The Pacific
pp. 5-6 · Read in the full issue
America And A New Order In
TF the Pacific of the future is not to A be under Anglo-American control, we white communities of the South Pacific will perish.
Let us be realists, and face stark facts. For too many decades, we buried our heads in the coral sands, and assured ourselves that all was well with our world, which was the best of all possible worlds. To-day, but for one man, we should all be dead, or the slaves of Japan. That man is President Roosevelt. This writer believes that it was only the fear of Roosevelt that held back the Japanese blow during 1940 and 1941; and that, had it not been for the clear vision, quick action and purposeful strength of this leader of the United States, we should have been over whelmed in 1942, before our friends could come to our aid.
The United States saved us in 1942.
The United States, in 1944-45, will re store to us the peace and security of which we have been deprived, in part, by the war-lords of Nippon. The safety which was given to us, until this decade, by thousands of miles of water-distance, has been destroyed by air transport. There can be no con tinuing security in the future for the white communities in the South Pacific, or for any communities within sight of Pacific waters, unless we are guarded by Anglo-American power.
T OOK at the map. The Pacific Ocean is enclosed between four continents—North and South America, Asia and Australia (which, for this discussion, must include New Zea
land). There are 140,000,000 Europeans in North America; a few millions of semi-Europeans (Russian Asiatics) in Asia; nine million Europeans in Aus tralasia; and an incalculable number of semi-Europeans (South European mixed with Indian) in South America.
The white communities in the Pacific Territories scarcely affect the main totals.
In other words, there are, in and around the Pacific, about 150,000,000 Europeans, and over 1,000,000.000 others in East and South-east Asia.
Most of the Europeans are gathered in North America, leaving half-empty Australia, and all the British and French Pacific Territories, isolated in the South Seas, within easy aeroplane distance of over one billion Asiatics.
True, of all those Asiatics, only 100,000,000 (the Japs) are aggressive, unfriendly and imperialistic; but that does not mean that we can depend, forever, and risk our national exist ence, upon the goodwill of China and India. For twenty years, while the cunning and treacherous Japanese planned, and built, and armed, we went our comfortable way, quite sure that the Japanese was too much of a gentleman to spring upon our unwary and undefended back. Now, we must have learned our lesson.
WE are civilised people, of course; but in every nation, as in every man, there remains still a bit of the jungle beast, selfish and ruthless and undependable, ready to spring and grab and loot as soon as the guard is taken off. If mankind is not soon to
disappear into the chaos of another Dark Age, there must be placed upon the world an international guard.
Twice within 25 years we have seen the world plunge into the hell of war, because there was no force to curb the greed of the Wilhelms and the screeching ambitions of the Shickel grubers. It must never happen again.
We do not think it will happen again— not while the British Commonwealth and the United States hold together.
The League of Nations, planned to ensure that World War I really was “the war to end war,” was hamstrung at birth. Selfish vested interests, controlling the Republican majority in the United States Senate, would not allow America to become a mem ber of the League which America really had created. So the concert of nations became a bear-garden; and the League a well-meaning, sniffling old lady whom no one would obey.
Japan seized Manchuria and raped China; Mussolini stole Abyssinia; Franco perpetrated horrible cruelties in Spain in the name of totalitarian ism; and finally a gang of political criminals—Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Himmler—took charge in Central Europe and hurled the world into the most terrible of all wars.
They all made a mockery of Aunt Sally of Geneva; and the blame for that lies directly upon the bumble footed “statesmen” of Britain, France and United States. True, all three are under punishment now; but is there any real retribution there when tens of thousands of our finest yourip- men, babies in 1918, are dying horribly on a hundred battlefields, while snuf fling old fools who betrayed the League of Nations to the Huns suffer nothing except excessive income tax!
THERE will be another League of Nations in the world; only, this time, there will be teeth in it, and at the head of it will be the United States. By now, the Americans must realise that if Wilson’s League of Nations had functioned, there would have been no Hitlerised Germany, no Japanese baring their teeth at us from Indonesia and the Central Pacific, no outpouring of American blood and treasure in 1943. They must have learned the lesson.
Between them, and with the aid of Russia, Britain and America have saved Western civilisation and the democratic way of life—Britain, be cause she held on, alone, when the remainder of Western Europe col lapsed; Russia, because her courage and tenacity sapped the terrifying strength of the Nazis; America, be cause she came in and turned a virtual stalemate into what we now believe will be an overwhelming vic tory. What Russia will do in the post-war period there is no means of knowing; but clearly there will rest upon Britain and the United States, at least, an obligation to police the world, and make it really safe for democracy.
THE policing of the Pacific, for a long time, will be necessary, if our ways of life are to continue. No one yet has tried to paint a picture of what Japan will be like, after her in evitable defeat; but of two things we may be certain: We cannot destroy a nation of nearly one hundred million people, and so we must have them with us in the future; and we cannot immediately eradicate, from the minds of certain Japanese classes, the imperialistic ambitions which have been cultivated for at least two generations. If there is to be peace in the Pacific in the future, the Japanese people, like the people of all nations which have been poisoned by Totalitarianism, must be taught to be peaceful—a matter of instructing at least one generation. It will not be difficult, once the Fascist element is removed from Japan; but it will be a lengthy job. It will involve the guardianship of the Pacific, in which the South Pacific communities are deeply concerned.
Although Britain will participate, the guardianship of the Pacific will be primarily an American responsi bility, and it will continue for a long time. That responsibility (which, of course, is responsibility for defence) naturally will tie up with the whole economy of the Pacific—adminis tration, commerce, transportation, communication, care of natives, settlement and industrial develop ment. We cannot see the Americans interfering much with the free gov ernments of the various Territories; but it is inevitable that American in fluence and American money will have a big part in all Pacific affairs in the future.
NO South Pacific community will object to that—and, least of all, the British. We are grateful to them because they came to our aid so quickly in the black days of 1942. We
appreciate the fact that, although American service-men are present in all the British and French Territories of the South Pacific in such numbers that they could easily have taken charge of all public affairs, they have been most scrupulous in respecting our Governments and all our institu tions, and nowhere has there been even a suggestion of friction. Since Pearl Harbour, we have travelled a considerable distance with these like able Americans along the road to wards a new order in the Pacific; and, since it is an order which gives us a guarantee of security, while inter fering in no way with our cherished association with Great Britain and the British Commonwealth, we can view the future without misgiving.