This book is an attempt to bring within focus the most outstanding factors in the Pacific. With the exception of Chapter II, which deals with the origin of the Polynesian people, there is hardly an incident in the whole book that has not come within the scope of my own personal experience. Hence this is essentially a travel narrative. I have confined myself to the task of interpreting the problems of the Pacific in the light of the episodes of everyday life. Wherever possible, I have tried to let the incident speak for itself, and to include in the picture the average ideals of the various races, together with my own impressions of them and my own reflections. The field is a tremendous one. It encompasses the most important regions that lie along the great avenues of commerce and general intercourse. The Pacific is a great combination of geographical, ethnological, and political factors that is extremely diverse in its sources. I have tried to discern within them a unit of human commonality, as the seeker after truth is bound to do if his discoveries are to be of any value.

But the result has been an unconventional book. For I have sometimes been compelled to make unity of time and place subservient to that of subject matter. Hence the reader may on occasion feel that the book returns to the same field more than once. That has been unavoidable. The problems that are found in Hawaii are essentially the same as those in Samoa, though differing in degree. It has therefore been necessary, after surveying the whole field in one continuous narrative of my own journey, to assemble stories, types, and descriptions which illustrate certain problems, in separate chapters, regardless of their geographical settings. If the reader bears this in mind he will not be surprised in Book Two to find himself in Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, or New Zealand all at once—for issues are always more important than boundaries.

The plan of the book has been to give the historical approach to the Pacific and its native races; then to take the reader upon a journey of over twenty thousand miles around the Pacific. I hope that he will come away with a clear impression of the immensity of the Ocean, of the diversity of its natural and human elements, and the splendor and picturesqueness of its make-up. Out of this review certain problems emerge, the problems of the relations of native and alien races, of marriages and divorces, of markets and ideals—problems that affect the primitive races in their own new place in the world. But over and above and about these come the issues that involve the more advanced races of Asia, Australasia, and America—where they impinge upon each other and where their interests in these minor races center. This is the logic of the Pacific.

Though the importance of these problems is now obvious to the world, I feel grateful to those who encouraged me while I still felt myself almost like a voice crying in the wilderness, on the subject. I therefore feel specially indebted to the editors of North American Review, World's Work and the Outlook, who first published some of the material here incorporated. But so rapid has been the movement of events that in no case has it been possible for me to use more than the essence of the ideas there published. In order to bring them up to date, they have been completely re-written and made an integral part of this book. Two or three of the descriptive chapters have also appeared in Century Magazine and Harper's Monthly, for permission to reprint which I am indebted to them.

There is a further indebtedness which is much more difficult of acknowledgment. To my wife, Marjorie Barstow, I am under obligation not only for her steadfast encouragement, but for her judgment, understanding, and untiring patience, without which my career of authorship would have been trying indeed.

Sydney Greenbie.

Greensboro, Vermont,
August 4, 1921.