Why does the United States build battleships, one after another, with such tireless energy? No doubt, in order to equal or outstrip Great Britain in naval power; in order to wrest from the United Kingdom its long-standing naval supremacy, on the preservation of which Lloyd George insisted so strenuously at the Imperial Conference.

Yet surely, the naval policy of the government in Washington is not dictated by any wish to fight the oldest representative of the Anglo-Saxon family of nations. The military and naval policy of both Wilson and Harding has been, and still is, governed by the situation in the Far East and in the Pacific generally, where until now England has been Japan's ally. And relations between the United States and Japan beget deep apprehension in the minds of the best-informed observers.

Only recently, M. Dubosq, a French expert on the Far-Eastern question, who has lived in China for many years, and has published his observations in L'Europe Nouvelle, wrote:

There is no need of making the situation more dramatic than it is, but it must be said that the Far-Eastern horizon darkens very rapidly. The thought of a coming. conflict between Japan and the United States gains in popularity. It permeates the atmosphere of the Far East even more definitely than the thought of a great war permeated the atmosphere of Europe in 1913. Of course, we cannot say that such a struggle has become inevitable. But we can say that it absorbs the interests of both sides, particularly of the Japanese.

In this approaching struggle between Japan and the United States, Great Britain herself is, at least formally, with Japan, while the British Dominions are with the United States.

In other words, the British Empire, taken as a unit, has no single and consistent policy in the Pacific, but finds itself at the parting of the ways.

Either it is to remain a world-power, and then the principal centre of its world-policy must be in the Far East, where naturally, there would be a preponderance of the tendencies supported by the Dominions in their policy of solidarization with America, or -But the other alternative should be excluded from the very start.

No matter how valuable the British Empire's interests in Asia may render the friendship of Japan, a break with. the Dominions is unthinkable, for psychological, economic, political, and, finally, military-strategic reasons. The Anglo-Saxons, particularly the British, have a remarkable genius for compromise. No doubt in this case, too, a compromise will readily be found.

There will no longer be a London foreign policy. There will be a policy of a gigantic confederation of independent states, which will, no doubt, meet halfway the Washington tendency of enforcing universal peace through an invincible association of all Englishspeaking countries.

The British-Japanese Treaty, which expires soon, may be renewed after the Imperial Conference; but if so, there is no doubt that it will be renewed in a form acceptable to both the British Dominions and America. The shell will remain, while the contents will practically disappear.

In any event, the renewal of the treaty will scarcely satisfy Japanese imperialists. They will, no doubt, try to find new allies, in order to reënsure their position in the Far East and on the Pacific.

On the other hand, old England, forced to forego much of Japan's erstwhile aid, will be compelled at any price to ensure the inviolability of her interests in India and her road to India. The 'Russian danger' continues to trouble the minds of Britain's statesmen. Furthermore, there rises before

If we classify the nations bordering on the Pacific by color, we shall find that, at a moderate estimate, about 400,000,000 belong to the yellow race and 164,000,000 to the white race. Of the latter only 12,000,000 actually dwell upon the coast; and of these nearly one half live in Australia and New Zealand.

All the white border nations are not equally interested in the outcome of this conflict, although it will seriously affect their future. The United States and Canada might theoretically survive an ethnic defeat upon this battlefield. But the isolated white dwellers of the Antipodes would not survive such a disaster. Their only guaranty of independence, and their only protection against the expansion of their yellow neighbors, is their solidarity with the great Western powers. If they are to survive, the latter must remain masters of the Pacific. It will not be enough for them merely to exclude yellow people from their own territory, already a delicate problem, but they must fix

a limit to both the economic and the political zones of influence of the Chinese, and above all of the Japanese, and prevent these ambitious rivals from becoming their immediate neighbors. Chinese expansion is exclusively economic, but the Japanese danger is political and military.

Some people are inclined to ascribe Australian policy to imperialist ambitions. I interpret it as purely defensive

the defense of a race and of a civilization. The problem has three aspects, equally serious - economic, ethnic, and political. They may be formulated in three questions: Who will exploit the Pacific? Who will populate it?Who will rule it?

The development of the Pacific islands, and of the territories neighboring the Pacific occupied by the white race, encounters a fundamental difficulty, the scarcity or non-existence of manual labor. Colored labor would be of great value in California, British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand; but it is excluded as a matter of principle. The opposition of the tradeunions, which insist on maintaining their standard of living, would be a sufficient explanation of this policy; but there is a deeper cause behind it. These advance-posts of our race are aware, to a man, that to mingle with the neighboring races spells the doom of their own social organism. The yellow race

would soon expel the whites from all fields of manual employment, and the territories of the latter would soon be converted into exploiting colonies. Two distinct races cannot exist side by side, and live the same life under the same laws. This is what the Australians mean when they preach a white Australia. So far they have succeeded by drastic exclusion legislation; but they are perfectly aware that the latter can be enforced only so long as the Western powers retain their military supremacy.

In the Pacific islands the problem is still more distressing, for white men can perform manual labor without injury in New South Wales or Queensland; but they cannot do so in Hawaii, Fiji, or Samoa. There the colored laborer is indispensable. Now the Polynesians are a charming but a lazy people. Their simple needs are easily supplied, and then they stop. Consequently, employers have had recourse to Chinese, Japanese, and Indians. But this quite natural measure has resulted in the most unexpected and serious ethnic problems.

For we have learned from experience that, when the yellow race and the Polynesian race come into contact, the latter disappears. The immediate cause is not apparent, for the Polynesians are a vigorous people, of magnificent physique, and apparently of robust constitution; but contact with foreigners slowly kills them off. This is not due alone to alcoholism and the introduction of new diseases. There is a more mysterious factor in the thing, a sort of non-resistance to death, which permits an enormous infant mortality and exterminating epidemics.

What will be the ultimate outcome, if those regions continue to import coolie labor? Three quarters of the white governments having possessions in the Pacific seem blind or indifferent to the outcome. Only the Australians appear to appreciate what the result will be

when the white men and the yellow men come into direct rivalry, without the Polynesian buffer.

That is why the Australians are so resolute in their determination to prevent Chinese or Japanese from invading, not only the Australian continent, but even the South Pacific islands. They do not want the yellow race to get a foothold there, even as coolies. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say that a single Japanese cannot land in New Caledonia without arousing Australian resentment.

But the weak point-the exceedingly weak point-in Australia's position is its inability to suggest a substitute for yellow labor. The Polynesians cling to the life of their ancestors. Indian coolies, who have been tried in Fiji, refuse to come. The Filipinos and Portuguese employed in Hawaii are not numerous enough. Nevertheless, the guano-digging, the cane-fields, the cocoanut-plantations, must have labor. In a word, the Australians face a problem which is unsolvable.

But this is not all. In order to keep the yellow race out, a people must be political masters of a country. That is the key to the whole immigration problem. It explains the insistence with which the Australian government resisted every attempt at Japanese penetration of the South Pacific at the time of the war, particularly at the Peace Conference. It tolerated Japanese occupation of the three former German archipelagoes the Carolines, the Ladrones, and the Marshall Islands; but it successfully prevented their getting a foothold south of the Equator. That looks like a possible political frontier likely to satisfy reasonable people on both sides. Australia may regard Japan as a dangerous rival in the future, but is not opposed to provisional settlements. with that power.

Before leaving Melbourne for the

Peace Conference, Mr. Hughes, the Prime Minister, in an important speech upon Australian policy, declared unambiguously that the existence of the Commonwealth depended upon the Empire's possessing an adequate navy. He added and the two questions evidently were but one in his mindthat there was no objection to renewing the Anglo-Japanese alliance, but it must be subject to two conditions: that this should not prejudice in any way the White Australia policy; and that it should not be directed against the United States.

This frank statement uncovers the deeper forces determining Australia's foreign policy. That nation is independent at heart, but at the same time loyal to Great Britain, instinctively realizing that British backing is the only guaranty of its independence. However, there is a delicate nuance in this attitude. The country feels that its secu

Outside of Europe, we must accustom ourselves to regard foreign problems, not only from a political, but also from a racial point of view. We easily fall into the error of regarding the politics of the Pacific as an end in themselves; when, in fact, they are only a means to an end- the supremacy of the race. This is so true that even the most ardent internationalists of the Australian Labor Party are whole-hearted supporters of military conscription, if needed to defend a White Australia.

ALTHOUGH Viscount Esher has given his book the above title, he is careful to explain that it is not meant to recall the tragic death of the great soldier-administrator in the stormy Orkney sea. The purpose of Lord Esher's volume is to demonstrate that Lord Kitchener was a failure in his administration of the War Office from August, 1914, until his death in June, 1916, and that Lord Kitchener himself realized this terrible fact. This, in brief, is what the book conveys. Lord Esher declares that, in the midst of the greatest task of his life,

and while at the summit of a career of fame and success, Lord Kitchener suddenly became aware that the golden bowl was broken. . . . The rush which had sprung up so miraculously in the sands of the desert could not grow in the London clay. . . . To the poet's vision the tragedy of Hamlet lay in the hero's consciousness of his own irresolution, and not in the holocaust of death amid which the play ends. Lord Kitchener's tragedy was not dissimilar, inasmuch as he realized that the qualities of mind and character which had served him well through life were, under these entirely new conditions, out of place.

This extract from Lord Esher's study of Kitchener's work and character during the twenty-two months he was Minister for War is sufficient to show that, in the writer's opinion, Lord Kitchener failed in the great task he had undertaken and fully realized the extent of the disaster which had overtaken him. This is what Lord Esher seeks to prove in the volume of two hundred-odd pages that he has written. Whether history will accept this conclusion, time alone can reveal. To his contemporaries, with the possible exception of some of his colleagues in Mr. Asquith's overcrowded Cabinet, and perhaps a few soldiers with whom he came into conflict, Lord Kitchener, while he lived, was the great outstanding and commanding figure of the war. We know from Sir George Arthur's biography that there were men in the Cabinet in 1915 and 1916 who longed to be rid of Kitchener. His mentality and the circumstances of his career in Egypt unfitted him for the team-work which membership in the Cabinet entails. He had been too long in a position of supremacy and autocracy, where his word was law, to be able to work under conditions where he had to defend his proposals and coördinate them in conjunction with the opinions, and even the prejudices, of other men.

Lord Kitchener had not a gift for discussion. He was either too silent, or, when strongly moved, was so voluble as to be incoherent, and often indiscreet. He was entirely out of place among the lawyers and dialecticians who formed so large a part of the Asquith Government. Lord Esher gives a painful picture of him struggling like a blind and bewildered giant amid unfamiliar surroundings, and against intangible, but powerful, forces which he could not effectively combat because he could not understand them. Some of his colleagues in the Cabinet both dis

liked and feared him. Attempts were made to render his position so uncomfortable that he would be forced to resign. When these failed, he was sent on a mission to the Mediterranean and the Near East, from which it was hoped he would never return. In Paris, while on his way to Gallipoli, Lord Kitchener said bitterly: 'Asquith is my only friend.'

When he returned unexpectedly from the Near East in November, 1915, he was shorn of some of his power at the War Office, and colleagues were forced upon him whom he did not desire. "They want to use my name and deprive me of authority,' he complained to an intimate friend, when administrative changes were made at the War Office which lessened his personal control of affairs. But Kitchener felt that he owed a duty to his Sovereign and to the country, and he remained at the post he had undertaken. Perhaps the greatest disappointment his enemies met with was when Sir William Robertson was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

"The wish in certain quarters to be rid of Lord K.,' writes Viscount Esher, 'had not diminished, but it was hoped that Sir William Robertson would bell the cat.' This hope was not realized. The new Chief of the Imperial General Staff was too big and too honest a man to play the game of the politicians, whose object in pressing for his appointment Sir William discerned very clearly. He recognized that the nation owed more to Kitchener than to any living man for what had so far been done in the war. On Feb. 4, 1916, Sir William Robertson wrote:

Where would we be without the New Armies? He was not well served. If they want to be rid of him, why not move him? I imagine they dare not. Apparently, I have been a disappointment in not knocking him down. But it is no part of a