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.

For the sake of her bales of cotton, her export lists, and her Indian possessions, the London government threw all the traditions of the British world empire overboard and forgot that Old England's problem of civilization was the conquest of the world for the Anglo-Saxon race. For the sake of her London merchants, Old England betrayed Greater Britain, which in the calculations of the London statesmen was only a geographical conception, while the nations without credulously accepted the decisions of English politics as the gospel of British power.

England offered the hand of fellowship to the Japanese parvenu simply because she wanted some one to hold her Russian rival in check.

What the Manchurian campaign cost England can be figured out exactly, to the pound and shilling. She simply purchased the downfall of Russia with the loan of a few hundred millions to Japan—an excellent bargain.

But Sir Charles Dilke was beginning to open the people's eyes. "Another Japanese loan," he cried, "will slip a sharp dagger into the hand of our greatest commercial rival."

England, however, would not listen, and after the war she only drew the bonds of the alliance closer for fear of the Japanese ants who were creeping secretly into India and whispering into the people's ears that the dominion of a few hundred thousand white men over three hundred million Indians was based solely on the legend of the superiority of the white race, a legend which Mukden and Tsushima had completely nullified.

After all, London was at liberty to adopt any policy it liked; but in this particular case the colonies were expected to bear the entire costs. And this was the gratitude for the aid given in South Africa for customs favors extended to English goods at Ottawa, Cape Town, and Melbourne. Deliberately disregarding the warnings of Sir Wilfred Laurier, of Seddon, and of Deakin, who clearly recognized the proximity of the danger, the gentlemen in London insisted upon unrestricted Japanese immigration into the colonies, although Hawaii furnished an eloquent example of how quickly coolie immigrants can transform an Anglo-Saxon colony into a Japanese one.

In South Africa, too, England was sowing trouble with Mongolian miners, until the Africanders took it upon themselves to rid their country of this yellow plague.

In consideration of the existing alliance with Japan, Downing Street demanded of Canada and Australia that the Japanese settlers should be granted equal privileges with the white man. New Zealand's prime minister, Seddon, a resolute man whose greatness is not appreciated in Europe, brought his fist down on the table with a vengeance at the last Colonial Conference in London and appealed to Old England's conscience in the face of the yellow danger. All in vain. Although he persisted in proclaiming New Zealand's right to adhere to her exclusive immigration laws, it was several years before Australia and Canada awoke to a realization of the dangers which the influx of Japanese coolies held in store for them, and before they began to prepare for an energetic resistance.

Then, in August, 1908, came the American fleet. Great was the rejoicing in all the Australian coast towns, and the welcome extended to the American sailors and marines proved to the world that hearts were beating in unison here in the fear of future catastrophes. Never has the feeling of the homogeneousness of the white race, of the Anglo-Saxon race, celebrated such festivals, and when the Australians and Americans shook hands at parting, the former realized that a brother was leaving with whom they would one day fight side by side—when the crisis came and the die was cast which was to decide whether the Pacific should be ruled by the Anglo-Saxon or the Mongolian race.

And now the danger that had been regarded as likely to make itself felt decades hence had become a terrible reality in less than no time. The joint Japanese foe was actually on American soil, the American dominion over the Philippines and Hawaii had been swept away at the first onset, and the great brother nation of the United States was struggling for its existence as a nation and for the future of the white race.

What had become of Great Britain's imperialism, of the All-British idea, for the sake of which Australia, Canada, and New Zealand had sent their sons to South Africa? England, whose grand mission it was to protect the palladium of Anglo-Saxon dominion, stood aloof in this conflict.

The cabinet of St. James had sent a warning to Ottawa not to permit Canadian volunteers to enter the United States, and similar instructions had been forwarded to Melbourne and Wellington.

But when England, at Japan's instigation, tried to persuade the European powers to compel Mexico to prevent American volunteer regiments from crossing the frontier by concentrating her army opposite El Paso, Germany frustrated this plan by declaring that the acknowledgment of the Monroe Doctrine as a political principle in 1903 rendered it impossible for her to meddle in America's political affairs. In spite of this failure, the cabinet of St. James continued to play the rôle of international watchman, and employed the influence secured by ententes in previous years to carefully prevent other European governments from violating the laws of neutrality towards Japan. It was, of course, the worry over India which made the English government, generally very elastic in its views regarding neutrality, all at once so extremely virtuous.

London felt very uncomfortable when, in July, a Canadian paper published an alleged conversation between a Japanese and an English diplomatist. "What will Great Britain do in case of war?" the Japanese is said to have asked, whereupon he received the ambiguous answer: "Her duty." Then, with the daring candor assumed by these people when they feel that they are masters of the situation, the Japanese had declared: "The London government must bear in mind that the continuation of British rule in India depends absolutely on the wishes of Japan; that England, in other words, can support the United States only at the price of an Indian insurrection."

This conversation, which was published by a curious act of indiscretion, and of course at once denied in London, nevertheless threw a flood of light on England's political situation. Japan did not directly ask for military aid, which, as a matter of fact, she had no right to expect under the terms of the second Anglo-Japanese agreement, but she did demand favorable neutrality on the part of Great Britain as the guardian of the mobile forces of the Anglo-Saxon world-empire; in other words, Japan insisted that England should betray her own race for the sake of India.

This political trick of the Japanese government was the yellow man's revenge for the half promises with which England had driven Japan into the conflict with Russia, and then; after the outbreak of the war, had offered only meager messages of sympathy instead of furnishing the expected military assistance.

England's destiny now hung in the balance; the threads reaching from Ottawa, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Wellington to Downing Street were becoming severed, not by a sword-cut, but by England's own policy.

If imperialism should leave no room for a "white" policy, then Australia and Canada must throw off the burdensome fetters which threatened to hand over the white man under the Union Jack, bound hand and foot, to the Mongolians.

It was not easy to come to such a decision, and it was months before it was finally reached. But one day, towards the end of August, the entire Australian press advertised for volunteers for the American army. Thousands responded, and no one asked where the large sums of money came from with which these men were provided with arms and uniforms.

A vehement Japanese protest, sent by way of London, only elicited the reply that the Australian government had received no official notification of the enlistment of volunteers for the United States, and was therefore not in a position to interfere in any such movement.

A feeling of joyous confidence reigned among the volunteers; they were going to take the field and fight for their big brother. The racial feeling, so strong in every white man, had been aroused and could withstand any Mongolian attack. By October the first steamers of volunteers left for America. As there were no Japanese or Chinese spies left, and as the government kept a strict watch on the entire news and telegraph service, the departure of the steamers remained concealed from the enemy. As Japanese ships were cruising in the Straits of Magellan, the route via Suez was chosen, and in due course the steamers arrived safely at Hampton Roads.

Wherever the conscience of the Anglo-Saxon race was not wrapped in bales of cotton and in stock quotations, wherever the feeling of Anglo-Saxon solidarity still inspired the people, there was a stir. And so the objections of the London government were not heeded in the colonies.

Why should the citizen of Canada, of British Columbia, care for Downing Street's consideration for India, when he was suffering commercially from the yellow invasion just as much as the citizen of the United States, and when he realized that he would surely be the next victim if the Japanese should be victorious this time?

In this epoch-making hour of the world's history, England had neglected her bounden duty, because she was indissolubly bound to Japan. By the same right with which George Washington had once raised the flag, crowds of men streamed across the frontier from Canada and British Columbia, and by that same right Ottawa now categorically demanded the removal of the Japanese ships from the harbor of Esquimault. "They must either lower their flag and disarm, or they must leave the harbor!" wrote the Canadian papers, and the Canadian Secretary of State, William Mackenzie, couched the protest which he sent to London in similar terms. It was recognized in London that threats were no longer of avail in the face of this spontaneous enthusiasm. England had staked much and lost.

Canadian and Australian regiments were soon found fighting side by side with their American brothers. And now at last, with the united good-will of two continents behind us, there was a fair prospect of the early realization of the boastful words uttered by the American press at the beginning of the war: "We'll drive the yellow monkeys into the Pacific."