Over There with the Australians | Page 5

soldiers than
civilians, cannibalism is rife, and life and property are insecure outside
the immediate limits of the barracks. In British New Guinea or Papua
there has never been a single soldier and cannibalism is abolished. A
white woman, Beatrice Grimshaw, travelled through the greater part of
it unprotected and unmolested.
The following story told of Sir William Macgregor, the first
administrator, shows the way of Britishers in governing native races.
He one day marched into a village where five hundred warriors were
assembled for a head-hunting expedition. Sir William, then Doctor
Macgregor, had with him two white men and twelve native police. He
strode into the centre of these blood-thirsting savages, grasped the chief
by the scruff of the neck, kicked him around the circle of his warriors,
demanded an immediate apology and the payment of a fine for the
transgression of the Great White Mother's orders for peace--the bluff
worked, as it always does.
Australia has now added the late German colony Hermanlohe, or
German New Guinea, to the southern portion, making an Australian
crown colony of about two hundred and fifty thousand square miles.
This was taken by a force of Australian troops conveyed in Australian
ships. I was not fortunate enough to be a member of the expedition, but
the ultimatum issued to the German commandant resulted in the
Australian flag flying over the governor's residence at Rabaul within a
few hours of the appearance of the Australian ships.
It was soon evident to the Australians that this was intended to be a
German naval station and military post of great importance. Enough
munition, and accommodation for troops were there to show that it was
to be the jumping-off place for an attack on Australia. Such armament
could never have been meant merely to impel Kultur on the poor,
harmless blacks with their blowpipes and bows and arrows.
Every Australian is determined that these of nature's children shall not
come again within reach of German brutality, but that they shall know
fair play and good government such as the British race everywhere
gives to the "nigger," having a sense of responsibility toward him that

the men of this breed cannot escape. It would almost seem that the
Almighty has laid the black man's burden on the shoulders of the Briton,
as he was the first to abolish slavery, and no other people govern
colored peoples for the sole benefit of the governed.
In every British colony other nations can trade on equal terms, and
millions of pounds sterling are squeezed from the British public every
year to provide for the well-being of native peoples, worshipping
strange deities and jabbering a gibberish that would sound to an
American like a gramophone-shop gone crazy! While other nations
make their colonies pay for the protection they give them, the British
people pay very heavily for the privilege (?) of sheltering and civilizing
these far-flung, strange peoples. No true friend of the black man can
consider the possibility of handing him back to the cruelty of Teutonic
"forced Kultur."
The most heartless of Japanese gardeners could never twist and torture
a plant into freak beauty more surely than the German system of
government would compress the governed into a sham civilization.
Australia would fight again sooner than that a German establishment
should offend our sense of justice and menace our peace near our
northern shores.
The western half of New Guinea (and the least known) belongs to
Holland, and it was in the waters of this coast that the Australians
whose story I am telling were living and working when the tocsin of
war sounded. These sons of empire were registered under a Dutch
name with their charter to work there from the Dutch Government, yet
when they heard that men were needed for the Australian army, they
dropped everything and hastened south to enlist. The long-obeyed calls
of large profits and novel experiences, the lure of an adventurous life,
were drowned by the bugle notes of the Australian "call to arms."
These were young men who had left the shores of their native country,
venturing farther out a-sea, ever seeking pearls of great price. They had
once been engaged in pearl-fishing from the northernmost point of
Australia--Thursday Island--that eastern and cosmopolitan village
squatting on the soil of a continent sacred to the white races.

When the handful of white people holding this newest continent first
flaunted their banner of "No Trespassers" in the face of the
multicolored millions of Asia, they declared their willingness to sweat
and toil even under tropic skies, and develop their country without the
aid of the cheap labor of the rice-eating, mat-sleeping, fast-breeding
spawn of the man-burdened East. But this policy came well-nigh to
being the death-blow to one little industry of the north, so far