Those were significant words spoken that seventeenth day of August.
Chapter XX
A FRIEND IN NEED
The attitude towards the war in Australia was entirely different from that of Europe. Everyone realized that this was not an ordinary war, but a war upon which the future of Australia depended. If the Japanese succeeded in conquering a foot of land in North America, if a single star was extinguished on the blue field of the American flag, it would mean that the whole continent lying in Asia's shadow would also fall a prey to the yellow race.
The early reports from the Philippines and from San Francisco, and the crushing news of the destruction of the Pacific fleet, swept like a whirlwind through the streets of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Wellington and Auckland, and gave rise to tremendous public demonstrations. Business came to a stand-still, for the Australian people had ears only for the far-off thunder of cannon, and their thoughts were occupied with the future. Huge open-air mass-meetings and innumerable demonstrations before the American consulates bore witness to Australia's honest sympathy. The time had arrived for the fifth continent to establish its political status in the council of nations.
In Sydney the mob had smashed the windows of the Japanese consulate. Satisfaction was at once categorically demanded from London, where the government trembled at the bare idea of a hostile demonstration against its ally. The apology was to take the form of a salute to the Japanese flag on the consulate by a coast battery, etc. But the Australian government refused point blank to do this, and contented itself with a simple declaration of regret; and as there was no other course open to him, the Japanese Consul had to be satisfied. But in Tokio this affair was entered on the credit side of the Anglo-Japanese ledger, offsetting the debt of gratitude for August 10, 1904, when the English fleet constituted the shifting scenery behind Togo's battleships.
A great many of the Japanese located in Australia had left the country before the outbreak of the war to join the army of invasion, and those who remained behind soon recognized that there was no work for them anywhere on the continent. When they refused to take this hint and make themselves scarce, Australian fists began to remind them that the period of Anglo-Mongolian brotherhood was a thing of the past. The last of the Japanese settlers were put aboard an English steamer at Sydney and told to shift for themselves. The Chinese, too, began to leave the country, and wherever they did not go of their own accord, they were told in pretty plain language that the yellow man's day in Australia was ended.
Australia, up to this time merely an appendage of the Old World, a colony which had received its blood from the heart of the British Empire and its ideas from the nerve-center in Downing Street, which had hitherto led a purely dependent existence, now awoke and began to develop a political life of its own. And this development, born of the outbreak of Mongolian hostilities, could not be restrained. The time had passed when the European nations could say: The world's history is created by us, other nations are of no account.
Once before Australia had taken an active part in politics. That was when the Union Jack was threatened, when British regiments were melting away before the rifles of a peasant people at Magersfontein, Colenso and Graspan, when Ladysmith was being besieged, and Downing Street trembled for the safety of the empire. Then, in the hour of dire need, a cry for help went out to all the peoples dwelling beneath the Union Jack, whose flagstaff was being shaken by sturdy peasant hands. And the colonial troops heard the call and responded nobly. Australian and Canadian heroism was ushered into being on the grassy plains and kopjes of the Transvaal. They may not have been good to look at and their manners were not those of the drawing-room, but England opened her arms to those splendid fellows from the Australian bush and was glad to use them in her hour of need—but afterwards she forgot them. But those days were not so soon forgotten in Australia; there are too many men still going around with one arm or a wooden leg. The gentlemen in Downing Street, however, have short memories, and the debt of thanks they owed the colonies quickly slipped their minds.