Future Of Pacific

Races.

Probable Asiatic Influence.

THE future of the natives of the Pa cific Islands was discussed by Pro fessor S. H. Roberts, of Sydney University, in a public address on 26th October.

The professor said there was, for the Pacific natives, a choice between de cline, prosperity under the system of peasant-plantations, or absorption with in the new Asiatic and European ele ments. For the Asiatics, there was a similar choice between such aloofness as had been displayed by the Japanese in Hawaii, or submergence, or a new joint Pacific-Asiatic culture. Every indication pointed in the last-mentioned direction. The next few decades would nee an interesting growth of mixture in the Pacific between the races of the East and West. That growth would be cultural, for certain, and physical, in all probability.

In the last 60 years there had been an influx of 320,000 Asiatics into Hawaii. Seventy per cent, of the people were now Asiatic. The group was thus an experimental station for such ques tions as inter-racial relations, mis cegenation, and contact between east and west. Hawaii, in spite of last year’s racial troubles, had solved her prob lems in an astonishing manner, though Japanese assimilation had been much less complete and happy than Chinese.

The British position in the Pacific re mained fundamentally unsatisfactory, said Professor Roberts. Perhaps the most deplorable drift had been in the New Hebrides,, where Australia had simply abnegated her rightful position.

The French had forged ahead. They had brought in Asiatics and established direct transport with Indo-China. The great bulk of the trade was now in French hands. Except for the creak

ing machinery of the Condominium, the group was French. The drift would probably continue until the New Hebri des were practically a French posses sion.