a prison settlement, and for many years did not succeed in establishing a stable community supported by local production. At times starvation was imminent. Several attempts to colonize the western parts of Australia failed altogether, and the settlers had to be rescued. Yet to-day no economic system is so productive per head as Australia's, but none is so completely artificial. The continent now produces a large proportion of the world's wool and other pastoral products, besides much food, metal, and raw material. But it could only have done this by being treated as a part of the British Empire. Nothing like this could have been achieved by an Eastern race settling in Australia. Taking advantage of its opportunities, its vast open spaces, its sunny climate, and its great wealth, the British people have set up high standards of life and institutions of the freest type, which secure a high economic product. Therefore, the British people have claims to Australia which are not to be gainsaid by the mere scantiness of population. The Australia of to-day has been created by them. They found it a neglected, apparently desert, continent. They have occupied and turned into profitable account a very large proportion of the territory and established a population there which has reached a high level of social welfare. The British Empire was founded and extended in defiance of climate. Yet there is a curious insistence by the Englishman that all problems of racial settlement are determined by climatic considerations. This may be so in the long run, or with people who are passive. But an energetic race, equipped with all the resources of science, cannot accept it readily. The human race arose in the tropics - some of the world civilizations were founded in or near tropical countries, and it cannot be concluded offhand that the white races cannot live healthy lives in the tropics and maintain their physical and mental vigor. There are tropics and tropics. There are moist tropics with heavy rainfall and dense vegetation, where germs multiply, and tropics where, though the heat is intense, the climate is dry- there is little water lying about and fever germs do not thrive. It is quite certain that consumption, a disease due to confinement necessary owing to cold conditions, exacts far more victims in England than the heat or tropical disease does in Queensland. The dangers of life in the tropics do not come so much from the heat itself as from diseases which multiply more quickly under tropical conditions not only of heat but of moisture. If medical science is capable of coping with such diseases, the problems of tropical settlement will take upon themselves quite a different complexion. So far the outlook is hopeful. It is understood now that a great deal of the lassitude found in people inhabiting the tropics is due to two diseases, hookworm and malaria. If these could be abolished the energy of the white races might not be impaired at all by life in hot countries. It is too soon to say whether this hope will be realized. In any case the medical problem of dealing with these diseases is assisted by the fact that we have in Australia an educated population willing to obey hygienic regulations. The parts of the Australian tropics with a moist climate are very small. A strip of land along the north coast of Queensland about ten to fifty miles. wide, a few patches of the northern territory near the coast, and a very narrow strip along the northwest coast of West Australia comprise the total. The rest of tropical Australia possesses a relatively dry climate, a climate so dry, at any rate, that agriculture is almost impossible. This area can only be devoted to the pastoral industry. Here it is acknowledged that the danger of ill-health from diseases such as malaria, characteristic of tropical countries, is not serious. The energy of the white man is not impaired by this dry heat, however high the thermometer may be. In Australia the Queenslander is regarded as far more energetic than the Tasmanian of the extreme south. The most vigorous and enterprising men I have ever met have been Queenslanders from the back country. So far, then, as the climate problem is concerned, only a very small portion of Australia is really affected. Even in = those parts there is every hope that it :will be solved satisfactorily. Because White races can live healthy lives in the tropics it does not follow that people accustomed to a temperate climate will do so willingly. They may be driven thither by economic pressure or they may have to be attracted there by high wages. There has been for the last ten years no economic pressure in the South. The South is short of labor and the wages are high. Therefore labor has had to be attracted to the North by higher wages. The attractiveness of the north coast of Queensland has also had a share in bringing and retaining =there a large and increasing population. It will be seen, therefore, that the settlement and economic exploitation of the northern parts of Australia under White Australia conditions, difficult as they are, are not at all hopeless. The problem is the selection of suitable primary industries where White labor can work at reasonable cost. Intense tropical agriculture, where the labor cost is high, is not possible at present. But that does not mean that we cannot select other forms which will be just as profitable. It is quite a fallacy to sug gest that exploitation of resources by low-paid labor under an indentured system is a benefit to a country. It may bring a big profit to a few capitalists. It may serve a purpose by breaking up and developing new land. But in general a type of industry which employs more-skilled labor, higher paid, and, if possible, under independent farming conditions, is immensely more profitable to the community. The sugar industry illustrates how methods can be altered to suit White labor without loss. When it was proposed to prohibit Black labor, it was contended that White labor could not do the work. When this was challenged the advocates of Black labor stated that there was one part of the process which White men would never tackle. This was trashing—that is, cleaning the dead leaves from the lower parts of the cane. The custom was to do this some time before cutting and, as the cane was very dense and the weather very hot, the trasher was for hours in something resembling a hot bath. It was held that he could not stand it. Probably he could not; but, when the Kanaka was prohibited, the planters ceased the trashing and found that it was quite an unnecessary operation. They have suffered nothing by its abolition. So far the sugar industry has proved the salvation of Northern Queensland. Up to the war, sugar of a very high quality was produced at 3d. a pound retail. For this the industry was protected. Since then politics have come into play and Labor Governments, by forcing up wages, have thrown burdens on the growers which are crushing. The sugar-growers have been forced to combine, use political pressure, and pass on to the rest of Australia the burdens imposed by their own Labor politicians. But, unsound as all this is, the prices have still not been excessive. In 1920, when the sugar agreement resulted in a retail price of 6d., the foreign price was considerably more and the Australian retail prices were the lowest in the world. In the interval foreign prices slumped; but now when de-control prevails, and the import duty results in a price of 4d., this is still, I understand, below prices in many other countries. When an amateur strategist looks at the map of Australia, with its vast empty or thinly settled areas in the tropics, he says to himself, "The North is the Achilles heel of Australia.' It is rather an inapt allusion. The empty North does, of course, present a big defense-problem for Australia, but it is nothing like the one suggested by a cursory glance at a map. The wealth of Australia is concentrated in the South, and the empty North can only be tributary to the South. Without a well-settled South, the North for economic reasons would not be settled at all. Australia remained unsettled for centuries, although a few days from the crowded population of Asia, because the South had not been discovered and its potentialities were undeveloped. The key of the situation is the fact that, except along the eastern coast, between the North and the South, is a desert heart uncrossable by any military expedition. The inhabitants of Timbuktu would not feel any excitement at a landing on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, because they know that the Sahara could not be crossed by a conqueror. The situation is not so clear in Australia because the integrity of the whole continent is a consideration of great value to Australian defense. But the idea of the Northern Territory being the Achilles heel of Australia is absurd. Its possession by an enemy would not be a mortal blow. In fact, it is doubtful whether it would be worth taking. An enemy attack against Autralia would almost certainly be directed down the east coast near Brisbane or down the west coast near Geraldton or Perth. Only if the Northern Territory were well settled with a developed economic system in working order would an enemy think it advantageous to go there as a first step. It is, therefore, quite a feasible suggestion that an empty North is rather advantageous to Australian defense than the reverse. In fact many people consider that to link the South and the North by railway would be a fatal mistake from the strategic point of view. If the North is developed through the pastoral system, with large ranches, it will probably be better than endeavoring to settle it by an agricultural population. Furthermore, Northern Queensland's settled coast towns are not a factor of any value in defense at all. A hostile fleet could stand off and knock them to pieces in a few hours. The key of the defense of Northern Queensland is the coastal mountain range. All through this range there are extraordinarily fertile table-lands at heights varying from 1500 to 3000 feet above sea level which can be settled by White farmers growing cotton, maize, root crops, and producing butter and dairying products. These table-lands could not be taken except by large military forces, and if they are well settled Queensland is relatively safe. The real defense of Australia is on the sea. Six million people cannot defend 3,000,000 miles of territory. Even when well settled to the limit of her capacity, Australian settlements will be a narrow ring around the centre, and the North will always be comparatively empty. The distances are so great that landings on lonely points on the coast will be impossible of prevention. A navy strong enough to prevent any other Power from getting command of the Pacific will always be essential. 1 A White Australia policy, therefore, does not militate against Australian · defense. The admission of Asiatics would indeed make it more difficult. If this immigration reached any size, it would immediately raise very difficult questions of internal defense. If the immigrants were South Sea Islanders, it might not matter; but if we had races like the Chinese, Indian, or Japanese, with a high degree of national feeling, capable of being militarily organized, a great danger would immediately be created, which I would be intense while the white population is so small. The defense of Australia can only rest on the shoulders of the Anglo-Saxon holders, and any substantial penetration of unassimilable aliens would render the problem of Australian defense insoluble. It cannot be denied, of course, that the exclusion of the subjects of powerful Eastern races does cause offense and challenges aggression by them. They suffer from the evils of overpopulation, and if such problems become acute those nations may be spurred to action against Australia. In the face of such a danger we can only rely on our membership of the British Empire and help from other sections of our race. Such a danger is not averted, but rather intensified, by the admission of other nationals. Besides, the evils of overpopulation can be overcome by other means. Asia as a whole is not overpopulated. Nor is South America, where a very mixed people with little racial feeling is just beginning to develop the land. There are spheres for the expansion of India and Japan in the innumerable islands of the Pacific. Meanwhile, Australia is overcoming her underpopulation as rapidly as possible. Her natural increase is one of the highest in the world. Her total increase over a series of years is over two per cent, which is greater than that of America at the period of its highest immigration. WHAT JAPAN THINKS OF AMERICA BY SETSUO UENODA From the Japan Advertiser, June 18 Sappukei, literally meaning 'scenerykilling,' is an expression often applied to America by the Japanese who have visited that country, in describing the general impression they received there. To say America is sappukei may mean that America is without taste, is ungraceful, unpoetical, vulgar—it may mean all of these for lack of a better word. This adjective as applied to America may or may not be correct, but the way in which it is spoken is, in most cases, a sort of despairing gasp, uttered out of our countrymen's distressing experiences in trying to live in an American metropolis. The people in an American city begin the day with an alarm clock and all day long they bustle and rush about in the din of a frightful drive. Their minds are so keyed up to the mechanical precision of daily routine that the swifter the locomotion the happier they are. Into this world of affairs a business man comes from a land of dreams and poetry and tries to live in the midst of it, to study and investigate the practical subject with which he is concerned. He little understands the language and customs of the country he is visiting. It is, indeed, no small effort for a person like a Japanese, who is extremely proud and sensitive to ridicule, even to live in a large American city, or to travel from place to place. As he passes along the street he hears constantly the rattling of knives, forks, and plates from quick-lunch restaurants, observes the endless procession of motor-cars tooting along the street, and is deafened by 'L' trains overhead and tramcars on the surface. The pedestrians about him are imposingly taller than he is. As he looks up, he observes huge buildings towering over him with a strength and durability that are awe-inspiring. It is no wonder that his mind is oppressed and outraged by the breathless activity of the American people and the ponderous environment that makes the American city. It is out of his harassing experience that he declares, heaving a sigh, 'America is sappukei.' During his stay in America, however, he does not fail to observe the marvelous development of American commerce and industry. The whole fabric of the American industrial and commercial system is for him so wonderful in comparison with that of Japan as to inspire a feeling of pity for the latter. He is convinced that Japanese commerce and industry are still in an infantile stage, and that Japan has to learn from America much more than she has already learned. As a result the admiration he entertains for the marvels America has accomplished along these lines far outweighs his disgust at her sappukei. When he crosses the Pacific back to Japan and again comes in contact with our ill-adapted foreign mode of living and primitive manner in which our people conduct their business, his memory of his unpleasant experiences in America gradually fades until she becomes in his recollection like a shining land of activity. To his friends and acquaintances he constantly harps on the greatness of American material achievements. It is this everlasting 'boosting' of America, coupled with the outstanding fact of the superiority of American-made goods to practically all similar goods made in Japan, that has done so much to form a romantic conception of America and Americans in the minds of the Japanese people. The Japanese student who studies in an American high school, college, or university lives in an academic atmosphere. Usually he makes acquaintances among some choice Americans in a narrowly limited community. He is generally regarded as a courteous gentleman, respected by them, and admired for his industriousness in his school work. But his position in this community is that of a guest instead of a member, and he is always treated as such. He is, in most cases, merely a spectator of this limited world in which he has cast his lot. Under such circumstances he forms a very flattering impression of Americans. It becomes his habit to look upon America through the spectacles of his happy school-days. When the student comes back to Japan after a period of study in America, he remembers and speaks of the wholesome atmosphere of the little |