trade and wealth are growing at an astonishing rate. The suicidal tendencies observable in European industries are giving the Japanese a unique opportunity. They will develop China, if China does not develop itself. They manifest the vigour of a new race-the patriotism and the ambitions of a successful race. Does any one believe that this people can be confined to its own narrow islands? The expansion of Japan is as inevitable as was the expansion of England. Would the islands of the Malay Archipelago satisfy them? They are watching the great continent beyond.

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In a good cause Australia could depend upon the whole forces of the mother-country and of the white races of the Empire. But if the cause is doubtful, if the Australians are held to have made insufficient use of their land, what then? Are we to repeat the overweening blunder of Spain, in striving to keep for ourselves a world we cannot use? If so, history may also repeat the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Where Japan goes China will follow. The Yellow Peril' is no extravagance of a fervent imagination. Chinese students have for years been thronging to Japan in thousands to learn the secret of her success. China will make up in mass for the slowness of her motion. Her momentum may become greater than that of her neighbour. We are in the presence of gigantic forces. To take one item only, it is difficult to overestimate the result of the application in scientific and methodical fashion of the labour of patient millions to 250,000 square miles of coalfields. Industrial progress has an inevitable bearing upon war. China and Japan, having settled their differences, may some day be in a position to meet the world in arms.

Nothing can be more agreeable to the oriental than the cry Australia for the Australians.' In so far as the catchword means that the actual inhabitants object to sharing the wealth of their continent with the people of the old country or with other whites, in so far as it means discrimination within Australia of a nature to make the country less attractive to the newcomer, in so far, even, as it means unwillingness to shoulder burdens in order to increase the speed or area of settlement, 'Australia for the Australians' to-day means Australia for the Asiatics' to-morrow. Australians will have to

face the fact that their ultimate heritage in Australia will be in exact proportion to their hospitality to the races most akin to themselves.

There are three possible futures for Australia. The first is that the continent should remain entirely 'white'; the second is that it should be divided between the Europeans and the Asiatics: the third is that it should become entirely or virtually Asiatic. The first of these possibilities is the goal set before themselves by the Australian people. It can be made a reality only by a supreme effort. The means to be adopted are fairly plain. Migration at a maximum speed from the mothercountry, sufficient in amount to effect a gradual transference of a large proportion of her population; assisted immigration from other European lands, particularly from Italy, into the warmer temperate regions; maintenance and, so far as possible, enhancement of the natural increase of population; development of the tropical portions by indentured labour, or by other methods that may prove efficacious, short of actual Asiatic settlement. The second and third possibilities need not detain us long. They are each intensely repugnant to the Australians; they would be preceded by extremities of human suffering; but one or other is unavoidable unless the most vigorous measures adopted. Australia can save herself by her own exertions, not otherwise.

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The practical steps which would have to be taken to effect a migration of many millions of British men and women and their establishment in a new land cannot be described here in any detail. A few leading principles only may be briefly considered. Hitherto emigration has been conducted with reference to the numbers which a given colony can absorb in a specified time. In the absence of due provision, emigrants in excess of this power of absorption would become a charge upon the colonists. But, where emigration is directed to a favourable locality, and undertaken by a powerful organisation or by a government, there is no such limitation. Given abundance of fertile land, expert advice, temporary support, newcomers can be settled as fast as the railways can be built. The emigrant must be equal to his work; he can be made so by being trained in the land of his

adoption. There is no special mystery about life in a new land. The ordinary man can be made an efficient colonist just as surely as, and much more readily than, he can be made a good soldier. He can become selfsupporting, or nearly so, from the start. All previous records in emigration could easily be eclipsed by the adoption of a well-devised scheme.

The expenses of transportation and settlement should be borne entirely by the country to which the emigrant takes his muscle and bone and brain. In going to a colony he increases its wealth by the value of his lifework. In an overstocked old country he may be an encumbrance; in a new country he is an asset. The effect of his entry into a neighbourhood is speedily seen in the increase in the value of property. If a certain proportion of the lands developed by the newcomers were to be set apart for the purpose, their increment of value, realised by sale or rental, would provide the funds required to subsidise the scheme of immigration. The only sort of emigration which we should encourage is one which turns to account the natural resources of the Empire or, in other words, which multiplies its wealth. This wealth enriches the new countries principally and directly; the old country is only benefited indirectly, except in so far as its capital is employed.

But what if Australia neglects to make the great effort that is required, preferring to sit at ease in the land she calls her own? In that case Australia can take no part in any constructive scheme of migration. So far as can be seen, there can be but one end to the attempt to hold for the white man a continent so closely linked to Asia. The prospect is not an attractive one, nor should we be justified in recommending colonists to settle in a situation thus threatened. In homely phrase, it would be throwing good money after bad. Our children are our riches, when all is said. Without Australia there is yet ample space within the Empire for as many as we can profitably spare; in New Zealand, where complete development is entirely feasible, and above all, in Canada, whose needs are second only to those of Australia.

Whether we take the Empire as a whole or confine our attention to any of its larger portions, there is

no surplus of population. With negligible exceptions, there is a niche for every one where he could not only lead a useful and happy life but where also his presence would be a factor of security. The millions of our countrymen whom in the past we have been so ready to fling away-the greater number to the United States -are the most important element in the resources of the Empire,' without whom, indeed, these resources are a snare and an incentive to attack. It is to be hoped that these unvalued millions will be husbanded to better use in the future.

A thousand motives urge us to action, but they are in danger of being forgotten amid the clamour of the catchwords. We are rightly concerned about our export trade. That problem, like many another, would no longer trouble us if our prosperity were based upon the mother-earth at our doors. To give a great people the freedom of its lands; to abolish the extraordinary spectacle of chronic unemployment, while countless millions of acres lie unused; to turn the masses from the vain dream of unlimited prosperity obtainable in an overcrowded corner; to dismiss for ever the dread of attacks upon the food supply; to lay the spectre of cutthroat foreign competition and become sufficient for ourselves; to aid our far-off kinsmen in maintaining the integrity of the Empire-in order to accomplish these aims but one thing is primarily necessary, viz. to spread a knowledge of the facts, to stimulate by all means in our power a thorough study of the question of emigration and of the connexion between pressure of population and economic stress, and to bring home, especially to our fellow-citizens in the Britains overseas, the dangers which threaten us in the not remote future.

FLEETWOOD CHIDELL.

Art. 9.-THE FIRST LORD HOLLAND.

Henry Fox, First Lord Holland; His Family and Relations. By the Earl of Ilchester. 2 vols. Murray, 1920.

WE have often had occasion to lament, when enjoying the hospitality of English country-houses, the indifference of country-gentlemen towards their books and, above all, to their papers. Men who are ideal landlords, admirable citizens in respect of the hard work that they do for the county, proud of their possessions, and well informed as to such things as their pictures and their china, are often strangely ignorant of the contents of their libraries, and regard their muniments and other papers as the affair of their agents. Let it be granted that a country-gentleman who knows all about all his possessions, his lands, woods, flocks, herds, house, and house's contents, is one of no ordinary culture. It is asking a good deal of a man to be a good judge of a bull and a good judge of a miniature, to be equally competent to conduct a drive of partridges and to read the courthand of an ancient deed, to be able to gauge the merits or demerits of a tenant as a cultivator, and to date the undated letter of an ancestor. Yet such men are to be found, and Lord Ilchester is one of them. There are not many who would care to match themselves against him with a gun or with a dry fly; there are few who could teach him anything about his pictures, his furniture, his china, or his books. Not only does he cherish his papers, from a deed which bears the marks of Canute and Dunstan to the letter of the last man of note who has visited Holland House, but he also interprets the more interesting of them by genuine and laborious research, and sets them forth, with an excellently written though modest commentary of his own, for the reader of English history.

It is not until one peruses a compendious list of the Cabinets of the English Sovereigns from George I to Victoria that one realises how recently they have ceased to consist mainly of peers. Yet the great English names of the political world in the 18th century-there are practically only three-were all of them owned by Vol. 233.-No. 463.

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