted by in search of sights. And I soon realized that within
the walls, intramuros, there was nothing. Across the park, across the
Pasig River, there one finds life.
Yet within that ancient crust there is new life. Some old buildings have
been turned into government offices, high schools, a public library
fully equipped, an agricultural institute, everything standing as in
days of old, but new flowers and plants growing in those crude
pots,--old surroundings with a new spirit. Something mechanical in that
spirit,--typewriters clicking everywhere under native fingers; still,
typewriters don't click without thoughts.
Here, then, is the conflict in growth between the ends of time, heredity
struggling with environment, the fountains of youth washing the bones of
old ambitions. They may not become young bones, but may we not hope they
will at least be clean? May not time and patience remold antiquity,
absorb its bad blood and rejuvenate it? Typewriters clicking everywhere;
tongues born to Filipino, then turned to Spanish, now twisting
themselves with English. The trough has been brought to the horse. Will
he drink? The library was full of intelligent-looking young Filipinos,
the cut of their clothes as obviously American as the typewriters
clicking behind doors. Both typewriters and garments indicated
efficiency, but I could no more say what was the impulse in the being
within those clothes than what thoughts were being fixed in permanence
to the sound of an American typewriter.
The most symbolical thing of all was the aquarium built beneath one wing
of the great wall round this little village. If in the hard shell of
American possession arrangement can still be made for the freedom,
natural and unconfining, of the native Filipinos, we shall not lay
ourselves open to censure. The natives may not be satisfied, they may
prefer the open sea; but that is up to them to achieve. As long as we
keep the water fresh and the food supplies free, they can complain only
of their own crustaceous natures and nothing else.
3
All Manila does not live within the walls, however,--not even a goodly
portion of it,--and the exits are numerous. Passing through the eastern
gate, one comes into a park which lies between the walled city and the
Pasig River. Beyond the river and on its very banks is Manila proper. As
I got my first glimpse of the crowded, dirty waterway, I could not say
much in reply to my companion, whose patriotic fervor found expression
in criticism of American colonization. It was like looking into a
neglected back yard. The Englishman did not seem to see, however, that
to have done better in so short a time would have been to inflict
hardships on the natives which no amount of progress ever justifies.
Still, with memories of Honolulu as a basis for judgment I was not a
little disappointed. How to change people without destroying their
souls,--that is the problem for future social workers for world
betterment to solve.
Meanwhile I had succeeded in eluding my burden of seventy-three years
and opened my eyes to the life round about me. There was still a bridge
to cross. It was narrow, wooden and crowded. It was only a temporary
structure, built to replace the magnificent Bridge of Spain which was
washed away in the great flood of September, 1914. During the few
minutes it took me to saunter across it, the traffic was twice blocked.
Perhaps to show me how full the traffic was, for in that moment there
lined up as many vehicles and people and of sufficient variety to
illustrate the stepping-stones in transportation progress. There were
traps, motor-cars, carts drawn by carabao, or water-buffalo, bicycles,
and trolley-cars. Everybody seems to ride in some fashion.
Yet everybody seems to walk, and in single file at that. Gauze-winged
Filipino women,--tawdry, small and ill-shod, or, rather, dragging
slippers along the pavement--insist on keeping to the middle of the
narrow walks. Frequently they are balancing great burdens on their
heads, with or without which they are not over-graceful or comely. Their
stiff, transparent gauze sleeves stand away from them like airy wings.
One hasn't the heart to brush against them lest these angelic extensions
be demolished, and so one keeps behind them all the way.
The men also shuffle along. They wear embroidered gauze coats which veil
their shirts and belts and trousers. There is something in this
lace-curtain-like costume that seems the acme of laziness. Neither stark
nakedness nor the durability of heavy fabrics seem so prohibitive of
labor as does this thin garment. No inquiry into the problem of the
Philippines would seem to me complete without full consideration of the
origin of this costume.
But one is swept along over the bridge, and is dropped down into Manila
proper by way of a set of steps, through a short alley. The main street
opens to the right and to the left. It is brought to a sudden turn one
block to the left and then runs on into the farther reaches of the city;
to the right it winds its way along till it encompasses the market-place
and confusion. This chiseling out of streets in such abrupt fashion is
puzzling to the person with notions of how tropical people behave. Why
such timidity in the pursuance of direction and desire? The obstruction
of the bridge promenade by the main street and of the main street by a
side street have a tendency to shoot the seer of sights about in a
fashion comparable to one of those games in which a ball is shot through
criss-cross sections so that the players never know in what little
groove it will fall or whether the number will be a lucky one or not.
I first fell into a bank, and the amount of money one can lose in
exchanging Australian silver notes into American dollars is sufficient
to dishearten one. The shops were too damp and insignificant to attract
me much, however, so I ventured on into the outer by-ways of the city.
There the dungeon-like stores and homes and Chinese combinations had at
least the virtue of ordinary Oriental manner in contrast to our own. The
Chinese cupboard-like stores, that seem to hang on the outside of the
buildings like Italian fruit-stands, held few attractions. There was an
obvious utilitarianism about them which, strange as it may seem, is the
last thing the man with no fortune to spend enjoys. Shops and museums
afford the unpossessing compensation for his penury.
As I made my way ahead to a small open square, my attention was arrested
by a performance the full significance of which did not at first appear
to me. At the gateway of a large cigar-factory from which came strolling
male and female workers, sat two individuals--two women at the women's
gate, two men at the men's--and each worker was examined before leaving.
As a woman came along, the inspector passed her hands down the side of
the skirts, up the thighs, over the bosom,--then slapped her genially
and off she went. Through it all, the girls assumed a most dignified
manner, absolutely without self-consciousness and oblivious of the gaze
of the passers-by. What is more certain to break down a man's or a
woman's self-respect than becoming indifferent to the opinion of the
public as to the method of being searched? A Freudian complex formed to
the point of one's believing oneself capable of theft, the next thing
is to live out that unconscious thought of theft and to care nothing for
the censure of the world.
When at work, these girls possessed a sort of sixth sense. The
cigarettes are handed over to them at their benches to be wrapped in
bundles of thirty. They never stop to count them--just place the
required number in their left hands encircling them with thumb and
fingers, reject an odd one if it creeps in, and tie the bundle. I
counted a dozen packets, but did not find one either short or over, and
the overseers are so certain of this accuracy that they never count them
either.
But what a different world is found at the public school not very far
from the factory! The building was not much of a building,--just an
old-fashioned wooden structure with a court. Its sole purpose seemed to
be to furnish four thousand children with training in the use of a new
tongue. "Speak English," stared every one in the face from sign-boards
nailed to pillars. I listened. The command was honored more in the
breach than in the observance, yet where it was respected strange
English sounds tripped along tongues that were doubtless more accustomed
to Tagalog and Spanish. There was nothing shy in the behavior of these
boys and girls. They moved about with a certain monastic self-assurance,
less gay than our children, more free than most Oriental youngsters. In
a few years they will be advocating Filipino independence, in no
mistaken terms,--if they have not been caught by the factory process.
I went straight ahead and found myself on my way back into the
city,--but from a side opposite that from which I had left it. The
squalor and the dungeon-like atmosphere were indeed nothing for American
efficiency to be proud of. Slums in the tropics fester rapidly. One
cannot say these places were slums; but they certainly were not native
villages. One felt that here in Manila America's heart was not in her
work. Why build up something that would in the end revert to the
natives, to be laid open to possible aggression and conquest! One felt
further that the Filipinos did not exactly rejoice in being Americans.
What they actually are they have long since forgotten. Once
foster-children of Philip of Spain. To-day the adopted sons of America.
To-morrow? How much more fortunate their Siamese cousins or relatives by
an ancient marriage! Yet all who know Manila as it was ten years ago
agree that there have been vast improvements in a decade. One does not
include in this generalization the residences and hotels of the
foreigners, for obvious reasons; still, the welfare of a community is
raised by good example.
That afternoon I stretched in the shade of one of the walls of the old
walled citadel with its fine gateways. I pondered the significance of
those stones against which I was resting. One gains strength from such
structures as one does from the sea,--not only in the actual contact,
but in the thought that that which human effort accomplished human
effort can do again. My septuagenarian had returned to the ship for
rest. I thought of his criticisms of the American occupation of Manila,
of his suggestions that England would have made of it a fine city. I
wondered what drove the Spanish to build this wall. To protect
themselves against Chinese pirates? There is not a country in the world
that has not tried to safeguard itself against invasion by the process
of invasion. Yet any attempt to do otherwise is decried as impractical.
All the while, decay weakens the arm of the conqueror.
But more luring scenes distracted my thoughts. The sinking sun stretched
the lengthening shadows of the wall as a fisherman, at sunset, spreads
his serviceable nets. Filipinos passed quietly to and fro; cars,
motor-cars, and electric cars cut a St. Andrew's cross before me. The
scent of mellow summer weighted the air. Slowly everything drew closer
in the net of night.
Two days later I was in Hong-Kong, where the Oriental dominates the
scene. I was at the third angle of the triangle, and hereafter the
subject is Asia.
CHAPTER X
BRITAIN'S ROCK IN ASIA
1
To one who had received his most vivid impressions of China from her
noblest philosopher, Lao-tsze, it was somewhat disconcerting to peep
through the porthole just after dawn and find oneself the center of a
confusion indescribable. The sleepy, heaving sea was more in tune with
the mystic "Way" of the great sage. I had not anticipated being thrust
so suddenly among the masses and the babel on which Lao-tsze, that
gray-beard child, had tried to pour some intellectual oil.
Yet, I had been living on the top floor of a Chinese "den" for
twenty-six days between Sydney and Hong-Kong. On board I was ready to
blame the steamship company for the crowding and the uncleanliness. Had
there been a dozen murders, I should not have regarded it as unnatural.
Had I been compelled to spend three weeks in such circumstances, I
should either have committed hara-kiri or killed off at least four
hundred and fifty-five to make the decent amount of room necessary for
the remaining fifty. So I was prepared to exonerate them, to praise them
for their pacifism and their orderliness in such conditions.
But when I peeped out of the porthole that morning and saw the swarming
thousands struggling with one another to secure a pittance of privilege,
which these five hundred had to offer by way of baggage, my heart went
out to the great sage of 650 B. C. He must have been courageous indeed.
Full families of them on their shallow sampans cooperating with one
another against odds which would sicken the stoutest-hearted white folk.
Yet in that Oriental mass there was the ever-present exultation of
spirit. Laughter and good-natured bullying, full recognition of the
other man's right to rob and be robbed. No smug morality teaching you to
be shy and generous in the face of an obviously bad world, a world
ordered so as to make goodness the most expensive instead of the least
expensive quality. But I soon discovered that beneath that external
jollity only too frequently fluttered a fearful heart, filled with dread
of the slightest change of circumstances.
The distance between the ship and the shore was not like Charon's river
Styx, but it was a way between the Elysium of an alien metropolis and a
Hades of hopeless nativity, none the less. Beyond stood the towering
hills of Hong-Kong with its massive palaces in marble at the very
summit. Chinese will to live had builded these, but the people had not,
it seems, enough will left to build for themselves. From the very foot
of the hills upward rose a steady series of buildings which looked
surprisingly familiar, yet somewhat alien to my expectations. It was
something of a shock to me to find that Hong-Kong was Chinese in name
and character only, while being European-owned and ordered. I felt
fooled. I had gone to see China, but found only another outpost of Great
Britain. My American passport had had most fascinating Chinese
characters on the back of it. But the "Emergency Permit" issued to me in
Sydney, had none. Between British ports one can always expect British
courtesy and that largeness of heart which comes from having taken
pretty nearly all there is worth while in the world without being afraid
of losing it. So I made some hurried mental adjustments as we chugged
our way across, amidst bobbing sampans, and convinced myself that it
might have been worse.
In that great future which will put modern civilization somewhere
half-way between the Stone Age and itself, the stones of Hong-Kong will
give investigators much to think about. Everything in Hong-Kong is
concrete and stone. From the spacious office buildings that stand along
the waterfront, to the palaces upon the peak, stone is the material out
of which everything is built. What achievement! What a monument to
Britain! But as the stones become harder beneath one's feet, one senses
the toil embodied in them. Male and female coolies still trudge over
these stony paths, carrying baskets of gravel, tar, or sand higher and
higher. These structures seemed to me like human bridges which great
leaders of men sometimes lay for their armies to pass over. Where do
they lead to? Perhaps to England's greatness; perhaps to the world's
shame.
At first one is prone to be rigid in one's judgment. There seems too
much evidence of desire to build securely, rather than humanely or
beautifully. The Orient, one hears, builds more daintily, more softly,
more picturesquely; America builds more comfortably and more thoroughly.
One might add, apologetically, that had not the masters driven these
coolies to such stony tasks, the poor creatures would simply have built
another Chinese wall at the behest of one of their own tyrants. Cheap
labor makes pyramids and walls, and palaces on the peaks of Hong-Kong.
But it also makes an unsightly slough of humanity about itself.
Considering how costly pyramids and palaces such as those at Hong-Kong
are, considering the plodding toil it took to build them, for the sake
of humanity it is better that they were built of stone, so that
rebuilding may never be necessary.
Everywhere as we climb we pass rest stations, coolies buying a few
cents' worth of food, coolies carrying cement. While far beneath lies
murky, moldy Hong-Kong with its worm-like streets, its misty harbor
waters, its hundreds of steamers, sail-boats, sampans, piers, and
dry-docks, and all around stand the peaks of earth and the inverted
peaks of air. Returning by another route, down more winding and more
precipitous paths, one passes great concrete reservoirs, tennis-courts,
an incline railway, water-sheds,--and the city again.
2
The days draw on even here, and sunlight is curtained by dim night. The
din of human voices loses its shrill tone of bargaining, the rickshaw
men trot regularly but more slowly. Carriers of sedan-chairs lag beneath
their loads; their steps slow down to a walk. Women by the dozen slip
by, still with their burdens, but their voices have a note of softness,
pleasing sadness. And now comes the time of day when no matter in what
station one's life may be cast, spirit and body shift to better
adjustment. And through the dim blue mist the shuffling of feet is
heard, or the sounding of loose wooden slippers like drops of water in a
well. Whatever revived activities may follow this twilight hour, now,
for the world entire, is rest,--even in toil-worn, grubbing, groveling
China, which seems not to have been born to rest.
"Business" is not yet gone from the streets of Hong-Kong, though it is
now wholly dark. Every one is working as though the day were but just
beginning and it were not Sunday night. It is impossible to select
"important" things from out this heap of human debris. Filth, odors,
activity, jewelry, dirty little heaps and packets of food,--all are
handled over and over again, and each one is content with a lick of the
fingers for the handling. Then when quite worn out one may rest his
bones on the pavement covered with straw or mat, or if more fortunate,
may have a hovel or a house in which to breed. The number of homeless
wretches sleeping on the inclined stone pavements of Hong-Kong was
simply appalling. And Hong-Kong is British made. Hong-Kong was a barren
island twenty-nine miles in area when seventy-five years or so ago
Britain demanded it from China; to-day its population is nearly a tenth
of that of the whole continent of Australia. But what a difference in
the status of that population! Certainly no man who sees the result of
over-population in proportion to a people's industrial ingenuity can
blame Australia for keeping herself under reproductive self-control.
A few of the things one sees as a matter of course in Hong-Kong will
illustrate. As I was coming down Pottinger Street I was horror-struck at
the sight of a small boy on his knees groaning and wailing as though he
were in unendurable agony. I thought at first he was having a fit, but
it became obvious that there was method in his madness. He was repeating
some incantation, bowing his head to the ground, tapping frantically
with a tin can on the stones, and chanting or shrieking out his
blessings or his curses, which ever the case may have been. He was a
blind beggar, and though he must have received more money than many a
coolie does (for even Chinese have coins to give) and in a way certainly
earned it, I could not but smile at his wisdom,--for at its worst it was
no worse than the labor of the coolie. Yet from many passers-by he
evoked only slight amusement.
Upon some steps in an unlighted thoroughfare stood a Chinese haranguing
a crowd. His voice was not unpleasant, his manner was persuasive. But
what to? Had he been urging China to stop breeding, to cease this
worm-like living and reproducing, I should have regarded him as a public
benefactor. For it made me creepy, this proximity to such squirming
numbers.
Beside a dirty wall around the corner was a medicine man selling a
miraculous bundle of herbs. He screeched its powers, gave each a smell,
which each one took since it cost nothing, and then he went into
frightful contortions to demonstrate that which these herbs could allay.
But from the expression on his face it was obvious they could not allay
his disappointment that the purchasers were few.
At an open store was a crowd. I edged my way up to see the excitement.
It was a "doctor's operating-room." Upon a bench sat an old man,
gray-haired and almost toothless. The "doctor" stood astride the
patients' knees and with a steel instrument, somewhat rusty, calmly and
carelessly stirred about in the old man's eyeless socket. All the
sufferer did was to mutter "Ta, ta, ta," pausing slightly between the
ta's, but never stirring. No guarding against infection out on the open,
dusty, dirty thoroughfare.
The crowd looked on without any sign of emotion. A few women sat on a
bench inside, but seemed quite indifferent. There was one exception. A
little mother with a boy of about six contemplated the performance with
a pained expression. Her boy's eyes were crossed and turned upward. He
had to be treated, too.
Finally even these things end. It is nine o'clock. Shops are closing,
the crowds on the streets die down. And for one brief spell the world
will rest.
Here we have four examples of life in China. When we examine them
closely, haphazardly chosen as they have been, there is a strange
uniformity and contradiction in their basic situations. The blind
beggar-boy, the charlatan advocate and medicine man, the careless
surgeon,--at bottom all charlatans, yet all essentially sincere. That
ranting little beggar howled his lying appeals, but at home, no doubt,
were other mouths to be fed for which he--blind head of the family--was
responsible. The herb-specialist seemed, from the tone of his voice,
sincere in the belief in his remedies; the surgeon, certain of his
operation. Yet that is what China is suffering from most, and because of
the faith in their crude panaceas and the conviction that five thousand
years of tradition gives folk, the Rockefeller Foundation will have to
work for many generations before it will make China prophylactic.
3
There was another incident that illustrated, to me at least, China's
ailment. Hong-Kong seemed possessed one night. I thought a riot or a
revolution had broken out, but it was only a house on fire. Thousands of
Chinese scurried about like rats looking for ways of escape. From the
littered roof and balcony of a five-story tenement a flame leaped
skyward as though itself trying to escape from the unpleasant task of
consuming so dirty a structure. The curious collected in hordes from
everywhere.
I made my way into this mass not unaware of being quite alone in the
world. It was interesting to be in this sort of mob. The reason for
China's subjugation showed itself in the ease with which it was
controlled. One single white policeman, running back and forth along the
length of a block, kept the whole mob well along the curb. It was
amazing to watch the crowd retreat at the officer's approach and then
bulge out as soon as he passed by. One young Chinese stood out a little
too far. The officer came up on his rear, yanked him by the ear, and
sent him scurrying back into the mob. They who dared rushed timidly
across the street. I remarked this to the policeman. He was pleased. "If
you want to get closer up, just walk straight ahead," he said. And so I
did, as did other white men who arrived, without being stopped. That was
it: we were quite different; we could go. Later a host of special
police, Chinese and Indian regulars, arrived and relieved this lone
white officer.
This incident seemed to me to symbolize China's present state. No
leader, no cohesion, no common thinking. Had the mob been
resentful,--what then! It was a mob the like of which I had never seen
before. A dull murmur sounded through all the confusion. It seemed to
be of one tone, as though all the notes of the scale were sung at once
and they blended into one another like the colors of the spectrum. The
people seemed wonderfully alert. Their hearing was keen. Two tram-car
conductors conversed forty feet away from each other, with dozens of
yapping Chinese between.
Thus, China enjoys a oneness like that of water. Easily separated,
lightly invaded, rapidly reunited, her masses flow on together when
directed into any channel, and it matters little where or why. And the
white policeman assured me that when the Chinese still wore queues a
policeman raided a den and tied the queues of fifteen Chinese together
and with these as reins drove them to prison.
4
Yet, what nation or race in the world has maintained such indivisibility
against so much separation! Think of what the family is and has been to
China,--its creeds, its government, its entire existence. Yet the family
and concubinage obtain side by side.
There was evidence of this in British Hong-Kong. Upon the street one day
I saw another crowd. It was waiting for the appearance of the Governor
of Canton. When the worthy governor emerged from a very unworthy-looking
building, the crowd cheered and gathered close around the automobile.
A well-dressed young Chinese in European clothes emerged from the hall.
I asked him what was toward, surmising his understanding. He spoke
English fluently and seemed pleased to inform me. So we strolled down
the street together. He was not very hopeful about Chinese democracy as
yet, but believed in it and expressed great admiration for America.
Britain, he said, was not well liked. He spoke of his religion, his
belief in Confucianism. He regretted that Hong-Kong had no temples and
that he and his friends were compelled to meet at the club for prayer.
Yet though he was a Confucianist, he decried the family system. "Chinese
cling too much to family," he said. "One man goes to America, then he
sends for a brother simply because he is a relative. The brother may be
a very bad character, but that doesn't matter. So it is in official
circles in China to-day. Graft goes on, jobs are dispensed to relatives
worthy or unworthy, efficient or inefficient. And the country is getting
deeper and deeper into difficulties."
As though to prove the truth of his assertions, he told me of his own
experiences as a child. "Chinese obey," he said. "My father paid for my
education, therefore my duty toward him should know no bounds." His
father had had ten children, only two of whom survived,--he and an elder
sister. When his father died, he became the head of the family.
Therefore he had to marry, even though then only fifteen years of age.
He had been married for sixteen years. I should never have believed it,
to judge from his appearance. He seemed no more than a student himself,
but he assured me he had five children,--one daughter fifteen years old.
Birth-control! Limitation of offspring! Why bother? If his father could
"raise" a family of ten on "nothing" and then just let them die
off,--why not he? So does duty keep the race alive.
And duty tolerates that which is sapping the very foundation of the
race,--not only the enslavement of the wife in such circumstances, but
the entertainment of the concubine. I saw the way that works.
At the opposite end of the city is the quarter where the concubines
abound. Life there does not begin till eight o'clock in the evening, if
as early. The clanging of cans and the effort at music is terrifying.
Hotels of from four to five stories, with all their balconies
illuminated, gave an effect of festive cheerfulness which the rest of
the city lacked utterly.
[Illustration: IN CHINA DRINKING-WATER, SOAP-SUDS, SOUP AND SEWERS ALL
FIND THEIR SOURCE IN THE SAME STREAM]
[Illustration: SHANGHAI YOUNGSTERS PUTTING THEIR HEADS TOGETHER TO
MAKE US OUT]
[Illustration: THIS OLD WOMAN IS LAYING DOWN THE LAW TO THE WILD YOUNG
THINGS OF CHINA]
[Illustration: CHINA COULD TURN THESE MUD HOUSES INTO PALACES IF SHE
WISHED--SHE IS RICH ENOUGH]
Upon the ground floors, which opened directly upon the street, the
women could be seen dressing for the evening. Nothing in their behavior
or dress would indicate their profession,--so unlike the licensed
districts of Japan. The women never as much as noticed any stranger on
the street. At the appointed time each little woman emerged, dainty,
clean and sober, and passed from her own quarters to the hotels and
restaurants where she was to meet her chartered libertine. Her decorum
approximated saintly modesty, and she moved with a childlike innocence.
There was throughout the district no rowdyism, no disorderliness.
Everything was businesslike and according to regulation. Strange, that
with so much self-control should go so much licentiousness. But it is
part of the mystery of the Orient.
5
Yet, this is no stranger than that with so much of excellence in
Hong-Kong, there should also go the perpetuation of coolieism; to
paraphrase, that with so much dignity and honesty in trade should go so
much inhumanity in the treatment of men. That is the mystery of
Britannia,--and her success. America went into the Orient and
immediately began educating it. In answer to a German criticism of
British educational work in Hong-Kong, the "Japan Chronicle" (British)
says:
Considering how much greater British interests in China have
hitherto been than American, the Americans are far more guilty of
the abominable crime of educating the Chinese than the British,
having spent a great deal of money, and induced young Chinese to
come to America and get Americanized. Most people, including
impartial British subjects, would find fault rather with the narrow
limits of English education in China than with its intentions.
Hongkong has been for many years the center of an enormously
profitable trade, and had things been done with the altruism that
one would like to see in international relations, there would be
ten universities instead of only one and a hundred students sent to
England for college or technical training where only one is sent
to-day.
Hitherto, it has been Britain's success that she has not interfered with
the habits of the races she has ruled. In Hong-Kong she has built a
modern city out of nothing, but has permitted Asiatic defects to find
their place within it.
For instance, there was no sewerage system in Hong-Kong,--a fact than
which no greater criticism could be made of Britain, or of any other
nation pretending to be civilized. In this no question of altruism is
involved, but purely one of self-interest. And if greater concern for
such matters were manifest, doubtless it would work its way back through
concubinage, ancestor worship, charlatanism in public and private life.
Having taken my chances with criticism, I shall risk praise. Englishmen
have never, to my knowledge, been given credit for the possession of
romantic souls; yet nothing but a deep love of romance could be
responsible for the manner in which Britain has preserved Hong-Kong's
Chinese face. Despite the fact that it is entirely Western in its
structure, I never felt the Oriental flavor more in all Japan than I did
at Hong-Kong. The sedan-chairs that take one up the steeps and remind
one of the swells on the China Sea in their motion, the thousands of
rickishaws that roll swiftly, quietly over smoothly paved streets, the
particularly attractive Chinese signs that lure one into dazzling shops
with unmistakable Eastern atmosphere, the money-changers and the markets
dripping with Oriental messes, left an impression on my mind that none
of my later experiences can dispel.
CHAPTER XI
CHINA'S EUROPEAN CAPITAL
1
Under the benign influence of a Salvation Army captain, my feet were
guided safely through some of the lesser evils of Shanghai. The greater
could not be fathomed in the short time allotted to me in the European
capital of China. Miss Smythe, who resented being called Smith, in a
manner that revealed she had long since ceased to be shy of mere man,
belonged to New Zealand by birth and heaven by adoption. She chose
Hong-Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo as temporary resting-places. It was her
task, every five years or so, to make a complete tour of the Orient to
collect funds for the Salvation Army. Hence her captaincy.
I was walking along Queens Street, Hong-Kong, somewhat lone in spirit,
when a rickshaw passed quickly by. The occupant, a fair lady, bowed
pleasantly to me and disappeared in the mêlée. I could not recall ever
having seen her face and wondered who in Hong-Kong she could be. Then it
struck me that she wore a hat with bright red on it. Later that day, as
I stepped into the launch to be taken across to the _Tamba Maru_, who
should appear but this selfsame lady. We greeted each other, both
surprised at the second meeting and at the coincidence of our joining
the same ship.
"I thought I had met you when I greeted you on the street this morning,"
she said.
All the way from Hong-Kong to Shanghai she was as busy going from class
to class as she was on shore, spreading the faith, placing literature
where it could be found and read, organizing hymn parties and
discouraging booze. The Japanese on board took her good-naturedly. She
spoke their language fluently, but I could not see that they drank one
little cup of saké the less for her.
When we arrived at Shanghai she would have nothing else but that I
should go with her to some friends of hers for dinner. Into one rickshaw
she loaded her bags, into another me, with the manner of one handling
cargo, and then deposited herself in a third. The train made its way
along the Bund and out of confusion. And that was the way I was
shanghaied.
Somewhere in a street that might for all the world have been in Chicago,
our train drew up. It was quiet, had a little open park in it, where two
streets seemed to have got mixed and, scared at losing their identity
like the Siamese twins, ran off in an angle of directions. Here at a
brick-red building with balconies and porticoes, and a dark, damp door,
we made our announcement and were received. Now what would the world
have thought if a Salvation Army man had picked up a strange young woman
on a steamer and haled her into a strange house? None but a Salvation
Army Lassie could have done what Miss Smythe,--not Smith, mind
you!--dared to do. We were welcomed as though the appearance of a
stranger were in the usual course of events, and I was asked to stay for
dinner. The hostess, a quiet woman, with her pretty young daughter, kept
a boarding-house, and was always prepared for extra folk.
It was a boarding-house like any I should have expected to find in
America. The rooms were spacious, hung with framed prints, and dark and
slightly damp, according to Shanghai climate. There was something
haunting about the house, but to a homeless vagabond like myself it
seemed the acme of comfort. And to one who had had no real home meal in
five weeks or more, but only ship's food, the spread we sat down to was
delicious.
Miss Smythe did not enjoy her dinner as much as I did, for she feared
all along that she would not be able to get to church on time. Then it
was too late for me to regain my ship, so I was invited to spend the
night under a roof instead of a deck.
The next day I wandered off by myself, but not till I had promised to
return for Chinese "chow." In the meantime Miss Smythe had spread my
fame among others of her profession, and made a date for me to go to a
"rescue house" or some such place that evening. It was a mission home
for Japanese, run by a woman who, if she wasn't from Boston, I'm sure
must have come from Brookline. The only thing Oriental about that
mission was its Japanese. A sumptuous dinner was served which, despite
the fact that I had had "chow" only twenty minutes before, I was
compelled to eat. With two heavy meals where one is accustomed to berth,
accommodations were somewhat crowded.
Everything would have gone well if I hadn't promised to give the
residents a talk on my travels. I began. Miss Smythe felt that I wasn't
emphasizing the presence of God in the numerous regions I had visited. I
took His omnipresence for granted, but she kept breaking into my talk at
every turn. Two meals inside of two people who both tried to lecture at
once didn't go very well, especially at a mission in China run by
Europeans and attended by Japanese. It seemed that there was not
over-much love lost on the part of the sons of Tenno for those of the
Son of Heaven, nor did the European missionaries at this place encourage
the intermarriage of these illustrious spirits. The Bostonian in exile
on more than one occasion spoke disparagingly of the cleanliness of the
Chinese, much to the satisfaction of the Japanese. But then, she was
winning and holding them to the Son of God, and when they reached heaven
they would all be one. Miss Smythe afterward apologized to me for
interrupting me during my talk, and we parted as cordially as we had
met. Some months later I found her roaming the streets of Kobe, Japan,
as active as ever in the militant cause. Her insinuations about what
goes on in Japanese inns seemed to me unjustifiable. So I asked her
whether it was fair to the Japanese and Chinese for her to be forever
repeating hearsay when she would resent it were I to repeat what I had
heard about the morality of the Australians. It took her aback, but I am
sure that she is still pursuing vice and drink and irreverence, aided
and abetted by the dollars which she extracts from foreign business men
and reprobates throughout the East.
2
But I must get back to Shanghai, even though Miss Smythe is so
attractive. As long as I remained under her wing I had taken virtually
no notice of China. So it is in Shanghai; one cannot see the Orient for
the Occidentals. For if Hong-Kong is an example of adulterated British
imperialism, Shanghai is one of European internationalism grafted upon
China. At Shanghai the forces of two contending racial streams meet,
like the waters at the entrance of Port Philip, and here, though the
surface is smooth and glassy, there are eddies and whirlpools within,
which are a menace to any small craft that may attempt to cross.
How strange to wander about streets and buildings quite European but to
see only here and there a white face! It is an ultra-modern city built
upon a flat plain. The streams of Chinese that come wandering in from
regions unknown to the transient, give him a sense of contact with a
vast, endless world beyond. They might be coming from just round the
corner, but their manner is of plainsmen bringing their goods and
chattels to market. In comparison with the Southern Chinese, these are
giants, but still dirty and most of them chestless. In constant turmoil
and travail, beggars pleading for a pittance with which to sustain
their empty lives, limousines making way for themselves between
rickshaws and one-wheeled barrows, coolies pulling and carrying loads,
some grunting as they jig their way along, others chanting in
chorus,--yet all in the "foreign" settlement, amid buildings that are
alien to them, and largely for men who see only the gain they here
secure. I wonder if the Chinese say of the Europeans as Americans are
often heard to say of Italians and Orientals,--that they come only to
make money and return to spend it?
Yet the white have built Shanghai. Shanghai is not Chinese. Had it not
been for the white men, the plain would still be swampy, would still be
a litter of hovels with here and there a mansion flowering in the mud.
The mud still messes up the edge of things in Shanghai. The creek is an
example. There are the sampans and barges, some loaded with pyramid-like
stacks of hay, some with heavy, thick-walled mahogany coffins, the
myriads of families huddling within the holds, and the murky tides
washing in and washing out beneath them. Here the sexes live in greater
intimacy, it seemed to me, than in Hong-Kong. I actually saw one woman
place her hand in what I was sure was an affectionate way on the
shoulder of a man: and some were mutually helpful. But otherwise,
despite the great conglomeration and greater coöperation, in the entire
mass one cannot see how ancestor-worshipers can show so little regard
for one another.
In the market-place the confusion is more orderly. Here even white women
come to stock up their kitchens, and here Japanese women move about,
sober by nature and by virtue of the superiority they possess as
conquerors in their husbands' rights. Two girls are quarreling
vociferously and the more self-controlled look on both sympathetically
and antipathetically. The washed-down pavement of the market floor is no
place, however, for a serious bout.
Through the long hours of early evening I wandered into one street and
out the other. I had become more or less reconciled to the alien aspects
of Shanghai, to good stores selling good goods, to fashionable hotels
and spacious residences, but one thing was inalienably alien to it, and
that was a second-hand book-shop. It had not occurred to me that
foreigners in China would part with their books if they ever got hold of
them. And for a moment I was altogether transported, and my magic carpet
lay in San Francisco, in Chicago, in New York all at once. But it was
chilly and the rain made the city worse than a washed-down market, for
it depopulated the streets, leaving me as dreary in heart as in body. I
was glad when the hour came for me to make my appearance at the kind
woman's house for chow.
Though I was sorry to hear the missionary at the mission decry the
Chinese to the satisfaction of her Japanese patrons, and felt that it
turned me slightly against both, still both Japanese and missionaries
were kind and attentive to me. In the evening, a young Japanese business
man called for a motor-car and took us out in the bleak, wet night to
see the great white way of Shanghai. The rain deflected the strange
glimmers of electric light through the isinglassed curtains of the car.
For a time we skidded along over slushy streets, turning into the
theater district as the attraction supreme. Here the gonfalons drooped
in the watery air, while Chinese mess merchants stood in out of the rain
with their little wagonettes of steaming portions. In a whirl we were
through the cluttering crowds and making for the residential districts.
Then wide avenues opened out in serpentine ways, shaggy trees dripping
overhead, the slippery pavement swinging us from side to side as our
dare-devil Chinese driver sped on to Bubbling Well. For an hour we rode,
I did not know whither, but everywhere at my right and left were
palatial Chinese and foreign residences. Without knowing it we had
turned and were back in Shanghai, and presently within doors again,--and
asleep.
3
Next day, this same Japanese business man volunteered to escort me to
Chinese City. I would have gone by myself, but every one looked
horrified at the idea; so I accepted this knightly guide. At the
appointed time I presented myself at his office. He had asked his
Chinese clerk to accompany us for protection, and ordered three
rickshaws. Though he had lived in Shanghai for years, he had never gone
to see Chinese City, and was glad to avail himself of an excuse for
doing so now. The Japanese is a natural-born cicerone.
In a few minutes we had left the international section of the
settlement--that jointly occupied by Britain and America--and wobbled
into the French district. Suddenly we stopped, and our carriers lowered
their shafts to the ground. We were at a narrow opening three or four
feet wide, and I could not understand why we should pay our respects to
it. "From here we have to walk," said the Chinese, and in single file we
entered, dropping out of Shanghai as into a bog. That was real China,
but only as little Italy in New York is real Italy.
The whole of Chinese City can be summed up hastily and in but a few
words. Narrow, dirty little thoroughfares laid out in broken stone
paving, tiny shops where luxuries, necessities, and coolie requisites
are sold,--dark, dirty, open to the damp! What destitution is the
inheritance of these thousands of years of civilization!
The first thing to greet us, standing out against the general
wretchedness, was not beautiful. To one accustomed to hard sights and
scenes, to one not easily perturbed by human degradation, that which
passed as we entered was sufficient to unnerve him. Upon the wet, filthy
street rolled a legless boy. He had no crutches; his business required
none. He was begging: howling, chanting, and rolling all at the same
time. I could not say "Poor child!" Rather, poor China, that it should
come to this!
Immediately after, though having no business connections, came an old
man. Came? Walked crouching, bowing his gray head till it touched the
filthy pathway. He was kotowing before the menials of China, not its
empress.
The third was the worst of all. One old, ragged, broken beggar was
carrying on his back what might have been a corpse, but was another
beggar; the two--one on top of the other--were not more than four feet
above the ground.
I felt as though Mara, the Evil One, was trying to frighten me by an
exhibition of his pet horrors so that I might not go farther. I was not
being perturbed, the horrors ceased.
But what beauties or treasures were they meant to guard? What was there
that I was not to see? What ogre dwelt within? Nothing but a bit of
business, so to speak, in a social bog.
Beside a tideless creek, advertised as a lake, stood a pagoda-like
structure, just a broken reflection imaged in the mud. As we approached
we were immediately taken in charge by a Chinese guide and led along a
path crudely paved with cobblestones into an "ancient" tea-garden. The
wall around it was topped with a vicious-looking dragon that stretched
around it. A tremendous monster of wood, it lay there; and perhaps it
will continue to lie there long after China shall have forsaken the
dragon. Then from chamber to chamber we strolled, past tables of stone
and shrines and effigies, and into the heart of China's superstitious
soul. Though in itself not ancient, what a peep it afforded into
antiquity,--dull, dead, yet powerful!
For within these secret chambers there were displayed endless numbers of
emperors and their dynastic celebrities. In one chamber, blue with smoke
and stifling incense, lighted with red candles, burning joss-sticks,
behung with lanterns, and crowded with lazy Chinese, we found several
"emperors" with red-painted wooden effigies of their wives. To me the
smoke was choking; not so to them. The incense was sweet in their
nostrils, and nourishing. And in payment for the sacrificial generosity
and the prayers of fat, wealthy Chinese women who fell upon their knees,
rose, and fell again, bowing and repeating incantations, they were to
make the husbands of these women--too busy to come themselves--meet with
success in business. Seriousness and earnestness marked the features of
these women, and who can say their faith was ignored?
We emerged from this underground chamber upon another thoroughfare,
pursuing which we came upon an open, unused plot. Here a circus had
attracted a crowd. A three-year-old baby, a pretty little sister, a
feminine father, and a masculine mother were the entertainers. They were
acrobats. A family row--which, it would seem, is not unknown in
China--was enacted without any of the details being omitted; nor did
they stop at coarse and vulgar acts which would have brought the police
down upon them in America. Yet the audience seemed highly amused, while
some of the spectators might easily have posed for paintings of Chinese
bearded saints, or have been models for some of the sacred effigies
which, not more than a block away, were idols in the temple.
These are the high spots in Chinese City, a city into which I was urged
not to venture alone. That human life should be considered of little
worth here is not marvelous; but that any one there should consider the
prolongation of his own a bit worth the taking of mine, is one of the
inexplicable marvels of the world.
Is this China? By no means. It is merely the back-wash of the contact
with European life which has been imposed on China without sufficient
chance for its absorption. It is no more typical of China than our
metropolitan slums are really typical of American life. True, they are
the result of it, but where the rounding out of relationships and
conditions have been accomplished there follows a graduation of elements
to where good and evil obtain side by side. And Chinese City is but the
worst phase of Chinese slums plastered upon Shanghai.
4
Poverty in Chinese City is one thing; in Shanghai it is another. It is
all a matter of the background. Buddha the beggar is still Buddha the
Prince.
After I came out of Chinese City I took much greater note of the details
of the life of the coolie, the toiler in Shanghai proper. I was out on
the Bund. The stone walls hemming in the river Whang-po rise at a level
round the city. For five feet more the human wall of coolies shuts out
the tide of poverty and despair from a world as foreign to China as
water is alien to stone. From both walls a murmur reaches the outer
world: the swish of the tide, the hum of coolie consolation. I let
myself believe that they chant beneath their burdens to disguise their
groans. Up and down the Bund they course, here at exporting, there at
importing. Their gathering-places are at the godowns, and in and out
they pass up and down inclined planks, each with a sack, or in couples
with two or more sacks hanging from their shoulders, never resting from
these rounds.
At another point they are delivering mail to the ship's launch. Two
cart-loads arrive. Coolies swarm about the carts, waiting for orders.
Some are mere boys, but already inured to the tread. As each lifts a bag
of mail he passes a Japanese, who hands him a stiletto-shaped piece of
wood with some inscription on it,--painted green to the hilt. He takes
two steps and is on the gang-plank, two more, and he has burdened
himself with three bags of mail, and returns; he received and returns
three sticks. That is the way count is kept of the mail. I couldn't
understand this close precaution. Could the coolie possibly abscond with
a bag of mail under the very eyes of an officer?
Two small boys eagerly rushed a distance on, to pick up some bags that
had been left there. They were acting without order,--spontaneously.
They would have saved themselves some labor in that way. But the officer
in charge shrieked his reprimand at them. One, in his enthusiasm,
ignored the command. The officer rushed after him and boxed his ears.
The boy received the punishment, but went right ahead with his burden.
Hardened little sinner! calloused little soul! poor little ant!
One youngster came up, chanting the sale of some sweet-cakes. Looking
into his face, I wondered what he was thinking just then. He must think!
No one could be so young and have such a cramped neck, such sad eyes,
such furrowed brows without hard thoughts to make them so.
In the slush and rain, under semi-poverty and destitution, barefoot,
ragged, and in infinite numbers,--still they toil. Yet against the
background of sturdy Shanghai, their labor and their travail does not
hurt as much as it does in Chinese City. The perplexities of
life--national, racial, of caste--pervaded my thoughts. Why has China
remained dormant so long? Why is she now waking? How will she tackle the
problem of poverty? To me it seems that nations rise and fall not
because fluctuation is the inherent law of life, but simply because
universally accepted glory and prestige are positions generally paid for
by accompanying poverty and disease. No nation can dominate for a long
time with such coolieism as that in China.
China has standards all her own. We come with our ways and claim
superiority. China grants it, yet goes her own way. And when we see her
sons we like them, though we may criticize, condemn, and try to change
them. This is the oneness of China and the consensus of opinion is that
it is lovable. People come, employ Chinese as servants, and try to train
them. They may take that which they think you do not need, carry out
their own and not your ideas. You in turn rave and roar, but in the end
they are still there as servants and you as master. But they have
educated you, you have not changed them. And when you leave China you
long for them as did that American woman I met in Honolulu who fairly
wailed her longing aloud to me. China has done this with whole nations,
and, to the very end of time, whatever nation sets out to rule and
conquer that new republic must make up its mind to be lost.
And so behind Shanghai is Chinese City, and behind that there is China,
out upon the flat plains. There is another China yet beyond, and still
another and as many as there are billows on the sea. Build modern
buildings and cities, and the Chinese take them and turn them inside
out, and they are what he wants them to be. This plastic people,--what
is their destiny? And what, still, is there awaiting the world as they
fulfil that destiny?
How strange it feels to call her republic! Yet China has taken to
republicanism as though it had been brewing in her these thousands of
years. From outward appearances one would never know that she is a
republic to-day. Some say she really isn't. Coolies still are coolies,
and Chinese, Chinese. And I dare say she is both empire and republic,
two in one.
For centuries China has lain dormant as though stung by a paralyzing
wasp. Centuries have been lost in sleep. But what are centuries, when
waking is so simple and is always possible? China has wakened. She is
rising. An hour's work has been accomplished in the first fresh flush of
the new dawn. Perhaps that is all that will be done that day, the house
put in a little better order. To-morrow is time enough for real work. A
Chinese junk comes out of its night-mist retreat with its own dim
lights. A shrill whistle of a passing launch echoes across the flat
plains about Shanghai. The rain of yesterday remains only as a sorry
mist. A vision of clearer day shimmers through, but soon grows dull
again. China seems to have shaped her climate in her own image.
A two-days' steam to Moji, Japan, on the bosom of that heaving mistress
the China Sea, and my journey was over for a long while. The sea was
black, the sky somber; even the sun was sad as it stooped that evening
to kiss the cheek of Japan good night. I did not know just then that I
was to say farewell to the sea for two and a half years,--a farewell
that resulted in _Japan: Real and Imaginary_.
CHAPTER XII
WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS
_The Third Side of the Triangle_
... For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent.
Now round us spreads the watery plain--
Oh, might our marges meet again!
1
I had gone out to the _Katori-maru_ to inspect my quarters. I always
loved to get away from shore, even if only in a launch or sampan; it was
so much cleaner and fresher on the bay. That afternoon it was altogether
too attractive out there, and the city of Kobe lay so snugly below the
hills that I decided to remain on board till late in the evening, and
missed the last launch. I hailed a sampan. In this, with the wind
splashing the single sail and the spray scattering all about us, we
slipped romantically back to the American Hatoba. It was my last
entrance to Kobe.
All of the next day I kept changing trains and creeping over Japanese
hills and rice-fields in my devious and indirect route to Yokohama by
way of Japan's national shrine, Yamada Ise. A few days later I was on
board the _Katori-maru_, the newest type of Japanese shrine, the modern
commercial floating shrine, named after one of the most ancient of
shrines in Japan. The Katori shrine is said to have been founded some
twenty-five hundred years ago during the reign of the mythical first
emperor, Jimmu Tenno. It was dedicated to deities who possessed great
military skill and has always been patronized mainly by soldiers.
Transferring shrines from land to sea is a hazardous procedure. For me,
however, I was ready to give my offering most willingly as long as it
brought me to Seattle. There were too many people willing to patronize
floating shrines at that time for me to be too particular about deities.
[Illustration: FUJIYAMA
Japanese roofs may be monotonous--but never so is Fujiyama
Photo from Brown Bros.]
[Illustration: SEA, EARTH AND SKY
All are one in this glorious Pacific World
Photo from Brown Bros.]
For a moment, as we slipped away from the pier, I felt what a dying man
is said to feel when the flash-like review of life's experiences course
through his sinking consciousness. I saw Japan and all its valleys, its
dirt and its sublimity; and with all its past confusions I loved it.
Waiting for a final glimpse of Fuji left me idle enough to observe the
little things about me. There was, for instance, the two-by-two-by-five
sailor who was showing two Japanese girls through the "shrine" he was
serving. I followed them about the ship. He was explaining to them
various mysteries.
The Sailor: "Kore wa otoko no bath. [This is the men's bath.]" To the
minds of these Japanese maidens such a distinction was surprising.
The Sailor: "Kore wa second class. [This is second class.]" This was
like treading on sacred ground to these lowly born mites.
The Sailor: "Kore wa kitsu en shitsu. [This is the smoking-room.]" Why a
special room for so simple a service--and why men only?
He led them above to the hospital. He never made any comments, they
asked him no questions, but followed, single file, as is proper for
Japanese girls, agape with curiosity. They passed the life-saving
equipment. A tiny voice ventured a question. An amazed member of the
Japanese Government (it was a government subsidized vessel) said, with
semi-scorn:
"Kore wa? _Boat._ [This? _Boat._]" And they went below.
2
All of that forenoon, waiting for the _Katori-maru_ to slip away from
the pier, I watched for Fujiyama, that exquisite pyramid (to the summit
of which I had climbed twice), but it was veiled in mist. I wanted to
see what it looked like from the sea, just as I had seen what the sea
and the universe looked like from its peak. All afternoon, as Japan was
receding into the past, I tried to distinguish old Fuji, but there was
only a glittering edge, like a sword, beneath the low, bright sun. After
dinner I went on deck and there in all that simple splendor which has
made it the wonder of the world, stood Fujiyama, with a soft, sunset
glow beneath its peak. The symbolic sword had vanished. And I felt that
in all those years and miles and space which gather in my memory as that
single thing--the Pacific Ocean--nothing transcends in loveliness the
last view of Fuji from the sea.
Then for two days the world seemed to swoon in mist. The fog-horn kept
blowing drearily every two minutes; yet the steamer never slackened its
speed for a moment; in fact, we made more miles those two days than
during the clear days that followed. We had taken the extreme northern
route and were soon in a cold latitude. The fog became crisp, as though
threatening to crystallize, and when I stood on the forward deck it was
almost like being out in a blizzard. The siren continued to emit its
melancholy wail across a wilderness of waves lost in mist. One could not
see the length of the ship. At midnight I woke, startled by the sudden
cessation of the propellers. For three hours we were stationary, owing
to engine trouble. The steamer barely rocked, giving me the sensation of
the deep as nothing ever did before. It was at once weird and lovely,
and in the darkness I could imagine our vessel as lone and isolated, a
thing lost in an open wilderness of space. The siren continued moaning
like the wail of a child in the night, and once I thought I heard
another siren off in the distance. We started off again and from then on
didn't once slacken our speed in the least, so large, so spacious, so
unfrequented is the Pacific in these days.
The fog hung close for so many days that a rumor went round that the
captain was unable to get his bearings. With neither sun nor stars to
rely on men's best instruments are altogether inadequate. At half-past
nine o'clock one evening, however, the steel blinds were closed over the
port-holes. The ship began to pitch and roll. The waves rushed at us and
broke against the iron cheek of the vessel. The fittings on deck rolled
back and forth, and those passengers unused to the sea clung to their
berths.
Only when we were within three days of the American coast did the sun
come out. For over a week we had been in a dull-gray world which was
becoming terribly depressing. We were considerably farther north than I
had expected to be.
Five days after our departure, I was again at the 180th meridian, and
enjoyed what only a very eager, active person could enjoy,--a
forty-eight-hour day. This time, going eastward, we gained a day. I also
had the pleasure of being within fifty degrees of the north pole just as
three years before I had been within fifty degrees of the south pole. In
other words, I had touched two points along the 180th meridian which
were six thousand miles away from each other, or twice the distance from
New York to San Francisco.
Calculations are somewhat misleading at times. For instance, when we
were near the Aleutian Islands, I chanced to compare the records of that
day's run as posted in the first saloon with those posted in the second
saloon. The first read 4,240 miles from Yokohama; the second, 4,235
miles. Japanese handling of figures made the prow of the ship five miles
nearer its destination than the stern. Japanese historians also have a
tendency to make such innocent mistakes in their imperialistic
calculations. Japan's feet do not seem to be able to keep pace with her
desires.
As though to investigate this phenomenon, a little bird,--slightly
larger than a sparrow, with the same kind of feathered back, but with a
white breast, flitted down upon the deck before me,--and began hopping
about. It approached to within two feet of me, then sneaked into a warm
place out of sight. A stowaway from birdland, stealing a ride and
planning, most likely, to enter America without a passport. Perhaps it
thought that being near the stern of the boat, according to the
calculations above quoted, it could still remain beyond the three-mile
limit.
Then the homeward-bound spirit took possession of me,--that selfsame
realization of my direction which had come over me upon sight of the
Australian coast three years previously, a psychological twisting which
baffled me for a time. Another day and we were within the last square
marked off by the latitudinal and longitudinal lines,--the nearest I had
been to America in nearly five years. To remind me of my wanderings, the
flags of the nations hung in the dining-saloon: under nearly every one
of them I had at some time found hospitality.
3
The reader who has followed me thus far has been with me about three
months on the sea. What to the Greeks and the Romans was the
Mediterranean, the Pacific will be to us seventy times over. Already
there is a wealth of literature and of science which has come to us
through the inspiration of that great waterway. For Darwin and Stevenson
and O'Brien the Pacific has been mother of their finest passions. In the
near future, our argosies will cross and recross those tens of thousands
of miles as numerously as those of the Phoenicians on the
Mediterranean in antiquity. They will bring us back the teas and spices
and silks of the Orient. But there are those of us who have watched the
"White Shadows" of the Pacific who would wish that something were
brought away besides the ephemeral materials. For there is in the sea a
kinship with the infinite and the absolute, and who studies its moods
comes nearer understanding life.
I wandered along one night with a New Zealand man, without knowing where
he was leading me. Suddenly we came, by way of a narrow pathway, against
a wall of darkness. We were at the seashore. It was as though we had
come to the world's end and the white glistening breakers arrived as
messengers from eternity, warning us against venturing farther. I
strained my eyes to see into that pitch-black gulch, but I might just as
well have shut my eyes and let the persistent breakers tell the story of
the sea in their own way. Afterward I often made my way out to that
beach and sat for hours, or trod the sands till night left of the sea
nothing but mournful whisperings.
One day in August, when the first snow fell over our little winter world
in the far South, I had climbed the hills up to the belt of wildwood
that girds the city of Dunedin. The very joy of life was in the air.
Keenly I sensed the larger season,--that of human kinship merged in the
centuries. I looked across the hills to mountains I had known; but it
was then not the Alps I saw, not the Rockies, the Aeta Roa under the
Southern Cross, nor yet the Himalayas nor the snow-packed barriers of
the Uriankhai, the unrenowned Turgan group. In truth, I was not seeing
impassable peaks at all, but imprisoned ranges which were themselves
trying to outreach their altitudinal limitations. It was a world
consciousness which was mine, and I towered far above the highest peaks,
above the world itself. I saw no single group, no political sections nor
geographical divisions, the conquest of ridges, the commingling of
noises, the concord of peoples. And when men come to this world
consciousness they will recognize and accept all, include the barrier
and the plain. They will see these great, sheer rugged peaks knifing the
floating clouds, yielding to the creeping glaciers, yet one and all,
when released sweeping down the valleys as impassioned rivers, filling
the lowest depths of earth, depths deeper than the sea, lower than the
deserts. In such moments of world consciousness men will have to step
downward from the bottom of the sea and upward from the summit of
McKinley. Then barriers will become beacons. Mankind lives at sea-level.
We care little about our neighbors over the ranges. That mental attitude
makes barriers real and valleys dark. But when we turn them into beacons
we shall climb the barriers in order to look into the valleys of our
neighbors and they will become the ladders of heaven and the light unto
nations. That is the lesson of the sea.
At present we live at a sea-level, but beneath and behind the barriers,
are the peaks of earth. Hence walls of houses are as great barriers as
mountains. Hence even thoughts are barriers and ideals become terrible,
cold, insurmountable prominences.
But in world consciousness, which is the lesson of the sea, we do not
reject anything,--the religions, the political parties, the
anti-religions, and the negations,--but we bring them to the level of
human understanding by absorption, by taking them in. That is the story
of the sea.
The ocean breaks incessantly before us, but only the one majestic wave
thrills as it rises and overleaps the rocky barrier. A forest is densely
grown, yet only the stately, beautiful tree stirs the forest-lover. The
street swarms with human beings all of whom are material for the
friend-maker, yet only one of the mass, in passing, steeps the day's
experience in the essence of love. But loving that one wave, or tree, or
being does not shut us against the source of its becoming; rather does
it teach us the possibilities latent in the mass. That is the moral of
the sea.
But what is the sea? How can we know the sea? Is it water, space,
depth? Can we measure it in miles, in the days required to traverse it,
in steamship lines, by the turning of the screws, or by the system of
the fourth dimension? To me who have been round the greatest sea on
earth comes the realization that I have seen only a narrow line of it,
and that I can only believe that the rest is what it has been said to
be. Yet my faith is founded on my knowledge of the faithfulness of the
sea.
The sea, we sometimes say, has its moods, but rather should they be
called enthusiasms. It is really not the sea at all to which we refer,
but to something which in the vague world of infinitude is in itself a
sea whipping the surface of an unfathomable wonder. The sea's moods are
not in its breakers, any more than is the surface phenomenon which
floors the region between our atmosphere and ether, the story of our
earth. We cannot reach down beneath the breakers and learn the secret of
the heart of the sea. In ourselves, as in the sea, we obtain a record of
that tremendous silence which is the harbinger of all sound, as the
heavens are of all color.
One day in New Zealand I witnessed a conflict between the earth and the
sea. A tremendous wind swept north-westward, and pressed heavily down
upon the shore. It sent the sand scurrying back into the sea. Even the
breakers, like the sand, fell back in furious spray like the waves of
sea-horses,--back into the ocean. The entire length of the beach for
three miles was alive with retreating spray, mingled with the bewildered
sand-legions scurrying at my ankles.
One night, on the shores of Otago Harbor, the moon, blasted and blunted
by heavy clouds, had started on its journey. In a little cave huddled a
cloud of black night. We had spread the faithful embers of our camp fire
so they could not touch one another, and wanting touch they died in the
darkness. We had put the curse of loneliness upon each of them. The
little cave had become only a darker spot on a dark landscape,--a
landscape so rough, so rare and rugged, reaching the sea and the
western sky of night. So rough, so unformed, so uncompleted. The maker
of lands was beating against it impatiently, rushing it, forming it.
What uncanny projections, what sandy cliffs! For ages the wind and sea
have been whipping them into shape. Yet man could remove them with a
blast or two. For thousands of miles, all round the rim of the great
Pacific, the same process is going on, day and night. While upon land,
man has continued working out his mission in the same persistent,
unconscious manner.
O Maker of lands' ends, O Sea, when will man be formed? When will the
conflicts among men cease? They have tried to curb one another and to
subject one another to slavish uses, even and kempt. But still, after
ages of whipping and lashing, they are still unfinished as though never
to be formed. Are the various little groups which lie so far apart,
scattered by some ancient camper, to die for want of the touch of
comrade, like those embers in the darkness of that empty cavelet?
Here round the Pacific we dwell, each in his own little hollow. May not
this vast, generous ocean become the great experiment station for human
commonalty, for distinction without extinction? The dreams that centered
in the other great seas--the Mediterranean, the Atlantic--were only
partially fulfilled. But here at the point where East is West, it ought
to be possible, because of the very obvious differences, to maintain
relations without irritating encroachment. There was a time when
passionate desire justified a man taking a woman from another with the
aid of a club. To-day the decent man knows that however much he may
love, only mutual consent makes relationship possible. And from the
frenzy of untutored souls let those who feel repugnance withdraw till
the force of a higher morality makes the rest of the world follow in its
wake.
... now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain:
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
BOOK TWO
DISCUSSION OF NATIVE PROBLEMS--PERSONAL AND SOCIAL
CHAPTER XIII
EXIT THE NOBLE SAVAGE
1
To the primitive or simple races of the world marriage, divorce, and
supply of only the elemental wants are the most intense problems.
Nourishment and reproduction make up the rounds of life. While the
highly developed nations around the Pacific are concerned with the
exploitation of the resources of the islands, and with political
problems growing out of their reciprocal interests, the natives are
struggling with matters that lie nearer the real foundations of life.
For them the question of survival is an immediate and pressing one.
Extinction is facing many of them, absorption by inflowing races is
creating altogether new difficulties and relationships, such as marriage
and divorce, while newer conceptions of exchange and trade, the buying
and selling of meats and vegetables, are introducing social and moral
factors they could not as yet be expected to understand. Nor can we who
have thrust ourselves upon them or accepted responsibility for their
well-being understand our obligations unless we think of them as human
beings, or without visualizing their problems by human examples. Nor can
we escape these responsibilities or shirk them. Out of the stuff their
lives are made of grow the larger problems, those of the relationship of
the great civilizations that touch each other on the Pacific--Asia,
Australasia, America.
Threnodies and elegies a-plenty have mourned the passing of the
Polynesians of the South Seas. The noble savage whose average height
often measured six feet--plus thick callouses--has stalked among us, as
a mythical figure, maidens unabashed in their naked loveliness have
lured men to the tropics oblivious of home ties. Leisure and unlimited
harems in prospect have afforded many a civilized man salacious joys the
like of which the white race has not altogether abandoned, but which few
have the courage to pursue in the open. The passing of these Pacific
peoples has in some quarters been hailed as an indication of the
viciousness of civilization; their yielding to virtue has been deplored
by others. The sentimentalist has clothed them in romance; the cynic has
stuck horns in their brows. But whether the romancer is wrong or the
missionary devoid of appreciation of nature unadorned, the passing of
the Polynesian is an admitted danger. Whether it was the vice of the
drunken sailor or the clothes of the devout disciple that brought about
this downfall shall not here be determined. It will be mine merely to
depict in living examples the episodes that indicate their evanescence,
and to point to the silent forces of regeneration that are at
work,--forces that, having accomplished the virtual decease of some of
the finest races in the world, and yet are bringing about their rebirth.
One cannot live in the tropics without romancing. The simplicity, the
earnestness of life, devoid of many of the outer signs of avarice so
consonant with the individualism of our civilization; the slovenliness
unhampered by too many clothes,--these take one by a storm of pleasure.
One forgets the natives once were cannibals; or rather, one delights in
saying to oneself "they were," and forgets to thank the missionary and
the trader for having altered these tastes before one arrived; one
exalts every sprawling female into a symbol of naturalness, though
Heaven knows the soft white skins and hidden bosoms of the North come as
welcome reminders in face of native temptations. And with Professor
Brown of New Zealand, one deplores that the selfsame missionaries and
traders "in spite of their antipodal purposes and methods, alike force
the race to decay." Their contract with the white race is demoralizing
even where it aims to be most just and helpful. Their lands, made secure
to them by legislation (as in New Zealand), often become the means of
gratifying wild tastes for motor-cars and fineries which leave them
bankrupt physically and morally.
2
It was a steaming day. I had been up from before dawn in order to make
my pilgrimage to Vailima. Half the morning was not yet gone when I
returned to the little hotel in Apia, situated beside the reefs, to hide
myself away from the burning sun. Even within the shade of the upper
veranda my flesh squirmed beneath my shirt and the shoes upon my feet
became unbearable. So off went my shoes. Nothing merely romantic could
have induced me to crawl from under the shadows. There I was content to
listen to the lapping of the broken waves as they washed shoreward over
the reefs. There I inhaled the scent of tropical vegetation as it
reached me, tempered and sifted to the satisfaction of one who dreads
the sun and its overweening brilliance.
Suddenly a wail lanced the silence. It sounded for all the world like
the melancholy "extra" which New York newsboys cry through the side
streets when they wish to make a fire the concern of the world. I sprang
up and, leaning over the veranda rail, strained my neck in the direction
of the crier, who was still behind the bend in the road which is Apia's
Main Street. It seemed to take him an unconscionable time to come into
view, his voice approaching and receding, and being battologized as
though by a hundred megaphones. Prancing, crouching, and shading his
eyes in the manner of an Amerindian scout, he finally made his
appearance,--a grotesque fiend, one to strike terror to the heart of a
god. His oiled body glistened in the sun; his charcoal-blackened jaw
resembled that of a gorilla; while a scarlet turban of cheese-cloth
wound after the fashion of the Hindu gave flaming finish to this
frightful impersonation of the devil. Nothing but the presence of the
army of occupation and the _Encounter_ out in the harbor could have
allayed my apprehension, not even the vanity of racial superiority or
the oft-repeated prophecies about this vanishing race. For he seemed
savagery come to life.
Presently four others, similar personifications of deviltry, came on
behind him. In addition to make-up, each brandished a long knife used
for cutting sugar-cane, or a clumsy ax. They squatted, they jumped,
whirling their weapons in heavy blows at imagined enemies. Never was
make-believe played with greater conviction, never was the wish father
to the act with more pathetic earnestness. The pitcher of a chosen nine
never hurled his ball across an empty field with greater determination
to win the coming game than did these warless warriors wield their
weapons.
Slowly from the rear came the army, four abreast, in stately procession.
There were seventy-five Samoans, each over six feet tall, men of girth
and bone and pride. Their glistening bodies reflected the sun like a
heaving sea. Their loins were draped in leaves in place of the every-day
sulu, with girdles of pink tissue paper round them. Their faces, too,
were blackened with charcoal, and turbans of red cheese-cloth capped
them. Those of them who could not secure knives or axes, wielded sticks
with threatening realism.
In an instant I was in my shoes again and out upon the road, a bit of
flotsam in the wake of a great pageant.
I fell in with a Samoan policeman, dressed like an English Bobby,
trailing along in the rear. "What's the trouble?" I asked. "Is this a
preliminary uprising?" There was much talk of the Germans stirring the
natives to rebellion against British occupation, but evidently the
natives had had enough of alien squabbles, and it seemed to matter
little to them by which of the white invaders they were ruled. A strange
expression came into the policeman's face, a mixture of awe and
contempt. He could speak only a very scant amount of English, but enough
to unlock this awe-inspiring secret. "Tamasese, the king he dead," he
said. I fumbled about in my memory for coincidences. The policeman was
old enough to have been an understanding boy at the time Stevenson took
up the cause of Mataafa as opposed to the German interests and
antagonistic even to the British and American attitude. It must have
been strange to him, therefore, to find himself a British policeman in a
uniform of blue, with a heavy helmet, timidly following a funeral
procession in honor of the son of a king disfavored of Stevenson,--while
all about were the soldiers of New Zealand. I got nothing from him of
any political significance, but much in the way of the spirit of his
race. For though an officer of "the" law, perhaps the only one of his
kind in Samoa, he dared not go too close to the ranks of these
stalwarts. They had come from every islet of the Samoan group, the pick
of the race, representatives declaring before the whole world: Our race
is not dead; long live our race!
So, all along the way for over a mile into the country behind Apia,
continued the procession. Not for a moment did the antics cease; not for
a moment did the wail of the warriors subside. Every time the advance
scouts called out, "O-o-o-o-s-o-o-o" [The king is dead], the four behind
him thundered their denial, "E sa" [Long live the king], and the entire
regiment droned the confession "O so." For the king was truly no more.
Not only the king but his kingdom. For not only was there now no
struggle of aliens over its precincts, but the second conqueror,
Britain, who once did not think Samoa worthy as spoils, had stepped in
and taken possession.
The procession filled the native population with awe. No one ventured
near. A dog ran across the road and was immediately cut down by the
sugar-cane knife in a warrior's hand. A Chinese, with the contempt of
the fanatic for the fanaticism of others, drove his cart indifferently
into their line. Knives, axes, and other borrowed, stolen, or improvised
weapons found their way into the chariot of the Celestial.
Half-way along, a limping old man whose leg was swollen with
elephantiasis advanced against them. He challenged their approach. They
cut the air with furious blows aimed in his direction. He pretended to
fall, in the manner of a Russian dancer, picked himself up and started
on a wild retreat. The army had routed an enemy.
Here the roadside spread in open land dotted everywhere with native
huts. Presently the army arrived at the king's grounds, where a simple
hut sat back about two hundred feet from the road, with a bit of green
before it. The army broke "rank," and squatted in a double row just at
the side of the road. For a few minutes there was silence.
Then out of the group rose Maii, the leader. Silently he strode the full
width of the space in front of the thirty seated men, leaning lightly
upon the long rough stick in his hand. His giant-like figure was the
personification of dignity; his roughened face the acme of sobriety; he
seemed lost in thought. Facing about, he started to retrace his steps in
front of the seated men, then, as though suddenly recollecting himself,
turned his head in the direction of the king's hut and in a subdued tone
no higher than that in ordinary conversation, addressed the house of
Tamasese, which stood fully half a block away. Quietly, but not without
emotion, he spoke and paused; and every time he paused the leading four
men would shout "O-o-o-s-o-o," and the entire group would answer "O sa."
Convincing and convinced, the leader proceeded with his oration. An
hour later, to the minute, he finished.
At the king's house appeared an old man in a snow-white sulu, leaning
heavily on a stick. I could see his lips moving, but could not hear a
word. He was speaking to the leader, who could not hear any more than I.
They kept up the pretense at conversation for a few minutes and all was
agreed upon. A servant, who had followed the old man with a soft mat in
his hand which to me looked like silk, advanced cautiously toward the
warriors.
Two of them jumped instantly to their feet, brandishing their knife and
ax furiously as though to protect the leader or to drive away evil
spirits, I knew not which. But certain it was the cautious servant
became still more cautious, timidly arriving with his offering and
presenting it to the chief. The manner in which the gift was accepted,
though solemn enough, was full of admonition, much as to say: "Now,
don't you do that again." The mat-bearer's heart seemed relieved of a
great terror, and he started back to the house of the king. On his way
he passed a mango-tree, stopped, looked up as though he had spied an
evil spirit, picked up a mango, stepped back, and dramatically hurled it
at the tree as a boy would who was playing make-believe. At that the
whole army of stalwarts rose and departed to the right.
As soon as they left the grounds, eleven girls, in single file, each
with a mat of the loveliest texture imaginable flung to the breeze, came
out upon the road from the other side of the grounds and followed round
the front to the right after the way of the warriors. And the ceremony
was over.
I had squatted on the ground, close to the warriors. They treated me as
though I were an innocent child who did not know the dangers of evil
things, nor enough to respect my superiors. Not so the natives. Even the
policeman with whom I had arrived had retreated to the protection of a
hut some three hundred feet away from the road. All the people in the
neighborhood--men, women and children--kept within their own huts, their
solemn faces full of awe and respect. Nor did the tension slacken until
the last of the maidens had made her way out of sight.
Thus was the son of the last Samoan king escorted in safety along the
other way,--a way which to the native mind seemed as vivid and real as
heaven and hell were to Dante and Swedenborg.
3
Exit the Noble Savage. "Think," says Bancroft, spokesman of the arrogant
"Blond Beast," "what it would mean to civilization if all these
worthless primitives were to pass away before us." The beginning of this
end was witnessed and told by Stevenson in 1892, but the natives'
version of it has yet to be related. Against those who mourn his loss as
the Hellenist the Greeks, are some of our most practical men.
The Samoans are not vanishing as rapidly as are the Hawaiians and the
Maories, for two very simple reasons: their climate is not so suitable
to the white man as is that of New Zealand and of Hawaii. Nor, like
Fiji, has Samoa been hampered by indentured coolieism, though Chinese do
come. Racially there seems no immediate prospect of Samoa being
submerged, though politically it fell before Hawaii did. Socially,
however, it is going, as are the native features of most of the more
progressive and more assimilable peoples of the Pacific.
Simple naturalness is fast fading even from Samoa. I do not mean to say
that because Samoans are drifting farther and farther from their
primitive customs they are losing their "charm." With progress, one
expects not oddity, but simplicity; not shiftlessness, but a certain
tightening up of the finer fibers of the race. It is satisfying to see
the contrast between the loosely built native hut and that whose pillars
are set in concrete and roofed with durable materials. But it is
disheartening when the change is only from thatch, which needs to be
replaced every so often, to corrugated iron, without any other signs of
durability. In other words, the corrugated iron roof is no proof that
the race is becoming more thrifty, less lazy,--but the reverse. It
indicates that indolence has found an easier way, a more permanent
manner.
My presence at the ceremony in honor of the royal demise gave me an
opportunity to see at once some of the best specimens of Samoan manhood.
It left me with the impression that no race capable of mustering so many
men of such build was on the decline. There was nothing in their manner
to indicate servility or despair. And some day Setu, with his knowledge
of Western civilization gained at first hand, may be the means of
arousing his fellow-Samoans to great things.
4
The process of assimilation and decline is taking place with far more
rapidity in Hawaii. Hawaii crashed like a meteor into America and was
comminuted and absorbed. The finer dust of its primitive civilization is
giving more color to our atmosphere than any other American possession.
But the real Hawaii is rapidly receding into the past. On the beach at
Waikiki there is a thatch-roofed hut, but like most of the Hawaiians
themselves, it bears too obviously the ear-marks of the West, the
imprint of invasion.
What there is left of the Hawaiians still possesses a measure of
strength and calmness. Big, burly, self-satisfied, they wend their way
unashamed of having been conquered. Only a few thousand can now claim
any racial purity. The mixture of Hawaiians with the various peoples
now in occupation of their lands is growing greater every year; those of
pure Hawaiian blood, fewer. And after all, is it any reflection upon any
race that it has been assimilated by its conquerors?
And assimilated to the point of extinction Hawaii has been. It has
become an integral part of a continental nation of whose existence it
had hardly known a hundred years ago. When Captain Cook discovered
Hawaii he estimated its population at 400,000. Fifty years later there
were only 130,000. To-day there may not be more than 30,000. The white
race has had its revenge on these natives for the death of this intrepid
captain. And the last of the great Hawaiian rulers, Queen Liliuokalani,
shorn of her power, passed away on November 11, 1917. She, the
descendant of great warriors and remarkable political leaders, had
turned to the only thing left her--expressing the sentiments of her
people in music.
The submersion is nearly complete. Politically, there isn't a son among
them who would feel any happier for a revival. So little fear is there
of such a hope ever rising even for a moment in the Hawaiian breast that
the key to the former throne-room hangs indifferently on a nail in the
outer office of the present government. I believe that that is the only
throne-room under the American flag. It is a small room, modern and
finished in every detail. On its walls hang paintings of kings and
queens and ministers of state. There is a musty odor about it, which
could easily be removed. All one need do is open the windows and an
inrush of sensuous air would sweeten every corner of it. This would be
doing only what the race is doing with every intake of alien blood.
A broad-shouldered, broad-nosed, broad-faced--and seemingly
broad-hearted--Hawaiian clerk took me into the room. As we wandered
about he told who the worthies were, enframed in gilt and under glass.
Interspersed with some facts was inherited fancy. His enthusiasm rose
appreciably when he recited the deeds of Kamehameha I, their most
renowned king.
"Once he saw an enemy spy approach," said my guide. "He threw his spear
with such force that it penetrated the trunk of the cocoa-palm behind
which the traitor was hiding, and pierced the man's heart." A merry
twinkle lit up the cicerone's eyes. That twinkle was something almost
foreign to the man: it must have been the white blood in him that was
mocking the tales of his native ancestry.
Aside from these few portraits there was nothing in the throne-room
which gave evidence of Hawaii's former prestige. Here that king's
descendants planned to lead his race to glory among nations. And here
they were outwitted. The guide had recounted among the king's exploits
his ability to break the back of his strongest enemy with his naked
hands. Yet the white man came along and broke the Hawaiian back. And
to-day he who wishes to learn the habits, the arts, and the exploits of
these people has to go to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
A primer got up for children, to be learned parrot-like, and distributed
to tourists, tells us "the Hawaiians never were savages." We are also
assured they "never were cannibals," and "speedily embraced religion."
The first is an obvious misstatement; the second is an apology of
uncertain value; as to the third, the son of one of Hawaii's best
missionaries, who just died in his eighty-fifth year, said: "Not until
the world shall learn how to limit the quantity and how to improve the
quality of races will future ages see any renewal of such idyllic life
and charm as that of the ancient Polynesians." Dr. Titus Munson Coan,
whose father converted some fifteen thousand Hawaiians to Christianity,
deplored the effect on the native of the high-handed suppression of
native taboos and attributes their extinction--which seems
inevitable--to the imposition of clothes which they put on and off
according to whim, and to customs unsuited to their natures. Dr. Coan
said that though his father had a powerful voice he remembered that
often he could not hear him preach because of the coughing and sneezing
of the natives.
Be that as it may, a visit to the Bishop Museum would quickly contradict
the primer. There the array of weapons shows that the natives were not
only barbarous but savage. This is no serious condemnation, for none of
Europe's races can show any cleaner record. Arts, indeed, the Hawaiians
had, and sense of form and color. An apron of feathers worn by the king
required a tax of a feather apiece on hundreds of birds. After this
feather was extracted, the bird was set free, an indication of thrift if
not kindliness. Yet they did not hesitate to strip the flesh off every
bone of Captain Cook and distribute portions among the native chiefs. No
one has proved that they ate it; but cannibalism is, after all, a
relative vice and was not unknown in northwestern Europe.
5
The passing of the Hawaiians, like that of many other races in the
Pacific, is due to a cannibalism and a barbarism which are less
emphasized in the ordinary discussions of the problem. There are more
ways than one of eating your neighbor. However harrowing that savage
diet was, it did not work for the destruction of any of these South Sea
islanders as ruthlessly as did the practice among the Hawaiians of
infanticide. Mothers were in the habit of disposing of their impetuous
children by the simple method of burying them alive, frequently under
the very shelter of their roofs, lying down upon the selfsame floor and
sleeping the sleep of the just with the tiny infant squirming in its
grave beside them. Parents were not allowed to have more than a given
number of children because of the strain on the available food supply.
This more than anything else depleted the number of natives most
disastrously. But in addition came the white man with his diseases,
contagious and infectious,--a form of destruction that, from the native
point of view, is quite as dastardly as eating the flesh of the
vanquished.
Certainly, whatever the viciousness of the occasional or annual
outbursts of passion among these primitive folk, there was no example of
regulated, insistent pandering to vice such as has been set them by the
Europeans, especially in Hawaii. There one evening I wandered through
the very depths of degradation; there I witnessed a process of fusion of
races which had only one possible end,--extinction. Its Hawaiian name
had a strange similarity to the word evil: it is _Iwilei_. McDuffie,
Chief of Detectives of Honolulu, was making his inspection of medical
certificates, which was part of the work of "restriction," and took me
with him.
Mr. McDuffie had been standing near the window of the outer office, with
one foot upon a chair, talking to another detective, when I called out
his name. Tall, massive, with hair almost gray, a rather kindly face, he
looked me up and down without moving. I explained my mission.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.
A mean question, always asked by the white man in the tropics. Well,
now, who in thunder was I, anyway? I murmured that I was a "writer."
"Be round at seven-thirty, and you can come along," he said dryly.
On his office walls hung hatchets, daggers, pistols, sabers, and many
other such toys of a barbarous world hacking away against or toward
perfection. On the floor were dozens of opium pipes, taken in a raid
upon Chinese dens,--toys of another kind of world trying to forget its
progress away from barbarism. One Japanese continued his game of cards
nonchalantly. Flash-lights were in evidence, fearlessly protruding from
hip pockets.
At half-past seven I was there again. As we were about to enter the
motor-car, I ventured some remark, thinking to make conversation. "Get
in there," said the chief, abruptly. For an instant he must have thought
he was taking a criminal to confinement.
Zigzagging our way through the streets and across the river, we entered
an unlighted thoroughfare, hardly to be called a street. A steady stream
of straggling shadows moved along like spirits upon the banks of the
river Styx. Our way opened out upon a lighted section, crowded with
negro soldiers and civilians of all nationalities. Here, then, and not
only beyond the grave, class and distinction and race dissolve. A
perfect hubbub of conversation, soda fountains and plain noise, and
reeling of drunkies. A futurist conception of confusion would do it
justice. We were at the gates of Babylon.
A closely boarded fence surrounded this city of dreadful night. Hundreds
of men crowded the passageway. Within were rows and rows of shacks and
cottages. Men stood gazing in at open doors and windows. Outside one
shack a negro soldier remained fixed with his foot upon the door-step,
but ventured no farther. Within, on a bed in full view, sat a Portuguese
female, smoking, an Hawaiian woman companion lounging beside her. Both
ignored the male at the door. But he remained, silent. Hope fading from
his mind, and some interest elsewhere creeping in, he moved away. The
Hawaiian woman smiled contemptuously.
Then for three-quarters of an hour we made strange calls. Our card was a
club which the assistant to the detective--a massive Hawaiian--rapped on
every porch step, announcing the expected visitor. He was not unwelcome.
From every door emerged a woman, covered with a light kimono, and neatly
shod. At cottage after cottage, door after door, they appeared, showed
their "health" certificates, and retreated. Japanese, Hawaiian, white,
brown, and yellow. Some extremely pretty and not altogether unrefined
in manner; some ugly and coarse. The inspection was done hastily. Where
appearance of the inmate was delayed, a stamp of the foot brought the
tardy one scurrying out. Some greeted the detective familiarly; others
showed their certificates and retreated. One Japanese woman called after
us when we had passed her door without stopping.
Wherever there was any transgression against the proprieties, the
inspector commanded the guilty to desist, and went on. One woman
complained that a negro had just attacked her with a knife. She whistled
and called, she said, "But I might have been killed for all the
assistance I got." The inspector spoke kindly to her, assured her he
would order the guard to come round. But nothing was done.
Two or three doors farther on a fat and playful woman entertained a
number of men who stood outside her porch. The inspector told her to
keep still. "Just such remarks as that cause trouble. You get inside and
stay there." She shrugged her shoulders, made faces at him, and danced
playfully within-doors.
We came upon two groups of negroes, gambling. The inspector slapped one
of them upon the shoulder in a kindly way and told them to get out of
sight. "You know it's not allowed here." They moved away.
It was a network of streets. Not an underworld but a hinterland, a dark
swamp-land, full of scum and squirming creatures. A dreadful city, full
of "joy" and abandon. A city in which women are the monarchs, the
business factors, the independent, fearless beings, needing no
protection. Protection from what could they need? Surely not from
poverty, for wealth seemed to favor these. From loss of reputation? They
had no reputations to lose. Protection they needed, but rather from
themselves than from outside dangers.
For this was a restricted district which harbored no restrictions. This
was the crater of human passion, of animal passion. The well-ordered
universe without; within, the toils of voluptuousness. In this pit the
lava of lust kept stirring, the weight of unbalanced emotion overturned
within itself. The crater was thought to be deep and secure against
overflow. But if it did boil over, was it far from the city?
In the city the sound of pianos playing, people reading, swimming-pools
full, streets crowded with racing automobiles, soda fountains crowded,
theaters agog, gathering of folks in homes and cafés,--a great world
with allotted places to keep men and women and children happy; that is,
away from themselves. A heavy curtain of order protects one section. The
most disgusting polyandry shrieks from out the other. Yet no savage
community needed such an outlet for its emotions.
From various sources I learn that that little crater has overflowed. The
Chamber of Commerce, backed by the missionaries and others, secured
legislation against the "regulation" of the district in 1917. From
another source I got it that it was not the forces for good that
banished it, but that two contending and competing forces for evil had
mutually eliminated themselves. But still another source gives it out
that certain "slum" sections where housing facilities are inadequate are
now the center of evil, and that Filipino panderers are the most guilty.
And a year after _Iwilei_ was "done away with"--in April, 1918--the
Chief of Detectives asked for "thirty days" in which to show what he
could do to clean up the place so as to make it fit for the soldiers to
come to Honolulu.
Little wonder that, with such examples of "self-respect" and
shamefulness, lovers of the Hawaiians are throwing themselves into the
work of saving the few remaining natives from demoralization. Before
Cook's time these people did not know what prostitution was. Now they
have lost hope and confidence in themselves. The less pessimistic say
that another hundred years will see the last of the Hawaiians, as we
have seen the last of the Tasmanians. Others fear it will come sooner.
The Hawaiian Protective Association is stimulating racial pride in them
so that they may take courage anew, and, with what sturdy men and women
there still are, rejuvenate the race. But the odds are against them, for
besides disease and demoralization we have introduced Japanese, Chinese,
and all sorts of other coolies who have completely undermined the
Hawaiian status in the islands, and are rapidly outnumbering them in the
birth-rate and survival rate. What factors are at work for possible
regeneration will be discussed in a later chapter.
CHAPTER XIV
GIVE US OUR VU GODS AGAIN!
1
Some of the gravest mistakes the white man has made in his efforts to
regenerate the Pacific peoples have been indirect rather than direct.
This fact is best illustrated by the method Australia and New Zealand
resorted to in order to exterminate certain pests. To eliminate the
rabbit they introduced the ferret. The ferret then began to reproduce so
rapidly that it, too, soon became a pest. So the cat was let loose upon
the ferret. Forthwith the cat ran wild and is now one of the most
serious problems in Australia.
So has it been in the matter of many of the native races. Commercial
greed, which was not satisfied to use what native labor was extant
because it is never the manner of natives to be willing serfs to their
conquerors, looked everywhere about for people who might be imported
under crushing conditions and then cast out. It was that which created
the Japanese and Chinese situation in Hawaii; and it is that which has
created a similar situation in Fiji.
One would have to be an unadulterated sentimentalist to contend that the
passing of the natives is not justified by the present development of
the Antipodes. None of the native elements--the Australoids or the
Tasmanians or the Maories--would, of their own accord, even with years
of Caucasian example and precedent, have made of these dominions the
healthful, productive lands they now are. As long as the problem remains
one of the ascendancy of the fittest over the fit, it is simple, and
the present solution justifiable. But the introduction of other races
who have only their servility to recommend them is a poor practice and
soon turns into a more serious problem still. In most cases, a little
patience and foresight would have obviated such contingencies. Had the
white folk who tried to exploit Hawaii contented themselves with a
slower development, the Hawaiians would to-day be as secure as are the
Samoans and the Maories. In all cases such as these and that of the
Philippines, the native, when given a chance, soon justifies his
existence and our faith in him.
In Fiji we have an example of the introduction of the Hindu to the
extinction of the Fijian for the sake of the enrichment of the white
man. The indentured Indian, small and wiry, who seems too delicate for
any task and is stopped by none, acts as a reinforcement in the South
Sea labor market. He glides along in purposeful indifference. As coolie,
he may be seen at any time wending his way along Victoria Parade,
bareheaded, a thin sulu of colored gauze wound about his loins. As freed
man, he is the tailor, the jeweler, the grocer, and the gardener. As
proprietor he is buying up the lands and becoming plantation-owner. Then
he bewails the woes of his native land, India, far off in the distance.
Here in Fiji, where the coolie has a chance to start life anew, the
longing for rebirth in this world, still fresh, bursts into being. But
no sooner does it see the sunlight than it turns to crush the Fijian, in
whose lands the Hindu is as much of an invader as ever Briton was in
India.
The introduction of the Indian into Fiji was not accomplished without
considerable protest from small planters, who saw in it and the taxation
scheme introduced over thirty years ago, great danger to the Fijian
laborer. Aside from the burdens imposed upon the people by a law which
compelled them to work for their chiefs without wages, for the same
length of time that they worked for some plantation-owner with wages,
there was the equally bad law being "experimented" with which compelled
the people to pay in kind instead of in money. So serious had the
situation become that the "Saturday Review" of June 19, 1886, declared:
"As the Natives must eat something to live, it is perhaps not unnatural
that many people who know Fiji entertain distinct fears that the
combination of over-taxation and want of food will drive the Fijians to
return to cannibalism." The charge of cannibalism was denied by the Rev.
Mr. Calvert, though further evidence is not at hand, as I have seen only
the Government's side of the case.
However, with the admission of some 3,800 Indians as indentured laborers
in 1884 (or thereabouts) among a population of 115,000 natives, the
vital statistics of the islands have changed so that there were only
87,096 Fijians against 40,286 Indians in 1911, and 91,013 Fijians
against 61,153 Indians in 1917. This would seem to indicate a healthier
state of affairs for the Fijians as well as for the Indians, were not
the comparison of births with deaths for the last year named taken into
consideration. This shows that to 3,267 births there were 2,583 deaths
among the Fijians; while among the Indians the births were 2,196 as
against only 588 deaths. This proportion obtained also in 1911. The
struggle between the Fijians and the indentured Indians, even if the
former were not to become extinct within the century, would place the
Fijians in the minority in no time; and what were their lands would be
theirs no more.
This, briefly, is the story of the submersion of the Fijians.
[Illustration: AN INDIAN COOLIE VILLAGE
Near the sugar factory, Fiji
Western Pacific-Herald Post Card Series]
[Illustration: THIS HINDU HAS USURPED THE JOB OF THE CHIEFTAINS'
DAUGHTERS
He is grinding the Kava root in a mortar. What the girls are doing
with their teeth now no one knows]
[Illustration: A MAORI HAKA IN NEW ZEALAND
It is a procession of gesticulating, grimacing savages whose
protruding tongues are not the least attraction]
[Illustration: A MAORI CANOE HURDLING RACE
At Ngaruawahia, North Island, N. Z.]
In itself, the situation is not very serious. What if the Fijian passes,
or gives way to the Indian? The contribution of the Fijian to the
culture or the romance of the Pacific is small compared with that of
other races, such as the Samoans or the Marquesans. Of that more anon.
But there are problems involved that are of more immediate import.
Two races like these cannot live together without creating a situation
of strength or of weakness that is very far-reaching. We are concerned
with the attitude they assume toward each other, or in the substitution
of a race like the Indians, with their fixed traditions and destructive
castes, which will introduce Hindu problems into the very heart of the
Pacific. India is no longer within bounds, and sooner or later we shall
be face to face with new conditions. In eliminating the Fijian or the
Hawaiian, or any other Pacific islander, by the Indian or the Japanese
coolie process, we are only intensifying the difficulty, unless we are
ready completely to overlook the questions of likes and dislikes.
2
In Fiji one is not yet compelled to ask, "Where are the Fijians?" As
long as one's gaze is fixed slightly upward, the Fijian face with the
bushy head of coarse, curly hair stands out against the green of the
hills. But let the eye fall earthward and the resultant confusion of
forms and manners forthwith raises the problem of the survival of the
fittest. For among these towering negroids there now dwell over sixty
thousand Telugus, Madrasis, Sardars, Hindustanis, and a host of other
such strange-sounding peoples from India, and "Sahib" greets one's ears
more frequently than the native salutation. In the smaller hotels the
bushy head bows acknowledgment of your commands; in the one fashionable
and Grand Hotel the turban does it. In the course of the day's demands
for casual service, the assistant is the stalwart one; for the more
permanent work--as, for instance, the making of a pongee silk suit--the
artisan is the slender one. If your mood is for sight of sprawling
indolence, you wander along the little pier and open places among the
Fijians; if it is for the damp, cool, darkly kind to help you visualize
the dreams of the Arabian Nights, you enter some little shop in an
alley with an unexpected curve, in the district of transplanted India.
Feeling venturesome, I let fancy be my guide, though, to tell truth, I
was escaping from the burning sun. Life on the highway was alluring,
but, large as the Fijian is, his shadow is no protection. I hoped for
some sight of him within-doors. The row of shops which walls in the
highway, links without friction the various elements of Suva's humanity.
In a dirty little shop I ran into an unusual medley of folk. A blind
Indian woman in one corner; a Fijian chatting with an Indian in another;
a boy whistling "Chin-chin"; boys and girls fooling with one another;
while in the little balcony, like a studio bedroom hung in the deeper
shadows of the rafters, slept one whose snoring did not lend distinction
to his paternity. The place was evidently a saloon, but minus all the
glitter so requisite in colder regions. Here the essential was dampness
and coolness and improvised night. Hence the walls had no windows and
the floors no boarding. Hence the brew had need of being cool and
cutting, regardless of its name; and whether one called it _yagona_,
_kava_, _buza_ or beer, it had the effect of making a dirty little
dungeon in hiding not one whit worse than the Grand Hotel in the beach
breezes. Better yet, where in all Fiji was fraternization more simple?
Still, too much love is not lost between the sleepy Fijian dog and his
Indian flea. Does the Fijian not hear the white man--whom he respects,
after a fashion--call his slim competitor "coolie?" And is not _kuli_
the word with which he calls his dog? Infuriated, conscious of his
centuries of superiority, the Indian retorts with _jungli_, and feels
satisfied. His indentured dignity shall not decay. At any rate, he knows
and proves himself to be the cleverer. The future is his. While the
Fijian, seeing that the importation the white man calls "dog" gets on in
life none the less, seeks to steep himself in the Indian's immorality
and trickery in the hope that he may thereby acquire some of that
shrewdness, as when he devoured a valiant enemy he hoped to absorb that
enemy's strength. Thus in that dark little underworld the Fijian Adonis
vegetates in anticipation of the future Fiji some day to spring into
being.
Though the Indians are said to despise the Fijians, I saw
representatives of the two races sitting sociably together upon the
launch up the Rewa River, smoking and chatting quite without any signs
of friction. Indian women, all dressed in colored-gauze raiment and
laden with trinkets, huddled behind their men. They seemed a bit of
India sublimated, cured of the ills of overcrowding. One woman had
twelve heavy silver bracelets on each wrist, a number on her ankles,
several necklaces and chains around her neck, and many rings on each of
her fingers and toes, with ornaments hanging from her nose and ears. But
there was more than vanity in this, for, pretty as she was, she refused
to permit me to photograph her. Not so the men. One Indian had his
flutes with him and began to play. His eyes rolled as he forced out the
monotonous tones, over and over again. His heart and his soul must have
had a hard time trying to emerge simultaneously from these two tiny
reeds. One bearded patriarch smiled and rose with a jerk when I asked if
he would pose for me. A young Indian woman crouched on the floor, all
covered with her brilliantly colored veil. She shared a cigarette with a
Fijian boy in a most Oriental fashion. But those who know distrust this
fraternization. It is the subtle demoralization of the Fijian.
For the type of Indian men and women who now accept the terms of
indenture are even worse than those who did so formerly, and the
conditions under which they are compelled to carry out their "contracts"
are such as to develop only the worst traits of Indian nature. In
consequence, the Fijian is being ground between the upper (white) and
nether (Indian coolie) mill-stones. His primitive taboos which worked
so well are taboos no longer. The missionary has destroyed them
well-meaningly; the plantation-owner has preyed upon them knowingly, has
turned the predatory native chiefs upon them; and now the riffraff of
India is loose upon them, too. I am convinced, from what I saw in the
missionary settlements, that had the missionaries alone been left to
lead these people away from barbarism, they would have accomplished
it,--as they partially have. But unfortunately, the one weakness in
their civilizing process, the overestimation of minor conventions, such
as the wearing of clothing, only left an opening for the intake of
diseases and defects of our civilization. The insistence on monogamy is
another weakness, for to that the steady decline of the native can be
traced.
This dual process of degradation going on in Fiji is a great
disappointment to the adventurous. Though the natives number 91,000,
their ancient rites and festivities are without newer expression,
without newer form. And though one hears much of Fiji as another India,
because nearly half the population is Indian, still, as C. F. Andrews
has pointed out, the utter absence of anything Indian in the
architecture, the religious practices, or the other expressions of
Indian ideals leaves one wondering what is wrong with that newer world.
Everywhere one hears the appeal, "Give the man a chance," and democracy
and the advocates of self-determination for nations repeat and repeat
the plea. One believes that somehow if India were partially depopulated
and the remaining Indians were given a chance, the soul which is India
would blossom with renewed life and glory. One believes that here in
Fiji such a miracle might occur. But no promise of regeneration greets
the seeker, go where he may. Then, too, there is something lacking in
the native. One is led to conclude that the inhibitions upon the mind
and the soul of all the Fijians, through the preaching of doctrines
strange to them, or through the practices of foreigners over them, has
put the seal upon their lips. Trying to approximate the ruling religions
and to live in their ways must create emotional complexes in the natives
that are clogging the wells of their beings.
From Suva for forty miles up the Rewa River, the only manifestation of
life is in labor. Aside from the crude ornaments on the limbs of the
women of India there is virtually nothing of art or higher expression to
be seen. Nothing but the tropical loveliness, which cannot be denied.
3
The regeneration of the Fijian seemed more possible after I had spent a
few moments in the hut of the chief of the district. In the middle of
the village stood one plain, unpainted wooden house, distinctive if not
palatial. It was altogether wanting in decoration and with us might have
passed as a respectable shed. But here, surrounded by thatched huts,
picturesque when not too closely scrutinized, it assumed exceeding
importance through contrast.
The door, reached by a flight of four or five steps, stood wide open.
The interior was not partitioned into rooms. Half of it was a raised
platform-like divan or sleeping-section, spread with native mats. Upon
this elevation sat a fine-looking man,--clean-shaven, with a head as
bald as those of his brethren are bushy, dressed in clean and not
inexpensive materials, and wearing a gold watch on his left wrist. On my
being introduced, he greeted me in English so fluent and pure that I was
considerably taken aback. He was as self-possessed as most Fijians are
shy. This was Ratu Joni, Mandraiwiwi, chief of eighty thousand Fijians,
one of the only two native members of the Legislative Council, highly
respected, and the most powerful living chief of his race.
He remained seated in native fashion, legs crossed before him, and after
a few general remarks indicated a desire to resume his confab with the
half-dozen natives--all big, powerful men--facing him on the lower
section of the chamber. His reception of me was cordial, yet his was the
reserve of a prime minister. His bearing gave the impression of a man
intelligent, calm, just, and not without vision. He knew his rank. Had I
been a native and dared to cross his door-step--plebeian that I am--I
should most likely have seen dignity in anger. But, though an
insignificant white man, I still bore the mark of "rank" sufficient to
gain admission unceremoniously and was given a place beside him on the
divan. But he had an uncanny way of making me feel suddenly extremely
shy. I was aware of intruding, of having been presumptuous,--an
uninvited guest. So I withdrew.
The district over which he rules, though inferior to many another in
productivity, has always had the reputation for being well kept up and
in healthful condition and was pointed out as an example to the other
chiefs as early as 1885. At Bau, five miles the other side of the river,
Ratu Joni has a home European in every detail. It forms an interesting
background for his European entertainments. His income is enough to make
a white man envious. One son, an Oxford man, was wounded in Flanders at
the outbreak of the war; another was at the time attending college in
Australia. Ratu Joni is _Roko_ (native governor) of the province of
Tailevu (Greater Fiji).
Mr. Waterhouse, the missionary who kindly went about with me and made it
possible for me to meet this chief and to understand some of the native
problems, gave me a brief story of this impressive man's life. Though
his father had been hanged or strangled for plotting against the life of
the chief who ruled then, Ratu Joni succeeded in making his way to the
fore in Fijian politics. He set himself the task of cleaning up his
country. Of him it could not be said that he ever had reason to be
ashamed of his rule. Of him none could say as did a British governor in
a speech say of another Fijian: "What! has this chief been indolent?
Perhaps he limes his head, paints his face, and stalks about, thinking
only of himself; or is it that he squabbles with his neighbors about
some border town, and lets his people starve?"
One cannot judge a people by the conditions of its chiefs or rulers; but
with regard to the natives of the Pacific, as in the case of other
people accustomed to the rigorous life of battle, their safety lies in
the uses to which they have been put by their conquerors. The British
Government has utilized the Sikhs, its most difficult Indians, by making
them the constabulary throughout the length and breadth of its Asiatic
empire. This has been done in Fiji, too. But the most hopeful sign to me
in these islands on the 180th meridian was the Fijian constabulary. A
finer lot of men could not be found anywhere in the world. Not only
their physique but their intelligent faces and their alacrity suggest
great promise. One of them came on board our ship with his clean, tidy,
sturdy wife--a public companionship rare for these people--and was
received by the officers. His white sulu, serrated on the edge like some
of the latest fashions on Broadway, hung only to his knees. His massive
legs and broad shoulders were a delight to look upon. His wife was as
handsome a woman as I have seen in the tropics. The two gladly posed for
me, and asked me to send them a print.
4
Generally the thought and feeling of the natives in the South Seas come
to the outer world through the works of white men,--missionaries and
scientists. But rare indeed is the revelation of the mind of a strange
people brought to us pure and clear without the white man's bias or
reaction. Here and there I have run across snatches of native thinking
that were revelations, but no others so full and vivid as the essay by
a native Fijian on the decline of his race, which appeared in the
"Hibbert Journal" (Volume XI). The translator opens the door to the
Fijian mind as by magic. After reading that, I felt that personal
contact with these natives akin to contact with any other human being,
for I looked behind dark skin and bushy head, and saw the spirit of hope
within. The translator says:
It shows exactly how an intelligent Fijian may conceive
Christianity. That is a point we need to know badly, for most
missionaries see the bare surface. It also contains hints how the
best intentions of a government may be misconstrued, and suspicion
engendered on one side, impatience and reproaches of ingratitude on
the other, which a more intimate knowledge of native thought might
remove.
The argument of the essay is that "The decline of native population is
due to our abandoning the native deities, who are God's deputies in
earthly matters. God is concerned only with matters spiritual and will
not harken to our prayers for earthly benefits. A return to our native
deities is our only salvation."
The native reflects:
Concerning this great matter, to wit the continual decline of us
natives at this time, it is a great and weighty matter. For my part
I am ill at ease on that account; I eat ill and sleep ill through
my continual pondering of this matter day after day. Three full
months has my soul been tossed about as I pondered this great
matter, and in those three months there were three nights when
pondering of this matter in my bed lasted even till day, and
something then emerged in my mind, and these my reflections touch
upon religion and touch upon the law, and the things that my mind
saw stand here written below.
He then takes up the points that have disturbed him:
Well, if the very first thing that lived in the world is Adam,
whence did he come, he who came to tell Eve to eat the fruit? From
this fact it is plain that there is a Prince whom God created first
to be Prince of the World, perchance it is he who is called the Vu
God [Noble Vu].... Consider this: It is written in the Bible that
there were only two children of Adam, to wit Cain and Abel. But
whence did the woman come who was Cain's wife?...
It seems to me as though the introducers of Christianity were
slightly wrong in so far as they have turned into devils the Vu
Gods of the various parts of Fiji; and since the Vu Gods have
suddenly been abandoned in Fiji, it is as though we changed the
decision of the Great God, Jehovah, since that very Vu God is a
great leader of the Fijians. That is why it seems to me a possible
cause for the Decline of Population lies in the rule of the Church
henceforth to treat altogether as devil work the ghosts and the
manner of worshiping the Vu Gods of the Fijians, who are their
leaders in the life in the flesh, whom the Great God gave, and
chose, and sent hither to be man's leader. But now that the Vu Gods
whom Jehovah gave us have been to a certain extent rudely set
aside, and we go to pray directly to the God of Spirit for things
concerning the flesh [life in the flesh], it appears as if the
leader of men resents it and he sets himself to crush our little
children and women with child. Consider this:
If you have a daughter, and she loves a youth and is loved of him,
and you dislike this match, but in the end they none the less
follow their mutual love and elope forthwith and go to be married,
how is it generally with the first and the second child of such a
union, does it live or does it die? The children of Fijians so
married are as a rule already smitten from their mother's womb.
Wherefore? Does the woman's father make witchcraft? No. Why then
does the child die thus?
Simply that your Vu sees your anger and carries out his crushing
even in its mother's womb; that is the only reason of the child's
death. Or what do you think in the matter? Is it by the power of
the devil that such wonders are wrought? No, that is only the power
that originates from the God of Spirit, who has granted to the
Prince of men, Vu God, that his will and his power should come to
pass in the earthly life.
He develops this theme with ever-increasing emotion, until his poor mind
can think no more.
Alas! Fiji! Alas! Fiji is gone astray, and the road to the
salvation of its people is obstructed by the laws of the Church and
the State. Alas! you, our countrymen, if perchance you know, or
have found the path which my thoughts have explored and join
exertions to attain it, then will Fiji increase.
But Fijians have prayed to God, yet they have not increased, he
exclaims, faced with the unalterable facts. Why not? Christianity has
been with them many years. Does God hear their prayer! He proceeds to
give his own observations of life, and asks: "Is this true, reverend
sirs? Yes, it is most true." After making some comparisons between his
land and others, neglected of God in that they have no Vu Gods, he
expostulates:
And if the Vu were placed at our head ... there would be no still
births and Fiji would then be indeed a people increasing rapidly,
since our conforming to our native customs would combine with
progress in cleanly living at the present time. Now, in the past
when the ancients only worshiped Vu Gods and there was no
commandment about cleanly living, yet they kept increasing. Then if
... this were also combined with the precept of cleanly living, I
think the villages would then be full of men. Or what, sir, is your
conclusion?
A few more excerpts, taken here and there, will reveal the interesting
mind of this Fijian:
If this is right, then it is plain how far removed we are from
certain big countries. How wretched they are and weak, whose
medicines are constantly being imported and brought here in
bottles.[1] As for me, I simply do my duty in saying what appears
in my mind when I think of my country and my friends who are its
inhabitants; for since it wants only a few years to the extinction
of the people it is right that I reveal what has appeared in my
soul, for it may be God's will to reveal in my soul this matter.
Now it is not expedient for me to suppress what has been revealed
to me, and if I do not declare what has appeared from forth my
soul, I have sinned thereby in the eyes of the Spirit God: I shall
be questioned regarding it on the day of judgment of souls; nor is
it fitting that one of the missionaries should be angry with me by
reason of my words; it is right that they should consider
everything that I have here said, and judge accordingly. It is no
use being ashamed to change the rules of the Church, if the country
and its inhabitants will thereby be saved.
[1] The translator says in a footnote: "Whites pity Fijians,
but they find reasons to pity us. That is what white men
generally fail to realize; they put down to laziness or
stupidity their reluctance to assimilate our civilization,
whereas it arises from a different point of view; and that
point of view is not always wrong or devoid of common
sense. Is Fijian medicine more absurd than our patent
medicines, or as expensive?"
There is great hope for a people with such thinkers among them. And
if there are such hopes for the Fijians, there are still greater
possibilities for the Maories, Samoans, Tahitians, and Hawaiians.
5
Politically, as separate island races, they are no more. The little
Kingdom of Rarotonga is one of the last to remain independent. The
European war, oddly enough, in which Maories and Fijians fought for "the
rights of little nations," has sold them out completely, just as it did
Shantung in China. No one thought that a war in a continent fifteen
thousand miles away would play such havoc with the destinies of these
people. The "mandates," yielded with such cynical generosity, put the
seal upon their fate, and opened new international sores.
Pessimistic as this may sound, there are evidences of resuscitation in
the working out of these mandates, as will appear in the chapter on
Australasia. The Polynesians are becoming conscious of unity, and talk
of leadership under the New Zealand mandate is rife in Parliament.
"Nothing would hasten the depletion of the race more than the loss of
hope and confidence in themselves," says the Hawaiian "Friend." That
hope seems to be flickering into new life.
No people have suffered more, directly, from contact with the
"civilized" white races than the Polynesians. Morally undermined,
politically deprived of powers, physically subjected to scourge after
scourge of epidemic introduced by white men, their own standards of
living brushed aside as vulgar and infantile,--these heliolithic people
with their neolithic culture approached the very verge of extinction.
Then the white race began to sentimentalize over them, and sincere
scientific people to deplore their evanescence. Some of these latter
have earned the eternal gratitude not only of the natives but of the
whole world. Some of them I have mentioned in other connections. Two
others decidedly deserve recognition. Mr. Elsdon Best, the curator of
the Wellington Museum, is a tall, thin individual who has roamed all
over the Pacific. He has worked his way for years in the interests of
the Amerindians, Hawaiians, and Maories. Now he has one of the finest
museums in the South Seas--excepting that, of course, in Honolulu--in
which he treasures anything and everything that will help throw light on
the history of these interesting people. The other is Mrs. Bernice
Bishop, a part-Hawaiian woman, who established the museum in Honolulu
which bears her name. These are the centers round which we white folk
shall be able to gather for the preservation of this other type of the
human species. In the summer of 1921 a Scientific Congress under the
auspices of the Pan-Pacific Union and the immediate directorship of
Professor Gregory of Yale was held to devise ways and means of
furthering the study of these races, and its work is proceeding apace.
Museums and "models" of native architecture are the modern white man's
diaries, recalling the acts of ravishment and destruction which his
development and expansion entailed. Let us hope that out of the efforts
of scientists will spring a new consciousness of worth, which early
missionaries and scheming traders did everything to destroy. Yet it must
not be forgotten that much of our knowledge of these races comes from
those missionaries who were broad-minded enough to recognize the value
of recording customs and beliefs, even if their purpose was the more
effectively to counteract them.
CHAPTER XV
HIS TATTOOED WIFE
1
Something there is in the very bearing of the people in the Pacific
which, despite the obvious differences between us, strikes a note of
kinship in the mind of the white man least conscious of his true
relationship to these brown folk. A certain chemical affinity, as it
were, makes the problem of intermarriage with the Polynesians an
altogether different matter from that among Eurasians. For in the
marriage of an Occidental and a true Oriental there is the clashing of
two antagonistic cultures each equally complex and tenacious, while
"here there is evidence in the physique of the people that three great
divisions of mankind have intermixed."
But in the Pacific islands the white man feels himself among his kind.
The reason is hard to explain. Certainly it is not the loose and
ungainly Mother-Hubbard gowns which are still the style of the native
maiden. Yet the stoutish, portly individual who is introduced to you as
a chief and who parades the street along the waterfront in a suit of
silk pajamas might easily be a continental sleep-walker who has no
remembrance of the thousands of years that lie between him and the men
among whom he is waking. And the white man just arrived drops off under
the anæsthetic influence of the tropics, forgetful of the thousands of
years in which he has been busy laying up his treasures on earth.
Under this narcotic influence I wandered along the shores of Apia,
Samoa, toward sundown, the day before my departure. Within me was a
melancholy satisfaction, an unwillingness to admit even to myself the
truth that I was glad to go, like one conscious of being cured of a
delightful vice. I had had my fill of association with men whose main
theme of conversation when together was the virtues of whisky and soda
as an antidote for dengue fever, and when apart, the faults of one
another. I had watched the process of acclimatization as it attacks the
souls of men, and pitied some of them. Many would have scorned my pity.
Some did not deserve it. Others did not need it. The story of one is
worth while, though it has no solution.
He had been stationed in Samoa as a member of the military staff with
police duties. Behind him he had left a wife and kiddies. He longed for
them as only a man struggling against tropic odds to remain faithful to
his promise needs must long. He was faithful, but she was fearful. She
was writing to him daily not to forget. No woman forgets easily the
ill-repute of her fellow-women, and all Northern women distrust their
sisters of the warmer worlds. Women hear and believe that there is none
of their kind of virtue in the tropics, and they do not trust the best
of their men. They do not seem to be at all aware of the fact that
faithfulness and devotion are as strong impulses in the breasts of the
dark maidens as among themselves, and that semi-savage girls have
hearts, too, which can be broken. So this man whose friendship I had won
urged that I write to his wife and, in my own way, assure her of his
loyalty. I have never heard the end. But if ever she reads this account,
I hope she will believe in him.
For there are women in the tropics, just like her, who pray that their
men will be faithful. I was walking along, thinking of him and of her.
The evening glow, full to overflowing of tropic loveliness, was all
about. The white foam of the breakers dashing themselves against the
reefs out there, a quarter of a mile away, came softly in, over the
smooth water, to land. The laughter of little children on the beach
seemed to tease, the hiss of the sea, a combination of elemental things
utterly without tragedy.
Just then I came upon a group of people gathered at the little pier.
Strewn about their feet were trunks and bags and kits, indicating
departure in haste, while the presence of a handful of soldiers,
standing at attention, was an unspoken explanation of what was toward.
The civilians clustered in a little group, quiet, communicating with one
another in whispers. They comprised seventeen Germans, erstwhile the
wealthiest plantation-owners, now prisoners of war, and their wives and
children, from whom they were to be parted. The cause of their departure
is not pertinent here. The human equation is.
As the officer issued his order for embarkation, there was a momentary
commotion. Soldiers, by no means unfriendly to their prisoners, assisted
them in the placing of luggage on the boat. The men, turning to their
women and children with warm embraces, called in forced cheerfulness
that they would soon be back. All the men stepped into the rowboats and
with full, powerful strokes of Samoan oarsmen they were borne out across
the reefs toward the steamer anchored beyond. Upon the beach remained
bewildered native women and their half-caste children, some of them in
an agony of grief now run wild. One family lingered, weeping silently. A
group of two middle-aged women, a girl of about twenty, two small girls,
and two boys stood gazing out toward the ship. They brushed away tears
absent-mindedly. A little girl and boy cried quietly. And like that
white wife in the temperate world, these dark-skinned women of the
tropics were left to wonder whether their husbands would remain faithful
to them in a world of which they had vague if not altogether wrong
notions.
A full, mellow afterglow threw the ship for a moment into relief, and
twilight lowered. Upon the end pile of the pier sat a young Samoan in a
halo of dim light. From this modern scene which may some day be the
theme for a South Sea "Evangeline" I moved away wondering what this
cleavage of people would mean to the Polynesians. An unconscious
curiosity led me into the village. It was night. From the various huts
rang the voices of happy natives. Fires flamed under their evening
meals. Dim lamps revealed shadow-figures of men and women. A slight
drizzle brushed over the valley and disappeared. Then the firm tread of
feet sounded in the dusty road. About twenty girls, two abreast,
stamping their naked feet, passed by and on into the darkness to drop,
matrice-like, each into her own home. Earlier that evening they had
escorted to the ship the white woman who was their missionary teacher.
One long skiff had held them all. Each had a single oar in hand, short
and spear-headed, with which she struck the gunwale of the boat after
every stroke, thus beating time to a native song. Here was another case
of contact and cleavage. Their teacher was returning to her land,
leaving them with the glimmer of her ideals, her notions of life and
loyalty. How much of it would hold them? Coming and going, the fusion of
races, once of a common stock, is taking place.
2
I cannot recall having received any definite invitation from any of the
principals responsible for the party I attended one evening in Apia, but
in the islands the respectable stranger does not find himself lonely. It
was sufficient that I was a friend of one of the guests. Four young men
who were leaving were given a send-off; and the celebrations were to
take place in the little Sunday-school shack.
[Illustration: THREE VIEWS OF A MAORI WOMAN
In European clothes
With her New Zealand husband at home
In her native costume]
[Illustration: A GROUP OF WHITES AND HALF-CASTES IN SAMOA
The father of the two girls was a lawyer and the son of a Sydney
(Australia) clergyman]
[Illustration: A SHIP-LOAD OF "PICTURE-BRIDES" ARRIVING AT SEATTLE
Japanese seldom marry other than Japanese women]
[Illustration: A MAORI WOMAN WITH HER CHILDREN
The father is a white man--a New Zealand shepherd]
That evening the little structure was metamorphosed from crude solemnity
by a generous trimming in palm branches and flowers, as though it had
been turned outside in. Oil-lamps hung from the rafters by stiff
wires, unyielding even to the weight of the light-giving vessels. The
awkwardness of some of the natives in their relations with the whites
could not be overcome even by their obvious inclination. But the music
stirred us all into a whirl of equality. It was furnished by an old
crone of a native woman. She was dressed in a shabby Mother-Hubbard gown
and her feet were bare. Her stiff fingers worked upon the keys of an
accordion in a sluggish fashion, as she confused old-fashioned
barn-dances with sentimental melodies. She was stirred on to greater
sentiment by the teasing approaches of one white man fully
three-quarters drunk. As for the dancers,--what to them were
half-expressed notes? Their own fresh blood more than overcame any lack.
Pretty young flappers, eager for the arms of the white chaps, moved
about among stolid dames whose purity of race revealed itself in russet
skins and slightly flattened noses. They had finer features than the
matrons. The white "impurities" shone out of them. But they were not
quite free, not quite absolved from the weight of their primitive
forebears. They were shy and had little to say for themselves, and it
seemed they wished they could just cast off the high-heeled shoes and
tight garments and be that which at least half of themselves wished to
be. Yet they were erect and proud,--and gay.
Behind the curtain which hung across the little rostrum stood tables
fairly littered with bananas, mangos, and watermelons, mingled with the
fruits of the Northern kitchen stove,--cakes, pies, and meats enough to
satisfy a harvesting-gang. And when the call to supper came, the
invasion of this hidden treasure island and its despoliation proved that
however much mankind may be differentiated socially and intellectually,
gastronomically there is universal equality.
There is another basis upon which the wide world is one, and that is in
its affections. Long after midnight the party would have still been in
progress but for the threat of the ferry-men. They wished to retire and
announced that the last boat was soon to start across the
moon-splattered reefs. There was a hurried meeting of lips in farewell.
The silver light revealed more than one sweet face crumpled before
separation. Then with the first dip of their oars into the sea the
swarthy oarsmen began the song which, exotic and sentimental as it was,
left every heart as aching for the shore as it did those of the simple
half-caste maidens for their casual lovers of the colder Antipodes.
"Oh, I neva wi' fo-ge-et chu," drawled the oarsmen, and they on shore
joined in with the softer voices of that gentler world.
3
I had been an unknown and unknowing guest, paying my rates for keep at
the hotel. For most of an hour I had been in a small upper room with
three or four white men whose sole object seemed to be to get as drunk
as they could and to induce me to join them. In those clear moments that
flash across leary hours, they gave voice to their disapproval of
intermarriage with the natives. Then I learned of the wedding taking
place below. My curiosity led me downstairs, and though an utter
stranger, I made my way into the company. Not for a moment did I feel
myself out of place. Such is the nature of life in the tropics. Among
those present were pretty half-caste maidens, slovenly full-blooded
native matrons, men and women of all ages and conditions of attire.
There were German-Samoans, English, English-Samoans, American and
American-Samoans, with a salting of no (or forgotten) nationality. Some
were in Mother-Hubbard gowns, some in pongee silks, some in canvas and
white duck, cut either for street or evening wear. One young chap, the
clerk at the customs, came dressed in the latest tuxedo. And a
half-caste chief appeared in a suit of silk pajamas.
The marriage-feast was as sumptuous as any that ever tempted the palate
of man. It was spread not on acres, as in the olden days, but on a long
table which stretched the length of the thirty-foot room. Photographs
are everywhere sold displaying so-called cannibal feasts, with huge
turtles and hundreds of tropical vegetables. However it may have been in
those days, at this feast the guests were cannibal in manners only. They
stood round the table and helped themselves with that disregard of
to-morrow's headache and the hunger of the day after which is said to be
primitive lack of economy.
As the guests were led out into the dance-hall, one young stalwart took
the remnant of the watermelon rind he had been gnawing and slung it
straight at the pretty back of a Euro-Polynesian girl in evening frock.
She tittered at him. The jollity was running too high for any one to be
disturbed by anything like that.
Soon the dance was in full swing. Not the tango, which we regard as
primitive and wild, but sober editions of dances with us long out of
date. The need is more pressing in the tropics among folk of part-white
parentage than an appearance of real civilization. And though it is not
so long in the history of the Pacific since the coming of the first
white man, there is already an intermediate race growing up which,
beginning with Samoa, spreads northward and southward and all around as
far as the reaches of the sea. Nor is the mixture always to be
deprecated.
The night wore on. The dancing ceased. Flushed faces and perspiring
forms slipped out into the moonlight. The white collar which had adorned
the tuxedo of the clerk was now brother to the pajamas. The white men
who had tried to drown their objections to intermarriage had yielded to
the lure of the pretty half-caste maidens. One of them now disappeared
with his "tart."
A traveling-salesman from Suva, thin and wiry, had been in dispute with
a new civil officer. They contradicted each other just to be contrary.
The officer had a wife at home to whom he was bound to be faithful in
matters of sex; in the matter of spirits he could not be unfaithful,
since in that all the world is one. When the two of them and I left the
party, they were still disputing the question of intermarriage, in which
neither believed but on which both had pronounced complexes.
To change the subject, which was bordering on a fight, I asked: "Why do
the palms bend out toward the sea?"
"Now, what difference does it make to you?" said the salesman. "You're
always asking why this, why that?"
"Why shouldn't he?" grumbled the officer, more sober and more
intelligent.
We rambled along. The salesman soon slipped into his hotel. The officer
and I wandered toward the native village.
"Strange," he said, somewhat sobered by the sea air. "If I met him in
Auckland I wouldn't speak to him. He's beneath me."
Free and easy as the relationship of marriage seems to be here, one not
infrequently runs across descendants of very happy and desirable unions.
I had gone on a little motor jaunt with some of the men of the British
Club. Our way was along the road the natives had built in gratitude to
R. L. S., and our destination the home of a friend of his, who had
married a native woman. The house was of European construction, solid
and comfortable, with a veranda affording a view of the open sea. The
interior was in every way as typical of British colonial life as any I
later saw in New Zealand. There were photographs on the wall, hanging
shelves, bric-á-brac, a piano,--all importations of crude Western
manufactories.
The hosts were Euro-Polynesians; the father a lawyer and son of a
clergyman of Sydney, Australia, who had settled in the islands years
ago. I do not recall whether, like his closest friend, Stevenson, he was
buried on the island, but certainly he left by no means unworthy
offspring, whatever prejudice may say.
Thus, in the mixture of emotions often sterile, and in the bones of
white devotees is the reunion of the races of these regions being slowly
effected. And at the two extremities of the Pacific--New Zealand and
Hawaii--we find the process nearer completion.
4
In the journeys to and fro across the vast spaces of the South Pacific
one rarely meets a white man who takes his native wife with him. One
such I did meet when slipping down from Hawaii to the Fiji Islands.
There were two couples on board who always kept more or less to
themselves, two rough-looking white men, a white woman, and one who for
all I could tell was a middle-class Southern European woman. She wore
simple clothes,--a blouse hanging over her skirt and comfortable shoes.
She was in no sense shy, laughed heartily, moved about with a
self-conscious air of importance, but with ease, and made no effort to
hide the curving blue lines of tattooing that decorated her chin. She
was a Maori princess, and all the vigor of her race disported itself in
the supple lines of her figure.
Her husband, Mr. Webb, however, was not a British prince. Blunt in his
manners, he was ultra-radical in his opinions,--a proud member of New
Zealand's working class. Domineering in his temperament he was, but she
was a match for him. It was obvious that she had missed in her native
training any lessons in subservience to a mere husband. She spoke a
clear, broad, fluent English without the slightest accent, and when her
extremely argumentative husband made a strong point, she gave her assent
in no mistaken terms.
At table she was more mannerly than her spouse, though laboring under no
difficulties whatever in the acquisition of food. I have never seen a
person more self-possessed. Her royal lineage was writ large in her
every expression. Though out on deck they both seemed somewhat out of
place among the white folk and preferred a corner apart, in the
dining-room they were kin to all men.
I found them both extremely interesting, and when the usual invitations
were passed round for a continuance of the acquaintanceship after
landing, I accepted theirs more readily than any other. Blunt and
without finesse as they were, there was an obvious cordiality and
virility in their manner, and no man alert to adventure turns so
promising an offer aside.
Months afterward I was in Auckland, New Zealand, and made myself known
to them. Most cordial was the reception they gave me when I stepped upon
the well-built pier that jutted out into the inlet from the little
launch that brought me there. Back upon the knoll stood Madame, her
heavy head of curly hair loose about her shoulders. Her very being
greeted me with welcome, firmness of foot and arm and calmness of poise
proclaiming her nativity. When I approached, her strong hand grasped
mine, her face beamed, and she led the way over the grass-grown path to
the porch with even more self-confidence than when she had gone to her
seat in the saloon, on shipboard.
Yet it was no saloon they led me into, but a simple hollow-tile
structure with slate roofing and plain plastered walls. Just an ordinary
four-roomed house, the haven of the rising pioneer. There were no
decorations on the walls, no modern equipment of any kind, not even a
stove. The table was machine-turned, the chairs ordinary, and on the
mantelpiece stood some bleached photographs. My hosts went about in
their bare feet, and otherwise as loosely clad as the early November
spring permitted. They prepared their meals on the open fire, and the
menu was as simple as anything ever offered me; and for the first time
in my life I ate boiled eels, the great Maori staple and delicacy. Had
it not been for the emanation of her genial personality and his
vigorous, breezy, almost hard pleasure in my presence, I should have
felt chilled in that habitation. But in place of things was sincere
welcome. I had proof of that that night, for I was placed in the
guest-room, upon a soft, comfortable bed, while my hosts themselves
spread a mattress on the floor in the living-room. Lest I misunderstand,
they explained that it was their custom, Maori fashion, to sleep on the
floor, as they preferred the hard support to that of the yielding
spring.
I woke next morning just as the sun peeped over the hill directly into
my window. It was a sober dawn,--just a healthy flush of life, with
crisp, invigorating air. One branch of a young kauri pine-tree stretched
across the rising orb like nature rousing itself from sleep. And in the
other room I could hear my hosts moving quietly about, preparing
breakfast.
Without word of warning or any apparent welcome, the wife's brother and
his young bride arrived. It was obvious that the visit was no unusual
occurrence. They made themselves as much a part of the place as
possible, and were ignored by the white man and his Maori wife as though
they were servants. Yet they were both, to me at least, delightful. He
was broad-shouldered, erect, rounded of limb but muscular,--as handsome
a boy of twenty as I have ever seen, and it gave one joy to see him
mated to so fine a girl. Their beings vibrated to each other with the
joy of their union.
And she was as fine a mate for him. Though she accentuated every feature
of her sex, it was with the joy of fitness for him, not with any effort
to be alluring. She wore a very close fitting middy-blouse, which made
more firm the rounded breasts of her young maidenhood. She was supple
and plump and moved with litheness and grace, full of animal spirits.
With an affected air she swung about to the step of an American rag, and
every once in a while she would throw herself into her lover's arms, and
take a turn about out of sheer happiness. It had never occurred to me
how extremely civilized and not primitive our rag-time music is until I
saw these young "savages" affect it. But however ill-fitting the tune to
their emotions, there was something absolutely natural in their
adoration and their rushing into each other's arms which no amount of
civilization could tarnish.
In the afternoon they went digging for eels in the mud of the inlet.
While they were gone, my host and his wife cleared the yard of overgrown
weeds and rubbish.
"That's the way they are," said he. "All day long they dance and fool
away their time. They think they've done a lot if they dig for eels all
afternoon. When we went away to Hawaii we left them to look after our
house without charging them any rent. This is what we found when we
returned. The whole place was overgrown with weeds, the fences were
broken down, the gates were off, and the place was strewn with rubbish.
They don't know what it is to be careful." And he struck a match to the
heap of weeds he and his wife had gathered.
Presently the two lovers returned with a basket full of eels. The young
"housewife" hung her catch by the tails on the clothes-line to dry, and
in a pail of clear water washed the mud-suckers they had gathered as
by-product. Then they felt they were entitled to rest.
All afternoon until late evening they lay upon the spring of an unused
matressless bedstead, which stood upon the veranda. Their heads were at
the opposite ends of the bed. He kicked his feet in the air, but every
time a move of hers showed more of her legs than he thought proper, he
pulled down her tight skirt. He held an accordion over him upon which
he played a medley of airs, while she whirled a soft hat with her
fingers. From their throats issued a fountain of song, harmonious only
in the spirit of joy which inspired it.
So far they might just as well have been guests at a hotel for all the
attention their elders paid to them. We had had our meals by ourselves.
They were simply tolerated. But after nightfall, they joined their
relatives in a game of cards. Every move provoked a burst of laughter,
whether successful or unsuccessful to the hilarious one, and never a
suggestion of strife or thought of gain was manifest.
The Maories are more sober than their kinsmen of the upper South Seas.
Life was never to them less than a serious struggle. I daresay they are
happier to-day than they were in their own time, with peace and
prosperity guaranteed them. But that is problematical. Laughter and play
are to-day urgent necessities. The dances and games that were native to
them--when not stimulated by some social event--do not come to them with
the same old spontaneity. It took considerable begging on my part and
nudging from Mr. Webb to persuade the women to show me a native dance.
Donning her skirt of rushes, Mrs. Webb stepped into the center of the
room, giggling all the while, and insisting that her sister-in-law dance
with her. The latter took a stick in her hand and they began. But after
two or three movements they doubled over with laughter, and faltered. I
kept urging them on. At last they caught the spirit of it, and for a few
minutes they were as though possessed. Their movements, mainly of the
hands and hips, were not unlike those of the geisha dances of Japan.
They kept them up for fifteen minutes. Suddenly they stopped, as though
struck self-conscious, almost as a modest girl who had wakened from a
somnambulant journey in her nightgown. They slipped into chairs, and
were silent. Then for about half an hour they sat "yarning" soberly
before the hearth fire. And something sad seemed to creep away up the
chimney.
The two young lovers decided they would take a bath, and went into
another chamber to heat the water. My bed was spread for me; the hosts
unrolled the mattress which had been lying in the corner on the floor
all day. We retired. Then from the other room came sounds of hilarious
laughter, the splashing of water in the tub, and the slapping of naked
wet flesh. It kept up for hours, long after midnight. When silence
finally reigned over the household, an adorably cool moon peeped in at
our windows, and I knew that the two lovers in the room next mine were
at last overcome by the conspiracy of moonlight and fatigue.
"Did you hear those mad Maories?" said Mr. Webb to me the first thing in
the morning. "Such mad things! To keep the whole house awake till long
after midnight!" Then he, too, seemed to become self-conscious. Wasn't
he passing reflections on the tribe of his wife? We strolled out into
the fields. He seemed to feel the necessity of an explanation. Among his
people, the white folk, though he was not ostracized for having taken a
native wife (for it is common enough), still it did lower one in the
social scale. I steered the conversation round till he himself spoke of
it. He referred to his wife, somewhat soberly. "I like her and am
satisfied with her. She's a good woman." And during the whole of my
visit I saw nothing to indicate that their marriage was not a success.
She was tidy, thrifty, and companionable. He always treated her with
respect and affection, though once or twice with undue firmness. But she
always stood her ground with dignity and good-nature. When he poked
kindly fun at some photographs of her, she smiled and winked at me. Then
she said of a picture taken of him on the beach: "I wouldn't lose it for
all the world, just for his sake."
By way of apology for the absence of more furnishings, they explained
that they had sold out; they were tired of labor conditions in New
Zealand, of the too great closeness to the "tribe" and in consequence
had paid a visit to Hawaii, where they bought a plantation. Thither they
went shortly afterward, the Briton and his Maori wife, he to mix with
his European cousins, she with her Polynesian kinsfolk, and a more
general reunion, after centuries of separation, consummated.
Not the least lovable among the fifty-seven blends of humanity that make
up the inhabitants of the South Seas and the Pacific are these Maories
and their half-brothers and sisters.
5
From a Member of Parliament I had received several letters of
introduction, one of which was to the famous Dr. Pomare, the native M.
P. who represented native interests in the Dominion's parliament. When I
arrived at Wellington, the capital, I presented myself at his office and
was received by a most genial, well-spoken, widely read individual whose
tongue would have entertained the most sophisticated of European
gatherings. There was hardly a subject we touched in which he was not
well versed, and his native qualities rang out in intermittent bursts of
laughter such as only a healthy-minded and healthy-bodied individual
could indulge in. When we began to discuss the question of the virtues
and vices of his native race, the Maories, he assured me:
"Oh, we're just like any people. There are good and bad amongst us. Some
of our people will sell their lands, if they can, and buy an automobile
which they run madly about and then leave in an open plot in ruin. On
the other hand, one of our women has been very clever with her property,
has sold it off, and invested her money in stocks so that to-day she
owns the greatest number of shares in the Wellington tram lines. So you
see we are just like other people."
And so it is. But there is a slight exception, for I have heard from
every one that the tendency to revert to type is very great, and that
one of the wealthiest native woman in the Dominion will frequently leave
her mansion, her jewels, her limousine, her fine clothes, and spend a
time in a Maori _pah_, eating eels in the good old native way.
But such reversions cannot last long. Despite that drift, there are
indications of a racial recrudescence through the half-castes, a
tendency noticed by students of the primitive peoples throughout the
Pacific. Hope for the Maories is in the younger elements who have that
happy mixture in them, called Pakeha-Maori. Visiting a class of young
women in a commercial school in Dunedin I noticed among them one whose
dark face and black eyes were full of a certain wicked fascination. She
was as bright and alert as any member of the class. And when I spoke of
her to the head of the school, he said, "Oh, that little half-caste
girl." I should not have known it.
One does not like to be too enthusiastic, but if these savage
Polynesians can in the course of three generations, and with the aid of
a slight mixture, change from fierce cannibalism to something as sweet
and lovable as this, there is indeed great hope for them. What though
the prejudiced assure you that, however far the mixture may have gone,
it reveals itself in a tendency to squat when least expected? There is
in the most civilized of us still enough of the savage strain to make us
wary of carrying our aversions too far.
Doubtless the Britons of New Zealand would enter any debate with the
Americans of Hawaii as to which is the superior people, the Maories or
the Hawaiians. For our own peace of mind let us accept their Polynesian
kinship at the outset. Both are worth saving as separate races or in
mixture with others.
The Maori M.P., the rebellious priest, Rua, later released from prison,
the Hawaiian clerk in the throne-room, the Fijian chief turned governor,
the Samoan chief in pajamas who, with the customs officials, boarded the
steamer anchored beyond the reefs, and Mrs. Webb, the princess,--all
these are natives playing the new part allotted to them in this strange
new world.
Thus slowly, into the life and fabric of the South Seas, is coming this
consciousness of rebirth. It is a new class, a new race. Not the
Eurasians, scorned by the white and the superior Asiatics,--but the
reverse. Half-caste, but the proud possessors of the virtues of the
natives, with the strength and superiority of the white; half-caste in
blood but not always so in spirit.
CHAPTER XVI
GIVING HEARTS A NEW CHANCE
1
Casual, impermanent, or broken as these unions hitherto have been, their
cyclonic process of attraction and repulsion has created a suction
drawing in both good and evil. The white sailor and vagabond who
ravished the brown maiden never intended to father the consequences. But
gradually, as communication increased and mutual interests developed,
greater stability entered into the relations of the races. Marital
contracts became necessary and, from the point of view of property and
other acquisitions, even desirable. Readjustment of conceptions of sex
grew urgent. This entailed the complement, divorce.
From all corners of the world came people whose notions of man's
relations with woman were as divergent as the seas. The Japanese and
Chinese brought their Oriental attitude toward women; the American his
Occidental. Besides, with the passing of native control, European
nations superimposed European regulations upon the islands. We have,
then, the introduction of legalism into the casual affairs of the
tropics, and the vanishing of primitive license. We have the Japanese
woman, subject to the control of her husband, finding herself protected
by the laws of another race. These raise her status and her
self-respect. She rebels against unpleasant sex-unions. Divorce in these
conglomerate regions, therefore, means the idealization of sex, raising
it above the stage of animal possession and material interest; based
upon the sense of justice to woman, it recreates marriage, makes decent
unions possible.
Hence, in the wake of queer marriages we see even more queer divorces,
as though hearts, having become self-conscious, seek a new chance. As
age mellows racial associations, we find that men's hearts the world
over beat as one, and relationships which are at all compatible seek
permanency, if not "normalcy."
It was easy enough for a wanderer or a few hundred traders and romancers
to leave their imprint on the native races. It is another matter when
the native races are overwhelmed by a hundred thousand aliens of
twenty-odd races, and the work of amalgamation falls to the lot of the
white man. An altogether new problem manifests itself,--not only that of
bringing them together in a legal and permanent manner, but of
separating such types and individuals as cannot work for the betterment
of the new race.
Throughout the Pacific already reviewed, the mixture is as yet
essentially accidental and occasional. But in no spot in the Pacific has
the problem assumed such serious proportions as in Hawaii, where, added
to the great diversity of conglomerations, comes the factor of white and
Asiatic superiority in number. As we have seen, the infusion of this
flood of foreign blood into the thin native element has fairly swamped
it. This jungle of humanity seems at first sight utterly beyond cultural
purification. The streets throb with such multiplicity of little ways
that one feels bewildered. One has to snatch a sample of the life and
place it beneath the magnifying-glass of tradition and code to be able
to separate it from the whole. And that I did one day in Honolulu.
The sun was pouring down in veritable splutters of softness and
mellowness. It was warm in an all-embracing tenderness of warmth. To be
in the shade with another human being was here as unifying in spirit as
sitting before an open fire is on a blizzardy day in the North. And on
such a day I entered the court-room of Honolulu. The dusty tread of
people from every land has sounded across this court-house floor and
all the simple tragedies of life with their hoarse warnings have been
enacted within its walls. Hundreds of disappointed men and women have
come into that room hoping to have their lives straightened out, their
affections given a new chance.
When I entered, the court-room was empty. A massive Hawaiian looked in,
and walked away. Then a thin white man approached and, when he learned
what brought me, he sat down on one of the wooden benches to talk to me.
It was Judge William L. Whitney, who died in New York just recently.
Presently, an emaciated-looking Chinese entered and sat down to wait. A
small, wrinkled, sallow little woman from the Celestial Republic,
accompanied by a compatriot, came in after him, and seated herself a
little distance away. Then came the fat Hawaiian again who had peered in
earlier, and with that everything seemed in order. Judge Whitney left
me, approached the bench, and, though he wore only his ordinary street
clothes, he was forthwith crowned with the halo of his office.
The proceedings began. Proceedings in this case meant great round eyes
rolling in tremendous sockets, a tongue free with the dialects and
linguistics of every mixture, and a temperament free from ambition or
guile. The judge could speak no Chinese, the respondents could speak no
English, the witnesses (of whom two strayed in later) could speak
neither English nor Chinese,--and so among them the Hawaiian interpreter
had all the fun to himself. He was in reality the dispenser of justice.
The case was rehearsed. The Chinese was suing his wife for divorce.
"Where were you when you saw this man kiss your wife?" asked the judge.
The interpreter took up the question in Chinese as though the language
were part of his inheritance, and after the Chinese spoke, back came
the reply through the lips of the Hawaiian, but in the first person.
"I was in the garden. When I looked up into our bedroom I saw this man
kiss my wife."
The evidence was vague. To John Chinaman it meant more than a few facts,
for his wife had borne him no offspring. What a timid-daring attempt to
reach out for new life! At home he would just have dismissed her, but
here it was different. Yet from their appearance it was doubtful that
either of them would ever have the courage to try to live life over.
This was only one of the many entangled lives that came to be
straightened out in Hawaii. There are more than forty-seven different
combinations of races there, such as American and American, German
and German, Korean and Korean, Russian and Russian, Spanish-Marshall
and English, Half-Hawaiian and Chinese-Hawaiian, Hawaiian and
Chinese-Hawaiian, Hawaiian and Hawaiian-Portuguese, Chinese and
Chinese, Hawaiian and Hawaiian, Portuguese and Portuguese, Spanish
and Spanish, Spanish-Hawaiian and Spanish-Hawaiian, Portuguese and
Creole-Spanish-Portuguese, Chinese and Irish, American and
Half-Hawaiian, Portuguese and Pole, Half-Hawaiian and Half-Hawaiian,
American and Hawaiian-Chinese, English and Half-Hawaiian, Japanese and
American, American-Japanese and Japanese, Half-Hawaiian and German,
Portuguese and Hawaiian, German and Irish, Hawaiian-Chinese and
Spanish-Italian, Portuguese and Hawaiian-Chinese, Half-Hawaiian
and Spanish, Porto-Rican and Porto-Rican, Oginawa and Oginawa,
French-Porto-Rican and Porto-Rican, Swede and Portuguese, English and
English, Hawaiian and Chinese, American and French-Spanish, Portuguese
and Japanese, American-Portuguese and German-Irish, Portuguese-Hawaiian
and Portuguese, Portuguese and German-Irish, Portuguese-Hawaiian and
Portuguese, Portuguese-Irish and Hawaiian, Hawaiian and American-Negro,
Portuguese-Hawaiian-Chinese and Chinese. And I am certain that I can add
another, that of my New Zealand acquaintance and his Maori wife.
They are but one phase of the whole problem of the mixture of races and
the melting of their silvers and bronzes down to the human essence
within them. For there were in Judge Whitney's time on an average of two
hundred and thirty couples divorced under that ceiling every year.
Figures make human facts seem so remote that I hate to use them. As soon
as figures are quoted the individuals lose their identity. That which is
living and real becomes, as it were, an astronomical calculation and one
might as well talk of stars. But the figures of the divorces in Hawaii
are in themselves a living thing, as they interpret the life there more
than words could do; so I'll risk giving a few of the figures Judge
Whitney published while I was in Honolulu.
The Japanese contributed 49% of the divorces in Hawaii, though they
comprise only 34% of the population; the Americans, 7%, though they were
8% of the population. The rest were distributed among the other
nationalities. This is how those statistics compared with divorce
statistics in other countries. There were in England out of every
hundred thousand inhabitants, two divorces per year; in Austria, one; in
Norway, six; in Sweden, eight; in Italy, three; in Denmark, seventeen;
in Germany, twenty-three; and in France, the same; in the United States,
seventy-three; and in the island of Oahu (Honolulu), four hundred.
Hundreds of little folk, a host of children, have passed out of that
room either fatherless or motherless. Back in the lands which they might
have called home it would not have happened in just this way, or having
happened so, it would not have had the same tragic meaning. For in
Oriental countries fathers frequently put the mothers of their children
aside. Yet, somehow the tragedies do not fret and strut in such
distorted ways in lands where distortion is much more common, as in the
East. In most Oriental countries it is enough for a man to say his wife
talks too much and declare her divorced, but when he comes to the
half-way house, Hawaii, he must be cruel, extremely cruel to his wife
before the law will grant him a divorce. So he is "cruel" in a way he
may be sure will secure his freedom.
2
What the results of all these mixtures will be, no one can as yet tell,
but the consensus of opinion gives the Chinese-Hawaiian the prize for
superiority. However promiscuous other races may be, the Japanese seldom
stoops to conquer in that way. The maiden of Japan shares with the white
woman an aversion for these strangers in Hawaii, though the number of
Japanese women who marry white men is far greater than that of white
women marrying into any of the races in the Pacific.
One of the most prolific causes of divorce in Hawaii has been the
so-called "picture bride." Because of the exclusion of Asiatic laborers,
few Japanese and Chinese women have been born in the island. But because
of their preference for their own women, Japanese sent home for wives.
To get round the exclusion laws, they stretched the home process a bit,
selected by photograph the girls they wished, had themselves married by
proxy (a method recognized in Japan as legal), and then simply sent for
their "wives." Aside from the subsequent divorces which very frequently
ensued, there have been cases not without their humorous sides.
One story was told that must be accepted with caution.
Mr. Goto, who just a short while ago was Goto San, wants a wife. He sees
a go-between who secures for him the pictures of some girls of his own
district. He makes his selection and the process of marriage is
accomplished. With something little short of glee, he waits the maid's
arrival.
She comes. But alas, not alone! Mr. Goto waits with others at the pier.
Everybody is blessed but him. Chagrin and impatience battle in his
heart. Nearly everybody has been supplied with a wife. There are only
two women left. Neither seems to be the one he married. Goto
thinks,--thinks rapidly. Who will ever know the difference? He claims
the prettier; she accepts him, and off they dash on their honeymoon, à
la Occident, a two-day trip round the island of Oahu in a motor-car. And
never were nuptials more satisfactory.
In the meantime Fujimoto San comes rushing up pell-mell. His garage
business has kept him. He finds a lone girl, but she does not tally with
the reproduction he married. "Not so nice," is the first thought that
flashes across his brain. "Little too broad in the nose, lips thicker
than those on the photograph. Can I mistake?" But she is the only one
left. He bows at least a half-dozen times, bows clean over, half-way to
the ground, but alas! every time his head bobs up he sees the same
disheartening face, a face he never ordered, a face he cannot accept. He
must clear up the mystery. He calls the agent. Investigations reveal
that Goto was there ahead of him; so Fujimoto sets out on a chase after
the honeymoon pair. It ends in Honolulu two days later, and another
divorce case comes up in court.
The "picture bride" is now a thing of the past, as the Japanese
Government has agreed to deny her a passport in accordance with the
spirit of our treaty with Japan. From the point of view of immigration,
this may be a solution; but there is a phase of the problem of the
mixture of races in Hawaii I have never yet seen discussed,--that is,
the woman. In the case of the Japanese woman, much more than in that of
the man, entrance to Hawaii or America is freedom such as has never been
known before. At home she has been taught obedience and deference to
her husband. There are many others ready to accept that burden if she is
unwilling. But in Hawaii, where there are so many Japanese seeking wives
and where she moves among peoples whose standards are an inversion of
everything she has been taught to regard as virtuous and feminine, she
finds herself in an altogether different position. On the streets she
sees many white women treated with courtesy; in the courts women receive
even more sympathy than men,--to her an unheard-of thing. And so we find
that when all the divorces in the Hawaiian Islands have been tabulated,
these little timid creatures of Japan have been emboldened to the extent
of deserting their husbands in veritable shoals, making up 90% of the
entire number of Japanese divorces. It is a scramble for readjustment of
conjugal relations based on something nearer emotional equality.
But where do the Hawaiians come in? will be asked in all reason. They
are virtually no more. Of the entire race which at the time of their
discovery by Captain Cook numbered some 130,000 to 300,000, only a few
thousand are left. At the time of the annexation of Hawaii by America
(1898) there were some 31,000 Hawaiians of pure blood, or about 28% of
the population. Of Orientals there was about 42% of the population, with
24,400 Japanese and 21,600 Chinese. Then there were 15,191 Portuguese,
2,250 Britons, 1,437 Germans, 8,400 Americans, 1,479 Norwegians, French
and others combined. Already there were 8,400 part-Hawaiian. From the
rulers down there was a free mixture, even the queen had a white spouse.
Some of the best types of Hawaiian women had been married by men of fine
caliber, unlike almost any other place in the Pacific. The relationships
were of a permanent nature, for, as the governmental report in
connection with annexation stated:
The Hawaiians are not Africans, but Polynesians. They are brown,
not black. There has never been and there is not any color line in
Hawaii as against native Hawaiian, and they participate fully and
on an equality with the white people in affairs, political,
social, religious, and charitable. The two races freely intermarry
one with the other, the results being shown in a population of some
7,000 of mixed blood. They are a race which will in the future, as
they have in the past, easily and rapidly assimilate with and adopt
American ways and methods.
3
In defiance of prejudice, intermarriage between the races in the Pacific
is taking place. What the result is to be, no one as yet knows
definitely. The number of white men legalizing their relations with
native women is large. The tropics are veritable whispering-galleries
sounding the stories of men who have returned to keep their promises
even after they have been despatched from the islands under the
influence of the cup so as to prevent their marrying. In the
mid-Pacific, in the South Seas, in the Far East, white men are marrying
native women, even in cases where these have been their mistresses for
years.
In Japan, many leading white men have married Japanese women, among whom
the most celebrated has been Lafcadio Hearn. The list is long. In the
ports, many foreigners have married Japanese women, and though there is
a strong feeling against it socially, discrimination is not universal.
The French and the British are not nearly so fastidious in these matters
as are the Americans and the Japanese. Wherever there is outward
opposition, it comes from the Japanese side as well as from the white.
Japanese complain against discrimination here, but we are received with
no more open arms by them in Japan.
The girl from Japan coming to the West is by virtue of her immigration
alone to some extent emancipated; but to the white woman turning her
steps east there is only the emancipation, in part, from drudgery by
means of ample servants. To the white woman who goes a step farther and
links herself in marriage with a Japanese or Chinese there is in the
majority of cases only sorrow, soreness of heart, isolation, and regret.
It is not that she might not be happy with the individual Oriental, but
in the East she becomes part of a vicious family system that strangles
her individuality. Though the maid of Japan is not over-welcome in the
West, as the wife of a white man she comes into a higher plane of life.
By no means is that true in the case of the white woman in the East.
There are too many cases, still warm with regret, to be named in proof
of the statement. I have come across several cases of American girls who
had married Japanese and returned with them to Japan. They were content
enough with their husbands, but their position in the Japanese home was
intolerable. I remember the loneliness of a New York girl who had gone
to live in Kyoto. The contemptuous way in which some notable Japanese
looked at their countryman's white wife was only comparable to the
treatment she would have received here. The children, born in the same
labor, are not respected as are either "pure" Japanese or white. The
Eurasian is frequently disqualified. The white father regrets that his
children are not Aryan as did Lafcadio Hearn.
This is no attempt to make out a case for the mixture of natives and
white in the Pacific. There are not enough facts at hand. Unfortunately,
for the next few hundred years the differences between the peoples
living on the borders of the Pacific will continue to irritate, and
experiments in blood-mixture will probably be tried externally. I have
only mobilized such incidents as have come within my own personal
observation that will take the problem out of the cold, statistical
plane. It is with human flesh and blood, human hearts and affections,
human gropings and aspirations that we are dealing,--not with the
conflicts of imaginary hordes and with terrifying invasions.
To me, the human elements in Honolulu and throughout the Pacific remain
a memory of one perpetual stirring of sounds, colors, and desires. The
whole is not confusing, for it is outside one's consciousness. In a
sense it is an inverted world consciousness. Instead of nationals
thinking outward, they have come together and are thinking inward,
recognizing themselves as part of some whole. Eventually, after all the
races in the Pacific have been mixed more or less, or have proved
mixture impossible, they will find some way in which they can dwell at
one another's elbows without nudging. The mixture may even assume an
appearance of unity. The color scheme, like a thorough blending of all
the colors of the spectrum, may yet become white.
CHAPTER XVII
"THIS LITTLE PIG WENT TO MARKET"
1
The basket was growing heavier and heavier, and his stomach weaker and
weaker. How to convert his burden into a meal was a problem, written as
large upon his face as the delight in the bargains he was making shone
in the face of the marketer beside him. He was a young chap just
emerging from boyhood. He had been employed by this restaurant-keeper
because he said he needed a meal. It was not to be a real job. He was to
get his meal all right, but not till he earned it by going with the boss
to market and carrying his basket for him.
The basket was soon full to overflowing, and the young man bearing it
was nigh exhaustion. They were now going home. At the corner of the open
square that had been assigned to garden-truck venders the old man
stopped to buy a rose. He disputed the price with the flower-girl, got
it at a reduction, and went on. "I always bring my wife a rose from
market," he remarked in semi-soliloquy, and they disappeared, the young
fellow with his burden, the old man with his rose.
Thus does the European little pig go to market, and he's the most
civilized little pig in the world. For hundreds of years he has been
learning to market, and that most essential of social functions is the
progenitor of communal life. The way in which it is performed is a test
of the civilization of a people.
The first democrats and artists of Europe, the Greeks, knew this, and
made the agora a market-place, a focus of public art, and the scene of
their political gatherings. Wretched, indeed, was the little pig that
stayed home when the agora was convoked, for he it was whom the Greeks
had determined to ostracize. Despite their efforts as democrats, there
were only too many who had to stay home when the affairs of that world
were being decided; but as a market, with all the architectural genius
concentrated on making it attractive and beautiful, and Socrates leading
his classes through it, it was a certain success.
In the ruder parts of Europe, owing to the absence of means of
communication and the dangers of carrying one's possessions abroad,
definite market-places became an imperative necessity, and charters for
their existence were granted by decree. They became an important means
of securing revenue.
Even the Church recognized the value of festivals as means of enriching
itself in a combination of barter with merrymaking and adoration.
Festivals and fairs alike enhanced the material and the artistic life of
medieval Europe, and marked, as it were, the embryonic element out of
which grew all the later laws and ethics of trade. The legitimacy of
piracy at sea and robbery on land had to be counteracted in some way,
and the dignity and decency of exchange established.
The evolutionary process by which civilization has achieved some sort of
business morality may yet be traced in various countries, especially
among the primitive peoples of the South Seas, the more advanced
Filipinos, the recently awakened Japanese, the Mexicans, and the
accomplished New Zealanders. Beneath the surface of the market-place,
the wide world over, one finds the source of civilization, and at its
level, the level of human commonalty. For as men hunt to cover up their
love of wild life and nature, so women market as an excuse for mingling
with people. There is in the behavior of the marketer all the cunning
of the animal in search of prey, and the degree to which these instincts
are developed gives in a sense the measure of a man's civilization.
Even outside the bonds of law and order the mere process of exchange
tends to establish social ethics. This is nowhere better exemplified
than at the thieves' market in Mexico or in the hidden reaches of the
Orient. Thither all robbers bring their stolen wares for sale. Thither
all the robbed hasten, to recover their lost property. The instinct
within each and all of them is the gambling spirit. The despoiler is
eager to sell as quickly and as successfully as possible lest the
rightful owner arrive and claim the booty. The general public is anxious
to buy, for the prices naturally are low, and many a bargain may be
secured. The despoiled, chagrined though they may be at their loss, are
in part compensated by the hope of a purchase made at somebody else's
expense.
2
I had not known that buying and selling was ever part of the scheme of
things among people whose needs were as few as those of the South-Sea
islanders. Saints and philosophers are always teaching us that the most
desirable state is that in which wants are few, and their indulgence is
still more limited. But it seems to me that where that condition holds,
the few necessaries of life become so much more desirable and so much
more difficult to obtain that, instead of a release from slavery,
slavery is even more rigorous. Our pictured impressions of the tropics
are full of breadfruit-trees and fruits growing in abundance without
labor. But quite the contrary is the case. The fear of famine and the
insecurity of life have dampened the joys of many a wild man, and the
pressure of population has only too frequently resulted in infanticide
and cannibalism.
When, therefore, I heard that there was to be a native bazaar across
the Rewa River, in Vita Levu, the largest island of the Fiji group, I
defied the yellow sun that hung overhead, secured a complement of guides
in two Fijian boys who were more afraid of me than they were of their
chief, and set out for real primitive excitement. We were pulled across
the river on a punt secured to each shore by a cable, and made our way
up the banks in the direction of the sugar-mill.
It was noon when we arrived at the fair-grounds. Aside from long wooden
tables that stood beneath arbors of palms, there was nothing completed
by way of preparation. A few straggling natives wended their ways from
hut to hut of slab-board and thatch, their quiet manners reminding me of
the monks in monasteries, absorbed in their duties. Gradually, venders
arrived; the tables began to sprout with banana-leaves and flowers.
Strings of berry beads were displayed, like fish out of
water,--appealing eyes of the plant world asking why, with nature so
near at hand, they needed to be torn from life. Bottles of liquid fats,
like capsules of the castor-plant, stood ensconced in green-leaved
packages containing sweet messes that left the eager natives, old and
young, literally web-handed.
The goods displayed, the crowds from the surrounding huts arrived, drawn
by an irresistible charm. A Fijian never came with his mate; maiden
never approached on her lover's arm. Though they all appeared
indiscriminately, there was no obvious grouping of friends with friends.
They moved like shoals of fish that had got the scent or the sight of
food. It was a crowd with every evidence of cohesiveness except that of
companionship.
To me there was something pathetic in that crowd. An outsider by all the
laws of centuries of contrary development, I had no means of entering
their emotional lives, of guessing the promptings which made them leave
privacy for herding. I had only the most outward signs to go by, and I
thought what spiritless, barren lives they must lead who could be
brought together on such an occasion in so casual a mood. For aside from
the bottles of oil, the strings of beads, and the wrappings of stuff in
banana-leaves, there was nothing from my view to make a hundred or two
hundred thousand pounds of sluggish flesh rise from its mats and dare
the piercing sun.
Yet the women, who did most of the selling, with their unkempt hair and
their crude alien costumes, awoke to something universal under the game
of barter they were here called upon to play crudely. Rummage-sales and
carnivals, dog-shows and dances, likewise change the glitter of blue
eyes and pink cheeks; and I smiled at the thought of Lao-tsze and
Tolstoy, who between 650 B. C. and A. D. 1910 preached the ugliness of
trade.
When the play of barter and exchange had stirred these primitive folk to
a little more life, they quite naturally sought a way of giving it off
again; but so foreign did a real bazaar seem to them that they entered
the recreations with little zest. In these days of savage sedateness,
with trade becoming more and more a feature and a pastime of life, it is
not surprising that the natives attend with spirits in abeyance.
Following the great exchange of beads and oils and edible messes, the
crowds moved out to a more open space, under the clear sun. There, with
the aid of a native band, under the conductorship of a Catholic priest,
they made merry, with strange sounds and more familiar dances. But it
all seemed perfunctory and not without a touch of sadness. The Fijian
voice at its best is rich, deep, and stately. One cannot imagine it
attuned to singing jazz or rag-time. It seems exclusively made for
hymns. In consequence, the crowds could not rise to the occasion, and
stood behind the entertainers like so many solemn Japanese in the
presence of royalty.
3
But lest the little pig who stays at home may really starve to death,
the world sometimes indulges him a little by letting the market go to
him, and never have I seen a market more picturesque and more
self-possessed than one of this sort that visited our steamer as she lay
anchored in the harbor of Manila.
All about us during the night had crept Filipino lighters, their
gunwales capped with low-arched mats. They hugged the steamer like a
brood of younglings waiting for their food. They were to receive the
cargo of boxes and canned goods from New York and other markets of the
world.
It was still cool. A native Filipino woman squatted on the ridge of a
lighter top between two men. She was enjoying her morning cigarette. As
she caught my gaze her face beamed flirtatiously. Then and there I tried
my tongue for the first time in the real use of Spanish, and failed. As
the morning advanced, children crept from the darkness of the covered
lighters; charcoal pails were fanned into a glow like that of the dawn;
and roosters, tied to the boats by one leg with a string, crowed, their
contempt, protest, or indifference to a gluttonous and unjust world.
As the hour of breakfast's needs arrived, a thin, long canoe came up,
insinuating its way among the many more capacious crafts, quietly,
slowly, like a thing just stirring with the new day. On its narrow
bottom flopped dozens of little fish in agony, dying of too much air.
They looked like so many bars of silver when they lay dead. A basket of
bananas and a few simple vegetables comprised the rest of the stock of
these aquatic tradespeople, this man and his woman. She squatted
comfortably, looking from side to side for customers, while he pushed
the canoe along with easy strokes. They did not cry their wares, and
handed their stores out as though known to all for fair dealing and
fearless of competition. Thus with the freshness of morning air they
stimulated this little world to action.
By noon that day I was slipping through narrow streets, avoiding the
moldy shops of the main street, seeking out the men and women who make
life interesting. The coolness of the morning was gone, crowded out by
steaming noon. The casual, gift-like manners of those two aquatic
traders was now a thing not even to expect, for I was in the midst of
civilized trade. Unexpectedly, I came upon the public market.
What a different world! The hand of the law was in evidence. Here,
despite the general confused appearance, the concrete drains and stone
tables gave an assurance of at least periodical cleansing. Here the laws
of barter held men tied to fair dealing, as the roosters were tied to
those lighters. Venders make a mad dash for freedom through cheating,
but were jerked back to honesty by the bargain-hunter who watches the
scales and knows the laws. Values are measured by the size of the pupil
or the intensity of the gaze; if eagerness is manifest, up goes the
price.
A Buddhist, looking upon a market like this, if he were unaccustomed to
pagan ways, would shrink from the sight as we would at a cannibal feast.
Here the world was calmly cruel. All the things we eat lay in their
naked ghastliness,--the thin streams of blood, the bulging eyes of
little creatures, the stiff inflexibility of limbs once quick and
supple. And the men and women were unconsciously affected by the scene.
For nothing stimulates the snarling quarrelsomeness of human beings more
than the sight of food or the fear of imposition. The appeals of the
sellers were mingled with the bargainings and bickerings of the buyers,
a competition among both to best one another. Two women stood over a
fish-bin engaged in a matching of wits that might well have been envied
by filibustering senators. The debate was over a tray of tiny fish.
A white woman, firmly knit in body and in character, made her way
through the many aisles, purchasing with a precision as clearly
civilized as it was silent. A Spanish woman, dark and dashing, swung
through the same aisles like a little whirlwind. There was brilliance in
her eyes, and brilliancy in the gems on her fingers and in her ears. She
was exceedingly well dressed, buxom, and attractive, but every purchase
was made with a gust of austerity and command quite uncalled for. She
bullied the fisherwoman, she bullied her hackman, she bullied the
servant who had come to carry her purchases for her; and then she sat
down at one of the little restaurant tables and ate the strange
concoctions with a dexterity obviously native to her. She was a
half-caste, but the Spanish vein was strong in her blood, and Spanish
passion actuated her. She got into her ancient-looking hackney-coach
with flash and gusto; but not, however, before she had gained her point
in the matter of an extra piece of fat upon which she was insisting. She
was the little pig who had roast beef because she knew how to market
economically.
4
But the little pig that has none, and the one who cries, _wee! wee!
wee!_ all the way home, in the Far East, is like the Greek about to be
ostracized by the community in the agora. Indeed, he has been ostracized
in Japan for hundreds of years, and even modernization and imperial
edict have changed his status but little. He is known as the _eta_. To
him has been allotted the task of attending to dead animals, whether
edible or not, and though his touch profanes the lowest classes of
Japan, his labor keeps the country clean after a fashion. Much more. Not
only do these outcasts remove dead carcasses from a careless Oriental
world, but in one place at least they have been given the sweetest of
all professions,--that of selling flowers with which to decorate the
_tokonoma_, the most honorable place in the Japanese home. And all
through the day, if one is not too much engrossed in the marts of the
foreign settlement, one will hear the voice of these flower-girls
calling plaintively, "_Hana! hana-i! hana-iro!_" Flowers are the things
that stand between her and the degradation of her class, because for
years the shrine of a loyal servant of the neglected emperor who was
struggling against a greater and more powerful group of disloyal
Japanese had been kept fresh with flowers by these _eta_, or outcasts,
who did not know whose grave they cherished.
[Illustration: FIJIAN VILLAGE
One is content with its peaceful aspects]
[Illustration: LITTLE FISH WENT TO THIS MARKET
Before Japan woke up
© Harper Brothers]
[Illustration: A FIJIAN BAZAR IS A RED LETTER DAY]
[Illustration: GOOD LUCK MUST ATTEND THESE TRADERS AT THE DOORS OF THE
CATHEDRALS IN MANILA]
Otherwise the market in Japan is in the hands of Japanese now in good
social standing, men who before the opening of the country numbered
among those not much above the outcasts. To be in trade was worse in
Japan than in England, and when one watches the behavior of men at
markets, one is not surprised. One who takes the average trader at his
word in Japan--not the big concerns, to be sure--deserves to cry, _wee!
wee! wee!_ all the way home.
While all over the world woman goes to market, in Japan the market goes
to her. She has had to have most of her daily supplies brought to her
door by the cobbler, the bean-curd-maker, or the fisherman. In
consequence, except when she has servants, she has been deprived of the
educational advantages of market gossip, and has been kept in her sphere
more easily. She will be the last to come forward to freedom.
Not so the men. All the social advantages of barter and exchange are
theirs. They communicate their experiences to one another at four
o'clock in the morning over the fish-tub. They test their wits and their
eyes with the auctioneer who starts them running in competition with one
another over an attractive specimen from the sea. Or the more
imaginative resist confusion in the pit of the stock-market, where they
keep in touch with their entire country and with the world. They are
becoming, in consequence, more efficient and more practised in
world-wide ethics of business.
Yet within the last few years public markets have sprung into vogue in
Japan, and I look toward a revolution in the relations of the sexes, for
no woman who goes to market remains long an obedient and submissive
little soul. This is obvious to any one who wanders into the market of
Shanghai. There one can see the status of the various women who
replenish their household supplies and the most humble, it seemed to me,
was the woman of Japan. She moved about like _Priscilla_ suddenly
brought back to life and sent to compete with the modern American woman.
5
In ancient Greece, of course, no woman of refinement went marketing
herself. She sent her slaves. But in modern New Zealand not only are
there no slaves, but there is no one to do any personal service of that
nature. In the old days, in Europe, the market was the general
rendezvous where life played its pranks at all levels. The religious
festivals also afforded dramatic pageantry, and sometimes the two
interplayed with each other. But in our modern times, when the public
market is largely supplanted by the great department store, shielded,
protected, organized into a minimum of human interest and a maximum of
efficiency, the charm of the market is no more. So, too, our festivals
have surrendered much of their artistry. This was somewhat revived
during the war. New Zealand, because of the still evident atmosphere of
pioneer life, the lack of interlocking systems of communication, and its
distance from the most advanced places in the world, still affords some
of that simple charm of a life one reads about. The streets of the main
cities nightly resemble something one has dimly heard of and never
hoped to see. The people have laid aside all thought of business or
barter. There is in their attitude something of that suppressed
amazement that revealed the thoughts of the South-Sea islanders when
asked to thrill to an alien band conducted by the Catholic priest. Both
the whites and the primitives seemed to recall that once they knew how
to celebrate.
Queens Street of Auckland was decorated one day, and booths were erected
on which simple products were offered for sale. A parade of two
fire-department machines, a number of men in Chinese costumes, others
painted and foolscapped, boys with enormous masks, and girls in
dominoes, marched through the city, and in their wake was a rush of just
plain pedestrians. Other than that nothing happened. From five to ten
thousand people jammed the street. The crowd was essentially like every
other crowd in the world,--the same in gregariousness, the same in
hunting after pleasure that abideth but a moment.
One evening the events were more thrilling. Sulky races, men driven by
girls, and May-pole dances round the street lamps that stand between the
tram-lines gave a suggestion of antiquity to the city. The only
difference between these performances and those in the upper regions of
the tropics was in the absence of palms and green arbors. In place of
wide spaces were narrow streets, lined with brick buildings and studded
with iron poles whose only blossoms were glowing electric lights, and
whose only branches were pairs of stiff arms holding the trolley wires.
So, too, the market side of this carnival was a sharp contrast to the
fairs and markets in more modernized communities. Britons are
essentially traders, but they trade by rule. Even when they play
trading, as at this carnival, they are more constrained. What little was
done to allay the sober spirit was revived by the element of barter. The
gambling spirit, checked in normal times, was stimulated. Raffles,
wheels, and rings were employed to extract coins from the under-zealous.
The only abandon was in the confetti, which was scattered generously
about in the throngs.
In the booths conservation was the key-note. Everything, from motor-cars
to potatoes, was auctioned and raffled. A man from Coney Island,
accustomed to that hysterical release of emotion, would have felt that
he was attending not a carnival, but an open market in which only the
basic necessities of life were in demand.
Not so in Napier, New Zealand, or in Sydney, Australia. There they seem
as different from their British ancestry as Hottentots are from
Polynesians. There men and women know how to make merry in ways almost
unforgettable, and to ripple the smooth surface of sedate civilization
with lovely flirtations that would weaken the most stoic of mortals and
paragons of propriety.
Otherwise, in all New Zealand, life goes along in its leisurely,
businesslike way. Men attend horse-sales with great zest; salesmen rush
across the country in their little motor-cars, bringing the wares of the
world's elaborate markets to the doors of stations or ranches;
auctioneers dash hither and thither to confuse, if they can, farmers
into the exchange of sheep or cattle.
While tramping along the road to Wellington, I was overtaken by a
touring-car.
"Want a ride?" asked the driver. And when I mounted, he asked: "Seeing
our little country, are you? Nothing like it in the world. Ever been to
a sheep auction? Want to come along?" And the next thing I knew we were
rushing over the dirt road toward Onga Onga. We drew up at the
accommodation house with a sudden jolt.
The guest-room was filled with farmers. Sallow, hollow-cheeked, with
voices that seemed to plow through their brains for thoughts, their
conversation was labored. Dinner was devoured in semi-silence.
But when they got to the stockyards, they became more alert. The
auctioneer mounted the fence like an orator. He began cackling like a
bewitched hen. The farmers moved about, feeling sheep offered for sale,
the more expert glancing at them with pride in judgment. One sleek
farmer, whose elaborate motor-car stood by the roadside, scrutinized the
yards as one who might buy the entire lot as a whim.
The psychology of the auction-sale crowd is distinct from that of the
bargain-hunter. The latter believes himself to be the winner because of
the confessed misjudgment of the trader. But the auction-buyer moves
about quietly, makes his own judgments of values, exchanges opinions
only with his associates, and waits his chances. At a bargain-counter
every one rushes for the thing he wants; here the very thing most wanted
is ignored, as though to lead other hunters off the scent. As soon as
the sale was over, men fell apart, like boiling rice in a pot when
suddenly douched with cold water.
So far has civilized man made certain the processes by which he secures
the satisfaction of his wants that one begins to wonder why men like to
buy and sell at all. They are like the artisans and the mechanists who
have become specialized and divorced from contact with the living,
finished product. So much so is this true that much of New Zealand's
real marketing is done in London. Once the manager of a station wired
his London principals:
SNOWING DURING LAMBING
The principals, according to New Zealand's version, replied:
STOP LAMBING AT ONCE
6
Wander where one may this wide world over, one finds that the places to
which tourists are drawn mostly are the markets. There one finds the
richest reward for curiosity. The traveler in foreign lands, especially
if he is alone and somewhat homesick, knows no pleasanter thrill than
the sight upon the pier, amid cargoes from every known quarter of the
globe, of a box of canned goods stamped in black-stenciled letters with
the seven signs of bliss, "NEW YORK."
When lost in that good old town, it had never occurred to him that ships
trail the seven seas carrying canned soups and fruits and vegetables to
black-faced, sprawling-toed savages. But out there in the wide spaces of
the globe he realizes how strikingly alike are the alimentary failings
of mankind. Lost in reminiscences, when on Broadway again, he thinks
himself forever cut off from romance, until he happens to turn into a
side street, a public market, or even a small chain-store grocery. There
he finds that in a way romance is not dead. The sedate housewife permits
herself on occasion to flirt with the butcher or the baker; incidents
the on-looker has not thought possible prevail here as well as in the
markets of the Orient. And packages with the imprint of Japan, of China,
coffee from South America, awaken in him memories irresistible. He goes
away wishing he were again off there where New York seems like romance
to him. The day will never come when silks and spices and marts will not
conjure up in the minds of the most prosaic the very essence of
romance.
BOOK THREE
DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS INVOLVING AUSTRALASIA, ASIA AND
AMERICA
CHAPTER XVIII
AUSTRALASIA
New Zealand and Australia are to-day the only spots in the world wherein
the white race may expand without encroaching upon already existing and
developed races. The extent to which they are taking advantage of their
opportunities, the extent to which they are enlarging the scope and the
quality of progressive civilization is the measure of their right to the
maintenance of their exclusive "White-Australasia" policy.
I confess at the outset that I am at a loss for an adequate argument
against this policy. Narrow, selfish, dog-in-the-manger-like as it may
be, we are faced with the other question: From time out of mind China
and India have had two of the largest slices of the world's surface.
What have they done with them? How can India and Asia, having littered
up their domains with human beings, ask that more of the world be turned
over to them for a repetition of the same ghastly reproduction? They
have made it impossible, with their degradation of womanhood and their
exaltation of caste and ancestry, for new life to start with anything
like a decent chance. Is there not every reason to believe that
permitted to take up quarters in the open spaces of the white man's
world, they will do the same?
True that the white man, in both of these cases, has wrested his lands
from existing native tribes. But it was also true that, in New Zealand
at least, and through Polynesia, the natives were immigrants who in
their turn imposed on yet more primitive natives, as did the Japanese.
Furthermore, no race on earth has been given a better opportunity to
make good than has the Maori in New Zealand. The Australoid seems on the
whole not equipped for the effort. There have been cases of Australian
blacks making good. There is the case of the savage who after receiving
an education became a Shakespearean scholar. But the exception only
proves the rule. Furthermore, though there is bitter opposition to any
white man marrying a native black woman in Australia--an opposition that
is calling for legal action from some quarters so that such marriage
will be in future impossible--still, the White-Australia policy is not
aimed against the blacks. These will either take hold of themselves and
make good, in time, or will die out. Be that as it may, there is no
answer to the Asiatic demand for admission based on the argument about
the white man's plunder.
The only other argument is that, if this is the case, the white man must
get out of Asia. There too, it seems to me, is a weak spot. The white
man in Asia--as man to man--does not lower the standard of the
civilization of the native; nor is he ever likely to migrate in numbers
large enough to create a problem. Only politically, where a
leeching-process exists, where native industries are destroyed by cheap
foreign products (like that of cotton goods, which were forced upon the
Indians by the British, to the utter ruination of the Indian textiles)
has the havoc been serious. That is a real argument, and it is up to the
Asiatics so to adjust their own affairs and to come together as to
"oust" the white man,--a problem for the natives to solve for
themselves.
There is still another consideration. What of Japan? Japan has national
unity, she is advancing. Is she, then, to be made an exception in the
White-Australia policy? The answer is, Japan must do as she would be
done by, an answer which will be enlarged upon in the chapter dealing
with Japan.
Having thus focused on the negative phases of this discussion, let us
see what is written on the inner side of the Australasian shield. Before
we can at all understand the motives that move Australasia in the
direction she is going, and foresee the future, we shall have to know by
what channels she came to be what she is, what ideals are parents to her
being, and what ideals are her offspring.
Strange as it may seem, Britain's interest in her south Pacific
possessions have always been more or less mild. When the question of
annexing New Zealand came up in 1839, the Duke of Wellington said in
Parliament that Great Britain already had too many colonies. It is
common knowledge that she gave them as much rope as they would take,
that when she had the opportunity of acquiring the Samoan group in 1889
she let it slip, and that she took the Fiji Islands only after their
chief, Thakambau, offered them in liquidation of unjust debts to
America. In other words, it was New Zealand and Australia that held on
to the mother country, instead of the reverse. And in order to
understand the spirit of the Dominion and the Commonwealth, we must
consider the reasons for their clinging to "home."
Australia was first settled by men convicted of offences against
Britain's then crude sense of justice; but New Zealand was devised as a
colonial scheme under which every feature of British life was to be
transplanted. When Europeans came to America, political and religious
freedom was sought. When Great Britain went to New Zealand, eighty-five
years ago, society was politically and religiously free, but industrial
organization was awaiting an ambitious hand. In New Zealand it was not,
as Havelock Ellis puts it so vividly, "the roving of a race with
piratical and poetic instincts invading old England where few stocks
arrived save by stringent selection of the sea." They did not come
because of romantic longing, nor to escape oppression and restriction.
The story of the development of New Zealand, from settlement and
conquest of the Maories to the beginning of that legislation which has
made it famous, is the story of conservatism. When the first shipload of
colonists set out from England, their prospectus was a document of
conservatism. The aim of the projectors was to transplant every phase
and station and class of English life, to build in the other end of the
world another England.
Doubtless the fathers of this scheme were seeking to overcome the fear
of forced transplantation which had made of Australia a land of horror
in anticipation, and hence they spread broadcast accounts of the sort of
colony New Zealand was to be, which made it alluring. But such are the
erring tendencies of human nature that Australia, intended to be the
land of one of the worst forms of indentured and penal servitude and the
perpetuation of unprogressiveness, set the pace for the entire world in
untried liberalism in industry, while New Zealand, likewise advanced,
has developed her latent conservatism in regard to imperialism to a
marked degree.
[Illustration: THE MOUNTAINS ARE CALLED THE REMARKABLES
Farmer M---- had the reputation for being the worst boss in the
Wakatipu (New Zealand)]
[Illustration: THE BLUE MOUNTAINS OF AUSTRALIA
Seen from this side they look more like gorges]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA DENUDING HERSELF
Photo from Brown Bros.]
For apart from the experiments in labor legislation, New Zealand has
never lost any of the dependence on England. She seems to be afraid of
her isolation, lest, deprived of communication with the world, she
should be forced into a condition such as that in which the white man
found the heliolithic Maories. Canada might become a nation separate
from Britain; so might Australia. But New Zealand has not even that
proximity to a continent which made England what she is, for she is
twelve hundred miles from her nearest neighbor. In consequence, the New
Zealanders have always maintained a strong leaning toward the homeland,
whereas in Australia early resentment alienated the settlers. The New
Zealander to-day is the exact replica of the Englishman as we knew him;
the Australian is a compromise between an Englishman and an American.
The modern Australian on the east coast of the continent is as little an
Englishman as possible. I have heard any number of Australians resent
being called English. The last "convict" was brought to Australia in
1840; yet the Australians are very conscious of this stigma on them. The
other day an English engineer told me that in Subiaco, one of the
suburbs of Perth, it was impossible for one to join the tennis-club
whose grandfather was born in Australia--lest that ignoble ancestor
should have passed on some of the "taint" to his unfortunate offspring.
Yet in the eyes of enlightened legislation, the taint involved is of
course questionable.
It is therefore not to be wondered at that Australia kept growing
farther and farther from England. In the early days each settlement
maintained its own government, and so great was the jealousy among the
settlements that they sought to bar one another even in the construction
of railroads. Victoria built a broad-gage line, New South Wales, a
narrower, and Queensland the narrowest,--not mere engineering accident
due to any notion of superiority of the special line, but clearly and
openly to make communication of one with another difficult. But by 1900
the settlements had outgrown their childish squabbling, and they became
federated into the Commonwealth of Australia.
Though this brought them together within Australia, it awoke New Zealand
to the danger of being drawn into that union against her will. "The
Melbourne Age" prophesied that in a quarter of a century they would be
federated. "The fate and destiny of Australia and New Zealand were the
same and they should be united in the defense of these distant lands
that were held by people of the same thought and same political system."
But there never has been much love lost between them. New Zealanders
have been anathema in Australia, and Australians hadn't a ghost of a
chance of getting a job in New Zealand. Nor was this a matter of
different standards of living, except that they both discriminated
against the Englishman. And not without reason, for the type of
Englishman who set out for the Antipodes was one who generally had
nothing to sustain him at home. To the Australasians he was virtually a
foreigner, and foreigners of any sort are few in the far South, and are
encouraged still less. Yet there is excessive pride in the fact that
something like 98 per cent. of the inhabitants are British.
In view of the economic departures they have taken from European
conceptions, this would seem a paradox. But even among the workers, the
psychological effect of "home" is apparent to the most casual observer.
Though material security has been assured by the State, the result of
much of the legislation in the Antipodes seems to me to have been
something akin to the class system in England. The worker has become
legally recognized as a worker, he has been given a minimum wage and
protection against imposition, but any effort on the part of labor to
crystallize its ideals is still obnoxious to the masses. There is not
even any of the impulse found among American workers toward that rise in
the social scale which is essentially bourgeois. There is a most decided
tendency to accept the status of worker in the good old English fashion.
Working-people do not regard themselves as "gentlemen" or as "ladies,"
these terms in New Zealand having the same significance they have in the
old country. Deference to one who does not look like a laborer is
pronounced, and the average workman is more ambitious for the
"gentleman" than he is for himself. This spirit obtains much more in New
Zealand than in Australia.
Than dignity in labor nothing in the world could be more worthy. But if
that dignity spells merely content, it lays society open to a renewal of
the very class divisions industrial progress has sought to remove. The
laborer is too content to remain a laborer actively to enter the lists
against injustice. And in a short time you have those who refused to be
doped by the talk of virtue in labor on the top, and the laborer at the
bottom.
Yet, socially and outwardly, there are not the gaps between the classes
in New Zealand that are found in Australia. There are no great
restaurants and pleasure places for the rich. All people visit the
dainty little tea-rooms, and often workingmen come dressed in their
working-clothes, with unwashed hands. In Dunedin the proprietor of one
of the best tea-rooms handed out little cards to laborers with "Your
Patronage is Undesirable" on them, but the public howled his practice
out of existence. This is largely because the level of life in New
Zealand is more even. The wealthy do not display themselves over-much,
and the most obvious club life is that among the workers. Workingmen's
clubs are equipped with very good libraries and reading-rooms, but also
with tremendous circular bars fully as much frequented as the
book-shelves.
The result is that though, from a progressive point of view, New Zealand
is outwardly tame and sober, from a consideration of health, the
standard of life is universally good. Any great influx of peoples with
standards of living that would of necessity demoralize this normality,
would give the country a setback which might take generations to
overcome. On the other hand, though the present state of affairs might
continue indefinitely, unless New Zealand gains in numbers, her place
among the influential members of the Pacific Ocean nations is certain to
be strained, if not jeopardized.
Torn between these economic enthusiasms of a small country and the
restraining influences of a tradition that is essentially imperialistic,
New Zealand has a pretty hard time of it. Naturally enough, she is
holding on to her beloved mother country with an excessive amount of
talk, while at the same time nibbling away at the ties that bind her.
She is in the hardest position of any of the Pacific countries. By
tradition adoring England and scorning Australia, emulating the one and
trying to keep peace with the other, realizing that proximity makes her
more than a brother of her continental kin, looking toward America for
applause and assistance, New Zealand is shaping a policy that will
probably become a patchwork of colors,--and most interesting to look at.
But Australia is cutting the waters with the force of a triple-screw
turbine. And toward Australia we shall have to look for the leadership
of British policy in the Pacific. Canada is too close to Europe and
America ever to become the real leader in the destinies of the Pacific.
The truth of this statement becomes manifest when one watches the inner
workings of the island continent. Though New Zealand is more widely
known for its great liberalism, there is really more freedom of thought
in Australia, more freedom from traditional thinking, more boldness of
expression. That was manifest during the war when the conscription issue
came up. The New Zealand Legislature simply enacted a conscription
measure. In Australia, the Government tried twice to force it through by
way of a referendum, and twice it failed. William Morris Hughes, the
Prime Minister, had gone to England to attend a conference, promising
that conscription would never be proposed. He was wedded to
voluntaryism. When he returned, Australians suspected him of having
conscription up his sleeve. There was an outburst of indignation.
Australians charged him with having had his head turned by fawning lords
and ladies at "home" and with sidling up to a title himself. Australians
are not very keen about rank; in that matter they are more like
Americans. Hughes nearly committed political suicide by declaring
himself in favor of conscription. It is said that he was warned by labor
not to try to put it through without a referendum. What happened then
illuminates the Australian character.
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA IS NOT ALL DESERT AND PLAIN
South Australian Government Photo]
[Illustration: PEOPLE ARE SMALL AMIDST AUSTRALIA'S GIANT TREE FERNS
See the group on the rocks at lower right-hand corner
Photo from Brown Bros.]
For weeks the country was in as wild a state as pending civil war
could produce anywhere. The feeling was tense. Conflicts and wrangling
occurred everywhere. Up to the last night of the discussion it seemed as
though there would be war. Then came the day of the vote. The quiet and
the orderliness was one of the greatest boosts for democracy ever
staged. Everything was bathed in sunny restfulness. Workingmen lay upon
the grass of the public domain like seals. When they talked it was about
anything but conscription. Conscription lost. It lost a second time the
year after. Two main factors stood out against the sending of more men
to Europe,--labor and Asia.
Almost immediately after the referendum the coal strike occurred. The
situation became grave. To conserve fuel for industrial purposes, the
Government prohibited the use of electricity and gas except during
specified hours. Places of business on the main streets were lit with
kerosene lamps, movies were closed, the ferry stations stood in
semi-darkness. People conversed as though certain doom were impending.
Things looked forlorn indeed. Shops and factories were closing down,
throwing thousands out of work. One heard remarks about things heading
for a revolution.
Australia is reputed to have done wonders in the way of solving the
problems of capital and labor, but there are as many strikes in that
Commonwealth as in any other state. The country is crystallizing quickly
and is bound to become more and more conservative. Despite the worthy
democracy to be found there, every public utterance seemed to bear
itself as though made by a lord. One is constantly aware of the presence
of the crown, even though it has been removed, like the sense of
pressure behind one's ears after having taken off one's spectacles. For
notwithstanding its democracy, Australia is bound up in the monarchy.
Revolution was hinted at every now and then, but at its mention one also
heard the creaking of the bones of empire. It was evident and clear,
though hardly spoken. One felt the security which comes from the
accumulation of tradition and custom, but it was not comfortable. Even
in Australia change seems to be regarded as synonymous with destruction.
A marvelous structure, this British Empire, and fit for the residence of
any human being,--but not an American. He is too dynamic, too restless,
too eager for creation.
And here is where we arrive at the point of meeting and of parting in
our relations with Australia. America has determined upon keeping the
country "white" against the invasion of Asia. So has Australia. But
America has the inclusive tendencies of an empire; Australia the
exclusive. America is heterogeneous; Australia is homogeneous. American
strikes are regarded as importations, but what about the strikes in
Australia? America has a population of 110,000,000 in an area but a
little larger than Australia, while Australia has only a paltry
4,500,000. America is trying to amalgamate the diverse races it already
has without taking in such people as the Asiatics, whose racial
characters are so unyielding. But Australia is herself unyielding.
Homogeneous as her population is, she has great difficulty in keeping it
from disagreement. With a vast region not likely to be touched by labor
in generations, Australia uses the same arguments against outsiders
coming in as does America in regions already well developed.
Keeping Australia "white" is the keynote of all Australian politics. For
this reason half of the leaders waged war against Germany; while to keep
Australia white, the other half stayed conscription. Labor is at the
bottom of the "white" Australia policy. The most serious problem the
country has to face is her insufficient population. Yet what labor is to
be found there receives no more consideration than anywhere else in the
world. It is no better off than elsewhere. There is less poverty simply
because poverty is synonymous with over-population. To protect itself
against invasion of cheap (not necessarily Asiatic) labor, Australia
passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. To speak of restricting
immigration into a country containing only four and a half million seems
suicidal, but Australia went at it without any trepidation and declared
for the exclusion from "immigration into the Commonwealth ... any person
who fails to pass the dictation test; that is to say, who, when an
officer dictates to him not less than fifty words in any prescribed
language in the presence of the officer" fails to pass in the judgment
of the immigration officer. This is the crux of the Act; other than
that, restriction is placed only on those diseased or incapable. In
other words, this restriction places a person failing in the test on a
level with the criminal, lunatic, and the leper. It is obviously a
snare, for it means that an officer may spring any language he may
choose on an immigrant. He may ask a Frenchman to write Greek, or a
Greek Spanish, failure to comply giving the officer the power to exclude
the applicant. The law has kept Australia white, but with pallor rather
than purity.
Veiled and unveiled, this White-Australia policy was at the bottom of
the failure of conscription. The spirit which dominated both camps was
fear of invasion. Argued the pro-conscriptionist: "If we do not stand
behind the empire and the Allies in this war, Prussia or whoever may
become her ally in future will swoop down upon us." Argued the
anti-conscriptionist: "If that is the danger, then let us keep our men
at home to protect us against this possible peril." The antis were more
open. They pictured an invasion following the sending of men to Europe,
and pointed to the importation of coolies for labor in Europe. One
member of Parliament was fined a thousand dollars and made to enter into
"cognizance and comply with the provisions of the Regulation" because he
specified whom they were afraid of,--Japan. And to add grist to their
mill, a hundred natives of the island of Malta (British subjects, mind
you) appeared at the beautiful front door of Australia, Sydney Harbor,
and asked for admission. They did not land. Even Indians are excluded, a
deposit of five hundred dollars being required of any admitted, to
guarantee his return. A transport has been fitted out in Java with
native labor, but Australian workers refused to load it till the
fittings were torn out and done over by Australian labor.
Now, the White-Australia policy is, if you care to stretch a point, a
humane attempt to avoid conflict. The Australians say to themselves and
to the world: "We would rather call you names across the sea than
scratch your eyes or pull your ears over a wooden fence." They point to
the American Civil War and the present problem in the South as an
example. They wish to save themselves future operations by avoiding the
cancer and are willing to bear the burden of retarded development for
this promised peace. Let us see how it worked out.
It is interesting to note that in 1915, 890 Germans were admitted to
Australia, and only 423 Japanese; in 1914, 3,395 Germans and 387
Japanese. The number of Germans for the two years previous was virtually
the same, whereas that of Japanese fluctuated from 698 in 1912 to 822 in
1913, and 387 in 1914. From 1908 to 1915 the Germans entered in
increasing numbers, while the Japanese decreased. Chinese gained
admission in vastly greater number than the Japanese, exceeding them by
1,500 and 2,000 yearly. On the whole the preponderance of arrivals over
the departure was seldom excessive, most of the steamers from the south
bound for the Orient being taken up by returning Asiatics. With the vast
regions of the island continent uninhabited and untouched, this movement
of Orientals is only evidence of the check the Government keeps on
invasion. The fallacy in the White-Australia policy is obvious. Its
psychological significance was pointed to above,--a tendency on the
part of Australians, though politically democrats, to revert to habits
of thought inherited from England. England is an island kingdom, but the
Englishman cannot forget this even when he has taken up his home on a
vast continent like Australia. In this day and age of steel ships and
submarines, with possibilities of the airship clear before us, for any
one to think in an insular way is to lack the common sense of a King
Canute. Australia has shown that even with an enemy recognized and
fought she has been unable to remain unified in thought, yet she thinks
that merely by excluding the Asiatic she will be able to maintain her
integrity. Capital in Australia would be willing to admit the Oriental
in order to reduce the cost of labor; but as soon as he becomes a
factor in commerce--as in the case of the Chinese furniture-makers
who exploit Chinese laborers and undersell Australian furniture
manufacturers--Capital becomes wroth and shouts for the exclusion of the
coolie. Labor, on the other hand, swaggering about the brotherhood of
man and the common cause of labor throughout the world, becomes just as
nationalistic when "foreign" labor threatens to undersell it. True that
it would be easy enough to establish a minimum wage by law, so that no
Chinese would be allowed to receive less than that wage for his work,
but the principle doesn't work out so easily. Even with a minimum wage
and an eight-hour day, the Chinese with his intense application to his
job and his manner of living would threaten the white man. But have we
not the same difficulty even among a given number of white men, where
some are ready to undersell others? Australia, the experiment-station
for labor legislation, is the last country where one would expect to
find the exclusiveness which she condemns so vigorously. She has shown
herself exclusive in her discrimination against the English workingman;
she has even been exclusive in her attitude toward her neighbor, New
Zealand (an exclusiveness, which is reciprocated, of course); and
finally and foremost, she is exclusive of Asiatic and colored people.
This exclusiveness has left a continent with barely the fringe of it
scratched. To people like the Japanese, Chinese and Indians, this must
indeed seem the height of selfishness. True, that sparse as her
population is, Australia has done more to better the condition of her
people than has Japan or China; and there is the rub. That mere
excessive breeding gives a nation a right to invade other lands is a
principle that no decent-minded man could tolerate for a moment. Only
people to whom woman is merely a breeding-machine would advance such an
argument. And in the chapter on Japan and the Far East I shall elucidate
the basic facts in that contention for the elimination of a
White-Australia policy.
From the Australian point of view, though admitting that hardships are
bound to result, admitting that ethically discrimination is
unprogressive, the country is faced by the danger of sheer numbers.
Idealistically the Australian policy is wrong. Individually, those of us
who know the Japanese and the Chinese would just as soon live next door
to them as to any other human beings. But as long as numbers are the
racial ideal of the East, there is no solution that would not undermine
quality if quality did not defend itself against quantity. I am ready to
admit that there are many Australians who are as inferior to the Chinese
as the coolie is to us. But the Australasian has one virtue: he does not
breed like the Oriental.
The problem of assimilation and Australianization is intricate and
sometimes extremely unjust. There is the case of the young Chinese boy
born and brought up in Port Darwin, North Australia. In every way he is
an Australian citizen. To further his education and westernization, he
came to America to study at Harvard, and here fell in love with a
Chinese student born in Boston. Now, she is an American citizen. They
are to be married. He has every reason for wishing to return to Port
Darwin with his wife. But, says the Australian Immigration Law, you
can't come in because you're a Chinese. "But I'm an American Citizen,
and the wife of an Australian," she argues. "That doesn't matter. We
exclude Indians, who are British subjects, from entering Australia, and
we intend to exclude you. Australia is the only country in the world in
which the white race is still free to expand, and we intend to keep it
free for them." "What is America going to do about it?" I asked my
informer. "What can she do? The only thing she could do would be to come
to a clash of arms with us, and we intend to let the Chinese do their
own fighting if they want to. We won't let Japanese who are
American-born citizens enter Australia; we may seem a bit piggish about
it, but we intend to hold to our own nevertheless." This question was up
for the British Minister to decide upon, but at the time of writing no
decision has yet been arrived at.
That injustice such as the above is bound to result is obvious. But for
generations to come the onus rests on the Orientals, and on those white
men who would profit by either cheap or untiring laborers whose minds
ask for nothing, and whose bodies are content with little.
Though Australia's contribution to the intellectual welfare of the world
has as yet been slim, the advance in political and economic thought has
been exceedingly worth while. The freedom of the individual to go his
way in life, to develop the best that is in him, the standard of general
welfare and the quality of life as a whole so far excels the average of
Oriental social life that Australasia is justified in trying to prevent
the dilution of its concentrated comfort. We all know and admit that
both China and Japan have civilizations, intellectual and artistic, the
like of which might well be emulated in the West. But beneath it all is
the dreadful waste of human life for which China and Japan must give
answer before demanding of the West certain physical and material
advantages which we have.
CHAPTER XIX
JAPAN AND ASIA
When I completed the final section of my book "Japan: Real and
Imaginary," last year, and sent it to the publisher, I was not a little
worried lest the movement of events in the Far East proceed so rapidly
that the cart upon which I was riding slip from under me and leave me to
rejoin the earth as best I could. So fast did things run that I thought
surely there would be a revolution in Japan, or at least universal
manhood suffrage, and that without doubt Japan would withdraw from
Shantung. I am afraid I shall have to confess that the wish was father
to the thought. So far nothing has happened in that intricate island
empire seriously to affect any of the generalizations in that book. Nor
have any criticisms from my Japanese friends come forward so that I
might now be able to alter my position in any way.
However, enough has happened to make it necessary for me to extend and
enlarge upon some of the phases of the Japanese situation as they now
obtain. In my former book I handled Japan as an integer, avoiding
implications. Here I shall attempt to show how the Japanese phase of the
problem of the Pacific affects the three important elements round the
Pacific,--America, Australasia, and Asia. Under that head I shall have
to begin where I left off in "Japan: Real and Imaginary," with the
question of emperor-worship and its natural offspring, Pan-Asianism and
the so-called Monroe Doctrine of Asia; with the ingrowing phases of it,
democracy in Japan, and the Open Door without; with Japan's new
mandates and what she is doing with them; with the fortification of the
Bonin Islands and the Pescadores.
At the very outset, let me crystallize in one short paragraph the
essence of the whole situation. We have in Japan now a heterogeneous
nation whose ideals are essentially those of imperialism, the political
grip on the people being based on the worship of the emperor. The
outward consequence of this is that the entire nation is fairly united
upon the questions that affect the nation as a whole, such as
Pan-Asianism, the leadership of Asia. But if that were all, Japanese
rulers would have things pretty much their own way. This strange
consequence results, however,--that having been stimulated to feeling
that a Japanese is the most superior person on earth, the populace, in
this pride, is demanding greater recognition for themselves as
individuals. Hence that which the military and naval parties in Japan
win in their hold upon the people through increased pride of race, they
lose in the enhanced difficulty which comes from a restive population.
Added to which are the numerous alien elements that aggression has
inherited,--a rebellious Korea and Formosa, a boycotting China, and a
native element that sees itself being flaunted by world powers and
unable to obtain recognition of racial equality.
It is Japan's misfortune that she is still unable to live down her
reputation. With all her might she is trying to stand up to the world as
a man, and not as a pretty boy such as she has been regarded heretofore.
Hence, it is necessary, that after having paragraphed the make-up of
Japan, I do the same with the attitude of the world toward Japan.
Wherever I have gone I have been asked a certain type of question that
seems to me to hold the mirror up to Japan. The questions are generally
these: What business is it of ours, after all, what Japan does in Asia?
Isn't it only the conceit of the white man that makes him regard himself
as superior to the Japanese? Isn't it true that the Japanese haven't
any room for their surplus population? Or, the more knowing, those who
have read up on the subject--like the man who signed a contract with a
publisher to produce four boys' books at once, one of which was on
Shintoism in Japan--assume this attitude: "Let them adore their
emperors; it's a charming little peculiarity." There is still a third
group. It belongs to the adolescent class, to the age of boys who
threaten to lick other boys with their little finger, or "I'll fight you
with my right hand tied behind my back," and has been fed by the
romancers who portrayed everything Japanese as petite and charming. The
_Miles Gloriosus_, suffering from political second childhood, asserts:
"America could wipe the floor with Japan with one hand, just as she
could Ecuador." This statement was made by an Englishman with remarkably
wide international experience.
Now, until Japan lives down this reputation she will be forced to make
as big a showing of her might as is safe, and until then we shall
doubtless have ample reason for shouting for an increased navy and an
increased army. In other words, as long as we continue to publish the
impression that Japan need not be regarded seriously, so long will Japan
have to continue to convey the impression that she might become a
menace. To deny that Japan is a disconcerting problem is to stick one's
head in the sand. But Japan is no more of a menace to us than we are to
her. Japan is not simply going to walk across the Pacific and slap us in
the face. If any such catastrophe takes place over there, it will be a
conflict. "A conflict supposes a violent collision, a meeting of force
against force; the unpremeditated meeting of one or more persons in a
violent or hostile manner" with another, according to Crabb. On the
other hand, it is equally true that those who urge and stimulate war
talk with Japan are playing into the hands of special interests that are
too narrow in their thinking and too broad in their avarice, and make
war inevitable.
There is only one solution, and that is the presentation of facts. But
facts alone are sometimes worse than figures. They lie like a trooper.
Hence we are in the habit of saying: It is an honest fact. Facts are the
most irresponsible things in the world, and without the motives and the
spirit that underlie every circumstantial thing in life, they are the
source of all conflict and all sorrow. Therefore, let us consider the
questions that appear to be typical enough to clarify the situation, but
with the motives and spiritual factors included in the answer.
First of all, then, is it really any of our business what Japan does in
Asia? I shall have to split this question in two. The "our" side of the
matter will have to be answered in the succeeding chapter on America in
this Pacific Triangle. Here I shall handle it by inverting it. Is it any
of Japan's business what interest we take in Asia? This may sound like a
pugnacious question, but it is asked with all due respect to Japan. It
raises the question of the Open Door in China, of Pan-Asianism, of the
misnamed Monroe Doctrine of Asia. We have come to a new stage in the
history of the world. People with a developed sense of justice no longer
admit that a man may declare himself monarch of all he surveys without
consideration of the rights of the inhabitants of the "surveyed" areas.
When, during the war, everything was being done to placate Japan, a
certain "understanding" was reached between Secretary Lansing and
Viscount Ishii. While declaring for the Open Door it acknowledged the
precedence of propinquity over distance, of time, place, and
relationship. That is, it admitted that Japan was nearer the continent
of Asia geographically than was America. A very remarkable observation
it was. Certainly had that not been put in black and white,
"understanding" would never have been possible. But what was the result
of that "understanding"? Japan immediately translated it into a "Monroe
Doctrine of Asia." Here, then, was a fact. Japan most decidedly is
nearer Asia than are we. Ergo, Japan has the right to set herself up as
the god and little Father of China, to declare the Mikado Doctrine of
Asia. But is there any parallel whatsoever? Not only no parallel, but an
apparent contradiction in the use of the Monroe Doctrine from the
American angle; for that pronouncement involved non-interference in
European or foreign affairs. If we adhere strictly to the Monroe
Doctrine we have no right to set any limitations for Japan. Our concern
is only with the Americas. Even the amount of understanding involved in
the Ishii-Lansing agreement is in violation of our doctrine of
isolation. On the other hand, we virtually pledged ourselves to keep our
own hands off South America, Hence, the Monroe Doctrine, if applied to
Asia by Japan, would mean the denouncement of the Twenty-one Demands
made on China in 1915, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Shantung
and Siberia, the return of independence to Korea,--and then the demand
on the part of Japan that all European powers abstain from further
extension of their influence on the continent of Asia. If ever a Monroe
Doctrine of Asia was really declared, it was in the principles of Hay in
his Open-Door policy. If Japan should set herself up as the guardian of
Asia in this wise, she would never raise the question of whether we have
any business in Asia or not. It would not be necessary. And Japan would
be able to enjoy the fruits of propinquity to her heart's content. Then
Japan would truly be the sponsor for a doctrine that could be called the
Mikado's Doctrine of Asia and its worth would recommend itself to the
respect and admiration of the world. But this, of course, is a dream,
and in the words of a worthy Japanese author who "deplored" in his book
"the gross diplomatic blunder which Japan made in 1915 in her dealings
with China" and the "atrocities perpetrated in the attempt to crush the
Korean uprising": "Manifestly, the dawn of the millennium is still far
away. We have to make the best of the world as it is."
Into these criticisms of Japan's foreign policies one could read the
usual white man's conceit,--asking that a yellow man make such
sacrifices as no white man has ever made. There is nothing further from
my mind. There is only a groping down into the depths of Japanese
practices to discover, if possible, a real basis for the justification
of her Pan-Asiatic pretensions.
To me, Oriental civilization is something to conjure with.
There is in the Far East more art and beauty than there is in America.
When Europe was so poor as to make the Grand Moguls laugh at the simple
presents which Englishmen brought them, to remark with scorn and truth
that nothing in Europe compared with the silks and gold and silver of
the East, the white man was humble. He wandered all over the world in
search of riches which were unknown to him except by hearsay. His
dominions never extended over such vast spaces as seemed mere
checker-boards to Oriental monarchs. But the white man had his ships,
his latent genius, and these he has developed to where his realms now so
far outstrip the realms of old as thought outstrips creation. With these
the white man has secured for himself a place in the world which the
brown and the yellow man now greatly envy. But the Asiatics have much to
look back upon and be proud of.
How much of this splendor is Japan's? A great deal! But not as much as
the splendor of China, nor as much as that of India. Japan is to the
East what England is to Europe. Japan is building up her ships and her
material arts to such an extent that she is destined to wield and does
now partly wield the same influence in Asia that England wields in
Europe. But is that to be her sole contribution? Is that to justify her
place as leader of Asia? Let us see.
In Europe to-day there is no crowned head who really rules. The monarch,
where he does exist, is the memorial symbol of the nation's past. But
the basis of rule is the people. The extent to which democracy exists in
fact is not for this chapter to discuss. The slogan of rulership is
democracy. Even China calls itself a republic. Round the Pacific alone
are three great republican or democratic countries--Australia, New
Zealand, America--whose people are reaching for greater and greater
independence in the working out of their own destinies.
But what have we in Japan? We have a monarchy with a "constitutional"
form of government. The monarch is said to have held his power from the
beginning of time. He is literally regarded as a descendant of the gods
who created Japan,--which was then the world entire. The myth of his
origin would not be very different from any other myth of the origins of
rulers, were it not for the recent developments in the history of Japan.
At the time of the restoration of the previous emperor to power, it was
decided by the rebellious daimyo that the long-neglected mikado, he who
for hundreds of years had had absolutely no say in the government of his
lands, should be restored to power. That is to say, because there was no
one daimyo who could himself take the leadership and become shogun, they
determined to rule with the tenno as nominal leader, but themselves as
the real rulers. Other than in the superstitious reverence of the
ignorant masses for the symbol of the tenno--whose person they had never
seen--that lowly illustrious one might just as well have been
non-existent for all the say he had in his country's affairs. So far,
the situation might not be different from that in England, but England's
Parliament is in the control of the Commons, while Japan's Diet--both
upper and lower houses--is at the mercy of the cabinet, which, though
ostensibly responsible to the emperor, is actually in the control of the
genro and the military and naval clans. The worship of the emperor, on
the other hand, is made part of the political function, the better to
cow the masses into reverential obedience to the wishes of the actual
rulers.
The basis for this theocratical grip on the people is Shintoism. With
the Restoration in 1868, Shintoism, that ancestor-worshiping cult, was
revived as the spiritual core of the new empire; Buddhism was sent
packing, and all the cunning of pseudo-historians was resorted to to
bolster up this effete and primitive national ideal.
"Let them worship their old emperor," say some, largely those with a
love of pageantry in their unconscious. And no one could raise an
argument against this if that was where it ended. If it merely meant the
binding together in a communal nationalism the thought and devotion of
the people, it would be a desirable performance. But the natural result
of an artificially stimulated nationalism based on a myth and a
deception is that it becomes proselytic in its tendencies. It is not
satisfied with its native influence, but begins to reach out. In other
words, it takes upon itself the duty of making the entire world one,
just as religion and democracy seek to convert the world. And Shintoism
is a short step to Pan-Asianism. Pan-Asianism is the logical consequence
of Shintoism.
What is Shintoism? In this connection, none is more authoritative than
Basil Hall Chamberlain, Emeritus Professor of Japanese and Philology at
the Imperial University of Tokyo, and author of numerous scientific
works on Japan. In "The Invention of a New Religion" he says (page 6):
Agnostic Japan is teaching us at this very hour how religions are
sometimes manufactured for a special end--to observe practical
worldly purposes.
Mikado-worship and Japan-worship--for that is the new Japanese
religion--is, of course, no spontaneously generated phenomenon.
Every manufacture presupposes a material out of which it is made,
every present a past on which it rests. But the twentieth-century
Japanese religion of loyalty and patriotism is quite new, for in it
pre-existing ideas have been sifted, altered, freshly compounded,
turned to new uses, and have found a new center of gravity....
Shinto, a primitive nature cult, which had fallen into discredit,
was taken out of its cupboard and dusted.
Thus Shintoism, a cult without any code of morals, in which nature was
worshiped in primitive fashion, was made the basis of the national
ideal. There is nothing in Shintoism that might with the greatest
possible stretch of imagination become the ideal of any other nation in
the world. However much Japan might assume the economic leadership of
Asia, it would never be because she could obtain a following for her
Shinotistic ideals. "Democracy" has become a rallying cry even to the
Japanese, but there is nothing in Shintoism that might counteract that
appeal.
[Illustration: JAPAN'S FIRST REACTION TO FOREIGN INFLUENCE]
[Illustration: SECOND STAGE IN WESTERNIZATION
Some of my students leaving Kobe for a cross-country hike]
[Illustration: THIRD STAGE IN WESTERNIZATION
This is not England, but Shioya, Japan]
[Illustration: FOURTH STAGE IN WESTERNIZATION
This is not Manchester, but Osaka, Japan]
"What about Bushido?" Japanese will ask. Regarding this, it is also well
to read what Professor Chamberlain has to say:
As to Bushido, so modern a thing is it that neither Kaempfer,
Siebold, Satow, nor Rein--all men knowing their Japan by
heart--ever once allude to it in their voluminous writings. The
cause of their silence is not far to seek: Bushido was unknown
until a decade or two ago! _The very word appears in no dictionary,
native or foreign, before the year 1900._ Chivalrous individuals of
course existed in Japan, as in all countries at every period; but
Bushido as an institution or a code of rules, has never existed.
The accounts given of it have been fabricated out of whole cloth,
chiefly for foreign consumption. An analysis of medieval Japanese
history shows that the great feudal houses, so far from displaying
an excessive idealism in the matter of fealty to one emperor, one
lord, or one party, had evolved the eminently practical plan of
letting different members take different sides, so that the family
as a whole might come out as winner in any event, and thus avoid
the confiscation of its lands. Cases, no doubt, occurred of
devotion to losing causes--for example, to Mikados in disgrace; but
they were less common than in the more romantic West.
And when it is further taken into consideration that Bushido, or the
so-called code of the samurai, was the ideal of a special class, a class
that held itself aloof from contact with the _heimin_, or common people,
whom it at at all times treated with contempt, and cut down even for no
other reason than that of trying the edge of a new sword, one sees how
utterly unacceptable it would be to peoples of other races and nations
asked to come to the support of its standards. And according to one
Japanese spokesman in America, only by methods that "had the appearance
of browbeating her to submission by brandishing the sword" was China
brought to accept the infamous Twenty-one Demands.
I search my memory and experience earnestly trying to find a basis for
Japan's leadership in Asia that is not materialistic, and I cannot find
any. Energy and intellectual capacity Japan has. Her present leadership
in practical affairs is a great credit to her. In time, when greater
leisure will become the possession of her teeming millions, there is
doubtless going to appear much more that is fine and valuable in the
fabric of the race. For Japan has fire. Her people are an excitable,
flaming people who may burst out in a spasmodic revulsion against their
commercialization. But for the time being, her only right to a voice in
the destinies of Asia is found in her industrial leadership of the East,
but that is a leadership which is fraught with more menace to Japan than
to the world.
Let us review hastily the results of this preëminence. From being one of
the most admired nations in the world, Japan has suddenly become the
object of almost universal suspicion. To a very great extent, commercial
jealousy is playing its part in this change. But that is not all, by any
means. There is as much enmity between British and American traders in
the Far East as there is between Japanese and American, or any other two
groups of nationals.
But the animosity toward Japan is deeper than that of mere trade. It
lies at the bottom of much of the seeming equivocation of Japan's best
foreign friends. I was talking recently to one of the leading members of
the Japan Society in New York, and said of myself that I deplored being
regarded as anti-Japanese in some quarters, because I was not. "But,"
spoke up this Japanophile, "the majority of the members of the Japan
Society are anti-Japanese, or pro-Chinese, if you will." They are trying
their best to defend Japan, it would seem, and to cement bad relations
with good, but the result is that the ground of many sympathizers of
Japan is constantly shifting, though perhaps unconsciously. It is due, I
presume, to the disappointment of people in that, having regarded Japan
as worthy of their sympathy and adoration, they are now finding that all
is not as well as it might be.
Then there is that peculiar twist to Japanese psychology that somewhat
unnerves the Westerner. This is not a language difficulty, though it is
best illustrated by a linguistic example. A Canadian in Kobe told me
that he felt a strange shifting in his own mentality as a result of the
study of Japanese, something queer entered his thinking processes. This
is of course absurd as a concrete argument, but it indicates that which
I am striving to uncover in the Japanese mind and method which works
upon the Western mind, and puzzles and perplexes the white man in his
relations with the Japanese. And in the wider fields of Japanese life,
it makes us tighten our muscles when we survey and weigh the expressions
of the best Japanese minds, expressions by which they hope, earnestly no
doubt, to better our relations with them.
Take, for instance, the growth of democracy. As I have said, when I left
Japan it was with a sense of revolution impending. Agitation had got so
far out of bonds that it seemed nothing but complete collapse of the
Government could follow. The agitation has gone on, violent expressions
are often used, democracy is hailed and Japanese "propagandists" abroad
assert with a boldness that is inexplicable their faith in democracy and
their hatred of militarism and bureaucracy. But democracy in Japan is
virtually non-existent. Japan is to-day no nearer liberalism than Russia
was in 1905. One dreads to make parallels, when one thinks how it was
that Russia got rid of her czars, that the dreadful war in Europe alone
made it possible for a change in the Russian Government. Is it going to
take such a war to accomplish this in Japan? Some of the most ardent
Japanese in America boldly answer, "Yes."
Again, China! Many Japanophiles will say that our love of China is based
on our trade with her, and her own weakness to resist it, while at the
same time pointing to our enormous trade with Japan as proof of
friendship. That is false. True, that, compared with Japan, China is no
"menace" to America. But though China is the root of our problem, there
is something in the nature of the true Oriental that makes him charming,
jovial, childlike and lovable. Japan is, of course, not truly Oriental.
Japan is essentially Malay, mixed with some Oriental and a little
Caucasian. But in the two and a half years of my residence in Japan I
did not once come across a white person who had that same unexplainable
admiration for the native that is the outstanding characteristic of
white men in China. Be that as it may--and that is, after all, a
personal matter--that which enters into the Sino-Japanese problem is the
attitude of the Japanese to the Chinese. None was so ready to exalt the
Japanese as were the foreigners after the Boxer uprising in 1900. Then
the Japanese were hailed for their helpfulness and their dexterity. But
the manner of Japanese in China to-day goes against the grain of people.
They ask themselves constantly: For nearly seven years Japan has
promised faithfully to withdraw from Shantung, and her promises are as
earnestly being expressed to-day. Is it, then, so hard to remove troops?
Not so hard to move them in, it seems.
Those of us who listen to Japanese promises are from Missouri. Japan in
conjunction with the Allies sent troops to Siberia to "protect"
Vladivostok. Each of the Allies were supposed to send seven thousand
troops. Japan sent close to one hundred thousand. She has earnestly
promised to withdraw them ever since. Why are they not withdrawn?
Then comes the hardest thing of all to reconcile with her
promises,--Japan's actions in Korea. It is easy to sentimentalize over
the fate of nations. Korea's independence is a slogan that doesn't mean
much, though Korea claims four thousand years of civilized existence. An
independent Korea doesn't offer very great promise, even if one is
constrained to sympathize with her aspiration for independence. Korea
might just as well be an integer of the Japanese Empire. She had ample
time in which to expel foreign intriguers and denounce her own grafters,
for the sake of independence, years ago. But what has that to do with
Japanese atrocities in Korea? What has that to do with the action of
Japanese merchants who, according to Japan's own envoy to Korea, Count
Inouye, acted worse than conquerors. Count Inouye said:
All the Japanese are overbearing and rude in their dealings with
the Koreans.... The Japanese are not only overbearing but violent
in their attitude towards the Koreans. When there is the slightest
misunderstanding, they do not hesitate to employ their fists.
Indeed, it is not uncommon for them to pitch Koreans into the
river, or to cut them down with swords. If merchants commit these
acts of violence, the conduct of those who are not merchants may
well be imagined. They say: "We have made you an independent
nation, we have saved you from the Tonghaks, whoever dares to
reject our advice or oppose our actions is an ungrateful traitor."
Even military coolies use language like that towards the
Koreans.[1]
[1] In _Nichi, Nichi Shimnun_, quoted by Professor Longford in
_The Story of Korea_, pp. 137-338.
The atrocities in Korea committed by the Japanese in the uprising of
1919 would parallel the most exaggerated reports of what happened to
Belgium. Yet America's treaty with the Kingdom of Korea, ignored when
Japan annexed the empire in 1910, has never been abrogated. Where is
Bushido in Japan, that it does not rise in indignation at these
atrocities? It has done so, but so faintly that it might just as well
have saved itself the effort. Apology after apology, but atrocity
following each apology with the same inexorable ruthlessness of fate.
Likewise, the massacres in Nikolajevks, and Chien-tao are still
unanswered. They require a public apology of some sort.
If I am charged with deliberately selecting things derogatory to Japan,
I can only say that nothing, in my mind, that Japan may have done for
the good of Korea and of the world, none of the virtues which Japan
possesses can ever counterbalance these crimes. Yet intelligent Japanese
write:
Fortunately, a change of heart has come to the Mikado's Government
... there will be established ... a School Council to discuss
matters relating to education. [No mention is made of the
up-rooting of the native language.] The step may be slow, but the
goal is sure. Korea's union with Japan was consummated after the
bitter experience of two sanguinary wars and _the mature
deliberation of the best minds of the two peoples_.
The italics are mine. Who were these minds? No mention is made of the
assassination of the Korean Queen by Japanese, later "exonerated." In
other words, now that the lion has eaten the lamb he is going to tell
the lamb the best way in which he can be digested, for they are
"discussing matters" to their mutual advantage.
One is inclined to become bitter in the rehearsal of such facts, the
feeling being induced by the evasive apologies of rhetoricians. But
these outstanding facts must be faced if any true judgment can be formed
of Japan's position in the Far East: If it is her aim merely to dominate
in Asia, then Japan has set out to do it masterfully. But if the
leadership of the yellow race is her aim, if Pan-Asianism means the
uplifting of all Oriental races now under the heel of the white race,
then Japan has chosen the most unfortunate line of action. She is
running an obstacle race in which the silken garments of Bushido are
likely to suffer considerable wear and tear. Credit Japan deserves for
her administrative ability. Certain it is that no country in the Orient
to-day has the same capacity to rule that Japan has. In international
affairs, Japan has proved herself a match for the shrewdest diplomats of
the Western world. It is not to be marveled at that the yellow races
should be willing to yield her her position and her prestige. Thousands
of Chinese who could not afford a Western education are now being
educated in the universities of Japan; many Indians are doing likewise.
In the simple matter of road-building, Japan has done what few Oriental
countries seem to have the capacity to do. It is natural that the Orient
should look to Japan for leadership in government and industry, in
direction and help. But is Japan giving it?
The experiences of Tagore in Japan are not reassuring. He turned from
Japan as from a gross imitator of the West from which he had escaped. He
expressed keen disappointment at what he saw in modern Japan. In the
"New York Times," recently, there was an article by a Chinese called
"The Uncivilized United States," the thesis of the writer being that the
Americans lacked the gentlemanliness of the English. The Chinese was
obviously a great admirer of the Japanese and repeated over and over
again that the Tokugawas were great rulers because they advocated the
rule by "tenderness of heart"; but he, too, despaired of the modern
Japan, of its great industries and little heart.
That, of course, has been the oft-repeated criticism of America from
older countries, and need not discourage Japan. But Japan is making that
greater error of believing that a world which has won civil liberty and
enlightenment after so many centuries of strife, has builded for the
masses at least a semblance of economic freedom and democracy, is going
to yield all this blithely to an antiquated ideal of Oriental
imperialism that has not even the virtues of Oriental mysticism to
recommend it.
CHAPTER XX
AMERICA
1
Johnny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman, ended his career at
Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1847. Step by step he made his way over the
wilderness, winning the good-will of the pioneers and the devotion of
the Indians, and planting apple-seeds which time nourished into
orchards. Johnnie Appleseed has been glorified by Vachel Lindsay,--and
with him, not a little of the richness of life that went into the
make-up of America.
Unfortunately, Johnny Appleseed died in Indiana, at the early age of
seventy-two. Had he lived twice as long he would most likely have
reached the coast. By most he was regarded as rather a queer character,
but there were men who felt the current of greatness in his being, and
to-day Johnny Appleseed might well be hailed as the symbol of America.
For if the virtue of England lay in that process of selection which was
the result of "the roving of a race with piratical and poetic instincts
invading old England where few stocks arrived save by stringent
selection of the sea," how much more is the hardihood of pioneering the
very bone and marrow of America. For the sifting process here did not
end merely by the crossing of the Atlantic. To those who broke through
the fears of the Atlantic, lanced the gathering ills of Europe, that
Eastern ocean was only the symbol of a tradition. The way has been kept
open by the passage of millions of men and women and children who, year
after year, for four centuries, have been invading young America. But
what is that coming compared with the arduous reaching out across the
wilderness of this vast continent itself, a reaching that left its
mile-stones in the form of log cabins, graves, and roaring cities.
Following the trade-winds or beating up against the billows of the
Northern seas was a joyous pastime compared with the windless waiting
and tireless pressing on of the prairie schooner. The conquest of the
mountains, of the Mississippi, of the treeless plains, of the desert,
and of the rocky barriers in the farthest West is a story replete with
tragic episodes, and it is destined to become the dominating tradition
of America.
It is a strange story, and because it was essentially so lowly in its
early impulse, because it was seemingly a secondary phenomenon, snobs
and cynics dispose of it with indifference. The movement westward was
undertaken by men of small means and little culture. Pathetic in its
simple requirements, seeking fortunes that always lay on the fringe of
fortune, moving on with a restlessness that seemed to despise rest and
ease, it still left in its wake sorrows that approached tragedy but
never felt it. If "Main Street" is a necessary corrective, "The Son of
the Middle Border" is the crystallization of an unconscious ideal. This
westward movement is a vivid rehearsal of a belated migration that tells
the tale of man's first yielding to the mobile impulse in his nature, an
impulse that has made of him the conqueror of the globe. These thousands
of Johnny Appleseeds were not utilitarian seekers after wealth alone; in
them was the unconscious mother principle yielding to the forces that
were fathering a new race.
And that new race has come. Centuries of arduous trial and tribulation
have molded it. Go where you will, except for some slight differences in
tonal expression, there is one people. Beneath their Americanism are the
crude complexes resulting from a war between refinement and the unkind
forces of nature. The pioneers had all known what civilization meant,
but circumstances thwarted their inclinations. They brought with them a
respect for woman which no other people had known so well. Primitive and
Oriental people--and many European races of to-day--do not have the same
exalted notion of woman, simply because they have developed along with
women whose functions of life were determined by the savage
circumstances. But Americans found themselves in the continent with few
women, and those in danger of savage ruthlessness. Hence they became
doubly concerned for their welfare, even to the point of sentimentalism.
So, too, with regard to personal liberty. The pioneer knew what his
freedom meant to him, and fought for it as a lion or a tiger fights for
his. Too frequently his own freedom could be bought only at the expense
of others around him. The word itself became a magic with esoteric
properties. Hence we find throughout our West a fanatical regard for the
term "freedom" that sometimes works itself into a frenzy of intolerance.
So fine are the achievements of our coast states, on so high a level is
the standard of life, that men cannot see the exceptions. When such are
pointed out to them there arises in their unconscious a fear of those
horrible days, a something which terrified their childhood and which
must be downed as the ghost of a crime one imagines himself to have
committed. Hence, not to be "with" certain people in the West in the
shouting adulation of their state or their city or their orchards is a
worse sacrilege than counteracting one prayer by another ritual. The
winning of the West was the aim of all the pioneers. For years and years
they were faced with the most obvious threats to its consummation.
Mountains, climate, savages, European jealousies, lack of
population,--everything that spelled despair stood before them. But an
uncomprehended passion drove them on. Perhaps it was the recrudescence
of intolerance which marked the early settlers in the East. Perhaps it
was the lack of opportunity resulting from overcrowding after the
advertisement of the desirability of life in America. It may have been
any one of a dozen possibilities that kept men and women moving on and
on and on,--nor always, by any means, the yielding to ideals. But on it
was and on it continued till the Pacific was reached.
This, superficially, is the accepted story of the development of our
West. I have attempted neither criticism nor laudation. It is an
unavoidable approach to the discussion of America's place in the
Pacific, an approach which even the most Western of our Westerners is
not always prone to take cognizance of. But within it lies the kernel of
future American life. To some, like the founders of the State of Oregon,
it was more defined. Some as early as 1844 realized that to the nation
which developed the coast lands belonged the spoils of the Pacific and
in its hands would lie the destinies of the largest ocean on the globe.
The opening of the Panama Canal has placed the Pacific at the door-step
of New York, and fulfilled the dream.
But to the vast majority of people on the coast to-day, occupation and
development of those enormous areas seem to carry with them opportunity,
but little responsibility. They have one concern which is akin to fear,
and that is of the Japanese. They only vaguely grasp the significance of
their fate. They do not see that they have hauled in a whale along with
their catch and that unless they are skilful they will drag the whole
nation into the sea with them.
But if they have forgotten the vision for the appearance of the catch,
what about the East? The East is as indifferent to matters pertaining to
the Pacific and the West. Its face is turned toward Europe. We think
that America is a nation, but the utter ignorance of one section with
regard to another, the lounging in local ease, is appalling. Easterners
are like the philosopher who when told that his house was on fire, said
it was none of his business, for hadn't he a wife to look after such
things! These are strange phenomena in a democracy. People think that
they discharge their duty by voting, but how many people are in the
least concerned with the problems that will some day light up the
country like a prairie fire? Westerners are generally much more
acquainted with Eastern affairs. As unpleasant as is the promotion
publicity of Los Angeles, it is a much more healthful condition than the
seeming ignorance of New York in matters pertaining to Los Angeles.
Yet while the East is aflame over affairs in Europe--the Irish Republic,
for instance--it probably thinks that Korea is the name of a Chinese
joss over which no civilized man should bother to yap about. This
indifference is not to be found in the man on the street alone. That man
is often uninformed simply because the dispensers of information are
uninformed. There is much he would want if he knew its value to him. And
so while we are becoming embroiled in European affairs another and
henceforward more sinister problem is threatening to back-wash over us.
It was while in such an apathetic state that America changed her status
from a continental republic to a colonial empire. Few Americans have
ever taken any interest in their insular possessions. Hawaii and the
rest had fallen to the lot of the Government, and would sooner or later
be returned; that was the sum and substance of their outlook on the
whole affair. That the Monroe Doctrine ceased to be a real factor with
the acquisition of these outlying possessions, that we virtually
abrogated it, did not seem to matter much. At large, the notion was that
American altruism would never involve the country in any difficulty.
But whatever a man's motives, once he has stuck his tongue against a
frozen pipe only a tremendous outpouring of altruism will ever detach
it. America began her adventures in the Pacific when she urged young men
to go West. Now we have the whole continent, we have Hawaii, the
Philippines, Pago Pago, Samoa, and Alaska,--a hefty armful. Are we going
to let these things go, or are we simply going to drift to where they
drag us into conflict with others who want them and want them badly? We
cannot merely blow them full of democracy and then wait for any one who
wishes to to prick the bubbles. For it must be borne in mind that the
issues are clear. The Pacific cannot remain half-citizen and
half-subject. Every time we stir up within a small island the
self-respect of individuals, we destroy the balance of power between an
expression of the wills of people and the wills of autocracies. Is
America going to set out to make the world safe for democracy in Europe
and then withdraw just when Europe needs her help most? Is she going to
continue to make treaties with small nations like Korea and then when
Korea is devoured body and soul simply overlook the little fellow as
though he had never existed.
Let me make the case of Korea clearer by a parallel. We had a treaty
with the Kingdom under which we had assured her that in the event of any
other power interfering with her independence we would exert our good
offices toward an amicable solution. Then came the Russo-Japanese war.
Korea received a pledge from Japan that her sovereignty would be
protected if she permitted Japanese troops to pass over her territory.
Korea, at the risk of being devoured by Russia for violating neutrality,
acceded to Japan's request. Five years after the Russo-Japanese War,
Korea was annexed by Japan, and we said never a word in her favor. Nor
have we ever denounced our treaty with Korea.
But here is the parallel. Belgium refused to let Germany cross her
territory. Because of Germany's invasion of Belgium, Great Britain
entered the war. What if Great Britain now decided to annex Belgium?
What if America did so?
Yet Colonel Roosevelt, who was so vociferous in his denouncement of the
Wilson Administration for its early neutrality in the face of the rape
of Belgium, himself condoned the annexation of Korea by saying that
inasmuch as Korea was unable to defend herself it was not up to us to
rush to her assistance. In other words, our treaty was only a scrap of
paper which was to be in force if the other high contracting party was
strong enough to have no need for our aid.
Is America going to drag China into world wars with promises of
friendship, and then concede Shantungs whenever diplomatic shrewdness
shows her to be beaten? Is she going to promise the Philippines
independence, allow her governor-generals to withhold their veto power
for years so that the natives may the better handle their own affairs,
and then simply let any who will come and undermine or explode the thing
entire?
This is not meant to imply by any manner of means that America is to
display force and employ it for the sake of democracy. It is not navies
nor armies that will count, but principles. It is America's duty as a
free country to encourage freedom and discourage autocracy. And in that
spirit, and that alone, can she justify her place in the sun. On several
occasions she has done so, though only those in which the Pacific are
involved need reference here.
2
Apropos of the Philippines: Two factors and two alone are involved. It
is not a question of whether America shall or shall not hold on to the
islands. In that America has given her word. The Philippines will
become, must become, free. There, as elsewhere, it is not our concern
whether one group or another gains the upper hand. It is not our concern
that the Filipinos, being Malay-Orientals, will evolve a democracy that
is not compatible with our notions of democracy. Our concern is, and has
been repeatedly stated to be, only the welfare and happiness of the
Filipinos. McKinley, Taft, Roosevelt, Wilson,--all have considerably
discoursed upon Filipino independence and Filipino welfare. We have
recently been on the very verge of granting independence, but,
unfortunately, oil has been discovered by the Standard Oil Company, and
the question will doubtless now depend on the amount of oil there is. If
a great deal, then fare thee well Filipino independence! However, the
real reason for our being in the islands is neither the altruistic
concern for the democratization of the people, nor to protect the
immediate interests of sugar, tobacco, or oil-handling capitalists. The
one and only basis for our action should be the extent to which Filipino
independence or our protectorate ministers to the peace of the Pacific.
If an independent Philippines will allay the suspicions of Japan, then
they should be independent. But Japan would have to give more than the
usual promise of her word that she would keep her hands off the
Philippines. The extent to which her word may be relied upon can easily
be determined. One need only mention Korea, Shantung, Siberia, the
Marshall Islands. We say to Japan: "As soon as you live up to the
promises in your treaty and other relations with these Orientals, we
shall be able to accept your further promises in regard to the
Philippines."
Yet it must not be overlooked that Japan saw our coming to the
Philippines with apprehension. Japan is an Oriental nation and cannot
understand any one doing anything out of pure goodness of heart. Fact
is, neither can we. Let the most honest man in the world offer any other
a solid-gold watch and that other would suspect something was wrong. We
declared to the world that we had only the best intentions toward the
Philippines--to democratize them. To Japan that was like holding up a
red flag to a bull. What, you are going to create a democratic sore
right in my neighborhood? That will never do. It might be catching. And
Japan is not interested in contracting democracy as yet,--that is,
official Japan. Even liberal Japanese are doubtful. When in Japan, I
interviewed the democratic M.P., Yukio Ozaki. He turned, without
question from me, to the subject of the fortification of the
Philippines. He pleaded that the forts be dismantled. In the event of
that plea failing, what could Japan do, he asked, other than proceed to
fortify the Marshall Islands? Yet at that time Japan had not even been
granted a mandate over these islands. The logic of his appeal is
irrefutable. But this is a sort of vicious circle. Who is to begin, and
whom shall we trust?
One thing is certain,--that in that whole problem of the control of the
islands of the Pacific, whether by annexation, protection, or mandate,
lies the seed of the future peace of the Pacific. And unless in each and
every case the natives are given the best opportunities of
self-development, that nation responsible for their arrested condition
is going to be the nation upon whose conscience will rest the sorrows of
the world.
In regard to the Philippines, this must be remembered,--that we are
dealing with human beings, not problems and principles. The stuff one
generally reads about foreign places might be just as descriptive of the
inhabitants of Mars. Little wonder that those for or against
independence or protection fail to win their case! We must remember that
for twenty years we have been building up the hopes of children whom we
taught in our schools, with our money and our ideals. They are now, many
of them, active men attending to the work of the Filipino world. They
are our foster-children and would be fools not to want to live their own
lives in their own way. Our policy in regard to them must be a negative
one; from now on it cannot be positive. All we can say to them is what
we cannot and will not permit them to do; we have no right henceforth to
say what they must do. We can say that we will not permit them to invite
any other nation whose governmental ideals are likely to threaten ours.
The world must continue on its road toward the greater and greater
liberation of peoples, hence we cannot permit them to step back toward
any form of imperialism. We cannot permit them to invite unlimited
numbers of Orientals who might swamp them. They must maintain the
Philippines for the Filipinos, with as much generosity thrown in as will
not endanger that. We must remember that our effort in the Philippines
is the first in which any government has attempted to treat its subject
natives with any degree of equality,--legally, if not socially. If the
world is to move on toward greater freedom--which is needed, Heaven
knows!--we must not let the Philippines be an example of the failure of
democratic management of natives.
3
In all this some may discover implications that our hold on the
Philippines should be maintained purely for strategic reasons. That may
be the purpose of the imperialistically minded. There may be some who
will read into this fear of Japan or a bellicose attitude irritable to
her. Neither interpretation would be accurate, for behind all this are
certain historical factors which prove that whatever use statesmen may
make of world situations, evil designs will be frustrated so long as the
circumstances which created the primary conditions were not evil.
Specifically, because the earlier relations between Japan and America
were brought about through essentially good motives, these later
developments can be kept to a sane path. And severe as may be our
present criticisms of Japan, so long as the purposes behind them are
good, they can have only a desirable result.
When Commodore Perry went to Japan in 1853, his only desire was to open
that country to trade. It may seem now that for the sake of peace in the
Pacific it would have been better had he been guided by the spirit of
conquest. Had Japan been conquered in the early days, she would never
have come to the fore as a possible menace. But she was not. It does not
follow, however, that that was unfortunate, for the earliest relations
between Japan and America were amicable and basically altruistic. The
relations between us have continued to be amicable, but altruism has
slowly given way to envy and jealousy. But the point that is missed in
all this reference to these cordial relations of the past is that
inasmuch as America was a great moral influence upon Japan in the early
days, she might continue to be that to-day. Cock-sure as Japanese
statesmen have become, and pugnacious as some Americans seem toward
Japan, a strong moral attitude will still do more to check hostility
than all the shaking of sabers and manoeuvering of dreadnaughts. We
need the Philippines more as a base for democratic experiment than as a
fortified zone. We need them as one needs a medical laboratory for the
manufacture of serums in the time of plague,--for the manufacture of the
serum of political freedom, of the rights of people to develop and to
learn to be free. And this experimental station should stand right there
at the door of Japan--and of British and French concessionists, if you
please, in China--and of China itself, for none of them has any faith in
this educating of natives and making them your equals. Only down below
the line, in New Zealand and Australia, far from where it can really
affect Japan, is that experiment being carried on. And more than all
else, when Japanese imperialism is spreading its wings, when Japanese
bureaucracy is throwing out its chest in pride and telling its poor,
impoverished people, "See what I am doing for YOU," we need that serum
station in the Philippines where a solution of democracy and freedom
may continue to be made,--be it ever so weak.
And it needs to be injected into Japan. Some of it is already working in
that empire. Japan needs more, it needs to be reinforced. Democracy in
Japan is struggling for a foothold. Let the germs of democracy persist
in the Philippines and be rushed to the island empire. And let America
stand as a great moral force, impressing upon Japan that the rights of
the people shall not be suppressed. But that will never be unless the
people in America who stand for liberalism, for true democracy, for all
that America has hitherto meant wake up to the seriousness of the
situation in the Far East and cease to turn from it with sentimental
notions about Lafcadio Hearn's Japan. There are two Japans.
Both of these Japans are watching America closely. They are watching the
actions of America in the Philippines, they are following in the
footsteps of America in China. That need not be taken too literally, for
there are two meanings to it. One example points in one direction,
another in another. But one or two by way of illustration will do.
When America returned the Boxer Indemnity Funds to China for educational
purposes a new precedent was established in international affairs. No
other nation had the moral courage to follow suit. But just at the close
of the war, Japan, having replenished her exchequer considerably,
unloosened her purse-strings and returned the balance of the indemnity
funds to China. It was a case of thrifty self-denial, a tardy giving
back of gold that none of the powers were really entitled to. As
misguided and foolish as the Boxer Uprising was, still had it been a
little better organized, none of the evils from which China is suffering
to-day would obtain. China should have been as wise in her method as she
was in impulse. However, it is good to see Japan doing so much. She
should be encouraged.
Again, seeing that American missionaries--and others--are influencing
China in the direction of Occidental culture, Japan is following suit.
Here it is likewise a tardy giving back to China what Japan took from
her centuries ago, for Japanese Buddhism is only the sifting of the
Buddhism that made its way from India by way of China and Korea. Still,
it is worth noting that intellectual and moral precedents are often as
forceful as more materialistic weapons.
Observing the influence that doctors and hospitals wield in China,--the
Rockefeller Foundation, for instance,--the Japanese are following suit
and establishing hospitals in the interior. Educational and industrial
work likewise will lead the way for educational and industrial work by
Japanese in China. Witnessing the force of friendship in America's
relations with China, the public in Japan is protesting against the
antagonizing of this gigantic neighbor to whom the Japanese bureaucratic
wolf has been making such grandmotherly pretentions. And indeed there is
much good reason for the protest, for the Japanese merchant who expected
so much juice in that Chinese plum found that because of antagonism,
because of the rape of Shantung, the plum momentarily became a lemon, to
use a vulgar expression. Japan, after the "peace" Conference
contemptuously handed over what didn't belong to it but a duped
assistant in the prosecution of the war against Germany learned that
there are more ways than one of killing a cat. And China proceeded to
gnaw at the vitals of the Japanese bureaucratic wolf in a most telling
fashion. China declared a boycott of Japanese goods that was so
effective that it brought about a financial slump in Japan from which
she is not yet fully recovered. China was of course forced to yield. One
cannot live on sentiment, and when Japanese goods are the nearest and
cheapest at hand, what could China do?
If only Japan could see the real significance of this she would at once
withdraw all her nefarious demands on China, proceed sincerely and
honestly to win the friendship of China, and then undermine the very
ground of every foreign trader because of her propinquity. But
bureaucrats are blind. They are moles that move underground. The ground
of China is all broken up on that account. One of these days the Chinese
giant will clumsily step, not in the wake of the mole, but on the mole
itself. Inadvertently, of course; giants are such clumsy things!
4
These, then, are some of the ways in which Japan has and has not
followed in the footsteps of America.
Let us follow the Chinese giant a bit, and see what blundering paths he
has pursued. Unfortunately, he has had his mind too much on the American
colossus to observe the mole. And so he blundered into accepting a
republican form of government. A vain _Malvolio_, he thought he was
being honored with blue and yellow ribbons on his enormous legs, but to
stretch the metaphor a little farther, it turns out that these alien
Lilliputians are strapping him securely down to earth. The ribbons and
the Lilliputian bands are the foreign-built and foreign-controlled and
operated railroads which have been talked of with sanctimonious
metaphors to make them palatable. And now China parades herself before
the world as a republic. That is some of the influence of America. The
Republic of China is our own handiwork. Is it anything to be proud of?
Poor China is a battered republic, with hands outstretched, appealing to
us for help. As I write the newspapers tell of the appeal of Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, recently elected President of the South China Republic. After
surveying what he regards as the situation, exposing the Peking
government, declaring that but for its intriguing with Japan there would
have been unity between North and South, and that the Northern
militarists were profiteering in food during the recent famine, and
charging them with a string of other crimes, he adds:
Such is the state of affairs in China that unless America, her
traditional friend and supporter, comes forward to lend a helping
hand in this critical period, we would be compelled against our
will to submit to the twenty-one demands of Japan. I make this
special appeal, therefore, through Your Excellency, to the
Government of the United States to save China once more, for it is
through America's genuine friendship, as exemplified by the John
Hay doctrine, that China owes her existence as a nation.
Now let us listen to the word from Japan on American diplomacy in China.
The "Asahi Shimbun" said:
Of all the foreign representatives in Peking the American was the
least known previous to the revolution. A lawyer by profession, he
was not credited with any diplomatic ability or resource. Yet he
will reap more credit than any of the others on account of the
ability and energy which he has displayed. But what have our
Government and our diplomacy done to counteract the American
influence? Our interests in China far exceed those of any other
country, and yet our officials have allowed themselves to be
outplayed by a diplomatically untrained lawyer. China, which ought
to look to Japan for help and guidance, does not do so, but looks
to America. The inertia of the Kasumigaseki has given Mr. Calhoun
an opportunity to restore American prestige in the neighbouring
country.
Japan has done nothing to gain the good-will of China, and America is
constantly veering her ship with its treasury of Chinese good-will more
and more in the direction of Japan. We had in Japan a man of unusual
gifts and sagacity. Mr. Roland S. Morris, American Ambassador under the
Wilson administration, though avowedly a friend of Japan, certainly had
a most unenviable position to maintain. He seemed peculiarly fitted for
his post, for during his years in Japan, notwithstanding the innumerable
missions that moved like settings on a circular stage, and the infinite
number of dinners that fall to the lot of distinguished foreigners in
Japan, he never seems to have got political indigestion. And doubtless
he is to-day a friend of China.
With an eye to the "special interests" of Japan, Dr. Paul S. Reinsch was
permitted to throw up his hands in despair. We were not doing much to
save China from being Shantung-ed. Because Mr. Crane once
undiplomatically expressed himself in ways unwelcome to Japan, he was
recalled before he got beyond Chicago. Several years later, Mr. Crane
succeeded in smuggling himself through to China as American Minister,
and as far as may be seen, he did noble work in connection with the
Famine Relief last winter. Now we have dispatched a Japanophile to
China. Dr. Jacob Gould Shurman was so strongly impressed with the
schools of Japan that he gave up Cornell University to go to China and
help Japanize the Celestial. At least, that is the mood in which he left
America. A man who knows him well and is close to the inner circle of
American financial affairs in China assured me the other day that
Shurman would not be in China six months before he would completely
reverse his sentiments, and regard Japan's work in China as it is
regarded by every one there who is not a Japanese official.
Poor deluded, short-sighted Japan! She could have China as a plaything
if she only went about it properly. Propinquity could put special
interests in last year's list of bad debts if Japan sincerely, honestly,
firmly made a friend of China, threw the doors wide open,--and then
laughed a hearty, healthy laugh at the efforts of white men to outwit
her in Asia. Propinquity has made Japan Oriental, it has given Japan a
script that opens the doors for her more than for any other alien:
Oriental methods, Oriental concepts, Oriental customs and requirements
give Japan a better chance in China than all her millions of soldiers
and dreadnaughts ever will. Yet the little mole loves it underground.
5
Thus we are blindly following the Japanese mole. We are catering to
Japanese "sensitiveness" by sending diplomats with a list in the
direction of Japan now. Presently, I presume, we shall withdraw our
diplomats from China as we did from Korea, and forget about it. But,
then, of course, we sha'n't. Things in the Far East are not going to pan
out so easily, not in the matter of China and Japan. Ever since the
first American clipper flirted with Chinese trade, American interests
have been involved in the interests of China, and they will continue to
be so involved. Without ordinary, decent, honest trade among nations,
the relationship of peoples ceases to have its reason for existence.
Just imagine a world of nothing but tourists! But decent trade is not
the forcing of opium on a country against its will, as Britain forced it
on China in the early days and as Japan forces it to-day. Decent trade
is not the impoverishing of native industries by the introduction of
cheap products from Japanese, European, and American factories. Neither
is decent trade altruism. The spirit of really decent trade may be
found, though not yet fully defined, in the motives behind the
consortium; but, then, that scheme has not yet been proved workable. Its
future remains to be seen, and I shall later describe it as far as it
has gone.
It has been admitted, even by the most prejudiced--and by Japanese--that
America's practices in the Far East, and China in particular, have been
essentially well-principled. The Philippines are restively seeking
independence, but they cannot claim that America's protectorate has been
discreditable. One could go on all the way through to the return of the
Boxer Indemnity, and the only serious charge that can be made with truth
is that altruism has often been accompanied by indecision and
inefficiency.
The question that now faces the world is whether the effect of Western
democratic governmental methods, which seem to have made a sudden, yet
vital, impression on the minds of the Chinese, shall become effective
with time, or shall be uprooted by another Oriental country for whom we
have expressed constantly the most affectionate regard. We do not love
a child less because it needs correction; correction, we realize, is the
necessary accompaniment of growth. Japan needs to be shown the error of
her ways; not in high-flown moral terms, but in just plain, everyday
examples of the impracticability of her doings in China. Thus, having
been instrumental in the opening of Japan to the world; having acquired
possessions in the Pacific which must remain the outposts of democratic
management of native peoples; having set an example of disinterested,
generous treatment of unwieldy China; having stood by as her friend, as
her preceptor, her sponsor; having, in a word, made that inexplicable
journey from the Atlantic to the farthest reaches of the Pacific, let
the robin say of Johnny Appleseed:
To the farthest West he has followed the sun,
His life and his empire just begun....
CHAPTER XXI
WHERE THE PROBLEM DOVETAILS
1
I have come now to the most delicate and most difficult task in the
whole problem, that of the dovetailing of nations. Twice has this phase
of the subject come before us: once when we met it in that welter of
racial experiments, Hawaii and the South Seas in general; and again in
that great outpost of the white race, Australasia. But in the one it is
too localized, and the other too much in anticipation. In Hawaii it is
hard to say which race has justly a prior right to possession; in
Australia the problem is only imminent.
But in California and the entire West the impact of the two races of the
Pacific has taken place. Nothing but a just solution can possibly be any
solution at all. Let me therefore define the problem at the very outset,
lest that which is really irrelevant be expected, or insinuate itself
into the discussion.
Primarily, the problem of Japan in America is not a racial one.
Primarily it is political, and hinges upon the rights of nations.
Secondarily, it is economic, and only in so far as the political and
economic factors are unsolvable can the problem become a racial one, and
terminate in conflict. All attempts at handling the situation which do
not take into consideration these two factors would be like crossing the
stream to get a bucket of water. For nothing can be done without
reciprocity, and reciprocity is the last thing that Japan would ever
consent to, as it involves a transformation in her political philosophy
and the relinquishment of her own position from the very outset. Hence,
before we can even approach the consideration of facts in California, we
must get clearly in mind exactly what Japan is doing within her own
territories. Japan is the appellant. Japan demands that her people be
given free entry the world over. We are not asking her to let our people
enter Japan and her possessions as laborers and agriculturists. Hence,
before she can make her plea at all rational, she must show that she
herself is not discriminating in the identical manner as the one she
objects to.
Now, in only one or two instances have I seen that question emphasized.
In all the literature I have read emanating from Japanese sources, in
the lectures of its propagandists here, I have never seen it faced
fairly and squarely. The actions of Japan are ignored or glossed over.
The protagonists of Japan in California--Americans, mind you--make of it
purely an American issue, as though discrimination were a fault peculiar
to ourselves. Two blacks don't make a white, but neither do two blacks
quarrel with each other for being black.
The questions in the order of their importance then are:
Does Japan permit the free entrance of alien labor?
Does Japan permit the ready purchase by aliens of agricultural land?
Does Japan make the naturalization of aliens easy?
Does Japan permit the denaturalization of its people abroad?
Now, these are all political problems, for the simple reason that the
very economic conditions of Japan make them unnecessary. That is,
Japanese labor is essentially cheap labor, and owing to the great
crowding there would be little likelihood of any great influx of Korean
or Chinese labor were the bars not raised fairly high. And the bars are
high. The number of Koreans admitted is greater largely because Koreans
are now subjects of the mikado, but even they are kept in check by
Japanese objections to their entrance, and conflicts between Japanese
and Koreans are not unknown. Chinese are permitted to enter Japan only
by special permission from the local authorities, as provided for in a
regulation in force since 1899. Forgetting the two hundred and fifty
years during which the doors of Japan were sealed; forgetting that even
after the opening of Japan a foreigner had to obtain a special passport
to travel from Kobe to Kyoto, a distance of forty miles inland;
forgetting all the psychological factors that have by no means broken
down the crust that still closes most of Japan to alien possession or
acquisition, one is still amazed at this discrimination against
fellow-subjects and Chinese, to whom the Japanese are in some essential
way, at least, related.
But let us see what happens to these people when they do get in. Let me
quote a statement in the bulletin of the East and West News Bureau, a
Japanese propaganda agency located in New York.
In Japan proper the Korean laborers are estimated to number about
20,000. Compared with Japanese laborers they are perhaps superior
in point of physical strength, but in practical efficiency they are
no rivals of the latter. They feel that they are handicapped by
strange environments and different customs, which partly account
for their low efficiency. But experienced employers assert that the
Koreans are markedly lazy, and that their work requires overseers,
which naturally results of curtailment of their wages.
According to inquiries by the Osaka police on conditions among
Korean laborers in the city, many of them have been thrown out of
employment on account of the economic depression; that they are
mostly engaged in rough work, such as carrying goods around or
digging holes, etc., as unskilled laborers. It states that they are
indolent and have no interest in work which requires skill and
attention; they are simply contented as cheap laborers.
This quotation is illuminating in many ways. First, it strikes me as
being anything but fair play on the part of Japanese in America to send
out such discriminating and unkind accounts of a people whom they have
now taken in as fellows in an empire, and whom they are "trying to
assimilate." Secondly, it is not quite true, for Japanese manufacturers
are going to Korea with their factories. If Korean laborers are
efficient in Korea, why not in Japan? But the fact of the matter is that
the Japanese, quite naturally, are not going to give the best jobs to
Koreans with their own men round about.
Now let us see what the British Vice-Consul at Osaka has to say of
Japanese labor, in a report to Parliament. Admitting that external
conditions have much to do with the poor quality of the Japanese
workman, and that in time and under better conditions he will improve,
the vice-consul says: "The standard [of intelligence] shown by the
average workman is admittedly low," while some of his sub-captions are:
"Docility," "Apathy," "Cheerfulness," "Lack of Concentration," "Scarcity
of Skilled Labor," and under the caption "Why Wages are Low" he says:
"Labor is plentiful and inefficient."
It is seen, therefore, that the opinion of the vice-consul in the matter
of the Japanese is similar to that of the Japanese in regard to the
Korean; and so it goes. The point in the whole question, to my mind is,
that Japanese discriminate as much against other races as they are
discriminated against. Not until Japan lays low the chauvinistic notions
about the superiority of the most inferior Japanese to the best
foreigner can we expect that other nations will set to work to remove
the obstacles toward a clear understanding.
In America the very reverse is true. No one ever asserts that the
Japanese is inferior to a white man. What is said is that the white man
is essentially an individualist who at maturity starts off in life by
himself, whereas the Japanese is bound by all sorts of notions of
ancestor-worship which submerge him completely in the group.
Furthermore, as a group the Japanese are able to overcome the greatest
odds that any individual can raise against them. The nature of that
group-consciousness will be analyzed in the answer to some of the other
questions.
2
But to return to Japan: That Japan has no occasion for fear of a serious
invasion of aliens is evident from recent figures that show that there
are only 19,500 foreigners there, of whom 12,139 are Chinese, 2,404
Britons, 1,837 Americans, 687 Russians, 641 Germans, and 445 French.
These figures are, however, unreliable, and antedate the Russian
Revolution. However, the question here pertinent is whether any of these
would be permitted to engage in such industries as the Japanese engage
in here; for instance, agriculture. That can be answered in the
negative. The Japanese land law, however generous it may seem from mere
reading of the statutes, does not extend that privilege to foreigners.
The first proviso of the law is that the person desiring to own land in
Japan shall be from a country wherein Japanese are permitted to own
land. In other words, if America does not allow a Japanese to acquire
land, no American can do so in Japan. As it stands, therefore, no
Japanese can complain if American laws make a similar ruling. The second
provision excludes from any and all ownership, in any and all
circumstances, the Hokkaido, Formosa, Karafuto (Sakhalin), or districts
necessary for national defense. Considering that every other inch of
ground is held in plots of two and a half acres per farmer, to whom they
are the beginning and end of subsistence, the privileges innocently
extended are mighty short. The law virtually excludes all right to any
agricultural lands that any foreigner might be able to avail himself of.
There is one kind of real property foreigners do wish to own, and that
is property for business purposes. But they cannot own that, even; they
may only lease it on long leases under conditions that are frequently a
hardship and often enough insecure. They may lease land under the
so-called superficies lease, but that means virtually evading the law,
and is always expensive. Even ordinary leases are frequently encroached
upon, as foreigners in the ports are only too well aware. While I was in
Kobe, Japanese were forcing foreign business firms out of the former
foreign settlement, which fully fifty years of white men's toil had
converted from a worthless bit of beach land into one of the most
up-to-date "suburbs" in the Orient, and which is now the best part of
Kobe. This was done by calling in leases, by making the rents
prohibitive, and by "buying out" foreign lease-holders at almost
exorbitant rates, just as the Japanese buy out white men in California.
One British druggist, Dr. Richardson, sold for $225,000 a corner plot
for which he had paid $12,500. He made a great profit in the deal, but
the process by which he, and others, were bought out is indicative of
the methods of the Japanese. For behind many of the real-estate dealers
was the Government, making loans at most favorable rates of interest
with the sole object of getting back into Japanese control as much of
the port plots as possible,--cost what it might. Even men of lifelong
residence in Japan must form themselves into corporations with their
wives and some Japanese as members, in order to own the land upon which
their residences are built. Some of these cases I investigated for the
"Japan Chronicle" and learned from the priest of the Catholic Church
that pressure was constantly being exerted upon him to make him
relinquish his hold upon the ground on which the church stands, because
it is in the heart of the business section. He said he did not know how
long he would be able to hold out against them.
How corrupt landlords may overstep the bounds is illustrated by a case
reported in the "Chronicle" of February 10, 1921. The editor says:
The notorious Clarke lease suit is a case in point. This was a
lease for twenty-five years, renewable for a further term of
similar duration. A syndicate of Japanese was organized which
purchased the land, knowing of the burdens upon it, with the hope
of worrying the lease-holder either into paying more rent or into
selling the lease for an inadequate sum. Suit after suit was
brought in various names, until at last a court was found to give
judgment raising the rent on the ground that taxes had increased
and the value of surrounding properties had expanded since the
lease was made. In justification of a judgment upholding this
decision, the Osaka Appeal Court declared that there was a local
custom in Kobe which permitted a landlord to raise the rent in
certain circumstances. No evidence was produced in support of this
contention, which was clearly against all contract law and rendered
lease agreements meaningless. The result was that the gang of
speculators who had banded themselves together to despoil a
foreigner were successful. The holder of the lease was forced to
sell and the syndicate profited greatly.
If the argument is raised that you will find bad people everywhere, and
that one cannot take the poorest type of person and set him up as the
example, let us recall the case of the Doshisha University. There,
because of these selfsame land and property laws, The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions placed the million dollars' worth of
property in the hands of Christian Japanese directors. Presently the
Government brought pressure to bear upon these directors, and they
yielded to their Government. In February, 1898, they virtually ousted
the foreign owners, turned the institution into a secular college, and
saw nothing dishonest nor immoral in the action. Japanese have of course
come to a better understanding of the rights in such cases, nor am I
trying to impugn the integrity of the "better-class" of Japanese. I am
merely bringing evidence to prove that not only are Japanese laws with
regard to the ownership of land by foreigners as discriminatory as those
of California, but their interpretation is a serious handicap to aliens
in Japan.
In America the fight is not to prevent Japanese from taking hold of land
for business purposes, but to prevent them from monopolizing
farming-lands, which, as Mr. Walter Pitkin has shown so clearly in his
book, "Must We Fight Japan?" are rapidly passing out of American hands
because of our vicious shallowness in agrarian matters. I am not as yet
bringing up the question of fairness, justice, generosity, or the rights
of over-crowded Japan. I am merely making parallels which seem to me
telling.
3
Does Japan make the naturalization of aliens easy? As far as the letter
of the law goes, there appears nothing in the eyes of a layman that
might stand in the way of a man, already married and with children, from
becoming a Japanese subject. There is no legal discrimination against
any race or color. But notwithstanding that there now are 20,000
foreigners in Japan, and that the number throughout the years must have
been much greater, there are on record only nine cases of foreigners
having been naturalized between 1904 and 1913; two English, two
American, five French; and ten cases of adoptions by marriage into
Japanese families. These, to my knowledge, do not include men previously
married. They are all cases of men who have married Japanese women, or
of women who have married Japanese men. There have been 158 Chinese who
became naturalized. This does not indicate that naturalization is
easy--except by marriage--and the general consensus of opinion is that
it would take a man fully fifteen years to become naturalized in the due
process of law.
Furthermore, the restrictions attached to the acquisition of Japanese
nationality take all the sweetness out of the plum, for even after you
have gone through the regular processes and have been permitted to sit
"amongst these gods on sainted seats," there are still exalted pedestals
beyond your reach. You may not become a Minister of State, President, or
Vice-President, or a member of the Privy Council; an official of
_chokunin_ (imperial-appointment) rank in the Imperial Household
Department; an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary; a
general officer in the army and navy; president of the Supreme Court, of
the Board of Audit, or of the Court of Administrative Litigation; or
member of the Imperial Diet. Nor are the professions in all cases open
to you.
However, this is a minor matter compared with that of the inability on
the part of any Japanese to accept another nationality without official
consent. If he resides abroad after his seventeenth birthday he cannot
in any circumstances become a citizen of that other country unless he
has completed his military service. Women may freely relinquish their
nationality through marriage; not so men. If men are born abroad, they
must make a voluntary request for denaturalization between the ages of
fifteen and seventeen, but such other factors are involved that only a
negligible number of American-born Japanese have ever attempted to rid
themselves of their ancestral connections; and there is one case on
record in which the Government refused on a technicality, for the child
had applied for denationalization according to Western reckoning,
whereas Japanese count the child's age as from the day of conception,
not birth.
In view of this, then, there seems no point whatever in the fuss made
about Japanese being barred from citizenship. Again, I am not discussing
the advisability of this restriction, but merely trying to brush aside
many of the webs that have been spun for the netting of sympathy. The
relations between Japan and America are thus involved in an infinite
number of petty political regulations on each side, and nothing but a
complete sweeping away of all restrictions on both sides would ever
assume even the semblance of justice. But how far is Japan ready and
willing to go in this denationalization of herself? The most casual
study of her nationalistic aims and aspirations answers that question.
That the problem is essentially a problem for Japan to solve is
self-evident. That it is political and not racial, and that this
political problem is rooted in Japan's economic condition, is likewise
clear. For no nation loses its nationals except when the conditions at
home are worse than those abroad, worse than those of the country to
which her people wish to emigrate. Australia and New Zealand find it
almost impossible to lure out British laborers, while Germany's desire
for room was largely for the utilization of her mechanics and scientists
and others whom she had trained in such large numbers that she hadn't
enough work for them at home. Two changes in the structure of world
economics have accentuated a condition of racial conflict which have
hitherto been virtually non-existent. Religious and political conflicts
have always obtained, but the color line has been drawn only in very
recent times. As long as black and yellow people have been of a lower
order and have been willing to serve the white, there was never any
serious disorder between them. The color line is not marked even in
Europe to-day, for the same reason that it is not marked in Japan.
Europe is herself too crowded to be a desirable immigration station.
Whatever the causes of conflict may have been, to-day it is clear that
they lie in the endeavor on the part of white labor to maintain a better
standard of living than Oriental labor has yet attained. And in exactly
the degree to which certain Oriental labor groups have risen above
others, the conflict becomes manifest,--to wit, the objection on the
part of Japanese labor to Korean and Chinese coolies. No serious
conflicts take place between Fijian laborers and Indian coolies, because
the Fijian maintains his standard under competition, that being lower
than the Indian's.
We have therefore to study the problem of Japanese in America, the
so-called race conflict, not so much as it develops here but at its
source, Japan. And there, if I read Japanese conditions aright, the
problem is political and psychological in the main. Japan has come very
far along material modernization; she has virtually stepped up to the
front rank of nations. But the most casual observation reveals that that
is only so in part, that the advance is made as a government, not as a
people. That government is rooted in antiquated notions, is vicious in
many of its aspects, and is opposed to even the most conservative
developments of Western countries. That government refuses to recognize
the social forces that are at work within Japan for the leveling upward
of classes. And there is the rub.
4
Glancing over the history of the nineteenth century, we realize that all
nations have passed through a continuous struggle of the masses for
betterment of their conditions, political and social as well as
economic. During the greater part of that century Japan lay dormant, its
masses mentally mesmerized. The sudden impact of the West has stunned
the people more than awakened them. Only part of the social body is
coming to life,--a limb, an essential organ. To be generous, I might say
the brain is working, though from many of the actions of Nippon that
would seem doubtful. But certain it is that whether it is the brain or
merely the spinal column, instead of limbering up the rest of the body
as rapidly as possible, it is trying to retard it. Hence, the feverish
condition of the country.
This is not mere speculation. As I have said, only such countries as
have an inferior economic condition suffer from the exodus of their
laboring people. That exodus takes place for several reasons. From
Europe it has come because of the hunger for religious freedom, to
escape political oppression, or merely to get a new start in life. And
though we have few political or religious exiles in America from the
Land of the Rising Sun, they come because of an unconscious desire for
relief from Japanese social domination. I am convinced that that which
most Japanese so prefer in America is that sense of individual
freshness, that desire for individual expression, for freedom from the
clutch of family and oligarchy. It is unconscious, and without doubt few
Japanese when brought face to face with the issues would admit it, so
deeply ingrained is the education and training at the hands of the
political administrators. Only here and there is some such statement
made, with an eye to the press and the galleries.
Were Japan to extend to the masses greater freedom, there would be
plenty of work for them at home. There is scientific advancement to be
made. Japanese are frightfully behind in the scientific habit. I have
been told by a friend at one of our greatest institutions of medical
experimentation that with but one exception the Japanese who come there
have to be constantly dismissed for their incompetence. There was no
anti-Japanese sentiment in the mind of the person who made this
statement. Japanese still need generations of training to acquire the
scientific spirit. Their historians prove this. In the business of life
Japanese have plenty of work at home which could easily absorb all the
man-power, both masculine and feminine, at their command, without the
necessity of shipping any of it abroad. But the vulgar acquisition of
wealth, the vulgar acquisition of political prestige in the world, the
vulgar appeal for equality which no man or nation with true dignity and
self-respect would mouth to the extent that Japanese officialdom has
mouthed it, the vulgar wearing of its sensitiveness on its sleeve,--it
is these with which bureaucratic Japan is preoccupied. While, at home,
every effort on the part of Japanese to secure manhood suffrage, to
arise to the dignity of true men, of which the masses are as capable as
any race on earth, is discouraged. On the one hand pleading, in
mendicant fashion, for racial equality abroad; on the other, refusal to
give the people at home racial equality. On one hand it is asserted
loudly that "The Japanese do not like to be regarded as inferior to any
other people. In no country will they be content with discriminatory
treatment";[1] on the other, Prime Minister Hara answers the demand for
the franchise with the maudlin fear that it would break down
"distinction."
[1] From the _Kokumin_, a leading newspaper.
So that the problem of Japan and the world is largely a political
problem which she must face at home. Raising the standard of living;
increasing the economic welfare of the masses; extending the rights of
the people who are clamoring for it in sections, not only to the
intelligent elements but down to the very _eta_; cleansing the social
pores of the empire,--these will in themselves automatically solve the
problem for the world. The people don't want conquest. They are not
aggressive. But the misguided leaders,--there's the rub.
5
As to Japan in America--or, more specifically, the Japanese in
California--the problem is for us to solve. I once heard an American
sentimentalist who practises law, and hence assured an audience he ought
to know what he was talking about, say that the trouble in California
was that the Japanese will work and the American is an idler and won't
work. Why he wasn't howled out of the auditorium I don't know. That
America has reared this vast continent and made it one of the most
productive countries in the world did not seem to enter the head of this
lawyer. Yet the Japanese problem will not be solved by exclusion alone.
We hear constantly that the reason for the conflict is that Japanese as
groups and as tireless workers are able to outwork Americans; and, in
certain special types of industry, that is proved. But were the
conditions made more acceptable to Americans in those industries, and
were we to devise mechanical means of production suited to them, it
would not be long before Japanese labor would find it extremely
unprofitable to come here, just as it finds it unprofitable to go to
Manchuria and Korea, where it has to compete with the cheaper Chinese
and Korean labor. Laws and restrictions can always be evaded, and the
price of vigilance is more costly than the gain. But those laws that are
basic in the condition of life no man can evade.
The Gentlemen's Agreement has not worked because gentlemen themselves
seldom work. It has not worked because it has denied America the right,
as all nations claim it, to determine who shall or shall not come in.
Gentlemen never exact such agreements from their friends. They realize
that a man's home is his domain, to be entered only on invitation.
Furthermore, the agreement is not mutually retroactive. It says that
Japan has a right to decide the issue, and promises not to permit coolie
labor to enter America. I shall not enter the statistical controversy as
to whether flocks of Japanese have or have not evaded the agreement. An
agreement such as that should be evaded, and was loose enough to make
evasion simple. That is enough of an argument.
Japan pleads for room on account of the tremendous increase in her
population every year. When a great appeal is made, the number is stated
as 700,000 or 800,000, according to the emotional condition of the
appellant. Professor Dewey contends that the Japanese Government, in its
own records, admits to only some 300,000 or 400,000 a year. Whether the
increase in California is or is not as stated, on one side or the other,
matters little. Japan's grounds for appealing for room are sufficient.
If the increase is so disgustingly large in Japan, it stands to reason
that it would be as large, if not larger here, where economic
opportunity makes increase possible and desirable. Every child born in
America is a handle worth getting hold of. But on the other hand, it is
also true that wherever Japanese better their standard of living their
birth-rate falls, as with every race. In which case there is only one
answer to Japan's appeal for more room: Better your standard of living
and you will not need to invade our house. That disgusting process of
breeding which aggressive nations indulge in should be decried from the
house-tops. It is no great mark of civilization to breed like mosquitos.
Mosquitos need to reproduce by the millions because their eggs are
consumed by the millions by preying creatures. Civilization makes it
possible for those born to survive. (See Appendix D.)
Some students of Far Eastern affairs, like J. O. P. Bland, urge that
Japan has a right to the occupation of Siberia; and none will gainsay
that. But the fact is that though free to go both to Korea and
Manchuria, Japanese have not gone to these regions even to the extent of
one year's increase in population during the last ten years. Where,
then, is the argument? As has been shown, they do not go as settlers
because cheap continental labor makes it unprofitable. They go as
business-men, as the advance-guard of the empire, as the rear-guard of
the army. No one has ever raised a voice against the migration of
Japanese to these unpopulated regions--with the exception, perhaps, of
the natives. But ever and always one feels the hand of imperial Japan
behind each little man from the empire, and that hold on her nationals
is the thing that vigorous nations resent, because it threatens to
impair their status.
That is what California and the sixteen other states who share her views
feel. They are conscious of some subsidy behind every extensive purchase
of land. From somewhere Japanese get enough money to buy anything they
want. It is always the paternalistic arm of the Government round every
little son of Nippon, or the embrace of his family. That is where the
problem begins and that is where it ends. If only some chemical
substance could be discovered that, when poured over the Oriental, would
separate him from the mass, he would be as good a fellow as can be found
anywhere in the world. But that was what always irritated me in my
relations with Japanese in Japan. I never met a man I liked but that in
order to enjoy association with him I had to tolerate his group. If I
started off anywhere with one, I soon had a retinue. That racial
clannishness is to be found everywhere, but nowhere is it more sticky
than in ancestor-worshiping Japan.
Consequently, in whatever manner the problem is finally solved
here in America, one thing is agreed upon by both Japanese and
anti-Japanese,--that those here will have to be redistributed over the
country, their clannishness broken up. That is a problem which affects
not only the Japanese. However, nothing that is now done should in any
way be retroactive so as to deprive any single Japanese of the fruits of
his labor. Whatever solution is found for the Japanese problem in
America, one thing is certain,--that no war will ever be fought because
of Japanese immigration to America. Japan, as has been shown, would have
to readjust her own political thinking to such an extent as virtually to
revolutionize conditions in Japan in order to make an issue of the
citizenship problem and the matter of alien landownership here. Such a
revolution would considerably reduce the scope of the issues, they would
fall apart and virtually cease to exist.
If we are looking for the causes of a possible conflict in the Pacific,
they must be sought not in California but in China. The dovetailing of
the angle of our triangle in America is contingent upon the dovetailing
of the angle of the triangle in Asia. The one in America can be
dislodged only by a wrenching apart of the angle in Asia.
Japan's hegemony in Asia is a serious matter. Japan is an industrial
nation now. She is entitled to access to unused resources in China.
Propinquity accedes this, but propinquity precludes the necessity of
submerging China in the process. The Open Door in China means peace in
the Pacific. We leave it to time to determine what the walling up of
that door would mean.
CHAPTER XXII
AUSTRALIA AND THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE
1
The tempest in the European teapot has become a tornado in the Pacific.
Small as the Balkans are, they were the stumbling-block in the way of
the downward expansion of the European powers.
The tragedy in Europe has left Europe in the background. Civilization is
rapidly veering round in the direction of the Pacific. There are little
nations to-day whose possession is as fraught with unhappy consequences
as anything in southern Europe ever was. Yet we hear innocent dispensers
of information assure us that Yap is only a little speck in the Pacific
over which no one would think of going to war. They forget that America
nearly went to war with Germany in 1889 over the Samoan Islands, which
then meant much less to her. And the settlement in Europe at the Peace
Conference has greatly enhanced the position of the present powers in
the Pacific.
Until very recently two developments in Pacific affairs had not been
given as much prominence in the press as they deserved. One, the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and the other the British Imperial Conferences,
held every other year since 1907. Just in proportion as the Imperial
Conferences have become, as it were, a super-Parliament to Great
Britain, so has the Anglo-Japanese Alliance waned. And just as the
so-called mandates over the various island groups in the mid-Pacific
congeal from lofty aspirations to concrete management there are emerging
in the Pacific the identical antagonisms that made of the little group
of states in Southern Europe the cause of the conflict.
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was formed in 1902. Its aim was to oust
Russia, and to guarantee British interests in China. Later on it was
revised to include Japanese protection over India. But consonant with
that agreement there blossomed in the British Empire a new thing to be
reckoned with,--an independent Australian navy. That navy has by no
means matured, it is not and cannot for years to come be a great
consideration in the Pacific, but it has been from the start prophetic
and explanatory of much that is taking place to-day. It is at the bottom
of the problem, because it is the beginning of Australian independence,
of her rise to nationhood. Let me rehearse the historical incidents in
connection with this development.
Now, until the advent of that navy all the colonies had been paying
certain sums yearly toward the maintenance of the British Navy,--Canada,
Australia, New Zealand alike. But with the federation of the
Commonwealth, Australia began to agitate in no mistaken terms for a navy
of her own, to be built and manned by Australians, and kept in
Australian waters, rushing only in an emergency to the support of the
empire. Canada decided otherwise,--i.e., to build her own ships, but to
merge them with the home fleet; New Zealand continued the old scheme.
Being twelve hundred miles away from Australia, her isolation and her
inadequate resources and population made her more timorous. With
Australia the construction of a separate little fleet was the beginning
of a straining at the leash. Then came the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,
which, while it allayed the fears of the Australians somewhat,
intensified certain other phases of the problem, such as the
White-Australia policy. The Russo-Japanese War did nothing to allay
apprehension on the part of the Australasians.
For years both the Dominion and the Commonwealth were absolutely
obsessed by the naval question. Sir Joseph Ward, the Prime Minister of
New Zealand, championed a single, undivided imperial navy; the late Mr.
Alfred Deakin of Australia stood out strongly in favor of an independent
navy. Seeing little hope of a very strong concession from England,
Deakin extended and urged an invitation, in 1908, to the American fleet
to visit Australia. He admitted that his object was to arouse Britain to
fear an Australian-American "alliance." The thrust went home. The
English "felt that it was using strong measures for an Australian
statesman to use a foreign fleet as a means of forwarding a project
which was not approved by the Admiralty." But even Sir Joseph Ward let
himself go to the extent of declaring that they welcomed America as
"natural allies in the coming struggle against Japanese domination."
And when at last the American fleet came to Australia, it received an
ovation such as still rings in the conversation of any Australian with
an American. For an entire week Sydney celebrated. Melbourne followed
suit; New Zealand could not but take up the cue. Every one pointed with
pride to the similarity between the Australian and the American.
Australian girls virtually threw themselves into the arms of American
sailors. It is even said that many a sailor remained behind with an
Australian wife. Not even the Prince of Wales (now King George) was
given such an ovation.
After that visit, so cordial was the attitude of Australians that
everywhere they talked of floating the Stars and Stripes in the event
of--what? In the event of pressure from Downing Street or from Tokyo.
The Australian temperament is not one which buries its grievances or
harbors ill-feeling. The Australian speaks right out that which is on
his mind. And though much must be discounted because of this bubbling
personality, almost primitive in its extremes, nothing that affects
Australia can long be ignored by us.
Frankly, the situation is this: Australia is set on her so-called
White-Australia policy. Australia made it clear to England that,
alliance or no alliance, she would never swerve from her policy of
excluding Japanese and Chinese. When the American fleet appeared,
knowing the exclusion of Orientals practised in America, Australia felt
that bond of fellowship which comes from common danger. And everything
was done to develop friendship; America became the pattern for
everything Australian. Never particularly fond of the Englishman, at
times discriminating against him as much as against the Oriental,
advertising that "No Englishman Need Apply" when looking for labor,
afraid of the little yellow man up there,--Australia naturally looked to
America as a possible defender.
But along came the European war. Great Britain was in danger. America
held aloof. Then everything changed. The wave of anti-American sentiment
in Australia was much more pronounced than in New Zealand. This was a
strange anomaly, for inherently New Zealand is much more imperialistic.
But it was characteristic of the Australian. There was almost a boycott
against American goods. One firm published a scurrilous advertisement
which the American Consul-General at Melbourne showed me and said he had
sent to Washington. For a time it looked rather serious, but in view of
the Australian character, its importance was not very great. It was the
impetuosity of a little boy, disgruntled because his opinion was not
feared. Many said openly: "We were so fond of America and thought you
were our friend. From now on we don't want anything from you. We don't
want your protection."
Yet, as late as December 8, 1916, the Sydney "Morning Herald" said
editorially: "And _those of us who think of a possible run under
America's wings_ forget that her strength at present is proportionately
no greater than our own [Australia's]. She is not ready for either
offence or defence and she knows it. This being so, can we ask Great
Britain," etc. The feeling toward America at that time was only
commensurate with the petty jealousies that now 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
twenty-five years had determined the policies of the several states.
Just recently a New Zealand navalist, writing in the "Auckland Weekly
News" (New Zealand), brought up the dread specter "balance of power"
again, calling attention to the fact that inasmuch as Japan is a great
naval power and America is increasing her naval strength, it is for
democratic Australasia to see to it that Great Britain does not lag
behind with its fleet in the Pacific,--to maintain the balance of power.
And the further sad fact was revealed that Australasia (seen in the
expression of this one individual at least) did not care particularly
whether, in the event of conflict, they were on the side of America or
Japan.
Feeling 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 empire. In 1909, at the Imperial Conference,
Mr. Joseph Ward sprung a surprise by offering a battle-cruiser to the
Government without consulting his constituents at home. For this he was
knighted. But the New Zealanders were in a mood to make him pay for it
himself when he returned. Mr. (now Sir Joseph) Ward was severely
criticized for what he did. He was ridiculed even by the university lads
during their "Capping Carnival." They took him off in effigy and carried
a little boat with a sign saying: "This is the toy he bought his crown
with." Upon his return from the conference he lost his Prime
Ministership and a "conservative" government came into power. 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.
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 protection
became more and more obvious to Australasians. The Panama Canal
intensified their conviction. They looked forward to a combination of
British and American power for the furtherance of peace as they
conceived it should be maintained, and consciousness of their own
destiny in the Pacific was stimulated. 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 the 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 unmixable 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 phase of the problem,--that
certain people are not happy together. Whether or not she
over-estimates 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 when nearly
everything within her own ken is laboristic? The explanation of this
enigma lies in a certain measure in the manner in which Australia has
set about making herself independent of her mother country and, while
working indirectly for the break-up of the empire, is becoming imperial
in her own small way. All these counter currents must be seen clearly
before understanding can follow. They whirl about the pillar of
imperialism--England--and have come out clearly since the war. They
hinge upon the mandates over the South Sea Islands.
2
While, 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, 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 be independent, to be able to develop in her own way, to expand, if
necessary, without danger of attack. This spirit is inherent in the
Australian temperament. When I told any Australian that I was traveling
and tramping on "me own," he could not understand it. He could not go
without a mate. He wanted to be sure that if he got into any scrape and
was with his back to the wall, his mate was there to help him. Still, he
wanted to fight alone. It did not seem to occur to any of these people
that a civilized man might go the wild world over and not have occasion
to fight. And this trait comes out in Australian international
relations. 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. But for the time at least she will not declare her independence
of Great Britain. She will not even give Britain the imperial preference
in trade which would compensate her for her trouble. But she did show in
the last war that she realized her responsibilities. In the Boer War it
was said that her assistance was merely for the sake of giving her men
adventure and practice for possible later use in her own defense. And in
this war conscription was defeated because, as it was openly declared,
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, Australia's attitude seems
extremely selfish, but to enthusiastic young Australia, with the wide
world before her, with a future that looks as promising as that of
America, it seems the only logical one. And as long as her potential
enemies do not take the trouble to show by deeds that they are not
enemies, her 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 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 Australia 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? What has happened
since peace was declared?
Australia and New Zealand were loudest in the protest against the return
of the South Sea Islands to the Germans. New Zealand soldiers had taken
Samoa; the Australian navy--what there was of it--had 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 these lands. Mr. Hughes of Australia urged
annexation. The people as a whole preferred that Great Britain should
annex them and guarantee the dominions against possible dangers from
enemy control. They felt they could not stand the cost of governing
them. They were even not averse to their being turned over to America.
They have come to realize that they were much better off before the war,
when they merely contributed their small quota to the support of the
navy; now Great Britain has intimated 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.
3
Before giving consideration to the developments 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 just as the Dominions had
their own problems within the empire. They afford them certain
commercial advantages: copra and cocoa from Samoa, phosphate from Nauru,
which alone has an estimated deposit amounting to forty-two million
tons. Nauru is of utmost importance to them because they are extensive
agricultural countries. It has been agreed that Great Britain take 42%,
Australia 42%, and New Zealand 16% of the export. The South Seas as a
whole supply 14.7% of the world's copra supply, and this may yet be
greatly increased. But this is nothing compared with 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
defense 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 island beyond.
The question of labor is bad enough for themselves, without having added
regions to worry about. Throughout the Pacific the problem of where to
secure man-power is pressing. Hawaii cries for labor; Samoa is in a
similar state; Fiji is troubled with the indentured Indians now there.
Go where one will, the islands would yield readily enough if cheap labor
were available. But Australia and New Zealand are not willing to exploit
these islands at the expense of cheap Asiatic labor which evolves into a
racial problem as soon as its returns become adequate. As for the
mandates both labor and capital in the South Seas are not keen about
these war orphans. A further problem is, what will happen when the
policy applied to island possessions conflicts 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. If they are to carry out the provisions of the mandate to
rule the islands for the good of the natives, they feel that they cannot
introduce Asiatic labor, which undermines the natives economically and
morally every time it is attempted. 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 between
Japan and Great Britain; they have driven a wedge into the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
Further, the whole question of mandates as it pertains to the Pacific
has completely opened new sores. The island of Yap, which has been in
the press so much of late, is an example. A blow at so vital a factor in
world relations as cables would be like a blow on the medulla oblongata.
Yet under that new and misleading term, "mandate," Yap became Japanese,
and the near future is not likely to know just what was done when
Germany's colonies were apportioned under its ruling. Yet what is fair
for Great Britain and the Dominions should be fair for Japan, and if
mandate means possession for one it ought to mean it for the other. But
where do we come in and where the peace of the Pacific? Already, as
stated elsewhere, Japan has had in mind the fortification of the
Marshall Islands. She is proceeding to fortify the Bonin Islands and the
Pescadores. She is, according to a very recent rumor,--and rumors are
really the only things one can secure in such matters,--establishing an
airship station on the southeast coast of Formosa,--not on the west,
which would shorten her distance to China, but on the east, cutting down
mileage to the Philippines. And we? Well, we know what we are about,
too. Hence, the sooner such matters as mandates are defined, the better
for the world.
4
How would these things work out with the new British arrangement as to
the control of the Dominions? We have seen that behind the whole
struggle for the development of an Australian navy was the desire for
greater independence. As long as the war lasted, no troublesome topics
were broached. Now that the war is over, one may expect the feathers to
begin to fly. The Dominions are not stifling their desire for greater
and greater freedom. They were involved in a colossal war without ever
having been consulted. They feel that now they have earned their right
to express judgment on international affairs. They realize that nothing
could be done effectively if Downing Street were hampered by several
wills at work at the same time. Yet it is obvious that the people of the
Dominions are concerned first with their own affairs, as nations, and
are devoted to Britain only in a secondary manner. They are now
conscious of their power, and are determined to wield it. They have made
and are doing everything to continue to make friends on 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, the Prime Minister 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."
But to show how complicated the whole position was, a Mr. W. Downie
Stewart, M.P., pointed out that
When New Zealand signed the Peace Treaty ... she took upon herself
the status of a power involving herself in all the rights and
obligations of one of the signatories.... That means that she may
have created for herself a new status altogether in the world of
foreign affairs, and instead of being an act to bring together more
closely the component parts of the Empire, it may be that it was
the first and most serious step toward obtaining our independence
and treating ourselves as a sovereign power.
And in connection with Samoa he says the time may come when, having been
recognized as an independent power, they will be told "we look to you in
future, whenever a question of internal affairs arises, to act as an
independent power, making peace or war on your own initiative."
Prime Minister Hughes, of Australia, however, has been steering a middle
course. He points to the dangers lying ahead, and to the absolute
necessity of keeping close to Britain. He urges that the alliance with
Japan be renewed, but in such a way as to leave no danger of losing
America's friendship. But he shows that the spirit of independence is
still uppermost in Australia. Declaring that "The June Conference has
not been called to even consider Constitutional changes," he adds: "It
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 in 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 a 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 going to be delayed only
because more pressing matters, such as the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and
Imperial Naval Defense, must be dealt with first. In other words, as
spokesman he realizes that "little" Australia, with its five million
people and its vast continent has asked too much of its parent to be
allowed to stand alone. So he is pouring oil on the troubled waters by
trying to devise an Anglo-Japanese Treaty "in such form, modified, if
that should be deemed proper, as will be acceptable to Britain, to
America, to Japan, and to ourselves."
But there is a third consideration in this whole question, and that is
Japan. What is Japan going to say about it all? For some time 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 of Japanese
journals, has boldly advocated its abrogation. The reason for both
British and Japanese indifference is obvious. Russia and Germany are 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. As a protective alliance it has little more
to do except to guarantee Great Britain against Japan and Japan against
Great Britain. 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 has done
everything in her power to arouse public opinion against its renewal.
Nevertheless, Japan has been concerned enough for the renewal of the
alliance to make a departure from her age-long attitude toward the
imperial family that is extremely interesting if not illuminating. The
recent visit to England of Prince Hirohito, heir to the throne, while
meant to widen his grasp of world affairs, was certainly intended also
to arouse public feeling there in favor of Japan and the alliance. This
was the first time that any Japanese prince of the blood had left Japan.
He hobnobbed with the common people, a thing unheard of in Japan. But if
he succeeded in winning popular approval for the alliance, it was
doubtless 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 person by a Japanese policeman nearly brought down the wrath of the
czar upon Japan, and there was much explanation.
While Japan was anxious to have the alliance renewed, she argued that
England was more in need of it than she. America, she said, had somewhat
eclipsed England. 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 be able to live up to it, in the event of war
between Japan and America, only 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 enough to forego all
other considerations. On the other hand, a good deal of the pro-American
feeling in the colonies cannot be accepted too easily, for, as we have
seen, 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 Australasia condemned America in 1914-17. But both
the psychological and material elements in the situation point to an
absolutely united front in Australasia for America in event of all the
talk about war with Japan coming to a head. That is best illustrated by
a statement in the "Japan Chronicle." The editor says: "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, as they
did boldly at the Conference.
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 misread what is
going on in Asia. Let but those actions coincide with the promises made,
with the spirit of the alliance and with the constant expression of
amity and good-will, and we shall see the mist of war in the Pacific
clear as before the glories of the morning sun.
There seems, therefore, no justification for the renewal of the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance. It is to all intents and purposes virtually
dead. Alliances on the whole have proved themselves treacherous
safeguards. Is there not something which can be substituted for them?
Cannot coöperation among nations replace intriguing misalliances, with
their vicious secret diplomacy? One way has been launched, and in the
succeeding chapter its character will be analyzed.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CONSORTIUM FOR FINANCING CHINA
1
If all goes well, the open shop in international finance is a thing of
the past; at least so far as China goes. On May 11, 1920, exactly
eighteen months after the signing of the armistice, Japan formally
declared her willingness to enter the new consortium for lending money
to China, and on October 15, following, representatives of the British,
French, Japanese, and American banking-groups met in New York and there
signed the provisions by which they are for the next five years going to
finance China under what is known as the Consortium Agreement.
For a full year after the signing of the armistice, Great Britain,
France, and America had been ready to act in consort in the matter of
future loans to China, but Japan insisted on excluding from the terms of
the agreement international activity in Manchuria and Eastern Inner
Mongolia. These two provinces have virtually become Japanese territory.
Into these she has extended her railroads or added to those built by
Russia, and over these she watched as a hen over ducklings. And because
she strenuously sought to manoeuver the Allies into admitting her
prior rights to these regions, the consummation of the Consortium
Agreement was delayed and delayed. Japan finally yielded, at the same
time claiming that the powers conceded her special interests; while
they, through their chief representative, Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, claimed
that Japan waived these interests. We shall presently see what happened,
but in the meantime it is obvious that both yielded and both won
out,--and that no nation is to-day sufficiently powerful and
self-contained to be able to stand apart from the rest of the world. The
closed shop in international finance has been ushered in, and the union
of world bankers is now known as the Consortium.
In a chapter it is hardly possible to make more than a hasty survey of
so intricate a stretch of history. China before the war with Japan was
free from debt, but in order to meet the indemnity demanded by Japan she
was compelled to raise money abroad. The scramble among the foreign
powers to advance this money gave China certain advantages. Her own
capitalists had money enough to pay off this indemnity immediately, but
they did not trust their government and hoarded their funds. They knew
that with the Oriental system of "squeeze" only a fraction of it would
succeed in freeing their country.
Another factor conspired to introduce alien domination over China,--her
lack of railroads and modern industries. She had wealth, man-power,
everything that an isolated nation could possibly desire, but she was no
longer an isolated nation, and she had nothing that an active nation
among nations needed for its very existence. Instantly, along with the
loans, came concessions for railroad-building, and the development of
China began. So deeply was China getting embroiled in alien machinations
that five years later, seeing that the young emperor himself, Huang-Hsu,
was head-over-heels in love with Western ways, the reactionaries
precipitated the Boxer Uprising in 1900. This only resulted in another
overwhelming indemnity, which China has not yet succeeded in paying off.
Consequently, more loans had to be made, and more urgent still became
the necessity for means of transportation and for the modernization of
industry.
The Russo-Japanese War, which ordinarily might have meant a modicum of
relief to China, only succeeded in entrenching her enemy much more
securely at her very door, and another period of alien scrambling over
Chinese loans set in. Coöperation among various groups of foreign
bankers regardless of nationality was not unknown, for absolute
competition would most likely have been fatal. But thoroughly
thought-out getting together was, in view of the existing jealousy among
nations, inconceivable. Still, to such a pass had this suicidal
competition come that by 1909 a consortium was proposed which aimed to
include Russia, Japan, Germany, France, England, and America. It began
to work, but Secretary of State Knox made a proposal for the
neutralization and internationalization of the Manchurian railway system
which met with a cold no from Japan. Shortly afterward Japan made an
agreement with Russia which completely frustrated Knox's proposals, and
the thing virtually fell through.
In 1913, President Wilson took the matter in hand. He refused to become
a party to a scheme which, in his estimation, instead of working for the
rehabilitation of China and the Open Door bound her helplessly. And ever
since China has been getting "the crumby side" of every deal. For the
plan as it then existed had no provisions against the pernicious
practice of marrying China to one power after another with concessions,
without giving any guaranty of the preservation of her dower
rights,--freedom in her industrial and political affairs.
Russia then was Japan's "natural" enemy. Russia was threatening the
"very existence" of Japan. Yet when Knox's proposal came up, Japan was
ready to unite with Russia in order to keep the others out of Manchuria.
She had to use that argument to save her face. Bear this in mind, for we
shall presently see that a second time Japan used this argument in order
to keep the consummation of the consortium in abeyance. It was more than
a plea for special interests because of propinquity; it was a plea that
the peace and safety of the empire demanded it.
Propinquity! The pin in that word has pricked nearly every one who has
shown any interest in China, no matter where. Japan used propinquity as
a justification of her annexation of Korea, breaking her word to that
kingdom in so doing. Yet Japan contends that she never has broken her
word. Japan is a nation true to her word, but, like many another nation,
is loose in her wording. She has guaranteed the Open Door in Manchuria
and Mongolia,--and Korea. In Korea the door is shut, and Japan has made
entrance to the other spheres of little advantage. Ill-content with
penetration of these regions, she has, by means of her railroads there,
sought to divert the course of Chinese trade from Shanghai through
Manchuria and Korea and Japan. In this there is nothing intrinsically
wrong. But she goes farther and tries to exclude consortium activity in
other fields in these two provinces. But that these are not the only
slices of China she is after,--that they are, in fact, only
stepping-stones for the final domination of the great republic,--is
attested to by certain well-known facts in Far Eastern affairs.
Japan and her friends assert she never has broken her word; her enemies
declare she is sinister and not to be trusted. Neither statement is
correct. Her methods may sometimes be sinister, but no one who follows
events in the Far East is unaware of them, and Japan has taken no pains
to conceal them. Actions speak louder than words. But has Japan actually
never broken her word? We have already referred to Korea, whose
independence Japan has guaranteed by published treaty. During the war
Japan carried out the requirements of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but
Article V reads:
The High Contracting Parties agree that neither of them will,
without consulting the other, enter into separate arrangements with
another Power to the prejudice of the objects described in the
Preamble of this Agreement.
Notwithstanding this clear stipulation, Japan immediately after
capturing Kiao-chau from Germany, without consulting Great Britain as
herein provided, issued the Twenty-one Demands on China. Of these Group
V alone would have made a vassal state of China had she accepted them.
Knowledge of these were kept from Britain completely, but when they
finally leaked out, Japan vociferously denied them. Downing Street was
not pleased, but there was much to be done in Europe just then. In 1918,
Japan a second time made an arrangement with China without consulting
her ally, Great Britain. This time it was the Sino-Japanese Military
Agreement. At the moment Russia withdrew from the war and released the
German prisoners, and that was the excuse for imposing combined military
action under Japanese officers.
As though this were not enough, when the success of Germany on the
western front was at its height, Count Terauchi, Prime Minister and
arch-plotter in China, came out with a statement published by Mr.
Gregory Mason of the "Outlook" to the effect that it was not unlikely
that some understanding, if not alliance, might be effected between
Japan, Russia and Germany. And the rumors of such an understanding
having been actually arrived at, have since been shown to have had just
foundation.
Furthermore, since 1917, according to "Millard's Review" for April,
1920, Japan has lent China about 281,543,762 yen or thereabouts,
privately, for political and industrial purposes, for reorganization,
railway construction, munitions, canal improvements, flood relief,
wireless, forestry, war participation, and other undertakings.
These things must be recalled in considering the new consortium, as they
show what led up to its final consummation. These actions of Japan
indicate encroachment upon China to the extent of virtually closing the
Open Door. In this regard, the alliance has had a dual effect: while it
makes possible for Japan to go as far as Britain would dare go, and even
farther, on the other hand it tends to keep Japan in check. Hence, the
state of mind of the Japanese on the subject of the treaty has been
contradictory. They have regarded its renewal and its abrogation with
about equal anxiety. From a moral point of view, they dare not stand
alone in the world, being the only great autocracy remaining. Conscious
of their power and twitching under the restraint which the alliance
imposes, yet needing its support, they are trying to make it appear that
Great Britain needs it fully as much.
As far as Great Britain goes, the alliance was formed chiefly to
guarantee the interests of the empire, but also the Open Door and
China's integrity. That is, that Japanese Yen and British Sovereigns
should have full freedom to go to China to earn a living. Let us see
what the various treaties and understandings purport to accomplish.
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance assures "The preservation of the common
interests of all Powers in China by insuring the independence and
integrity of the Chinese Empire and the principle of equal opportunities
for the commerce and industry of all nations in China."
The Root-Takahira Understanding declares: "The Policy of both
Governments [Japanese and American], uninfluenced by any aggressive
tendencies, is directed to the maintenance of the existing _status quo_
in the region above mentioned and to the defense of the principle of
equal opportunity for commerce and industry in China." In other words,
without an alliance, America has secured from Japan an understanding
guaranteeing the integrity of China and the Open Door for her pet, the
Dollar. Hence, except for the fact that it made no promises to the
effect, "My Ally, right or wrong, but still my ally," this agreement
says that the American Dollar has as much right to earn a living in
China as the Yen has.
But in the meantime the Yen has been having it all his own way, for the
Sovereign and the Franc and the Dollar were very busy doing things in
Europe. And in good Oriental fashion the Yen has been breeding, and
breeding rapidly. He was going to China, as we have seen, by the million
and keeping China's interests and integrity, which all had guaranteed,
in a very feverish state, notwithstanding alliances and agreements born
and in embryo.
This, at bottom, is what the whole Far Eastern problem is,--all of the
governments seeking opportunities in China and mutually binding and
barring one another from aggression and concessions. They have all
guaranteed China's "integrity," but none, except America, has actually
lived up to the agreement, and China's integrity is rapidly ceasing to
be an integer.
Now, if that were all there was to it, debate would be childish, but
integers, like the atom, are not easily divided without creating
something new. The atom becomes an electron; and the integer, when a
nation, becomes a source of international conflict. Hence, it is of the
utmost importance that China remain an integer. The Anglo-Japanese
Alliance has failed to maintain China's integrity. The Root-Takahira
Agreement seemed to cover the ground well enough, but that it was not
sufficient is proved by the later necessity on the part of Mr. Lansing
to supplement it by his so-called "understanding" with Viscount Ishii.
However, that the Ishii-Lansing Agreement is loose and inadequate was
obvious on the face of it and it was shown to be absurd when the
Consortium Agreement was being negotiated. It seems that
Secretary-of-State Lansing, realizing that his "agreement" with Ishii
was being translated into a Monroe Doctrine of Asia, as it was never
intended to be, fostered the new Consortium Agreement in order to throw
a ring round the Ishii-Lansing Agreement and define its limitations.
With the very first approach the promoters of the consortium made to
Japan, Japan, as we have seen, began eliminating from its scope
everything that propinquity permitted, threatening not only the
consortium but the various previous agreements. I state these facts not
to condemn Japan, but to delve into the psychology of the powers who, at
the Peace Conference at Versailles, came to the conclusion that the only
solution for the situation in the Far East was a coöperative scheme.
They must be borne in mind in order to understand why Japan withheld
from concurring, and finally yielded.
2
America was viewing all this with no little apprehension. Matters in the
Far East were extremely precarious at the time she entered the war. It
was in order to reassure Japan and merely as a restatement of issues
that the Ishii-Lansing Agreement was made. Japan's propinquity was
recognized. But it was also recognized that the Open Door was being
walled up. Hence, the American Government, which had withdrawn from the
Sextuple Consortium, suggested that a new consortium agreement be made
in which the four leading powers take equal part. These powers had been
drawn closer together during the war, and that concord was to be taken
advantage of before it had a chance to dissipate.
At the time that I wrote the article on "Lending Money to China" for the
"World's Work," August, 1920, the whole consortium scheme was shrouded
in mystery. Since then the correspondence that took place between the
powers has in part been published. The way it developed is worthy of
being outlined.
The American bankers had been asked by the Government to enter the
proposed consortium. They were not over-enthusiastic about it, for at
the time they felt they had enough demand at home and in Europe for
such funds as they could command. They realized that at that time (July,
1918) they would be expected to carry, with Japan, both England and
France, but they agreed that "such carrying should not diminish the
vitality of the membership in the four-Power group." But they did
stipulate that "One of the conditions of membership in such a four-Power
group should be that there should be a relinquishment by the members of
the group either to China or to the group of any options to make loans
which they now hold, and all loans to China by any of them should be
considered as a four-Power group business."
Lansing replied to the bankers, accepting their stipulations, obviously
his main intention in working for the consortium being, as I have said,
to encircle the problem with a view to defining its limitations so as to
make it impossible for Japan to interpret his agreement with Ishii too
broadly.
These communications were transmitted to the British Foreign Office,
prompting a reply from Mr. Balfour on August 14, 1918, wherein he
inquired whether it was the intention of the American Government to
enter the $100,000,000 loan to China for currency reform which was then
under consideration and toward which Japan had already made two separate
advancements; and whether it was the intention of the United States to
confine activities to administrative loans or to include industrial and
railway enterprises as well. Lord Reading made inquiry of the State
Department and determined that both types of loans had been considered.
It is obvious from these communications that both Japan and Great
Britain wished to retain their special interests in regard to the
existing railway and industrial loans, and balked at their being pooled
with those of the consortium. But England was ready enough from the
beginning to forego these. The United States held "that industrial as
well as administrative loans should be included in the new arrangement,
for the reason that, in practice, the line of demarcation between those
various classes of loans often is not easy to draw."
Everything went along smoothly until Japan was consulted, and then it
was found that while she was willing enough to enter into a consortium
for the whole of China, she was emphatically unwilling to have Manchuria
and Mongolia included. From the very beginning, the American, British,
and French banking-groups and governments most decidedly refused to
accede to Japan's demands in this matter, declaring that such a
rendering would simply open up the sores of spheres-of-interests and
concession-hunting, and completely nullify the purposes and intentions
of the consortium. The Japanese argument is amusing. When Japan first
encroached upon Manchuria and Mongolia, it was because of danger to her
safety from Czarist Russia. Now she was face to face with Bolshevist
Russia, and she trembled for her safety in these terms:
Furthermore, the recent development of the Russian situation,
exercising as it does an unwholesome influence upon the Far East,
is a matter of grave concern to Japan; in fact, the conditions in
Siberia, which have been developing with such alarming precipitancy
of late, are by no means far from giving rise to a most serious
situation, which may at any time take a turn threatening the safety
of Japan and the peace of the Far East, and ultimately place the
entire Eastern Asia at the mercy of the dangerous activities of
extremist forces. Having regard to these signals of the imminent
character of the situation, the Japanese Government all the more
keenly feel the need of adopting measures calculated to avert any
such danger in the interest of the Far East as well as of Japan.
Now, South Manchuria and Mongolia are the gate by which this
direful influence may effect its penetration into Japan and the Far
East to the instant menace of their security. The Japanese
Government are convinced that, having regard to the vital interests
which Japan, as distinct from the other Powers, has in the regions
of South Manchuria and Mongolia, the British Government will
appreciate the circumstances which compelled the Japanese
Government to make a special and legitimate reservation
indispensable to the existence of the state and its people....
The utter fallacy of this is obvious. The consortium was not a
miracle-worker. Its efforts would necessarily extend over a series of
years; its principals were as opposed to Bolshevism as Japan was. But
there was Japan,--bureaucratic, imperialistic Japan,--shedding tears
over the prospect of what might happen to her people from Bolshevism if
the consortium were permitted to take a share in the development of
Manchuria and Mongolia,--to which she has no right other than that of
her might.
No pressure such as could be said to be in the nature of an ultimatum to
join the consortium was exerted, of course, but it was obvious that
unless Japan withdrew her objections the consortium would not
materialize. Japan made an effort to get the other powers to make some
written statement or accept her formula securing to her these special
rights; but the others were adamant. Japan specified just what she
feared,--the construction of other railroads.
The United States replied:
The American Government cannot but acknowledge, however, its grave
disappointment that the formula proffered by the Japanese
Government is in terms so exceedingly ambiguous and in character so
irrevocable that it might be held to indicate a continued desire on
the part of the Japanese Government to exclude the American,
British, and French banking groups from participation in the
development, for the benefit of China, of important parts of that
republic, a construction which could not be reconciled with the
principle of the independence and territorial integrity of China.
It is interesting to note that in all these communications, the Japanese
Government is constantly referring to its own special interests and
dangers, whereas the others repeat and repeat their concern for the
integrity of China. It may be, after all, that the Japanese Government
is the more honest, though America's stand is unchallengeable.
I have dwelt sufficiently, I believe, with the emanations from behind
departmental doors. The human elements are much more interesting.
Suffice it to say that Japan held out for a long, long time, and things
seemed hopeless. At last, after an understanding with all those
concerned outside Japan, Mr. Thomas W. Lamont went to the Far East as
spokesman for the other powers, to carry on negotiations with Japan.
Unfortunately--whether by design or not I have no way of telling--an
American business mission also went to Japan at that time, upon the
invitation of Baron Shibusawa, popularly known as the "Schwab of Japan."
Everybody got these two parties mixed, but I have since been very
earnestly assured that Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, who headed the business
mission, had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Lamont's mission. Be that
as it may, it was certain even from the twin-reports that while the
business mission was being lavishly entertained, Mr. Lamont was seeing
all that he wanted to see, and saying all that he wanted to say. The
mission was discussing with Junnosuke Inouye, Governor of the Bank of
Japan, and Baron Shibusawa, and others such questions as Japanese
immigration, the Shantung situation, the invasion of Siberia, and the
submarine cables. All that the world at large got as to the decisions
arrived at was the fact that views were exchanged in a friendly manner,
and some delightfully amusing articles from the pen of Julian Street who
was the scribe of the occasion.
In the meantime, Lamont, who seems to be a man for whom a dinner has
little attraction, left the impression on the Japanese Government that
Japan and Japan alone would lose by holding back. When he left Japan, to
go to China, the Japanese Government was still determined on securing
from the powers exemption for Manchuria and Mongolia.
But a series of subsequent events helped Japan to make up her mind.
First and foremost among these was the financial slump in Japan, which
was seriously embarrassing. This was followed by financial stringency in
Manchuria and the eagerness of the directors of the South Manchurian
Railway,--who are at present involved in a far-reaching scandal for a
loan which could not be floated in Japan and which was sought in
America. Third, as either cause or effect, was the situation in China.
China, on account of Japan's courtship of the Peking militarists and the
rape of Shantung, had instituted a boycott of Japanese goods the
bitterness and force of which Japan had learned to respect. These
circumstances alone might have been enough to drive a nation to
desperation; but a sensitive nation like Japan would suffer these things
a thousand times over in silence. One thing Japan cannot stand, and that
is the distrust of the world.
And the Lamont party found from the moment it left Nagasaki for China
until the moment it set foot again in Shimonoseki on its return that
there was not a white man nor a yellow man who had a good word to say
for Japan. Japan was an isolated country socially,--isolated a thousand
times more definitely than she is geographically. And the good sense of
the Japanese has brought them to a realization that that does not pay.
Japan wants the good-will of the world, and she wants it sorely.
When Mr. Lamont arrived in China he did not find the same atmosphere he
had found in Japan. The fact that he had been in Japan first added to
the suspicions of the Chinese. They had many things to ponder over and
be suspicious about. China remembered the processes of westernization
which she had had to answer with the Boxer Uprising in 1900. But China
has never forgotten the return of the Boxer indemnity by the United
States.
In Peking some students threatened to stone the hotel at which Mr.
Lamont stopped. A few came as special representatives of the student
body, according to one report, and quizzed Mr. Lamont for two hours.
They left apparently satisfied. Their strong plea was that no loans be
made to the Government until peace between North and South was
established.
The press of China and the people of China were divided. Some of the
Japanese, who owned papers in China, sought to alienate the sympathy of
the Chinese for America; some tried other tactics. The Chinese
militarists in Peking who had tasted of the flesh-pots of Nippon were
not over-anxious to put themselves on a diet. Chinese patriots saw in
the new consortium a rope of a different fiber. The consortium party
found itself double-crossed by obvious agencies.
In a measure this was justified all the way round, for the undertaking
was shrouded in secrecy on many points which could not but discredit it
in the eyes of many. Perhaps this was unavoidable, but it was none the
less natural that China should be wary. In her own sort of way, China
was taking inventory. The last loan of $125,000,000 only arrived in
China as $104,851,840 after deductions for underwriting had been paid.
And before the sum can be paid off, it will have cost China $235,768,105
by way of interest and commissions. And China knows that only a small
part of this tremendous sum had gone into actual constructive work.
Yet China needs assistance. Railroads are the world's salvation and
China's crying need. But for lack of railroads, China would to-day be
the most powerful nation on earth, financially and politically. And the
fact that her railroads are short while those of other countries are
long makes of her a prey to those tentacles of trade against which she
is helpless. China has to-day only about 6,500 miles of railroad: she
needs 100,000. She who built the rambling wall has still only
foot-paths. She needs 100,000 miles of highway. Her canals, which a
thousand years ago kept the country open to trade and partially free
from famine, have fallen into disrepair. She needs telegraphs,
telephones, wireless. If only the money she borrowed went into such
enterprises China would repay the world a thousandfold.
It was therefore natural that China should be suspicious, and likewise
natural that she should be willing to be convinced. What young China
wanted most was definite and outspoken assurance that her integrity as a
nation would not be jeopardized.
The leading Chinese newspapers expressed their gratitude at repeated,
assurances of due respect being given to Chinese public opinion and
promises to refrain from interfering in her internal affairs. But
others, like the China "Times," said:
The British plan to control our railroads jointly, and the American
plan is to monopolize our industries jointly, while the Japanese
plan to monopolize all our railroads, mines, forestry, and
industries. Any one of these plans will put our destiny in their
hands.
It also declared: "Although it has been reported that Japan will make
certain compromises, it is hard to say to what extent these will go."
To this Mr. Lamont said: "It now remains for the Japanese Government
formally to confirm this desire [of the bankers to join]. If they fail
to do so and if Japan remains outside the consortium, I should think
that Japan might prove to be the chief loser." He next made it clear to
China that she would first have to establish peace if she is to be
helped. Aside from the reorganization of the currency, the consortium is
going to see to it that a sufficiently safe audit system is established,
so that it will be sure that all loan expenditures go as far as they
should into the properties themselves. Further, the Chinese Government,
in order to save some cash, refused to pay on certain bearer bonds which
had come back rather curiously. These were formerly German property
bonds on the Hukuan Railway loan which Germany had evidently sold off
before the war. They had now come back by way of England and America.
The Chinese Government wanted proof of transference on bearer bonds. Mr.
Lamont pointed out to them that this action would totally discredit them
and that the ability to secure further investments would be very slim
unless these were redeemed. Mr. Lamont then returned to Japan.
Then it became known that the Japanese Government had finally given its
consent. In Japan, opinion ranged from imperialistic chauvinism to
liberal recognition of the consortium as a way out of the mess. On May
11 things came to a head. Mr. Lamont stated on his return to America
that:
The fact that Japan has come into the Consortium for China without
reservations should be made clear. The agreement that the Japanese
banking group with the approval of its government, signed at Tokio,
leaves nothing to be desired on this point; but in Japan, while
there was perfect readiness by all authorities to announce that an
understanding had been reached, there seems to be some reluctance
to make public any statement that the Japanese Government had
withdrawn its reservations as to Manchuria and Mongolia. It is only
fair, therefore, that every member of the American banking group
and American investors generally should clearly understand the
facts.
Still Viscount Uchida, the Foreign Minister, insisted:
While other powers can afford to regard the new Consortium solely
as a business matter Japan is otherwise situated, since her vital
national interests, such as national defense and economic
existence, are apt to be involved in enterprises near her border.
When the three other governments expressly declared to Japan that
they not only did not contemplate acts inimical to her vital
interests but were ready to give assurance sufficiently
safeguarding them, the Japanese Government decided to confirm the
Paris agreement.
What Japan expected the powers to say other than just that is a matter
for diplomats to play with. To the common person this statement is
absolutely meaningless. It is a generalization which leaves the door
open for Japan to object to loans for any work which she feels will
jeopardize her national life or vitally affect her "sovereignty." Any
railroad scheme which might become a competitor by diverting freight
from Manchurian lines owned by Japan would be a menace to Japan's
sovereignty.
For instance, it seems understood that among these vital interests are
certain loans to Chinese capitalists and corporations. And doubtless
Japan would right now much rather have the millions which she has sunk
in China in her own hands. But if these loans are recognized, what
guarantee is there that even under the nose of the consortium further
"loans" will not be made?
Is it likely that Japan will relinquish her hold on the South Manchurian
Railroad, which in her opinion is of strategic importance? If the
consortium is to have no say in such vested interests, obtained before
its conclusion, how is it going to secure itself against these very
interests being used as a means of breaking up the unity of the
cooperative enterprises? How is so sweeping a clause going to be kept
within bonds? If Japan is left in full control of the Manchurian
railways, if the consortium has not really dissolved the Sino-Japanese
Military Agreement, if Japan is to control the German-built railways in
Shantung, how is the consortium going to better things in the Far East?
There is altogether too much silence on many points in the consortium
project for the world to have any real assurance. Secret diplomacy
having been discredited, it seems that bankers have themselves broken
into diplomacy. Of course, individuals have a perfect right in this
modern world to discuss whatever matters they like,--and governments,
too, for that matter,--but it should seem that the people as a whole
whose money, whose happiness, and whose lives are involved have a right
to know to the last detail what has been traded off in the making of the
consortium. China evidently was placated by Lamont with full
explanations of what the consortium intended. In brief it was this:
The agreement calls for the pooling of all such interests of the several
powers in China as had not been already developed separately, in a "full
and free partnership." In this way it is hoped that future spheres of
influence will be eliminated, jealousies between the powers be done away
with, and Chinese grafters be prevented from pitting one power against
the other for their own selfish ends. Chinese complain that now they
will not be able to secure loans on a competitive basis and that
therefore they are being more surely strangled. That is partially true.
But it is also true that corrupt Chinese officials have been keeping
China and the world in turmoil for their own greedy ends. Both of these
things must be stopped if peace is to obtain in the Pacific.
The guarantees given to China were to the effect that in no
circumstances would the consortium undertake such private enterprises as
banking, manufacturing, or commerce, but would devote itself entirely to
the construction of railroads, the laying of highways, and the
reorganization of China's currency. The consortium was to make loans to
the central or provincial government only, but as a condition of their
advancement, peace between the North and South was urged. The consortium
was not to interfere in the domestic affairs of China. Loans were to be
made only with the approval of the governments behind the bankers. Nor,
of course, can you compel any one to borrow money from you, wherein
China has the whip hand. Herein lies a very important possibility.
China has plenty of money. Its bankers hoard enough to clean up the
country's debts in no time. But they cannot trust their governmental
officials; they never have trusted them. But just lately these bankers
have been awakening to the wisdom of foreign financial methods, and are
adopting them. This may be the first good result of the consortium.
On the other hand, should the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance
displease China, she may refuse to recognize the consortium. What then?
China has set out to strangle the alliance, which was formed without
consulting her. But we speculated enough in the last chapter to show
that should the consortium really work, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance
would cease to have any functional value.
But there are dangers in the consortium,--and even in the coöperative
development of China. If Japan joins whole-heartedly in the consortium,
she may be the greatest gainer. For here are all the powers mutually
developing China, laying railways, and opening up the resources of the
country. Who, more than Japan, is going to tap China's unlimited raw
supplies,--the coal in Shansi, for instance, which is enough to supply
the world's needs for a thousand years? And should Japan in the end
still seek the hegemony of the East, she could utilize these railroads
and resources for her own aggrandizement. Who could stop her? Have not
the separate governments given Japan their assurance that she "need have
no reason to apprehend that the consortium would direct any activities
affecting the security of the economic life and national defense of
Japan?"
There is, it is said, only little left to be told, but that little may
be more than enough. But if China is really helped to strength and
independence, then the greatest menace that has ever faced mankind will
have been averted, and China, a country with the oldest culture in the
world, will have been won back to civilization. Not in emasculated
alliances but in a healthy cooperation will the peace of the Pacific be
preserved. And the consortium, as things are in the world, is the first
example of international good sense known to modern history.
Now, the Consortium Agreement is not an idealistic scheme. The powers
recognize that the future peace of the world depends on how they manage
their affairs in China. If the consortium throws all secrecy to the
winds and comes out openly and at all times for the principles on which
it was formed and for which the several governments have guaranteed
their protection to these banking-groups, what use is there going to be
for the alliance? Perhaps, to paraphrase President Wilson's statement
when he went across the Atlantic with his challenge for the freedom of
the seas, Great Britain and Japan may now have to say to the world:
"Gentlemen, the joke's on us. Why, if the consortium works in China
there is going to be no need of an alliance!"
CHAPTER XXIV
UNCHARTED SEAS
We have taken a long journey together. The main routes along the Pacific
which are the highways of our past and future intercourse have been
inspected. But the great Pacific basin is not yet everywhere safe for
navigation. There is, I understand, a scientific expedition now at work
thoroughly charting every inch of that wonderful watery waste. There is,
I know, a scientific body under the directorship of Professor Gregory of
Yale for the thorough research of ethnological materials among the races
of the Pacific. But aside from the efforts of individuals, politically
and socially and hygienically, there is nothing going on to bind the
peoples together. I had nearly forgotten that a year ago we did send out
a political expedition to the Far East, a Congressional expedition which
spent four days in Japan and, I daresay, a week in China. Otherwise, we
are still at the mercy of individual scribes, who, like myself, have
their own points of view, their own motives, and their own reactions.
For years I have read religiously every interview reported in the press,
with spokesmen for one country or the other on the Pacific. The mass of
clippings I have accumulated I have time and again sifted carefully for
some word or sign that might indicate the real problem. But I have
failed to find any. I cannot lay the responsibility on the press. It
rests with the individuals who have been asked to give their opinions.
But as far as substance goes, they may all best be illustrated by a
sentence from the speech of Viscount Uchida, the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, delivered before the Imperial Diet. I have the speech as it
came to me from the East and West News Bureau. The sentence I have
selected, for the translation of which the Viscount is of course not
responsible, is this: "It is true that this friendly relationship is not
without an occasional mingling of incidents; that is almost inevitable
in any international relations." All speeches such as these are
remarkably free from definition. Speech after speech is reported, all
plead for understanding, but in none of these is any basis for
understanding given. Sentiment will not dissolve international
suspicion.
Right here I should like to make it clear that Japan is not the only
nation that is being maligned, as some would have us believe. Exclusion
is practised not against Japan alone, though in other cases it is
practised in a different manner. The Honolulu Chamber of Commerce
excludes white men from entering its sacred sanctums nearly as much.
Unless you are approved by the chamber, you will find it very difficult
to take up a profession. As I look back over my years of wandering in
the farthermost reaches of the Pacific I recall incident after incident
that is indicative of what is toward.
Wherever competition is rife, the competitors lay themselves out to be
courteous and friendly, but in the long runs that dissect the waters of
that ocean, so secure have many of the steamship companies felt that
decency has frequently been forgotten. The carelessness of the rights of
the unhappy voyager who merely pays for a privilege on the Union
Steamship Company is not conducive to international good feeling. The
lack of common courtesy on the part of many of the employees of this
company is proverbial even among the Britons in Australasia. Peoples in
the goings and comings gain their impressions of countries very often
from such samples as are forced upon their attention en route. And over
the bars in the distant lands compatriots give vent to recriminations of
the compatriots of other nations in a manner not flattering to either.
One of the most unfortunate features of the whole problem of the Pacific
is that only too often the men who are accountable for the most serious
sources of dislike are men who at home would be kept in check by a
healthy fear of social ostracism. But once a white man enters trade in
an Oriental port as a clerk or salesman, he seems to consider it his
bounden duty as a representative of his country to run down the natives
as viciously as he dare. I have seen white men who at home would hold
their tongues lest they offend some decent woman's ears with their vile
language assume an air of superiority toward the men amongst whom they
are living that is certainly not conducive to international amity. I
have heard them express a longing for a chance some day to come back and
"lick" these natives that, considering the human sufferings involved, is
at the very depths of unrighteousness.
Nor is this feeling directed against Orientals only. I have heard
serious statements from Americans against the British that are not only
unjustifiable but astounding. And the British themselves maintain a
lordly superiority to all others. The boast that "the sun never sets on
English soil" is illustrative of a certain provincialism among Britons
that is not healthful from an international outlook. Britons generally
take such routes hither and thither as leave them always within the
British Empire, and the result is a dull point of view with regard to
foreign lands. To be regarded as a foreigner is a source of great
irritation to a Briton; he cannot stand this "slur" when passing through
America. Even within the British dominions themselves there are childish
prides that make understanding impossible,--the New Zealander being
against the Australian and both against everybody else.
These antagonisms more than all else are at the bottom of the confusion
obtaining to-day in the Pacific. Their utter folly and futility are
simply suicidal. Were it not better that we study carefully the social
and political ideals of every race on the Pacific and see in what
manner such changes may be effected as will preclude conflict? Is not
America's preëminence in the Pacific to-day due to her return of the
Boxer indemnity, to her attempt at winning the sympathy of the Filipino,
to her friendship for China? Cannot the sympathy and the emulation of
races supplant their enmity and jealousy? In the manner in which the
various peoples of the Pacific turn to their problems lies permanent
peace. There is already a considerable veering round of national
conceptions toward the recognition of our common welfare being dependent
on mutual development, as in the case of the consortium.
One gets tired of the perennial expressions of felicitation of the
"leaders" of states, of the sentimental balderdash which emanates from
international "functions" of the world's "best" people, who don one
another's garments and pledge one another eternal affection, of those
who assure us that the fact that one nation has placed with "us" an
order for the latest type of electrically driven super-dreadnaught
indicates the love and fellowship obtaining between us. Only four years
ago, Viscount Bryce admitted that "Most of us, however, know so little
about the island groups of the Pacific, except from missionary
narratives and from romances, like those of Robert Louis Stevenson, that
the recent action of the white peoples in the islands is practically a
new subject, and one which well deserves to be dealt with." And despite
all those speeches, despite all the international societies--that exist,
it seems, only to entertain celebrities, not to uncover
misunderstandings that they may truly be corrected--real irritation
comes from the average man's notions, and to him should attention be
directed.
Those vast spaces to which Viscount Bryce referred, once regarded with
such awe, are now criss-crossed with a veritable network of steamers.
They have made short shrift of the distances between the East and the
West. We may invite one another across for week-ends, but not
necessarily for life, and the impressions each brings away with him will
go toward making up the sum total of what is going to be the thought of
the Pacific. Are we to navalize the Pacific or to civilize it? Are we to
convert every projecting rock into a menace, or are we to be honest
navigators exposing every treacherous island for the safety of all
races? Are we to scramble for interests in the Pacific, or are we to
help races there to rise to strength and independence, so that each will
be a healthy buffer against aggression? The "Valor of Ignorance" is not
to be met with the blindness of force.
I sought to obtain a bit of information once from a dispenser of
"understanding" located in New York, but he tried to lead me off the
scent. It was not, he feared, to his country's credit that such and such
facts be known. He was very sensitive, and gave me no assistance. This
covering up of our weaknesses before the eyes of our neighbors is
certain to lead to disaster. This putting our best foot forward, only to
have the other ready for a nasty kick, is not going to bring about
amity. If there is an ideal worthy of emulation in any race in the
Pacific, we ought to know and honor it. If there is a sore which needs
scientific political treatment, let us attend to it. Our problems are
well defined, if we will but look for them; our obligations are clear,
if we will but undertake them courageously.
We are not going to solve our problems as we did with the coming of
Japan into the range of the world,--by adulation. To-day we are
suffering from the effects of having made the Japanese feel that they
are perfect and to be adored. The problem is one of unadulterated
education, of education in the simple arts of self-support among the
primitive people, and self-government among the more advanced.
But if our efforts are to be fruitful we must avoid abstract education
which leads to hair-splitting. It is to be education in the
fundamentals,--education in the use of hands and brain for self-support
and mutual happiness founded on justice. It is to be education of
ourselves as well as of those we wish to elevate.
But the problem is even deeper than that. Merely elevating other races
will not preclude conflict. Germany was well educated and on a level
with, if not in many ways superior to the nations roundabout her. Her
very development created friction. And the talk of Japan as a menace is
largely due to the fact that Japan has grown out of the lowly state in
which her exclusionists had placed her for two hundred and fifty years.
As yet China is no "menace," for China has still her teeming hordes who
curtail one another's usefulness.
Nor, as I have said in the chapter on Australasia, will the problem of
our relationship with the people of the Pacific be solved by the effort
of labor to keep up its own high standards by the exclusion of those of
lower standard.
Nor will the problem be solved by our assuming more and more
protectorates over simple nations unused to the tricks of diplomacy.
Our problem will be solved only by working assiduously for international
coöperation. Our problem will clear away when all nations establish
departments open to civil-service appointments of people who will enter
the field of education and uplift work without other compensation
possible than that of an honest salary. There should be a Department of
Education for the Pacific in which the people of the United States do
out of their own funds what we did in China out of the moneys paid in
the Boxer indemnity. This department would study the races of the
Pacific with a view to finding what are the special requirements of each
particular people and how they can be supplied. There should be a Bureau
of Social Hygiene and Sanitary Engineering recruited from the American
student body with luring pay, drawing thousands of young physicians and
engineers out into the various Pacific islands to study the questions of
the eradication of disease and the care of body and mind. There should
be a Bureau of Civics and International Law carrying to the peoples of
the Pacific whose simplicity lays them open to the chicanery of
political parasites the simple truths of human relationships as we
understand them. So the entire fabric of civilization might be spread
over the waters of the Pacific. But to guard against the possibility of
some sword piercing it and rending it must come the voice of
civilization calling shame upon the present practices of any nation now
operating in the Pacific in other than pacific ways.
All this must be done not by America alone, but by all the people now in
a position to coöperate. Just as Japan codified her laws and changed
them in conformity with those of the West, so as to regain full rights
over foreigners in her own territory, so must all the nations reorganize
their laws in conformity with the best interests of all. There must be
judges in all lands who know the laws of other lands as well as their
own and an attempt be made to bring them all in greater conformity to a
universal standard of justice, of right and wrong. There must be
educators set to work studying the educational systems of nations on the
Pacific so as to bring the methods more and more in line with one
another. There must be departments of health advising one another how so
to remedy conditions as to eliminate the danger of spread of plague. It
is not enough that we have an excellent department of health vigilant in
the exclusion of plague; our department of health should co-operate with
that of Japan and of Australasia, and of every island in the Pacific. In
other words, we must realize that the problems of every group anywhere
in the world affect for good or ill our own welfare.
Our problem in the Pacific is therefore ten times more complicated than
that which faced the powers in Morocco, Africa and Persia. While the
diversity of nations was great in Europe, in the Pacific it is greater.
But while the relationship in the Balkans was in some cases close, not
only in sheer propinquity, but in development, in the Pacific not only
is the blood running in the veins of the races in many cases extremely
alien, one to the other, but the distances separating them in space and
in development make coöperation and getting together difficult. This
makes it easier for selfish nations to place themselves as wedges
between them. The scramble after mandates in the Pacific indicates the
recognition of their importance.
But in inverse ratio,--in so far as the races of the Pacific have none
of the irritating intimacy which obtained in Europe, the problem is
clearer. The repetition of the intrigues which Germany, through her
daughter on the Russian throne, could carry out, is here impossible.
Only once in my knowledge has royal intermarriage been attempted and it
proved a failure. The Japanese changed their law against the marriage of
their royalty with royalty of another race in favor of Korea--and to
forestall a Japanese-Korean union we are told, the Ex-Emperor of Korea
committed suicide. Insurrection followed. The marriage has since taken
place, but Korea is no longer an independent empire.
The more pronounced differences of race should perhaps be recognized,
but recognized with sympathy. Each race then presents its own problems.
But over all must come recognition of the commonalty of man. This does
not mean international fawning and flattering of one another. Racial
equality must be admitted, but not as Japan sponsored it,--with the
existence of her own castes and classes, and the oppression of
Korea,--but in full recognition of the latent possibilities in all
peoples. Japan regards herself as infinitely superior to all mankind.
So do we. But that must be replaced by realization of the historical
worthiness of Orientals as well as Caucasians.
We have in the Pacific, as has been seen, a great number of races in
varying degrees of development. Most of them know little of one another
and hate one another less. They have never been close enough for serious
conflict, and they need never be. We can instil into them through
educational channels a regard for one another which all the love-potions
in the world could not pour into the races of Europe, inured to war and
slaughter and religious bigotry.
There is still one great obstacle in the way of a peaceful solution of
the problems of the Pacific, an obstacle that can be overcome only by a
rapid evolution or revolution. Even as the forces for the greater
liberation of the people are at work in China, now bound no more by her
own swaddling-clothes of imperialism, so must they be encouraged in
Japan, whose bureaucracy is to-day entangling not only her own liberal
elements, but a greater number of nations in the Pacific. Jingoists
speak of the yellow peril as though it were a single thing, elemental
and simply conquerable. But it is not very different from the peril of
imperialism everywhere.
In the working out of the problems of the Pacific, Japan is the farthest
from our ken. Our relations with Australia and New Zealand and with
Canada--apart from Great Britain--are already more or less intimate.
Just as Japan is beginning to realize that she must make China her
friend, so must we four Western nations on the Pacific realize the
fullness of the possibilities in coöperation. There should be an
exchange of opinion, a greater supply of news from one to the
other,--news of personal, educational and geographical value, in the
nature of local news. With these four countries as a nucleus and the
same thing going on between China and Japan, the problem of the East
understanding the West will be simplified.
But we must show that we appreciate the fine points in the Oriental
civilizations, while the Orient will have to remove from its conscience
the hatred of the foreigner. The millennium? Not in the least. Just the
beginning of our groping toward human commonalty.
APPENDIX
A
Mr. Sydney Greenbie,
New York, U.S.A.
DEAR SIR:
Your letter of 26th March has been forwarded to me from Samoa. I
relinquished the Administration when Civil Government was established
there.
The Chief whose funeral you saw was TAMASESE, a son of the late King
Tamasese.... MATAAFA, the son of King Mataafa, died in the influenza
epidemic in 1918 and I dug his grave with my own hands, everyone working
hard to avoid a pestilence.
The Chief TAMASESE was made much of by the Germans when they were in
Samoa, was taken a trip to Berlin but was not allowed to visit England.
He remained pro-German to the end; one of the few Samoans who did so.
On his death-bed Tamasese remembered a promise made to his deceased
father (he said the spirit of his father appeared to him and reproached
him) that he would bring the late King's bones to the family burying
place and he could not die in peace until this was done. I was
approached in the matter and at once sent a Government launch with the
family party to get the bones, and they were put in a coffin and buried
in the family ground. This done, Tamasese passed away in peace in a very
short time.
You are probably aware that when Tamasese's body was lying in state the
hair was sprinkled with gold dust and a German crown made of white
flowers was placed on the coffin. The widow had a Samoan house built
alongside the tomb on the Mulinuu peninsula and lived in it for some
months in spite of the stench which came from the tomb. She died in the
influenza epidemic in 1918, having in the meantime named one of the
native Samoan judges.
I am sorry the information I can give you is so meagre, but I have not
my records here as yet.
Yours faithfully,
ROBERT LOGAN,
Colonel.
Weycroft,
Axminster,
Devon, England,
13th July, 1921.
B
DEAR MR. GREENBIE:
Your letter of Feb. 20th was forwarded on to me here, and reached me
yesterday.
I regret that I cannot tell you definitely as to the celebration held in
Samoa in 1915, in honor of the late "King"; I returned to Samoa in 1917
after an absence of some years, and heard nothing of it. I think,
however, that the celebration must have been for Mataafa, as the natives
told you that the deceased Chief had been the favorite of Mataafa.
Stevenson rather despised Laupepa who although an amiable man and the
rightful King, was of feeble character, and when broken up by the
suffering and indignity of his deportation by the Germans, weakly ceded
the throne to Mataafa out of gratitude for the stand taken by the latter
on his behalf during the years of his exile.
My own conviction is that, had R. L. S. lived a few years longer, he
would have realized that his championship of Mataafa was a mistake, and
precipitated the very event he wished to avoid--the German rule in
Samoa.
Very sincerely yours,
----------
C
Apia, Samoa,
October 5th, 1904.
A. M. Sutherland, Esq.,
San Francisco, U.S.A.
DEAR SIR:
The kind invitation extended to me by the members of the "Stevenson
Fellowship" through your welcome letter or the 17th August, 1904, has
been received by me with great delight. I thank you and the Committee
from the bottom of my heart for remembering me, and for including my
name in the long list of friends whom Tusitala has left behind to mourn
his irreparable loss. I would have very much liked to be present and
meet you all on this fitting occasion, but the fact is, my health and
old age will not permit me to cross the vast waters over to America. So
I send you many greetings wishing the "Stevenson Fellowship" every
success on the 13th November next. And whilst you are celebrating this
memorable day in America, we shall even celebrate it in Samoa. It is
true that I, like yourselves, revere the memory of Tusitala. Though the
strong hand of Death has removed him from our midst, yet the remembrance
of his many humane acts, let alone his literary career, will never be
forgotten. That household name, Tusitala, is as euphonious to our Samoan
ears as much as the name Stevenson is pleasing to all other European
friends and admirers. Tusitala was born a hero, and he died a hero among
men. He was a man of his word, but a man of deeds not words. When first
I saw Tusitala he addressed me and said: "Samoa is a beautiful country.
I like its people and clime, and shall write in my books accordingly.
The Samoan Chiefs may be compared to our Scotch Chiefs at home in regard
to their clans." "Then stay here with me," I said, "and make Samoa your
home altogether." "That I will, and even if the Lord calls me," was the
reply. Tusitala--story-writer--spoke the truth, for even now he is still
with me in Samoa. Truth is great and must endure. Tusitala's religion
and motto was: "Do ye to others as ye would have them do unto you."
Hence this noble, illustrious man has won my love and admiration, as
well as the esteem and respect of all who knew him. My God is the same
God who called away Tusitala, and when it has pleased Him for my
appointed time to come, then I will gladly join T. in that eternal home
where we meet to part no more.
With perfect assurance of my best wishes for your progress and
prosperity,--I remain, dear sir, cordially yours,
M. I.
C. C. MATAAFA
High Chief of Samoa.
D
April 24, 1921
DEAR MADAM:
Thank you very much for the letter which came some four months ago. I
read it over, over and over again to memorise every word of the letter,
and it was a glad toil. I thought of you and Mr. ... I thought of
Messrs. F.... D.... and R.... and Miss G...., every body to-gether and
every body separate that gave me untold happiness, and I heard the
throbs of my heart. I told to my wife who is very glad to hear from me.
As you know I got married in the year of 1913. And we have five children
now. Please don't be scared! Two boys and three daughters. Takako oldest
daughter six year, seven months old. Takashige, William (boy) four
years; Fuziko Elsie two years and nearly four months; Chiyeko, Lucie
eight months old. And this made me perfect papa, which is my joy and my
pride! Beside this I have thirty acres of orange orchard (four years
old) all is my own, and my wife's now which brought me four
(boxes-horses) (?) poor fruit year before last, and seventy two boxes
better fruit last year. I am expecting greater crop this fall. I read
Mr. ---- article about June drop in California Cultivator, and irrigated
my orchards last December and this year I started to wet from February
which no body does this in this visinity (orchardists of here keep
orchards with weeds and wild oats as high as my shoulder all winter and
they wait irrigation until orchards perfectly dry and cracke.) I am
taking care our orchards after Mr. ---- idea mostly with some of my own,
as I feel as it mine but all of them are a collection of idea of other
people's experiences.
I have debt of five thousand five hundreds dollars which need not to pay
interest except one thousand five hundred dollars. This is my joy and my
pride too, is it not?
Five children and five thousand five hundreds dollars debt are not big
job to carry on, for me, but they make me very busy indeed. For this
reason, I do not write to my friends, as often as I wish, of course I
can, if I do, like this one, but it is great strain for me now.
Therefore please will kindly excuse, I shall not write you again until
next Christmas probably.
Please remember me to Mr. ---- and All your family.
When you will come to Terra Bella to see Mr. ----.
When you have spare time, and when you thought of old servant, please
stop a moment at my humble dwelling place and give me chance to hear
your voice directly. That will be my honor, that which will encourage
me, if it is possible with Mr. F. P. It will be a greater honor for us.
Befor I ask you to come to see us, we should go to see you first, but
just excuse for the reasons as above written.
I shall leave the pen with prare of your sound health, and happiness.
God be with you.
From your old servant
--------
INDEX
Adelaide, 132, 146
Adler, 90
Africa, 391
Alaska, 5, 317
Albatross, 129 _et seq._
America: 10, 22, 100;
pioneer, problems of, 312, 314;
insular possessions of, 316 _et seq._;
adventures of, in Pacific, 317 _et seq._;
diplomacy of, in China, 326;
Japan in, 342 _et seq._;
Japanese immigration to, 345;
attitude of, toward Eastern affairs, 371 _et seq._
Ameridians, 6, 23, 25, 119
Andrews, C. F., cited on self-determination, 228
Andrews, Roy Chapman, quoted, 22
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 355, 357, 359-360, 363, 367, 381
Antarctic, 10
Anthropologists, 24
Antipodes: 9, 26, 76;
legislation in, 285 _et seq._
Apia: 87, 88, 100, 101, 105, 207;
a party in, 240 _et seq._
Arafua Sea, 139, 157
Aryans, 20
"Asahi Shimbun," quoted on American diplomacy, 326
Asia: relation of, to human existence, 6 _et seq._, 14, 18, 22;
culture of, 23;
Britain's rock in, 168-178
Atlantic, 141
_Atua_, 76
Auckland: 13, 110, 114;
market, 272;
Art Gallery, 118
"Auckland Daily News," 351
_Aurora_, Shackleton's ship, 128
Australasia: political problems affecting, 281-296;
intermarriage in, 355 _et seq._
Australasians: games of, 355 _et seq._
Australia: 5, 6, 9, 14, 22, 53;
population of, 150, 158;
and the labor problem, 289 _et seq._;
and immigration, 292;
and labor legislation, 293, 294;
attitude of, toward independence, 353;
and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 347-363
Australian Immigration Law, 295
Australoids, 21
Ava: 93, 94;
making of, 69, 70
Balboa: discovery of the Pacific by, 3 _et seq._;
quoted, 3, 10
Balkans, 391
Bancroft, quoted, 212
Banda Sea, 139
Bagg, Mr., 145
Ban, 230
Bass Straits, 131
Beach-combers, 89
Belgium, 317
Best, Mr. Elsdon, 235
Birds of New Zealand, 124, 125
Bishop, Mrs. Bernice, 235
Black-birding, 68
Bland, J. O. P., 344
Bluff, 129
Boas, Franz, quoted, 24
Boer War, 354
Bondy, 132
Bonin Islands, 357
Botany Bay, 6, 132
Boxer Indemnity Fund, 323, 328, 389
Boxer Uprising, 308, 365
Brisbane, 136, 152
Britain, outpost of, in Asia, 168-178.
_See also_ England, Great Britain
British Club, 96
Brown, Dr. McMillan, 25
Bryce, Viscount, quoted on Pacific Islands group, 387
Buddha, 8
"Bulletin," Honolulu, 38
Bushido, 305, 309
Calhoun, 326
California, 40, 103, 104, 343, 345
Cannibalism, 27, 28, 216
Canoes, 25
Canton, 4
Cape Horn, 5
Cape Liptrap, 131
Caroline Islands, 125
Caucasia, 17, 28
Celebes Sea, 139
Chamberlain, Professor Basil Hall, quoted on Shintoism, 304, 305
Chaplin, Charlie, 43
Chapman, John, 312
Chatham Islands, 26
Chidley, 149
Chicago, 184
China: Great Wall of, 4;
effect of famine in, 27, 39, 129;
licentiousness in, 176, 177;
coolieism in, 177;
waking of, 189;
standards of, 189, 190;
and the Twenty-one Demands, 306;
American trade with, 308;
bureaucracy and, 324 _et seq._;
development of, 365;
consortium for financing, 364 _et seq._, 373;
need of constructive work in, 377;
latest loan to, 377
China Sea, 139, 141
Chinese: 30, 132, 133;
gambling, 141;
music, 176;
superstition of, 186
Chosen People, 21
Christchurch, New Zealand, 109, 143
Civil War, 120
Coan, Dr. Titus Munson, cited, 215, 216
Cocoa plantations, 105
Compasses, 25
Confucius, 6
Consortium: Agreement, 370;
function of the, 381, 382, 383
Consumption, 120
Cook, Captain James, 5, 7, 18, 28, 216, 261
Coolieism, 177, 212, 343
Copra, 53, 56, 57
Coral reefs, 37
Cradle of Mankind, 21
Culture, 27
Customs, 23
Dante, 89
Darwin: quoted on South Pacific, 22, 24, 28
Davuilevu, 61, 62
Deakin, Mr. Alfred, 349
Dengue fever, 110
Desolation Gully, 112
Dewey, Professor: cited on Japanese birth rate, 343
Divorce, 254 _et seq._
Draft Act: in relation to the Maories, 123
Drake, Sir Francis, 4, 7, 9
Dunedin, New Zealand, 109, 112, 113, 127
Dutch, 4, 10
East and West News Bureau:
statement of on alien labor in Japan, 332, 385
Easter Islands, 25
_Eastern_, the, 132, 133, 136
Eden, 17, 23
Elephantiasis, 94, 95
Ellis, Havelock, quoted, 283
Emerson, 108
England, 19, 20, 22, 24.
_See also_ Great Britain
English, 19, 20
English Corporal Correction League, 135
Episcopal See of Australia, 138
Equator: astride the, 128-142
Europe, 17, 20, 22
Europeans: 18;
effect of famine on, 27, 52
"Evening Post," Wellington, New Zealand, quoted, 358, 359
Extinction: danger of, of primitive races, 205 _et seq._
Famine: effect of upon civilized nations, 27
Fan-tan, 141
Fiji: 11, 12, 13, 18, 21, 32;
relation of, to the Pacific, 52 _et seq._, 81, 105, 356
"Fiji Times," Manager of, quoted, 58
Fijians: 14;
characteristics of, 19, 20, 21;
study of, 52-78;
personal appearance of, 59, 60;
characteristics of, 64 _et seq._;
dances of, 67;
women, 70 _et seq._;
tastes of, 71 _et seq._;
music and dances of, 71, 72;
schools for, 76, 84, 85, 86;
jail of the, 73;
submersion of, 223 _et seq._
Filipinos: habits and customs of, 162 _et seq._
Fire-walkers of Mbenga, 13
Food, 27
Formosa, 298
Four-River Group, 372
France, 100
Frenchmen, 20
Fujiyama, 35, 193
German New Guinea, 156
German Plantation Company, 89
Germans: in Samoa, 88, 89, 90
Germany, 24, 100, 389, 391
Golden Gate, 7
Governor of Samoa, 101
Great Barrier Island, 13
Great Barrier Reef, 136, 137
Great Britain:
attitude of, toward Pacific possessions, 283 _et seq._, 360, 361;
attitude of toward her colonies, 362
Great Wall of China, 4
Gregory, Professor, 384
Haleakala, 48
Halemaumau, 51
Hauraki Gulf, 13
Hawaii: music of, 8, 9, 16, 17, 23, 32;
aspirations of, 42;
birth-rate, 43;
assimilation in, 43;
foot-binding in, 44;
kinship, 44;
racial evanescence, 44;
dances of, 72, 105;
divorce in, 255 _et seq._;
census of, 261, 317, 356
Hawaiians: 14, 20, 30;
racial purity percentage of the, 213 _et seq._
"Hawaiki," by Percy Smith, cited, 26
Hearn, Lafcadio: cited on fruit of intermarriage, 263
Heasley, Inspector, 97
Heinie's, 39
Heliolithic man, 18
"Hibbert Journal," quoted on Fijian mind, 232-234
Hilo, 48
Hindus, 78
Himalaya Mountains, 22
Hong-Kong: 109, 141, 167, 169 _et seq._;
slums of, 171;
poverty in, 172;
surgery in, 176;
birth-rate in, 176;
music in, 176
Honolulu: 7, 9;
our frontier in the Pacific, 30-51;
the spirit, 37 _et seq._, 235.
_See also_ Hawaii
Huang-Hsu, 365
Hughes, Premier William Morris:
attitude of, toward conscription, 288, 355, 359, 360
Hukuan Railway, 378
Imperial Conferences, 347 _et seq._
Imperial Diet, 384
India, 17, 18, 21, 63, 117
Indians, 77
Infanticide, 216
Inouye, Count: quoted on Japanese merchants in Korea, 309
"Invention of a New Religion," by Basil Hall Chamberlain,
quoted, 304, 305
Ishii-Lansing Agreement, 370, 371
Izanagi, 21
Izanami, 21
Japan: 4, 5, 7, 9;
awakening of, 28, 29, 132, 135, 282;
in relation to the Pacific problem, 297 _et seq._;
foreign policies of, 299 _et seq._;
race-pride of, 302;
government of, 303;
Democracy in, 305;
attitude of, toward commercialization, 306;
American trade with, 308;
in Siberia, 308;
Buddhism in, 324;
relations of, 326 _et seq._;
and alien labor, 331;
foreign population statistics of, 334;
naturalization in, 337 _et seq._;
science in, 341 _et seq._;
in America, 342 _et seq._;
birth-rate, 343;
attitude of, toward financiering China, 373, 374;
attitude of the Orient toward, 376;
and the Pacific problem, 379;
and Manchurian railways, 380
"Japan Chronicle,"
quoted in British educational work in Hong-Kong, 177;
quoted on English policy, 362
"Japan: Real and Imaginary," by Sydney Greenbie, 297
Japanese: 21, 25, 30, 31;
races, 72, 94.
_See also_ Japan
Java, 4, 22
Joan of Arc, 51
Junnosuke Inouye, 375
Kaiser, the, 104
Kamehamea, 36, 50, 215
Kaneohe, 35, 36, 51
Kapiolani, 51
_Katori-maru_, 192
Keats, quoted, 3
Kellerman, Annette, 148
Kiao-chau, 368
Kilauea, 8, 50
Kinglake, 24
Kinship of Pacific peoples, 20 _et seq._
Kipling, 116
Knox, Secretary, 366
Kobe: business situation in, 335
Korea: 4, 298;
Japan's actions in, 309;
the case of, 317, 324, 391
Kyoto, 7
Labor: conditions in New Zealand, 6;
in Fiji, 13 _et seq._;
legislation in New Zealand, 116;
indentured, 222
Lake Rotorua, 122
Lali, 71, 73, 78
Lamont, Mr. Thomas W.: 364;
negotiations with Japan by, 375;
mission of, to China, 376, 377;
statement of, 379, 380
Language, 22, 23
Lansing, Mr.: 370;
attitude of, toward loans to China, 372
Lao-Tsze, 269
Laupepa, 395
League of Nations, 358
Legend: and the Pacific, 24 _et seq._
"Lending Money to China," by Sydney Greenbie, 371
Leper Island, Molokai, 8
Levuka, 75, 85
Lindsay, Vachell, 312
Little Barrier Island, 13
Logan, Colonel Robert: 101, 104;
letter of, 395
London, Charmian, 38
London, Jack, 10
Longford, Professor, "The Story of Korea," quoted, 309
Los Angeles, 30
Lost Tribes of Israel, 23
_Lurline_, 7, 9
Luzon, 158
Mackaye, Arthur, 36 _et seq._
Magellan, 4, 9, 18
Magneta Island, 137
"Main Street," 313
Malays, 308
Manchuria, 344, 373
Mangoes, 105
Manila: 32, 141, 158 _et seq._;
description of, 163 _et seq._, 271
Manoa Valley, 33, 34, 37
Manono, 87
Maories: 20, 23, 26;
dances of the, 72, 110, 118 _et seq._;
vital statistics of, 123;
racial discrimination against, 250
Maoriland, 17
Marital contracts, 240-253
Markets, 265-278
Marquesas, 5, 26, 52
Marshall Islands, 319, 357
Martin, Alonso, 4
Mason, Mr. Gregory, 368
Mataafa, 396;
letter, 395, 396
Mbenga: mystic fire-walkers of, 13
McDuffie, Mr., 217, 218
Melanesia, 18, 19, 23, 26, 27
Melanesian-Fijians, 20, 21
Melba, Madame, 145
Melbourne, 129, 143, 144, 349
Melville, 10, 24
Message, Mr., quoted, 61
Micronesia, 23, 26, 27
Migrations, 20
"Millard's Review," 368
Mindanao, 140, 158
Mindoro, 158
Missionaries: 19;
Fijian, 65 _et seq._, 68, 69, 73, 121, 231, 236
Moa, 28
Moji, 191
Molokai, the leper island, 8
Molucca Sea, 139
Mongolia, 373
Monroe Doctrine, 316
Monroe Doctrine of Asia, 297 _et seq._, 320
Monterey, 103
Montessori Method: in Fiji, 67
Mormon missionaries, 23
"Morning Herald," Sydney, quoted on America's War policy, 350, 351
Morocco, 390
Mt. Eden, 110
Mount Vaea, 103
Mua Peak, 87
Mulinuu, 91
Mummy-apples, 20, 59
Nagasaki, 376
Napier, New Zealand, 276
Napoleon: 20;
in relation to Fijian legend, 21
Negros, 158
New South Wales, 146
New York, 111, 113, 184, 270, 364
"New York Times," on Japanese, 311
New Zealand:
labor conditions in, 6, 13, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 72, 84, 105;
study of, 108-127;
home life in, 111;
the bush of, 111;
farmers, 112 _et seq._;
newspapers, 113;
population, 113;
characteristics, 114, 115;
girls, 115;
progressiveness, 116;
development, 117 _et seq._;
Parliament, in relation to the Draft Act, 123, 133, 145;
and the class system, 286 _et seq._;
policy toward England, 353
_Niagara_, the, 9, 10, 11, 16, 53, 62, 79, 86, 111
Nichi Nichi Shummun, 309, note
Nicholas of Russia, 361
Night-blooming cereus, 33
Niuafoou, 12, 13
North Island, 112
Oahu: 40;
College, 63
O'Brien, Frederick, 10, 24
One hundred and eightieth meridian, 11, 13, 195
Open Door, 367, 369, 371
Origins of races, 22
"Osaka Asahi," 360
"Outlines of History," Wells, 29
Pacific: discovery of, 3 _et seq._;
significance of, 7;
effect of the mid-, on time, 11;
kinship of Pacific peoples, 20 _et seq._;
Darwin quoted on South, 22;
origin of, cultures, 23;
Griffith Taylor quoted on size of, 24;
counter-invasion of, 28 _et seq._;
our frontier in the, 30 _et seq._;
relation of Fiji to the, 52;
outposts of the white man in the far, 143 _et seq._;
our peg in the far, 158-167;
ideals that dwell around the, 199-201;
Hindu problems and the, 225;
political problems of the, 281 _et seq._;
adventures of America in the, 317 _et seq._;
causes of confusion obtaining in the, 386, 387
Pago Pago, 10, 82, 317
Paleolithic life, 16
Pali, the, 35, 37, 50
Panama Canal, 315
Panama-Pacific Exposition, 79
Panay, 158
Pan-Pacific Union, 236
Papuans, 53
Pasig River, 161
"_Paul and Virginia_," 137
Pavlova, 46
Peace Conference, 357, 358, 371
Peace Treaty, 358
Persia, 390
Pescadores, 357
Pharaohs, 25
Philippines: 6, 32, 140, 317;
problem of the, 318 _et seq._;
and independence, 328
Pilgrims, 17
Pleistonic period, 20
Polyandry, 220
Polynesia: 17, 18, 23, 27;
present status of, 29
Polynesians: 19;
origin of the, 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 52;
dances of the, 72, 88, 206;
character of the ancient, 215;
and the problem of intermarriage, 237 _et seq._
Population: limitation of, 27, 28;
decline of, 30 _et seq._
Port Chalmers, 129
Port Williamson, 132
Portuguese, 4, 30
Poverty Bay, 28
Prisoners: Fiji, 73, 74
Promotion Committee: of Honolulu, 34;
"Primer" of the, 41
Queensland, 138, 146
Race-blending, 28 _et seq._
Rangatora, 120, 121
Rarotanga, 93
Ratu Joni, 230
Reading, Lord: on loans, 372
Reinsch, Dr. Paul S., 326, 327
Rewa River, Fiji, 18, 19, 60, 62, 67
Rickshaws, 171, 178
Rockefeller Foundation, 173, 174, 324
Rolland, 108
Roosevelt, Colonel, and Korea, 318
Root-Takahira Agreement, quoted, 369, 370
Rua, Maori priest, 127
Russia, 308, 391
Russo-Japanese War, 317, 348, 365
Ryecroft, Reverend Mr., 65 _et seq._, 68
Salvation Army, 44, 45, 179
Samoa: 10, 11, 13, 19;
cosmogony, 21, 23, 26, 52, 84, 238, 317, 356
Samoans: 14;
dances of the, 72;
study of the, 79 _et seq._;
songs of the, 80;
dances of the, 83;
hospitality of the, 93 _et seq._, 208
Samurai, 305
San Francisco, 7, 10, 184
Santa Anna Valley, 137
Savii, 26, 87
Scientific, 236
Scientists, 231
Seattle, 193
Sedan chairs, 171
Shackleton, Sir E., 128
Shanghai: China's European capital, 179-191;
description of, 192 _et seq._;
slums of, 185;
the Chinese city, 185 _et seq._;
market, 274
Shantung: 297;
rape of, 324
Shaw, 108
Shibusawa, 375
Shimonoseki, 376
Shintoism: 299;
defined, 304, 305
Shurman, Dr. Jacob Gould, 327
Siberia, 344
Siberian Railway, 361
Sikhs, 231
Sino-Japanese Military Agreement, 380
Sino-Japanese War, 365
Slums;
tropical, 165;
Hong-Kong, 171
Smith, Percy, cited, 26
Smythe, Miss: 179;
work of, 180-182
Solomon Islands, 65
"Son of the Middle Border," 313
South Manchurian Railway, 375, 380
South Pole, 128
South Seas: 5 _et seq._, 10, 12 _et seq._, 14, 30 _et seq._;
style, 32, 57, 74, 80, 82
Spanish, 10
Sponges, 37
St. Helena, 20
Stevenson, R. L.: 10, 88, 100;
pilgrimage to tomb of, 100-105;
home of, 103, 387, 395
Stevenson Fellowship, 395
Stewart, Mr. W. Downie: quoted on status of New Zealand, 359
Stone Age, 89
Street, Julian, 375
Sulu Sea, 139
Sulus, 65
Sun Yat-sen, Dr., 325;
quoted, 326
Superstition, 25
Suva, Fiji, 11, 13, 20, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 73, 75, 76, 84, 105
Sydney, 9, 12, 132, 139, 146 _et seq._
Tagalog, 165
Tagore: 116;
experiences of in Japan, 311
Tahiti, 17, 26, 28, 52
Talume, 12
Tamasese, 395
Tamba Maru, 179
Tasman, 9, 10
Tasman Sea, 128
Tasmania, 132
Tattooings of Time, 17
Taylor, Griffith: quoted on size of Pacific, 24
Te Noroto, 124
Terauchi, Count, 368
Thomson, Basil, cited, 13
Thursday Island, 155
"Times," China: quoted on foreign control of industries, 378
Thoreau, 95
Tokyo, 349
Tolstoy, 269
Tongans, 19, 77
Torres Straits, 139
Townsville, 137
Traders: in the Far East, 55, 89, 236, 306
Tradition, 22
Tulane, 13
Turks, 20
Tusitala, the tale teller (Stevenson), 103, 395
Typee, 5
Typhoons, 141
Uchida, Viscount: quoted on Consortium, 379, 384
Union Steamship Company, 129
Upolu, 87
Vailima, Stevenson's home, 88, 100, 101, 103
Vancouver, George, 5, 7, 18
Venice of the Pacific, 25
Vice: among the primitive races, 217
Victoria, 146
Vikings, 25
Virginia, 151
Vladivostok, 308
Waikato, 124
Waikiki, 39
Waitemata Harbor, 13
Ward, Sir Joseph, 349, 351
Waterhouse, Mr., 69
Waterspouts, 140
Webb, Mr., 245
Wellington: 97, 109, 113;
Museum, 235
Wellington, Duke of: cited on Britain's colonies, 283
Wells, H. G., 29
"When the Sleeper Wakes," Wells, 29
White Australia policy, 291, 292, 294, 348, 350
Whitney, Judge William L., 256-258
Wilson Administration, 318
Wilson, President, 382, 383
_Wimmera_, 131
World War, 234, 350
"World's Work," 371
Wright, Mr., of the "Bulletin," 38 _et seq._
Wurm ice age, 26
Yamada Ise, 192
Yokohama, 192
Y. M. C. A., 38
Zamboanga, 140, 158
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