Those who seek to find in history the evidence of an all-wise purpose might gather from the fantastic history of Australasia facts to confirm their faith. Far back in prehistoric ages, this great island was cut adrift from the rest of the world and left lonely and apart in the Southern Pacific. A few prehistoric marsupials wandered over its territory and were hunted by poor nomads of men, without art or architecture, condemned by the conditions of their life to step aside from the great onward current of human evolution.

Over this land the winds swept and the rains fell, and, volcanic action having ceased, the mountains were denuded and their deep stores of minerals bared until gold lay about on the surface. Coal, copper, silver, tin, and iron too, were made plentifully accessible. At the same time enormous agricultural plains were formed in the interior, but under climatic conditions which allowed no development of vegetable or animal types without organised culture by a civilised people.

Nature thus seemed to work consciously for the making of a country uniquely fitted for civilisation by a White Race, whilst at the same time ensuring that its aboriginal inhabitants should not be able to profit by its betterment, and thus raise themselves to a degree of social organisation which would allow them to resist an invading White Race. In the year when Captain Cook acquired the Continent of Australia for Great Britain, it was ripe for development by civilised effort in a way which no other territory of the earth then was; and yet was so hopelessly sterile to man without machinery and the other apparatus of human science, that its aboriginal inhabitants were the most forlorn of the world's peoples, living a starveling life dependent on poor hunting, scanty fisheries and a few roots for existence.

It needs no great stretch of fancy to see a mysterious design in the world-history of Australia. Here was a great area of land stuffed with precious and useful minerals, hidden away from the advancing civilisation of man as effectually as if it had been in the planet Mars. In other parts of the globe great civilisations rose and fell—the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Chinese, the Greek, the Roman,—all drawing from the bowels of the earth her hidden treasures, and drawing on her surface riches with successive harvests. In America, the Mexican, Peruvian and other civilisations learned to gather from the great stocks of Nature, and built up fabrics of greatness from her rifled treasures. In Australia alone, amid dim, mysterious forests, the same prehistoric animals roamed, the same poor nomads of men lived and died, neither tilling nor mining the earth—tenants in occupation, content with a bare and accidental livelihood in the midst of mighty riches.

Australia too was not discovered by the White Man until the moment when a young nation could be founded on the discovered principles of Justice. To complete the marvel, as it would seem, Providence ordained that its occupation and development should be by the one people most eminently fitted for the founding of a new nation on the virgin soil.

The fostering care of Nature did not end there. The early settlers coming to Australia not only found that nothing had been drawn from the soil or reef, that an absolutely virgin country was theirs to exploit, but also were greeted by a singularly happy climate, free of all the diseases which afflicted older lands. Prolific Australia, with all its marvellous potentialities, lay open to them, with no warlike tribes to enforce a bloody beginning to history, no epidemics to war against, no savage beasts to encounter. And they were greeted by an energising climate which seemed to encourage the best faculties of man, just as it gave to harvests a wonderful richness and to herds a marvellous fecundity.

How it came to be that such a vast area of the earth's surface, so near to the great Indian and Chinese civilisations, should have so long remained unknown, it is difficult to understand. There is faint evidence that the existence of the great Southern continent was guessed at in very early days, but no attempt at exploration or settlement was made by the Hindoos or the Chinese. When the Greeks, who had penetrated to India under Alexander the Great, returned to their homes, they brought back some talk of a continent south from India, and the later Greek literature and some Latin writers have allusions to the tale. Marco Polo (thirteenth century), during his voyages to the East Indies, seems to have heard of a Southern continent, for he speaks of a Java Major, a land much greater than the isle of Java (which he knew), and which was probably either New Guinea or Australia. On a fifteenth-century map of the world now in the British Museum there are indications of a knowledge of the existence of Australia; and it is undoubtedly included in a map of the world of the sixteenth century.

But there was evidently no curiosity as to the suspected new continent. Australia to-day contains not the slightest trace of contact with ancient or Middle Ages civilisation. Exploration was attracted to the East Indies and to Cathay by the tales of spices, scents, gold, silver, and ivory. No such tales came from Australia. It was to prove the greatest gold-producing country of the world, but its natives had no hunger for the precious metal, though it was strewn about the ground in great lumps in some places. Nor did sugar, spice, and ivory come from the land; nor, indeed, any product of man's industry or Nature's bounty. Wrapped in its mysterious grey-green forests, protected by a coast-line which appeared always barren and inhospitable, Australia remained unknown until comparatively modern times.

In 1581 the Spaniards, under Magalhaes, reached the Philippine Islands by sailing west from the South American coast. In the nature of things their ships would have touched the coast of Australia. In 1606 De Quiros and De Torres reached some of the Oceanian islands, and named one Terra Austrialia del Espiritu Santo", (the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit). As was the case with Columbus in his voyage of discovery to America, De Quiros had not touched the mainland, but his voyage gave the name "Australia" to the new continent.

The English were late in the work of exploring the coast of Australia, though as far back as 1624 there is a record of Sir William Courteen petitioning King James I. for leave to plant colonies in "Terra Australis." In 1688, William Dampier, in the Cygnet, touched at the north-western coast of Australia. The next year, in H.M.S. Roebuck, he paid a visit to the new land, and, on returning to England, put on record his impressions of its fauna and flora. It was in 1770 that Captain Cook made the first landing at Botany Bay.

The British nation at the time could find no use for Australia. Annexed in 1770 it was not colonised until 1787, when the idea was adopted of using the apparently sterile and miserable Southern continent as a depÔt for enforced exiles. It was a happy chance that sent a "racketty" element of British social life to be the first basis of the new Australian population. The poachers, English Chartists, Irish Fenians, Scottish land rebels (who formed the majority of the convicts sent to Australia) were good as nation-building material.

There was work to do there in the Pacific, there is further work in the future, which calls for elements of audacity, of contempt for convention, which are being worked out of the average British type. There could be no greater contrast between, say, a London suburbanite, whose life travels along an endless maze of little gravel paths between fences and trimly-kept hedges, and the Australian of the "back country," who any day may ride out solitary on a week's journey into a great sun-baked wilderness, his life and that of his dog and his two horses dependent on the accurate finding of a series of water-holes: his joy in existence coming from the solitude and the desert, the companionship of his three animals, his tobacco, and the thought of his "mate" somewhere, whom he would meet after six months' absence with a handshake and a monosyllable by way of greeting, and yet with the love of a fond brother.

That London suburbanite gives the key to his kindly and softly sentimental character in his subscription to a society which devotes itself to seeing that the suburban house cat is not left shut up without food when a family goes away on holidays. That Australian shows how far he has reverted to the older human type of relentless purpose when, in the pursuit of his calling, he puts ten thousand sheep to the chance of death from thirst. It is not that he is needlessly cruel, but that he is sternly resolute. The same man would share his last water with his dog in the desert to give both an equal chance of life. He feels the misery of beasts but says nothing, and allows it to interfere nothing with his purpose.

There is a story of a clergyman coming to a back-country station in Australia during the agony of a great drought. He asked of the squatter permission to hold prayers for rain in the woolshed. The squatter turned on him, fiercely gripping him by the arm.

"Listen!" he cried.

From all around came the hoarse, pitiful lowing and bleating of thousands of animals dying of thirst and hunger.

"Listen! If the Almighty does not hear that, will he hear us?"

That is the type of man, bred from the wilder types of the British race, who is the backbone of the Australian population, and who will be the backbone of the resistance which the White Man will make to any overflow of Asia along the Pacific littoral.

The Australian took instinctively to his task in the work of White civilisation—that of keeping the Asiatic out of Australia. In the early days of the goldfields, the Chinese began to crowd to the continent, and some squatters of those days designed to introduce them as cheap and reliable shepherds. The mass of the White population protested, with riot and rebellion in some cases. At one time it seemed as though the guns of British warships would fire on Australian citizens in vindication of the right of Chinese to enter Australia. But maternal affection was stronger than logic. The cause of "White Australia" had its way; and by poll taxes and other restrictive legislation any great influx of Asiatics was stopped. At a later date the laws regarding alien immigration were so strengthened that it is now almost impossible for a coloured man to enter Australia as a colonist, even though he be a British subject and a graduate of Oxford University.

Around the ethics of the "White Australia" policy there has raged a fierce controversy. But it is certain that, without that policy, without an instinctive revolt on the part of the Australian colonists against any intrusion of coloured races, Australia would be to-day an Asiatic colony, still nominally held, perhaps, by a small band of White suzerains, but ripe to fall at any moment into the hands of its 10,000,000 or 20,000,000 Asiatic inhabitants.

Instead of that, Australia is at once the fortress which the White Race has thinly garrisoned against an Asiatic advance southward, and the most tempting prize to inspire the Asiatic to that advance. There is not the least doubt that, given Australia, Japan could establish a power threatening the very greatest in Europe. Her fecund people within a couple of generations would people the coast-line and prepare for the colonisation of the interior. Rich fields and rich mines put at the disposal of a frugal and industrious people would yield enormous material wealth.

An organised China would put the island continent to even greater use. But there Australia is, held by a tiny White population, which increases very slowly (for men and women have the ideas of comfort and luxury which lead to small families), but which is now fairly awake to the fact that on the bosom of the Pacific and along its shores will be fought the great race battles of the future.

It is curious for the peoples of Europe, accustomed to associate extreme democracy and socialistic leanings with ideals of pacificism and "international brotherhood," to observe the warlike spirit of the Australian peoples. There are no folk more "advanced" in politics. Their ideal is frankly stated to be to make a "working man's Paradise" of the continent. Yet they are entering cheerfully on a great naval expenditure, and their adoption of a system of universal training for military service provides the only instance, except that of Switzerland, where the responsibility of national defence is freely accepted by the citizen manhood of the nation.

Universal training for military service in Australia, legally enforced in 1909, was made inevitable in 1903, when in taking over the administration of the defences the first Commonwealth Government provided in its Defence Act for the levying of the whole male population for service in case of war. That provision was evidence of the wholesome and natural view taken by Australians of the citizen's duty to his nation. It was also evidence of an ignorance of, or a blindness to, the conditions of modern campaigning. Raw levies, if equipped with courage and hardihood, could be of almost immediate usefulness in the warfare of a century ago. To-day they would be worse than useless, a burden on the commissariat, no support in the field. The logical Australian mind was quick to recognise this. Within five years it was established that, admitting a universal duty to serve, a necessary sequence was universal training for service.

One argument the Australian advocates of universal service had not to meet. In that pioneer country the feeling which is responsible for a kind of benevolent cosmopolitanism, and finds expression in Peace Societies, had little chance of growth. The direct conflict with Nature had brought a sense of the reality of life's struggle, of its reality and of its essential beauty. There is no maundering horror of the natural facts of existence. Australian veins when scratched bleed red blood, not a pale ichor of Olympus. The combative instinct is recognised as a part of human nature, a necessary and valuable part. That defencelessness is the best means of defence would never occur to the Australian as being anything but an absurd idea. He recognises the part which the combative instinct has played, the part it still must play in civilisation: how in its various phases it has assisted man in his upward path; how it has still some part to play in the preservation and further evolution of civilisation.

The original fighting instinct was purely brutal—a rough deadly scramble for food. But it undoubtedly had its value in securing the survival of the best types for the propagation of the species. With its first great refinement, in becoming the fight for mateship, the combative instinct was still more valuable to evolution. The next step, when fights came to be for ideas, marked a rapid growth of civilisation. Exclude chivalry, patriotism, Imperialism, from the motives of the world, and there would never have been a great civilisation.

A distinguished British statesman spoke the other day of the expenditure on armaments as possibly a sign of "relapsing into barbarism." He might more truly have described it as an insurance against barbarism—at once a sign of the continued existence of the forces which made civilisation, and a proof that the advanced races are prepared to guard with the sword what they have won by the sword. The Pacific has seen the tragedy of one nation which, having won to a suave and graceful civilisation, came to utter ruin through the elimination of the combative instinct from its people. The Peruvians had apparently everything to make life happy: but because they had eliminated the fighting instinct their civilisation was shattered to fragments in a year by the irruption of a handful of Spaniards.

The Australian feels that safety and independence must be paid for with strength, and not with abjectness. He does not wish to be another Peruvian: and he builds up his socialistic Utopia with a sword in one hand as was built a temple of Jerusalem.

Some doubt having arisen in the Australian mind, after a system of universal training had been adopted, whether the scheme of training was sufficient, the greatest organiser of the British Army, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, was asked to visit the Commonwealth and report on that point. His report suggested some slight changes, which were promptly adopted, but on the whole he approved thoroughly of the proposed scheme, though it provided periods of training which seem startlingly small to the European soldier. But Lord Kitchener agreed, as every other competent observer has agreed, that the Australian is so much of a natural soldier owing to his pioneering habit of life, that it takes but little special military discipline to make him an effective fighting unit.

Committed to a military system which will, in a short time, make some 200,000 citizens soldiers available in case of need, Australia's martial enthusiasm finds expression also in a naval programme which is of great magnitude for so small a people. In July 1909, an Imperial Conference on Defence met in London, and the British Admiralty brought down certain proposals for Imperial naval co-operation. Inter alia, the British Admiralty memorandum stated:—

"In the opinion of the Admiralty, a Dominion Government desirous of creating a Navy should aim at forming a distinct Fleet unit; and the smallest unit is one which, while manageable in time of peace, is capable of being used in its component parts in the time of war.

"Under certain conditions the establishment of local defence flotillas, consisting of torpedo craft and submarines, might be of assistance in time of war to the operations of the Fleet, but such flotillas cannot co-operate on the high seas in the wider duties of protection of trade and preventing attacks from hostile cruisers and squadrons. The operations of Destroyers and torpedo-boats are necessarily limited to the waters near the coast or to a radius of action not far distant from a base, while there are great difficulties in manning such a force and keeping it always thoroughly efficient.

"A scheme limited to torpedo craft would not in itself, moreover, be a good means of gradually developing a self-contained Fleet capable of both offence and defence. Unless a naval force—whatever its size—complies with this condition, it can never take its proper place in the organisation of an Imperial Navy distributed strategically over the whole area of British interests.

"The Fleet unit to be aimed at should, therefore, in the opinion of the Admiralty, consist at least of the following: one armoured cruiser (new Indomitable class, which is of the Dreadnought type), three unarmoured cruisers (Bristol class), six destroyers, three submarines, with the necessary auxiliaries such as depÔt and store ships, etc., which are not here specified.

"Such a Fleet unit would be capable of action not only in the defence of coasts, but also of the trade routes, and would be sufficiently powerful to deal with small hostile squadrons, should such ever attempt to act in its waters.

"Simply to man such a squadron, omitting auxiliary requirements and any margin for reliefs, sickness, etc., the minimum numbers required would be about 2300 officers and men, according to the Admiralty scheme of complements.

"The estimated first cost of building and arming such a complete Fleet unit would be approximately £3,700,000, and the cost of maintenance, including upkeep of vessels, pay, and interest and sinking fund, at British rates, approximately £600,000 per annum.

"The estimated cost of the officers and men required to man the ships does not comprise the whole cost. There would be other charges to be provided for, such as the pay of persons employed in subsidiary services, those undergoing training, sick, in reserve, etc.

"As the armoured cruiser is the essential part of the Fleet unit, it is important that an Indomitable of the Dreadnought type should be the first vessel to be built in commencing the formation of a Fleet unit. She should be officered and manned, as far as possible, by Colonial officers and men, supplemented by the loan of Imperial officers and men who might volunteer for the service. While on the station the ship would be under the exclusive control of the Dominion Government as regards her movements and general administration, but officers and men would be governed by regulations similar to the King's Regulations, and be under naval discipline. The question of pay and allowances would have to be settled on lines the most suitable to each Dominion Government concerned. The other vessels, when built, would be treated in the same manner.

"It is recognised that, to carry out completely such a scheme as that indicated, would ultimately mean a greater charge for naval defence than that which the Dominions have hitherto borne; but, on the other hand, the building of a Dreadnought (or its equivalent), which certain Governments have offered to undertake, would form part of the scheme, and therefore, as regards the most expensive item of the shipbuilding programme suggested, no additional cost to those Governments would be involved.

"Pari passu with the creation of the Fleet unit, it would be necessary to consider the development of local resources in everything which relates to the maintenance of a Fleet. A careful inquiry should be made into the shipbuilding and repairing establishments, with a view to their general adaptation to the needs of the local squadron. Training schools for officers and men would have to be established; arrangements would have to be made for the manufacture, supply, and replenishment of the various naval, ordnance, and victualling stores required by the squadron.

"All these requirements might be met according to the views of the Dominion Governments, in so far as the form and manner of the provision made are concerned. But as regards shipbuilding, armaments, and warlike stores, etc., on the one hand, and training and discipline in peace and war, on the other, there should be one common standard. If the Fleet unit maintained by a Dominion is to be treated as an integral part of the Imperial forces, with a wide range of interchangeability among its component parts with those forces, its general efficiency should be the same, and the facilities for refitting and replenishing His Majesty's ships, whether belonging to a Dominion Fleet or to the Fleet of the United Kingdom, should be the same. Further, as it is a sine qu non that successful action in time of war depends upon unity of command and direction, the general discipline must be the same throughout the whole Imperial service, and without this it would not be possible to arrange for that mutual co-operation and assistance which would be indispensable in the building up and establishing of a local naval force in close connection with the Royal Navy. It has been recognised by the Colonial Governments that, in time of war, the local naval forces should come under the general directions of the Admiralty."

The Commonwealth of Australia representatives accepted in full the proposals as set forth in the Admiralty memorandum. It was agreed that the Australian Fleet unit thus constituted should form part of the Eastern Fleet of the Empire, to be composed of similar units of the Royal Navy, to be known as the China and the East Indies units respectively, and the Australian unit.

The initial cost was estimated to be approximately:

1 armoured cruiser (new Indomitable £2,000,000
class).
3 unarmoured cruisers (Bristols) at 1,050,000
£350,000.
6 destroyers (River class) at £80,000 480,000
3 submarines (C class) at £55,000 165,000
—————
Total £3,695,000

The annual expenditure in connection with the maintenance of the Fleet unit, pay of personnel, and interest on first cost and sinking fund, was estimated to be about £600,000, to which amount a further additional sum would have to be added in view of the higher rates of pay in Australia and the cost of training and subsidiary establishments, making an estimated total of £750,000 a year.

The Imperial Government, until such time as the Commonwealth could take over the whole cost, offered to assist the Commonwealth Government by an annual contribution of £250,000 towards the maintenance of the complete Fleet unit; but the offer was refused, and the Australian taxpayer took on the whole burden at once.

Still not content, the Australian Government arranged for a British Admiral of standing to visit the Commonwealth and report on its naval needs. His report suggested the quick construction of a Fleet and of docks, etc., involving an expenditure, within a very short time, of £28,000,000. There was no grumbling at this from the Labour Party Government then in power. "We have called in a doctor. We must take his prescription," said one of the Australian Cabinet philosophically.

The Australian, so aggressive in his patriotism, so determined in his warlike preparations, so fitted by heredity and environment for martial exploits, is to-day the greatest factor in the Southern Pacific. His aggressiveness, which is almost truculence, is a guarantee that the British Empire will never be allowed to withdraw from a sphere into which it entered reluctantly. It will be necessary to point out in a future chapter how the failure, so far, of the Australian colonists to people their continent adequately constitutes one of the grave dangers to the British Power in the Pacific. That failure has been the prompting for much criticism. It has led to some extraordinary proposals being put forward in Great Britain, one of the latest being that half of Australia should be made over to Germany as a peace offering! But, apart from all failures and neglect of the past (which may be remedied for the future: indeed are now in process of remedy), Australia is probably potentially the greatest asset of the British race. Her capacity as a varied food producer in particular gives her value. There is much talk in the world to-day of "places in the sun." Claims founded on national pride are put forward for the right to expand. Very soon there must be a far more weighty and dangerous clamour for "places at table," for the right to share in the food lands of the Earth. Populations begin to press against their boundaries. Modern science has helped the race of man to reach numbers once considered impossible. Machinery, preventive medicine, surgery, sanitation, all have helped to raise vastly his numbers. The feeding of these increasing numbers becomes with each year a more difficult problem. Territories do not stretch with populations. Even the comparatively new nation of the United States finds her food supply and raw material supply tightening, and has just been checked in an attempt to obtain a lien on the natural resources of the British Dominion of Canada. Now, excluding manufactures, the 4½ million people of Australia produce wealth from farm and field and mine to the total of £134,500,000 a year. Those 4½ millions could be raised to 40 millions without much lessening of the average rate of production (only mining and forestry would be affected).

The food production possibilities of Australia make her of enormous future importance. They make her, too, the object of the bitterest envy on the part of the overcrowded, hungry peoples of the Asiatic littoral. The Continent must be held by the British race. It would appear to be almost as certain that it must be attacked one day by an Asiatic race.