Problems of the Pacific

by Frank Fox

Japan is now seeking desperately a material prosperity by industrial expansion. A tariff and bounty system, the most rigid and scientific the world knows, aims to make the country a great textile-weaving, ship-building, iron-making country. The smallest scrap of an industry is sedulously nurtured, and Japanese matches, Japanese soap, Japanese beer, penetrate to the markets of the outer world as evidence of the ambition of the people to be manufacturers. But when one explores down to bedrock, the only real bases for industrial prosperity in Japan are a supply of rather poor coal and a great volume of cheap labour. The second is of some value in cheap production, but it is yet to be found possible to build up national prosperity on the sole basis of cheap labour. Further, with the growth of modernity in Japan, there is naturally a labour movement. Doctrines of Socialism are finding followers: strikes are heard of occasionally. The Japanese artisan and coolie may not be content to slave unceasingly on wages which deny life all comfort, to help a method of national aggrandisement the purport of which they can hardly understand.

The position of Japan in the Pacific has to be considered, therefore, in the light of the future rather than of the present. At the time of the conclusion of the war with Russia it seemed supreme. Since then it has steadily deteriorated. If she had succeeded in the realisation of her ambition to undertake the direction of China's military and industrial reorganisation, the Japanese Power would have been firmly established for some generations at least. But the defects in her national character prevented that. Inspiring no confidence among the Chinese, the Japanese found all attempts at peaceful assumption of a controlling influence in China checked by sullen antipathy; and a forced assumption would not have been tolerated by Europe. It will not be found possible, on a full survey of the facts, to credit Japan with the power to hold a supreme place in the Pacific. She is, even now, among the dwindling Powers.

China, on the other hand, has the possibilities of a mighty future. To-day she is in the throes of nation-birth. To-morrow she may unbind her feet and prepare to join in the race for supremacy. The bringing of China into the current of modern life will not be an easy task, but it is clearly not an impossible one. Before the outbreak of the present Revolution (which may place China among the democratic Republics of the world), the people of the Celestial Empire had begun to reconsider seriously their old attitude of intolerance towards European civilisation. To understand fully the position of China it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the actual Chinese nation, some 400,000,000 of people, enervated as were the Peruvians of South America, by a system of theocratic and pacific Socialism, were subjected about 250 years ago to the sovereignty of the Manchus, a warrior race from the Steppes. Since then the Manchus have governed China, tyrannously, incompetently, on the strength of a tradition of military superiority stronger far than the Raj by which the British have held India. But the Manchus—in numbers and in intellect far inferior to the Chinese—forgot in time their military enterprise and skill. The tradition of it, however, remained until the events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries showed that the Manchu military power was contemptible not only against the white foreigner, but also against the Japanese parvenu. Patient China, finding her tyrant to be a weak despot, revolts now, not only against the Manchu dynasty, but also against the Conservatism which has kept her from emulating Japan's success in the world.

At present the power of China in the Pacific is negligible. In the future it may be the greatest single force in that ocean. Almost certainly it may be reckoned to take the place of Japan as the chief Asiatic factor.

Japan and China having been considered, the rest of Asia is negligible as affecting the destiny of the Pacific except in so far as India can serve as basis of action for British power. An independent Indian nation is hardly one of the possibilities of the future. Religious, racial, and caste distinctions make a united, independent India at present impossible. Unless the British Power carries too far a tendency to conciliate the talking tribes of the Hindoo peninsula at the expense of the fighting tribes, it should hold India by right of a system of government which is good though not perfect, and by reason of the impossibility of suggesting any substitute. In the event of a failure of the British Power, India would still, in all probability, fail to take a place among the great nations of the earth. Either she would fall a victim to some other nation or relapse into the condition, near to anarchy, which was hers before the coming of the Europeans.

It is not possible to imagine to-day any European Power other than Great Britain—with the possible exception of Russia—becoming strongly established in the Pacific. France and Germany have footholds certainly. But in neither case is the territory held by them possible of great development, and in neither case is there a chain of strategic stations to connect the Pacific colony with the Mother Country. The despatch of the German "mailed fist" to Kiao-Chou in China some years ago is still remembered as one of the comic rather than the serious episodes of history. The squadron bearing to the Chinese the martial threat of the German Emperor had to beg its way from one British coaling station to another because of the lack of German ports.

The influence of South America in the Pacific need not yet be calculated. It is a possible far-future factor in the problem; and the completion of Trans-Andine railways may quickly enhance the importance of Chili and Peru. But for the present South America can take no great part in the Pacific struggle.

It is when British influence and American influence in the Pacific come to be considered that the most important factors in the contest for its supremacy enter upon the stage. Let us consider, for the nonce, the two Powers separately.

The British Empire—holding Australia and New Zealand with an audacious but thin garrison; having a long chain of strategic stations such as Hong Kong and Singapore; having in India a powerful rear base for supplies; holding a great part of the North-West Coast of America with a population as yet scanty but beginning to develop on the same lines as the Australasian people—is clearly well situated to win and to hold the mastery of the Pacific. Such mastery would have to be inspired with peaceful ideals; it could not survive as an aggressive force. It is indeed the main strength of the British position in the Pacific that it is naturally anxious, not for a disturbance but for a preservation of the present state of things, which gives to the British Empire all that a reasonable ambition could require. It is wise and easy to be peaceable when one has all the best of the spoils.