Chapter I

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS--ON THE _PRINZ WALDEMAR_--INCIDENT IN
THE GERMAN CONSULATE AT SYDNEY--THE MAORIS--THEIR PRESENT
CONDITION--DIFFICULTIES IN THE GERMAN COLONY

This little span which we call life has been aptly described as a mere parenthesis between the vast eternities of whence? and whither? and in this age of breakneck speed if we would live, and not vegetate, we must be men and women of the hour, keen to note, swift to record.

In the case of the writer of these pages the call comes to testify to the virtues of a nation which, from circumstances apparently beyond its control hitherto, it has become the fashion to decry, for latterly, has not our literary provender teemed with nebulous and speculative matter anent the esoteric meaning of a Monarch’s utterances! Indeed the fertility of the British press leaves little to be desired. In the same way our parliamentary leaders provide food for mental digestion in which the quantity, hardly the quality, should satisfy the most omnivorous politician.

Raw stuff in the form of undiscussed clauses thrust before the astonished gaze of the Electorate of Great Britain, are professedly, the “considered judgment of the Commons of England.” Accustomed as we are to the growth of “terminological inexactitudes” we would remind, before we pass on, even those who frequent the precincts of Westminster, that a fashionable sin remains, as heretofore, one of the Lord’s abominations.

Now my travels have taken me beyond the parish pump, my views of men and things have long since failed to coincide with that respectable orthodoxy which to the rural mind is represented by squire and parson, and I venture to believe that reading, marking, and learning whilst we globe-trot amounts nearly, to the sum of what we can acquire on this planet. Therefore it appears not inopportune, for one who has experienced hospitality and courtesy in no small degree during a visit to Germany’s youngest colony, to contribute her mite to that literature which deals with the hydra-headed question of our relations with that country. The Master’s lesson to love our neighbours as ourselves is possibly beyond our power, yet those of lesser light remind us that the pen as well as the tongue has its responsibilities.

“Every word has its own spirit
True or false that never dies,
Every word man’s lips have uttered,
Echoes in God’s skies.”

And let us remember that if there be those who long to “thrash the English,” there is at the same time, a growing determination on the part of the Teuton people to restrain the military autocracy of the Hohenzollern. The fiat has gone forth, Germany has set her face against Absolutism, and in the iron chain of destiny there are no breaks. The velocity of national movements responds in proportion to the propelling energy at the back of them. In the history of Europe, to-day, we may well pause to take stock of the situation, to measure if we can the magnitude of that driving force, which, since the birth in 1870 of this powerful nation, has converted a race of dreamers and idealists into a hard, practical people. For if the will to dominate by land and sea, to agitate restlessly for commercial expansion and colonial possessions can be construed into representing the matured fruit of Teutonic spiritual aspiration, then indeed the words of a far-seeing poetess, “Souls are ripened in our northern sky,” have more than mystic meaning!

Yet for our mutual comfort, let me add, that although we are not blind as to what united Germany may mean to this country, and that notwithstanding the fact that our fatuous law-givers profess to see in the fly-blown phylacteries of Cobdenism relief for all the woes which beset us, notwithstanding also the perversity which causes them to interpret Holy Writ into doing unto the foreigner 100 per cent. more than he would do for us in parallel circumstances, we persist in the belief that the British bulldog breed is not yet totally extinct, when patriots such as Lord Roberts, and Lord Meath, rise up to warn the country of its danger and its weakness. And God knows, and the women of England know, that compulsory military training for three or five years for every mother’s son would be a boon and a blessing in every way desirable. In fact our legislative muddlers are bringing us to this, that if a healthy compulsion to learn the art of self-defence is not soon insisted upon, the cry of the women will not be “Give us votes!” but “Teach us to shoot straight!”

With these introductory remarks I will pass on to the subject-matter of these pages, hoping that I have defined my position as savouring neither of Teuto-phobia, or of Philo-Teutonism.

Some twenty months ago I stood on the deck of the _Prinz Waldemar_ as she slowly left her moorings and steamed at noon through that most exquisite waterway, Sydney Harbour, out into the Pacific Ocean bound for Hong-Kong. Her first port of call was Simpsonhafen, in New Britain, where the monthly steamers of the German Lloyd are eagerly welcomed by the officials and planters of the Protectorate of New Guinea as the solitary link between these distant equatorial possessions of the Kaiser and their beloved fatherland. Subsequently, the _Prinz Waldemar_ would call at Manilla on her way to the British emporium of the Far East. My destination was Herbertshöhe, the seat of government of the scattered dependency. Here it was my intention to stay a month, proceeding to Japan by the next steamer. The undisguised wonder on the part, first of all, of the German Consul at Sydney, then of the ship’s officials, lastly of my fellow-passengers, when they learnt my plan, was amusing. What in the world was I going to do in New Britain? they asked. There was no decent hotel. I should find it _langweilich_! In fact, the place was impossible! For a lady to stay in that fever-stricken, God-forsaken colony! unheard of! Was I not afraid of _die cannibalen_? The idea that a woman might be interested in the vagaries of savage life was too hard a nut for the normal Teuton to crack. An English lady of ducal name, who had been staying at Government House, Sydney, endeavoured to dissuade me, picturing vividly my plight in case of illness. I told her that fevers never troubled me, although prickly heat and I were sworn enemies. To the objections of an English gentleman who, with his large family, had been visiting his properties in Australia, one could only emphasize that what he termed obstinacy, others called determination. Though I listened to them all with deep respect I was none the less prepared to find a four weeks’ stay lacking in comfort, but years of roaming train one how to dispense with luxuries. Hitherto I had always found sufficient nerve to face unknown quantities. Besides, had I not as a child, and later, in my teens, in the most approved Methodistical fashion, literally wrestled in my prayers to see not only distant lands, but real live savages? And here was a chance of beholding some of the lowest specimens of human nature on the globe. Would I forego it because the hotel chairs were not upholstered, or the milk to my tea was canned. A thousand times No! In the quiet of my cabin I thanked Providence that He had not built me that way! To tell the truth, the only thing which really occasioned some anxiety on my part was whether I should find the German officials courteous, or the reverse. I had some grounds for my doubt. The unpleasant interview I had at Sydney, the morning previous to embarking, when I requested the German Consul to give me a letter of introduction to the Governor at Herbertshöhe, lingered in my memory. Just then feeling was by no means friendly in Australasian circles towards the Germans in the Pacific Islands, owing to the extraordinary behaviour of members of the Jaluit Company, in the affair of a schooner sailing in Micronesian seas, belonging to a well-known firm of Sydney shippers, concerning which legal measures were pending. I was told by everybody that I should find the Germans obstructive, discourteous, unwilling to facilitate me in any research I was desirous of making.

As a matter of fact, my experience was the exact opposite. However, during my interview I gave the Consul to understand that I was known to persons of position in Sydney, mentioning the name of one or two prominent members of the Federal Government. I had also lectured for a Guild, whereat the Lady Mayoress had presided. To my utter surprise he completely ignored the foregoing, declaring, that at the very least, I should have brought a letter from Government House stating the object of my proposed visit, etc. Needless to say, my anger had been roused at this official bumptiousness, and I had risen somewhat indignantly from my chair, expressing the wish to trouble him no further, since had I deemed it necessary, I could easily have procured letters from the Governors, either of Australia, or of New Zealand. The matter was comparatively of small importance, and I should not think of troubling their Excellencies! The sequel to my interview was that the letter I had requested was written and received by His Excellency, Dr Hahl in New Britain shortly before I made the call that etiquette requires. So far as my visit to the German Protectorate was concerned, this was the first and only disagreeable I encountered from German officialism. In the island itself nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality extended to me on every hand.

During those eight days of blessed rest and sunshine, gliding over smooth seas, under brilliant skies between Sydney and the German port, occasionally hailed by a passer-by to look at a shark, noting the circumstance that after Brisbane not a funnel nor a sail did we see till we entered St George’s Channel, which separates the island of New Britain from New Ireland, I had time to meditate upon the sights I expected to witness, in a day or two, where savage humanity, practically barehanded, after countless ages of barbarism, had for the last three decades come into contact with the white man’s civilisation.

The world moves slowly where national existence is unknown, where the intellect, or that which does duty for it, closed in by dead walls of monotony merely guesses in the loftiest fashion of its sleep at Heaven.

To such conditions I was about to make my introductory bow.

There seems to be no doubt that the low culture and sparse populations of the islands in the Bismarck Archipelago have been brought about by centuries of fierce feuds and exterminating warfare. In pre-German days these small races were like beasts of prey, robbing, preying upon their neighbours until they themselves were chased, killed, and eaten in return. Their bloody fights always ended in complete annihilation of the enemy, women and children included, the victory being signalised by a cannibalistic gorge. It was unthinkable that in less than a generation these men-eaters had lost their leaden instincts, so it were, according to Herbert Spencer, vain to expect golden conduct! Primitive peoples from one point of view agree to differ; each, as will be seen in after pages, appears to live and have its being on its own special rung of the evolutionary ladder. How far removed indeed from the ideal savage are these South Sea Islanders!

“I am as free as nature first made man
Ere the base laws of servitude began
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”

From barbarism in the Pacific to the tinker, the tailor, and the candlestick-maker of this age and of this land is a far cry, but it is an open question at what stage in anthropological development man would not be infinitely better off under the rule of parental despotism than he is ever likely to be under representative government, provided alway that the despot is truly parental in his methods.

The discipline of life, a pulpit expression, but comprehensive, and the “base laws of servitude,” though opposite as the poles in their _modus operandi_, are, so far as we can see, castigatory essentials to the bringing into working order the endowments of humanity, but the danger lies in that we, by our western methods, risk impairing the original deposit of true manliness, as natural to the man-eating savage, when he brains the enemy of his tribe, as to the latest dandy in Piccadilly, who shows himself a lion in courage on the battle-field. We are curious to know what the next compromising Education Bill will give to replace the native grandeur of the human animal, for with all our boasted enlightenment, we see in our midst a slackness, as opposed to alertness, a softness (balm no doubt to the nonconforming conscience) incompatible with ideals of British bravery, if not fraught with menace to our national safety. Such qualities too often appeal to the man in the street and take the place of virility and common-sense.

I had passed the previous winter in New Zealand and my thoughts during the passage travelled across the seas to a dusky race emerging from conditions which still characterise the Melanesians under German rule. No study of mankind is more full of interest than that of the present condition of the Maoris of New Zealand. Over one hundred years have passed since Captain Cook, struck by their vast numbers, first gazed upon them as he stood upon the decks of the _Endeavour_ watching them follow the ship round the coast. No finer savages ever trod the earth than this offshoot of the great Polynesian race. It is lamentable that contact with the pakeha (white man) has resulted in the dwindling of their numbers. All that is evil they have imbibed, but for the virtues of the European the race seemingly has no use. It would, I thought, be interesting to compare them presently, so far as this aspect was concerned, with the German Melanesians. The latest census taken in 1906 gives a total of 47,731, and Dr Pomaré, the Government medical officer to the Maoris, himself a half-caste, declares that it is the only enumeration that can be relied upon, since the returns are now sent in by the heads of the recently-established native village councils, for the Maoris, like Dolly of the Playhouse, paralysed at the evils which in the forms of drink, disease and gambling have played havoc with their race, have now set about reforming themselves. The tattooed chief in dogskin cloak and befeathered topknot is no longer seen. If he was relentless and fierce, he was also brave and chivalrous. When he ate his fallen foe he believed that in so doing he received into himself the _mana_ (prestige, renown,) not only of the dead man, but that of all his ancestors. To add thus to his own _mana_ by conquering the hereditary enemies of his tribe, although it meant the perpetuation of inter-tribal feuds, was highly desirable. His social polity was the outcome of his views of right and wrong. Maori-lore as expounded in the whare-kura (house set apart for that purpose) abounded in spells and incantations to ward off unseen, adverse influences. It told him of a land called Te Reinga, where he would live for ever with his departed ancestors in peace, from which place they would exercise their spirit influence upon mortal affairs. Mr Tregear in his delightful book describes the old Maoris to have been highly educated, good, all-round men. Before the coming of the pakeha these savages felled trees with the roughest of tools, built houses and seaworthy boats, made weapons, carved ornaments, understood the art of weaving and dyeing. They cultivated the soil, they stored their minds with hymns and spells innumerable. They were poets, orators, warriors and seamen, possessing industry, patience, skill and artistic perception in no small degree. Their present condition, due mostly to the fact that nothing as yet replaces this training, is by no means so satisfactory as one would be led to expect, taking into consideration all the agencies at work making for their mental and moral uplifting. It may be remembered that the first Bishop Selwyn exclaimed from the pulpit, so impressed was he by the fervour displayed by the Christianised natives of New Zealand, “We see here a whole nation of pagans converted to the faith.” Subsequently, when circumstances arose during the Maori war which led the natives to distrust the teaching and the teachers, and Hau-Hauism was substituted for the creed of the missionary, there remained but little to show as permanent result of the marvellous turn things took, when in 1860, mission work reached its zenith in New Zealand. The spell of _tapu_ had been broken, the sacred head of the chief was regarded with lessened veneration, but to this day the Tohungas (witch-doctors) retain their malign influence over the majority of the people. With the substitution of British rule for tribal authority the descendant of the once formidable Maori too often finds his dearest joy in horse-racing, and in gambling. He spends listless days in wondering at the marvels of the pakeha--his motor, the phonograph, the gramophone! He forgets the tribal legend, the glory of his heroic ancestry. In the words of an educated Maori, “it does not take the power of second-sight for the ordinary observer to see that the modern Maori is oppressed with unutterable woe, a listless manner, a hopeless expression and inertia which can accomplish nothing.” If this be a true finding for the majority, it was good to learn that a hopeful minority of agriculturists, living in the neighbourhood of Napier and Gisborne, present a healthy example of what the race may eventually become. So far as education is concerned, I had been struck with the facilities offered to the native children. Over one hundred village schools were in operation, and the Government offers one hundred and fifteen scholarships, tenable for two years, for children of predominantly Maori race. Yet the complaint was universal that no definite technical training for various trades figured in the curriculum.

To convert the aimless lives of those who had left school into busy ones. To turn them out into the world as carpenters, artisans, or engineers; to give the girls objects and interests in life in teaching them dressmaking or laundry work, and so forth, would prevent the going back to tribal life, which is so discouraging a feature to the teachers in the schools. But no sketch of the actual condition of these people, however humble, seems just without giving full allowance for the fact that the insecurity of native land-tenure, arising from the difficulties connected with establishing individual titles to lands formerly held in common by the tribe, is the real cause of much of the apathy, indifference, and idleness apparent.

In the initial stage of colonisation so far attempted in New Britain, in the low intelligence of its aborigines as compared with that of the Maoris and our other subject races, in the unhealthy climate, I was shortly to see for myself how difficult is the task which lies before the pioneers of civilisation in the equatorial regions of the German Protectorate.