1914] '^The Japanese Menace' 



geographical observations. My scientific colleagues, 

 McCuUoch of the Australian Museum at Sydney, 

 Waite of the South Australian Museum at Adelaide, 

 and Ogilby of the Queensland Museum at Brisbane, 

 I also missed; but I was glad to find Stead of the 

 Fisheries Bureau and to compare notes on the world 

 outlook for peace as well as on Ichthyology.^ 



As in 1907, I gave a number of lectures in Mel- 

 bourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, this time under the 

 auspices of the Peace Society. But I declined to 

 speak against conscription because it would be un- 

 seemly for a visitor in the country to oppose its actual 

 laws. I did, however, deny the idea, rampantly Baseless 

 current, that the tropical north, largely unpeopled, ^^'^'^ 

 was in imminent danger of seizure by Japan. This I 

 regarded as preposterous and freely gave my reasons 

 for thinking so. There are in Japan, as in other 

 civilized countries, elements sufficiently predatory 

 to seize anything accessible, but the ruling statesmen 

 are both cautious and rational.^ Moreover, the Jap- 

 anese are not natural colonizers and have no liking for 

 the tropics. 



At the same time General Ian Hamilton, a brilliant, a heroic 

 likable British officer, was making a tour through fi^^" 

 Australia to arouse military spirit among a people 

 most of whom had never known war. As it happened 

 that he and I both spoke one evening in Melbourne 

 on the alleged peril to Australia, from a report in the 

 Sun for March 11, 1914, I make a few extracts: 



Not a stone's throw separated Melbourne's most distin- 

 guished guests when they deUvered themselves of their strik- 

 ingly dissimilar views upon Australian security. . . . 



1 See Chapter xxxiil, page 212. * Ibid., pages 213-214. 



C 567 3 



