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last Parliament by Senator Pearce, Minister for Home and Territories, who advised the appointment of a commission of three capable men to reside in and have entire control of the development of the Territory, thus removing it from the political influences of the past, exerted in Melbourne and Sydney, where the mass of the population has no real conception of the dangers involved in a vast, empty North.

IV

It may be permitted to touch briefly upon one aspect of this problem because the same problem exists on the continent of America — the possibility of an economic settlement in the tropics exclusively by whites. No fiercer controversy has ever raged in Australia than that which centres around the White Australia policy, and the great majority of Australians are unalterably opposed, for racial and economic reasons, to the introduction of Asiatic laborers into any part of the continent, tropical or otherwise. This opposition is based both on the fear of miscegenation and on the fear that the wages of white workers would be adversely affected. But sooner or later the fact must be faced that Australia, although geographically one country, with an Anglo-Saxon population racially purer than that of any other country in the world, with the exception, possibly, of New Zealand and, of course, the Mother Country itself, - contains regions that do not fall within the sphere of white colonization.

Up to the present, very few prominent Australians have been ready to admit that large parts of the Northern Territory and adjacent districts cannot be settled by Europeans without the aid of Asiatic labor; and politicians least of all have been able to run counter to the national sentiment.

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Only one responsible statesman, Sir Henry Barwell, then Prime Minister of South Australia, has come out into the open and denounced the results of a too rigid adherence to the White Australia policy. Only now and then a patriotic official dares to throw discretion to the winds and reveal the real state of affairs. Thus Dr. Herbert Basedow, at one time chief medical officer of the Territory, reported that 'any sound developmental policy for the Territory must include two essential first, gangs of acclimatized colored laborers, kept under strict government supervision; and secondly, ready communication by rail with subtropic or temperate climes. In other words, there is no reason why white men should not live in the Territory as well as they do in other tropical countries, provided the necessary comforts be given them by introducing cheap attendance, such as can be supplied only by colored men, and providing an opportunity for them to regain periodically their physical strength by traveling to more favorable climes without the loss of too much time and money.' The opinions of such men as Sir Henry Barwell and Dr. Basedow are, however, anathema to the average Australian politician.

It has been stated with emphasis that many parts of tropical Australia are eminently suitable for European settlement, yet the fact remains that neither Australians themselves European immigrants are anxious to establish themselves permanently in those regions. Medical opinion still differs on the possibility of raising healthy families in the tropics and keeping them permanently resident there; but even granting this possibility, the economic factor then intervenes, and it becomes apparent to the merest novice that the problem of laboring in the tropics and of cultivating the products peculiar to those

regions is economically insoluble except at the expense of the whole community an expense which, in the case of these enormous regions, would be an impossible burden for the Australian people to bear.

The statement that white men can and do work in the tropics and can reside for long periods in tropical Australia without hurt to themselves and their families contains sufficient truth to be misleading to those who are unaware of the actual conditions. It is possible to reside there under the best conditions and where the whole drudgery of the housework does not fall upon the woman of the household; but where all must work hard to get a bare living out of the soil, where no outside labor is available, where the amenities of a well-organized household in the tropics cannot be observed, it is evident that the brunt of the experiment will fall upon the woman and through her upon the children, with the inevitable result that the race must deteriorate.

The present Administrator of the Territory, Mr. F. C. Urquhart, whose opinion must necessarily have considerable weight, in discussing this problem has stated: 'As to white labor, writing after a long experience in the most northern parts of Queensland, I feel sure that south of the fifteenth parallel [that is, well within the tropics] there is no question to debate, and that white men who are willing to do so may work without detriment from the climatic conditions. North of that line, up to the north coast, conditions are more severe, but there is nothing to show that they are dangerous to men of good constitution and of temperate habits. It is largely a matter of rational working-hours, temperance, and hygiene, with occasional spells in cooler regions for recuperative purposes. [The italics are my own.]

VOL. 187-NO. 4

When, however, we consider the case of white women in the northern portion of the Territory, more especially in the coastal regions under existing conditions, I fear the verdict must be less favorable, though improved housing, better dietary, and railway facilities for cheap and speedy access to more temperate climates might go far to lessen the disabilities they are now under. Children, it is agreed, do very well up to the age of eight or nine years, when a change of climate seems to be in most cases desirable.'

It may well be asked, however, how the manual worker with a family is likely to be able, under the economic conditions that must always pertain to the Northern Territory, unless there is an abundance of cheap labor, to make periodic visits — which to be beneficial must be of considerable duration to the more temperate portions of the continent.

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V

It will be thought, doubtless, that some apology is necessary for calling attention to what may well appear to be an obscure problem in an obscure corner of the British Empire. It is probable that many who read this article may consider the Northern Territory of Australia to be too insignificant though not in size — to merit much attention. Yet, as I have endeavored to show, this is in reality a world problem of the first importance. It involves, in the first place, the moral question as to how far the white races are entitled to hold vast tracts of country which they are unable to utilize or develop without the aid of their Asiatic neighbors, when near by are millions of fellow creatures who are clamoring for land and the 'right to live.' The greatest pressure of population upon this globe centres

around the Pacific, and, of all the regions dominated by Europeans, Australia occupies, with respect to the colored races, the most dangerous and most exposed position.

Its position is at present safeguarded by the moral influences and armed strength of the British Empire as a whole; but it is possible to conceive the time when other parts of the Empire, such as India, not to mention foreign Asiatic countries, may question the justice of the Australian Monroe Doctrine and seek to press their opinion in the councils of the Empire. Can Great Britain afford to disregard any definite and imperious demand made by her Asiatic subjects for admission to unoccupied lands, and in that case can she afford to support Australia in her policy of isolation?

This question cannot be answered, but it must occur to every thinker, and

not least to those in America, who, but for their consistent policy of settlement, would be exposed to-day to the same dangers that threaten the Australian Commonwealth. The five and a half millions of Australians are surrounded, except in the south and east, by over one thousand millions of yellow, brown, and black men, from whom they are divided by a racial chasm of their own making. The purity of the AngloSaxon race in the Southern Hemisphere may possibly be involved in this problem, though this is doubted by many authorities; but undoubtedly there is involved the great moral question that is at present occupying the minds of many thinkers in Asia- the question of the right to own land without effective occupation. Upon the solution of this problem depends the entire future of the British race in the Southern Hemisphere.

THE DECLINE OF CRIME IN BRITAIN

BY COLIN R. COOTE

THE sentence which burst like a bombshell on the social system of eighteenthcentury Europe was that with which Rousseau began his Contrat Social. 'Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.' This was the beginning of a change in the outlook of civilized man, which has developed with a slow but increasing intensity throughout the succeeding one hundred and fifty years. From a recognition of the fact that it was morally wrong and economically wasteful to chain men with the bonds of tyrannical social conditions came the corollary that it is useless to shut them up in prison as long as there is

any chance of reforming them. Thence came humaner laws, and the humaner administration of those laws. This created the difficult problem of striking the golden mean between the crime of creating crime and the crime of creating criminals.

To-day, generally speaking, prison is regarded as a deterrent, not as the instrument of vindictiveness, and public opinion undoubtedly acclaims this definition as correct. The whole of the effort of the modern State is directed toward, on the one hand, changing the social conditions in or of which crime is bred. The political history of Britain

for the past seventy years is one of competition among the political parties, whatever they might call themselves, as to which could most speedily carry into effect a programme of reform on which, in statement though not in method, all were agreed. On the other hand the effort has been to succor, rather than to punish, all who can pretend, with any semblance of probability, that their lapse into crime has been due to social conditions as yet imperfectly reformed.

You do not, however, end crime by recognizing that more often than not it is not the criminal's own fault if he breaks the law. You cannot destroy the conditions which create crime with the same facility as the scientists destroyed the breeding-grounds of the Anopheles mosquito. In point of fact, in an old country like Britain, which tumbled haphazard into industrialism, and increased its population in a hundred years by 500 per cent, it has required an enormous, and only very partially successful, effort to diminish the conditions in which crime is bred. Only recently has any coördinated attempt been made to deal, in these overcrowded islands, with such problems as slums, housing-shortage, public health, and, generally, the multifarious difficulties created by an industrial civilization founded upon a necessarily precarious prosperity.

It is supposed that, with the exception of certain popular characters invented by still more popular writers of fiction, the criminal is a person driven to misdemeanor by the miserable conditions in which masses of men and women are forced to live. The theory that crime is a disease is based upon the fact that the diseases recognized in the pharmacopoeia are indubitably fostered by such dreadful livingconditions. It is therefore to the point to consider, in some detail, the changes

in social conditions which have been created by four and a half years' orgy of spending between 1914 and 1918, all the more because those conditions are imperfectly realized by those who have had the good fortune to escape suffering from them. We in Britain, encompassed by the difficulties of 1925, are perhaps too apt to look back upon 1914 as upon a Golden Age, too ready to forget the industrial and political tension which was one of the factors upon which the German war party counted for a victory undisturbed by British interference. And yet it is true that since 1914 our difficulties have enormously increased, and the fact is proved by the most cursory comparison of the standard and conditions of life then and now.

We have a Budget balancing at £800,000,000, as compared with one balancing at £200,000,000; and of the former figure £350,000,000 is swallowed by debt services alone. This huge sum has to be found before Britain can begin to think of spending a penny on social services. With regard to housing, though the State has made a tremendous effort, translated into the cold figures of a £600,000,000 capital liability, there is a shortage of 800,000 houses. It is only this year that the corner has been turned and a beginning made upon overtaking the arrears. For many years to come there will be quarters in our big cities foul beyond imagination.

Our industrial situation is too well known to need elaboration. It is not so black as it is often painted, because 90 per cent of our population are employed, and there are actually 200,000 more persons in work than in 1914. Moreover, the unemployment figures for that year are unknown, because, there being at that time no comprehensive scheme of unemployment insurance, reliable figures are not available.

But it is estimated that even in that year there were 600,000 unemployed. Still, to-day's figure of 1,250,000 represents a formidable surplus to present industrial requirements. Lastly, it is pertinent to compare the standard of wages and the cost of living for the two periods. Upon the first it is extremely difficult to be accurate, because the truth has been hidden beneath a mass of partisan propaganda, brought forward in the course of industrial disputes, and because to-day nominal wage-rates are subject to all sorts of variations, and differ enormously as between different trades. Broadly speaking, and making full allowance for the lower purchasing power of sterling, in the sheltered industries that is, industries not subject to foreign competition, such as the building trade and the railways wages are higher by between 20 and 40 per cent. In all other industries, however, they are nominally back to about the 1914 standard (again measured in real values), and in certain cases even lower. A large percentage of miners, for example, owing to depression in the coal industry, can find work for only three or four days in the week. I must again disarm impending critics by repeating that it is possible to make only the most general statements about wagerates, particularly in the unsheltered industries. The cost of living it is possible to ascertain more definitely, because figures have been kept, though not based upon the same elaborate calculations as in the United States, since the Armistice. They show an index figure of 126, as compared to 1914, in 1919-20, and thereafter a steady decline to round about 70, at which it has remained throughout the present year. There are signs that this reduction of price levels is now being considerably accelerated, as retail prices are forced to approximate more

closely to wholesale prices. The statements made above in regard to wages take into account this rise in prices over the 1914 level, though the rise in food prices only is not quite so great as the general index figure. Generally speaking, the standard of living is disappointing to those who thought, and were often told by persons capable of knowing better, that a nation can win a great war without paying for it in

any way.

This does not mean, as extremist politicians pretend, that the policy of reform of social conditions has failed: but merely that it has been temporarily robbed of its full fruits by the war, and indeed has not yet had sufficient time to prove or disprove its value. A mass of new social legislation has been scribbled on the Statute Book, but has not had time to imprint itself upon the hearts of men.

It would therefore be anticipated that, under all the distress and temptations implied in these figures, the population of Britain would have lapsed the more readily into offenses against the law. Indeed, among those best qualified to judge, the absorption of 5,000,000 soldiers, habituated during a nightmare of five years to an existence wherein human life and considerations of humanity were held cheap, and wherein the ability of the individual to provide for his own comfort by fair means or foul was the chief criterion of his value, was expected to be attended by a general lowering of ethical standards. And yet, the very reverse is the case. In England and Wales the peak year since 1881 was 1905, when 197,941 persons were committed to prison; the lowest 1919, when the corresponding figure fell to 26,050. Since that date there was a gradual rise to 47,371 in 1923, but again a decline last year to 46,135. Broadly speaking, the number of persons sent

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