Russia.—One of the most interesting of Pacific questions is how far Bolshevik Russia will succeed in the Orient. In China its propaganda is probably doomed to failure because of the almost universal peasant-proprietorship ; but if it has fallen heir to the Oriental ambitions of Tsarist Russia, there is bound to be a triangular conflict in Manchuria; it cannot abandon the shorter route to the Pacific by the Chinese Eastern railway through north Manchuria. Japan cannot abandon its claims on Man churia as the best source of its food and raw material for manu factures and its best market; nor can China cease to proclaim this great province outside the Great Wall her own now that it is filling up with Chinese.
The process of human hybridization has grown slower as na tions have become stable and will grow slower still as national consciousness becomes more definite in its aims. And in the Pacific ocean, the new stage set for the next drama of human evolution, the action may drag through acts that each may take 0,000 or even Ioo,000 years to reach its denouement, so trasted are the peoples and cultures, so broad the sea that divides them, so slow the processes that have to depend only on com mercial intercourse.
The most hopeful omen is the rapidity with which Japan has absorbed Occidental culture and yet come out of the process strong in her personality and national character. It was her national environment that made this abnormal rapidity sure without a devastating revolution. An island or extensive archipel ago lying not far off a populous continent in the temperate zone, the zone of enterprise and initiative, and across the latitudes so as to secure a constant flow of variations for selection to work on, once it attains a unity, is bound to make swift and easy progress and to a play a dominant part in the ocean around it, if not in the world as a whole. Japan is the counterpart in the Pacific of Britain in the Atlantic. There are two other insular unities in the ocean that have a similar environment, New Zealand in the south and Vancouver in the north; whether they will have a large part to play is an interesting question; one is too far from its still sparsely populated island-continent and the other too much in the shadow of Canada to enter soon into the dominance that is the natural heritage of such an environment; but both will have that combination of a sailor-breed and a mountain-breed which makes a people bold in enterprise and passionately de voted to freedom; they will be the maritime shields of their neighbours. The very isolation of New Zealand will make her
capable of controlling her own destiny and transmitting pure her Anglo-Saxon culture and tradition, whilst her proximity to the islands of the South Seas will make her dominant in their development and prosperity. How Australia is to fill her empty spaces and preserve her white tradition so far from Europe and so near to the East is one of the most clamant Pacific questions and next to it stands in importance how she is to develop her vast droughty, if not desert, areas. As for British Columbia and Canada, as a whole they lie in the shadow of the great republic and for generations will be more or less dependent on her for capital and development.
It is significant that three of the most developable countries that abut on the ocean are English-speaking, and that the peoples of Anglo-Saxon descent have been amongst the most enterprising in pushing their way both by land and sea but especially by sea; they have been the most successful of pioneers in colonization and commerce. It looks as if English were ultimately to be the dominant language in the Pacific ocean; and a sign of this is that pidgin-English is the favourite medium of communication between Chinese of different dialects besides being the favourite linguistic intermediary in the islands of the ocean even when owned and managed by peoples that speak another European language. The Polynesian dialect of the isolated Easter island though moulded by French missionaries and Chilean officials has ten times more English words embedded in it than French and Spanish combined. And the large Oriental element in the trade and labour of the South Seas make pidgin-English their means of intercourse. The only language besides English that seems to have much chance of spreading in the ocean is the Japanese; for it belongs to a people that is naturally seafaring, commercial and colonizing.
It is not easy to answer what type of political system is likely to spread in the Pacific ocean and to dominate in the far future the world unity that is the desire and may be the goal of mankind.
Two that abut on the ocean and share largely in its traffic pre sent each a type that has a strong chance of survival because they are capable of sheltering and unifying varied kinds of commu nities; and both belong to the English-speaking peoples. One is the United States; it is a federal system that permits of the freest intercourse between its separate states whilst giving each its own legislative individuality; for it has lowered all tariff barriers. The other is the British commonwealth of nations which spread ing round the world keeps its units in vital intercourse by pro tected maritime traffic and by periodical conferences that decide how they can assist and guard one another's freedom and inter ests. An amalgamation of these two types may produce the final type that will fit a unified human race. It will allow of the greatest liberty of development to each of the national units whilst watching over their freedom of commercial and migra tive intercourse. It may take tens, perhaps hundreds, of thou sands of years to evolve; but the first arena for its evolution will probably be the Pacific ocean.