Chapter VIII

I CALL ON THE GOVERNOR--SUN-WORSHIPPERS--THE MISADVENTURES
OF A DECADE--BRITISH COLONISTS--I INSPECT “POLICE BOYS”--A
“WHITE AUSTRALIA” POLICY CONDEMNED

It was with some misgiving that I found my way up the steep ascent, which led to the Governor’s residence, commanding a magnificent view. It was a large, straggling building; at the back of it there were a number of outhouses which one passed on one’s way to the main entrance. Spacious and lofty rooms led out as usual on to a wide verandah overlooking Blanche Bay.

Her Excellency received me cordially; two ladies, one the wife of a Wesleyan missionary, the other of a barrister, were present at afternoon tea. Frau Hahl’s English was not so good as my German, so we conversed in the latter language. She was a tall, handsome woman of about thirty, belonging to the well-known family of Von Seckendorf.

In answer to my inquiry concerning her health, she said she was now acclimatised, and did not suffer as did so many from fever, probably because the house was built on such high ground. She introduced her little girl of three to me, and said she had only returned to Germany once since coming out directly after her marriage. I thought her charming, but hoped her husband would soon appear, for since I had no babies to discuss and was not enthralled with the mysteries of the culinary art, I felt somewhat at a loose end. A young German girl, who acted as nurse to one of the ladies, roused my curiosity, for although she had a somewhat striking face, she possessed the very thickest ankles, covered with white knitted stockings of the homeliest “bauer” type, I have ever gazed upon. Subsequently I learnt her history. She had come from Germany some years previously, to join a small band of sun-worshipping enthusiasts, under the leadership of a man called Engelhardt, who at one time was a well-known musician in Berlin.

Here, in an island at the entrance of the bay, these persons--at any rate, those of the male sex--dressing themselves in the scanty garments of the native, essayed to live not only “the simple life,” but the life of the native, minus its bloodthirst. They subsisted on cocoanuts and bananas, had huts for shelter in case of rain, otherwise lived and slept under the arc of heaven, holding the sun as the centre of life, and therefore to be adored.

As the members of the little society gradually died from the effects of this change in their mode of life, the girl preferred to return to civilisation, and eventually to her parents in Germany.

When the Governor made his appearance, I at once felt that I should like him. Honest, genial, inclined to be friendly; he began at once to speak in excellent English, and we immediately carried on an animated conversation, for he was only too willing to tell me of his experiences in the Archipelago. He was of middle height, scarcely forty, inclining to be stout, but exceedingly active; in fact, he seemed to carry with him an atmosphere of latent strength. Of Bavarian family, he told me, he had been legal adviser to the New Guinea Company several years before he succeeded Herr von Benningsen, the first Governor. Though he had at different times had severe illnesses--even that disease nearly always fatal to Europeans in these parts--the black-water sickness--he was now used to the extreme heat. In fact, only a man of good health, alert and active, could do what was required of a Governor in such a young and scattered dependency, dealing with natives of such treacherous and fierce instincts as, for instance, the Admiralty islanders! It was no armchair business! He had visited all the islands in the _Seestern_, the German Government yacht, and there were few islanders with whom he could not enter into some communication, for he had made a point of studying the varying languages. This was necessary, since it had frequently been his task to lead punitive expeditions against natives who had killed managers or other Europeans in various parts of the Archipelago. Had I not noticed the barracks near the hotel, these were the quarters of his “police boys.” And he proceeded to explain that in former excursions to chastise different islanders, they had found that it was impossible for Europeans to chase them through the dense bush along the tiniest tracks, which, as a rule, lead to their secluded villages.

Therefore he had, with the aid of his officials, organised and trained a native police for bush warfare, and hitherto they had proved themselves a most effective force.

The fierce Admiralty boys were the best for this purpose. He could get any number of them! Fighting was as the breath of their nostrils to them! A man-hunt was their greatest joy!

Physically robust, though not of such big proportions as the Bukas, they were infinitely more intelligent, their activity greater, and their lithe, slim bodies could slip through dense bush where the European had no chance whatever.

“Do you get all your police boys from the Admiralty?” I inquired.

“No, that would never do,” he laughed as he replied; “suppose they were to combine against us, we should be wiped out. Look at our numbers! Our safety lies in the fact of their being unable to talk to each other. Some are from New Ireland, some are Sulkas, and so on.”

Then he talked on cannibalism, which prevails more or less in the Protectorate where European influence as yet does not extend. In fact, outside settled lands, no one knows how near one may not be to a cannibalistic orgy. It seems, however, fairly established by this time that the savage will brain a white man with much pleasure, but that he will refrain from eating his flesh for fear of revenge that the spirit of his victim may take at such interference with his fleshy tabernacle. Mr Parkinson relates how a chief in the Shortland Islands, a small group off the North Solomons, remarked to him, “spirit belong white man no good,” whereby he meant that the black man has nothing to fear from the spirits of his fellows whom he may kill and on whose flesh he may gorge himself with impunity; but what the white man’s spirit would do in a similar case is of the quality of _x_, and best left alone. Thus the bodies of the ten murdered missionaries at the station in the Baining mountains were all recovered and buried.

A list of the misadventures and disasters since the Germans first commenced to trade in these parts, is given by Dr Schnee in his book on the South Seas, and to show how necessary it is to infuse into the savage mind a wholesome terror of the white man’s vengeance, I select some of the chief, occurring in one decade only:--

1885. Station at Kaboteron (Forsyth’s), trader
killed.

1886. Station in New Ireland (Hernsheim’s),
trader murdered and station wrecked.

1888. Station ruined at Kapsu (Hernsheim’s),
Captain H. and Chinaman killed.

1889. Trader killed (Forsyth’s).

1890. At the Fead Islands (Forsyth’s), trader
killed.

„ On a station (Hernsheim’s), trader killed.

1891. New Hanover station (Forsyth’s), two
Europeans killed.

„ In New Ireland, station ruined, two
whites killed.

1892. New Hanover (Forsyth’s), station ruined,
a German dangerously wounded.

1893. Trader murdered by natives of Gardner
Island.

„ At St Gabriel’s (Admiralty), two whites
and three coloured murdered.

„ Kaboteran (Deutsch Handel Co.), station
plundered, white trader killed.

1894. Captain B. attacked and wounded.

„ Station of Kabien in New Ireland, one
European, one Japanese and others
murdered.

„ A station in the Admiraltys (Hernsheim’s),
wrecked and a European killed.

Two things are mercifully withheld from the natives throughout the Protectorate--firearms and European liquor--their sale is strictly prohibited. All explosives are kept very carefully under German lock and key. Only sufficient ammunition for each practice is doled out to the “police boys,” and occasionally the little community discovers (with a shock) that one has managed to secrete a small quantity.

“If not for philanthropic reasons, then on economic grounds we must preserve the native and defend him from the consequences of his ignorance,” declared the Governor, as he vehemently asked what was the good to any country of tropical colonies without native labour? White men could not cultivate the ground in these latitudes, nor was it desirable they should if they could.

This was precisely the argument I had heard in Jamaica, and I told his Excellency that the best authorities in the West Indies were agreed that it was not advisable that the white man should place himself on the same level as regards labour with the negro.

“Somebody must be top dog,” he laughed as he spoke. He told me he had fifty-six officials under him in the Archipelago and twenty-eight in the Carolines.

“I see you vaccinate the kanakas,” I remarked, having passed on the way to his house a little crowd of natives waiting outside a special building which served as the Government medical department.

“Indeed we do,” replied he. “The worst thing we dread is the introduction of European diseases. These people would die off like flies if we got an epidemic in the place.”

From one subject to another we approached that of British colonisation, which his Excellency highly commended. Our holding of India was to him a surpassing marvel. That enormous hive, containing three hundred million souls, administered by less than one hundred thousand white men, would prove to posterity the real greatness of England, the administrative talent of Englishmen.

I left his residence just before dark to find at the hotel a company of Admiralty “police boys” awaiting my arrival. Dr Hahl had ordered them round for my inspection. In a few moments they tramped up on to the verandah, gave me a martial salute, performed a few evolutions and then lined up in front of me.

My Pidgin-English was not equal to conversing with their leader, but I must admit, in the half light, their wiry limbs and wild, dark eyes were weird to look upon. They were of middle height, darker perhaps than the Gazelle natives, they wore loin-cloths and caps, and looked at me as inquisitively as I gazed at them!

I was thoroughly pleased with my visit. Dr Hahl had promised to show me some villages in the hills situated some distance inland before I left New Britain, and elated with the prospect, I spoke of it to Dr Thurnwald in one of our many post-prandial conversations that evening. He had been busy collecting island curios and despatching them in enormous packing-cases to Simpsonhafen _en route_ for Berlin. Since his arrival in New Britain, he had photographed and taken anthropometrical measurements of many natives, besides recording nearly a hundred “Sing-Songs.” He had secured the services of a boy from the Admiraltys, and from him was learning the language. Struck with the superior intelligence of this savage, he often launched forth in depressing jeremiads concerning the hopelessness of the Gazelle people.

Another melancholy topic was the fact that apparently Germans would settle anywhere else on the globe than in their own colonies. They would flock to the United States; Sydney and South Africa were full of them, any ready-made colony had the preference.

To this I assented, maintaining that some of the most useful and industrious subjects of King Edward were plodding, prudent Teutons.

In repeatedly pondering over this subject, I have often wondered how it is that individual members of admittedly the most martial nation in the world, where one would naturally expect courage and initiative to be leading features, do not show the same independent freedom of action--that impulsive, headlong energy, heedless of risks, that neck-or-nothing policy, with which the sons of Albion have flung themselves against nature’s inhospitalities, compelling her to unlock to them the fruits of their toil and labour. One finds them on every shore, bringing into cultivation the waste places of earth, carving homes out of lonely, primeval forests, confronting savage men and wild beasts under blazing suns, trusting to luck and chance to pull them through. Instances are numerous in Canada, in New Zealand, in Australia, where high spirits and heroic hearts have earned fortune after fortune, how young men have left home as steerage passengers to return in middle age in comfort and in wealth. One is led to wonder if these characteristics of indomitable pluck and iron resolution are peculiar to the British race. The French do not shine as colonists, and it seems that the subjects of the Kaiser must have the Government behind them, postage-stamps and lager beer within reach, before they will adventure themselves in unknown lands.

My scientific friend would ascribe the paucity of _bona fide_ settlers in German colonies to red-tapeism, and quote statistics of officials _versus_ the latter.

But, for his comfort, I told him, it was just that minute attention to detail which was the German’s strong point, where we could not compete with him. Admittedly, his countrymen were the deepest and closest of thinkers, taking every detail into reckoning. But, he objected, that sort of thing was carried to excess: if you were always bent on detail you were unfitting yourself for broad lines of action which, after all, were the main things in colonisation, as in life generally.

It was a fault, he thought, which had grown with the development of the German nation. Before 1870, he argued, each little state had its dukelet or its princelet, and round the little court everything centred--nothing could be done without the consent of the head of the state--there was no room for personal initiative when every pfennig had to be accounted for to the central authority. For centuries the men of his race had thought in circlets.

I could not discuss this interesting point with him for lack of knowledge, but many daily incidents united to testify to my humble powers of penetration that there was something in the mental make-up of the Teuton which constituted him less fit than some for colonial enterprise. He takes few risks. There is nothing, so far as I could see, analogous to that attitude of mind with which many an Englishman to my knowledge faces big issues, when, metaphorically, he shuts his eyes and jumps.

It was interesting to note in the frequent conversations I held with one and another, that although they upheld British colonisation, there was a general consensus of dislike to the Australian policy of “a white Australia.” Why, it was urged, since the huge continent had only five million colonists, not define a territory in the north where surplus Japanese might work out their salvation from the evils of over-population. For this too-populous country would, in the near future, inevitably, be the menace of the Pacific, since expand it must.

To this I would lightly suggest that the Protectorate of New Guinea might offer lands more attractive because more accessible to the Japanese Government. This idea was not pleasing, but it became clear to me that the future of Japan, so far as one could forecast it, her wonderful powers of receptiveness and assimilation, the dauntless courage and devotion to their country of her sons, is the subject of some uneasy speculation in these islands, as it is elsewhere in the South Seas. Yet in the past, during two thousand five hundred years, Japan has only engaged in five foreign wars, though prior to the seventeenth century conflicts between contending chieftains disturbed the island’s peace. The land of the Mikado had evolved a splendid mentality long before St Xavier reached it, and when, in recent times, the flood of western light was turned on to its trained and fertile brain, it was only like leading a scholar into new museums: whereof the moral is that proper training in youth is the best preparation for general adaptiveness in later years.