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.
Photo, H. Winkelmann
IN GIANT CANOES HELIOLITHIC IMMIGRANTS ROAMED THE SOUTH SEAS
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.