14 
LAND & WAIEK 
January 3, 1918 
pho6j)liato roj-alty to patriotic funds, and were with difficulty 
persuaded to limit their gilt to /i.oooi by the warning of 
j)ossible future droughts. At a meeting of the labourers of 
the Pacific Piiosphate Company, held at Ocean Island, by 
the request of tlie Ciilbert and Ellice employees, it was suggested 
that each man should give 5s. from his deferred pay. Th(^ 
iininediate answer was : " VVe want to give all our deferred 
pay " (amounting to about £"15 a head). When the contri- 
bution was eventually raised to los. each, the limit permitted, 
great disappointment was expressed. These facts, condensed 
.from the latest official report, receive greater importance 
when it is realised that the natives in this little colony are not 
onl}- jxior, but are faced by a serious drought, in which they 
will have to li\'c from hand to mouth for a jear or more. 
The action of the Ocean Islanders is a valuable piece of 
evidence as to the humane character of British rule in the 
; South Seas, as distinguished from that of (ierman. The 
evidence should warm the hearts of the Alliance fighters to 
their brown allies in the South Seas who, although they arc 
not allowed to take up anns, arc giving generous help to 
lelicve white women and cliildrcn who are suffering from 
the conmion enemy of mankind. 
Deep down in the hearts of all honest democrats is the 
desire, not that this war should end quickly, but that it should 
put far away the danger of all war. This will be impossible 
so long as the German Hag flics in the Pacific. Professor 
%on Buchka, formerly Director of the Colonial Department 
of the German Foreign Office, made this point «juite clear in 
a recent article in Der Tag, of BcrHn. After discussing the 
relative values to Germany of Africa and the Pacific Islands, 
he argued that the extension of Colonial territory in Africa 
would not compensate Germany for the loss of her possessions 
in the South Seas. The latter, he writes, constituted by their 
geographical position and their excellent harbours the naval 
bases rccpiisite for the emphatic representation of the Germain 
interests in the \ast domain of the South Seas and for uphold- 
ing the prestige of the German name. The i)ermanent loss 
of all those bases, he adds, would necessarily entail the com- 
plete disappearance of the prestige already acquired, and put- 
an end to the political influence in the South Seas founded 
on the prestige. 
This German journal, Dcr Tag, docs not circulate generally 
in England. The opinions expressed by Professor von Buchka 
iue largely uiiknoAvn in England. They may be unknown 
also in America. Tlicy arc well-known in Australia and New 
Zealand. How well-known may be judged from a recent 
debate in the New Zealand House of Representatives. On 
July 3rd last Mr. Massey, the Prime IMinistcr, stated that there 
was no division of opinion throughout Australasia as to the 
grave danger of returning any of the Pacific Island colonies 
to (Germany. To this wa'ning Sir Joseph Ward added a 
striking metaphor : " Germany was "a hound ready to put 
its fangs into all honest passers-by." 
.\merica and .Australia may regard themselves as the joint 
wardens of the peace of t\u: Pacific. The people are desirous 
that freedom of trade should be preserved because honest 
trade is an ofticer of peace. They are desirous that the natives 
should be treated as free men with rights and privileges that 
belong to all human beings by virtue of their humanity. 
They are prepared to be patient with slow nati\'e dcx-eloi)- 
ment because down at the bottom they believe in the father- 
hood of God, and, to quote old Thomas Fuller, they think of 
the black man as being " God's image cut in ebony." Thev 
are prepared to admit Germany into the community of nations 
but not untd the Germans have changed their selfish colonising ' 
IMojects summed up in the motto " Deutschland uber alles," 
and have abandoned their mad methods of militarism, lentil 
these arc established facts it would be inhuman to hand back 
to their tender mercies the colonies of the Pacific or of Africa. 
Democracy cannot hope to stand upright in the justice 
court of History if the leaders refuse to reahsc facts which 
may be foreign to their own experience, or if the rank and file, 
in their desire for an early peace, disregard the rights of 
working men overseas, who may differ from workers in Europe 
and America chiefly in the pigment of the skin, but who are 
otherwise just as proper men. 
As an Enghshman who has lived for almost seventeen 
years 111 tropical and sub-tropical Australia, I agree witli 
what f^resident Lowell, of Harvard University, has said 
upon the mimorality of handing back the nations of the 
so-called fierman colonies to their former tyrants and par- 
ticularly in declaring that " the World must subdue a mih- 
tary autocracy that goes forth conquering and to conquer or 
the world will have no peace. Moreover, the oppression 
of one race by another must, as far as possible, be removed 
For that reason we cannot consider the return to Germany 
of her former colonies that their people may be exploited as 
they have been in the past." - • 
The Price of Citizenship 
By Dr. Charles Mercier 
THF: social state is not peciUiar to mankind. Many 
other animals, from the ant to the elephant, have 
adopted it. Even plants, and parts of plants, such 
as the flower of the daisy have adopted it, for of all 
aids in the struggle for life the social state is the most efiicient. 
Many devices arc employed by both animals and plants to 
secure their survival. Some, like the boa-constrictor, trust 
to their strength of muscle ; some, like the lion and tiger, 
to offensive weapons wielded by great muscular strength ; 
some, hkc the tortoise and the hedgehog, to defensive armour ; 
some, like the mole and the earthworm, to burrowing out of 
danger ; some, like the swift and many sea birds, to the 
inaccessibility of their haunts ; some to poisonous fangs and 
stmgs. some to swiftness and agihty ; some to boundless 
jMohficness. These and a thousand other devices aid in the 
survival of this and that organism, but of all devices in aid 
of survival, none except proUficness is so efficacious as the 
adoption of the social habit, and extreme prolificncss is in- 
compatible with a high grade of organisation. 
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. 
It IS numbers that prevail. The chief terrors of tropical 
lands are not the ferocious beasts of prev nor the poisonous 
reptiles, but the armies of insects ; and if mere numbers 
prevail, how muclf more numbers that are (organised and 
render mutual assistance. A cloud of midges may be killed 
by a frost or dispersed by a storm, but it is scarcely possible 
to destroy ;i colony of termites or an armv of foraging ants. 
Man, born destitute of weapons, both of offence and defence, 
neither swift nor strong in comparison with many of his foes! 
living neither in concealment nor in inaccessible places, in- 
creasing but slowly in numbers, possessing individually but the 
advantage of intelligence, an advantage of little avail if he 
lived solitary or in families alone, has taken the lead over all 
other organisms and established himself against all his foes 
and against the destructive forces of nature. This he has done 
by virtue of his adoption of the social habit. 
It is to combination with his fellows that man owe^^ his 
sur\i\al. It is by combination with his fellows that he has 
become what he is. It is by his assumption of the social state 
that he has placed himself at the head of all living beings and 
achieved an astonishing degree of mastery over the forces 
and material of nature. But for his sociality man could have 
pursued no agriculture, made no roads, built no bridges, con- 
structed no machines, woven no cloth, devised no arts or crafts 
However intelligent— and his intelligence is very largely due 
to his social habit— he would have remained a savage, living 
from hand to mouth, and destitute of everything that makes 
life worth living to civilised man. 
Accustomed as he has been from a past of immeasurable 
duration to live in societies, man cannot now adapt himself 
to solitary life. Condemned to solitude, he goes mad and 
soon dies fhc social state is necessary to the survival of 
t le individual : no individual is necessary to the survival of 
the society to which he belongs. The .society therefore takes 
rank of every one of its individuals, and its safety and its 
welfare are paramount over the safety and welfare of each of 
Its individual components. This is recognised in every body 
ot social animals without exception. In many bodies of social 
animals, bees, for instance, those individuals that arc no 
longer useful to the State are deliberately slaughtered. 
vSeeing the paramount importance of the social state it is 
most necessary to discover how this state is maintained • 
and the solution of the problem is contained in two words— 
Kenunciation and Duty. 
In order that a society may continue, each of its members 
must rcnouiice certain satisfactions, certain pleasures, certain 
activities Each must so Hve as to allow his fellows their 
chance of living Those activities that unrestricted would 
interfere wi h the life-worthiness of his fellows must be 
loregone. The prohibitions of the Decalogue must be observed 
Whatever rein a man may give to his aversions and desires 
towards persons and things outside of his own society, he must 
witrttr/// ='<^t^;tr^'-^« '"s fellows as not to interfere 
with the welfare of the society. .Action antagonistic to the 
society as a whole must be checked and renounced, for if per- 
mitted It will end in the destruction of the society. 
