[Editor: This article, regarding the White Australia Policy, was published in The Bulletin (Sydney, NSW), 2 November 1916.]
Is White Australia worth doing anything for except talk?
One of the yells raised by the opponents of reinforcing the army was this:—
Are you prepared to break down the barriers that keep Australia white? Are you prepared to see our beloved country submerged by an inrush of that “colored ocean” by which Mr. Hughes himself has warned us that we are surrounded? That is the question you are called on to decide. Conscript all our white men …. and either we must behold our industries perish and the remnants of our population starve, or we must import colored labor, jeopardise our racial integrity, and give up the cherished ideal of a great white nation enthroned in the Pacific.
It was not an ineffective yell either. Many people heard it. In a sense The Bulletin can find no reason to regret that the colored-labor question should exercise a strong influence on the minds of Australian citizens. To them the question is vital. Yet this paper has been sorry to see the very just apprehensions of the people played upon by a string of words which in the circumstances of the hour were maddeningly irrelevant to the problem they helped to confuse.
The nation’s army is locked in deadly struggle with an enemy; and the argument was that this army must be allowed to waste away in order to maintain a ludicrously ineffective defence against danger which would arrive with a bang if the enemy pulled out a winner.
It looks more like a shriek for a straight waistcoat than a sane contribution to controversy. But of course the argument was not seriously put forward. It was merely howled into the atmosphere much in the same way as thousands of demented individuals burst into braggart song when the war started and bitterly reviled everyone who ventured to remark that the proceedings might last more than two or three weeks.
Yet, though there is no arguing with a yell, there are a few things that require saying about colored labor, and a few which the Labor party and the other party and conscriptionists and antis ought to take into consideration. And the first of the things that need saying is this: the coolie can be a product of peace just as readily as of war, and in this paper’s judgment Borrow and Bloat and Shirk and Loaf have always been formidable menaces to a White Australia. The success of the policy of Borrow and Bloat is not to be judged by the superficial events of a year or two, but by the foundation on which it rests. If there is anyone who thinks that the white-ants have not been at work on this foundation, then such an individual carries his eyes under his hat.
The case for a White Australia is partly racial and partly economic. It is easy to prove that the mixture of white and colored races is undesirable. Colored peoples know this as well as the whites, but the dangers of such mixtures have often enough in the world’s history been accepted because of a real or assumed economic necessity, and repented of in misery and degradation afterwards.
It is easy to show also that the exploitation of the colored man’s labor is as indefensible morally as exploitation of the white man; that cheap labor is a bad investment in comparison with labor that has reached a higher standard of living; that white labor is more effective, productive and reliable than the labor of the colored helot.
But there is a qualification to this, and it is that white labor must perform its job — that it shall be economically productive. And this paper puts it without equivocation to the citizens of Australia that unless the industries of the Commonwealth are carried on by white men after the war with an honest intention of fulfilling the obligations involved in the White Australia policy, they will find themselves driven by the stern consequences of their long shirk and criminal reliance on loans and imports to get others to do what they had not the wit to see they should do for their own salvation.
White Australia is not a mere yell, though a lot if people think it is. There can be as much blither about it as about anything else, and Heaven alone knows what the possibilities of blither on any given subject really are.
Thousands of men are ready to talk in a loose way about a White Australia being worth fighting for. How many are there who realise that a White Australia is worth working for — worth being made the corner stone of a public policy that will hand on to the Australian kid something better than a record of wasted time and a staggering load of debt, contracted so that cash might be bartered for votes?
This paper is regretfully compelled to say that it is convinced there have been more politicians toiling in Australia to create conditions favorable to the birth of a new demand for coolie labor than there have been statesmen working to create conditions that would make coolie labor an impossible contingency.
Talk is not one of the barriers that will keep Australia white. Wind will never keep the coolie away. It is only by populating Australia, living on the produce of the country and getting rid of the twin curses of foreign debt and dependence on foreigners for goods, that the ambition to keep white will have a dog’s chance of survival in the generations to come.
Borrow and Bloat and Loaf mean the perversion of the healthy ideals of the past; if they have not already destroyed the sense of obligation to work for Australia’s future, they have at least seriously impaired it. How many of the men who have been using “White Australia” as an excuse for making the Commonwealth look contemptible in the eyes of her allies at a moment when the nation’s very life is trembling in the scales have ever raised their voice in protest against the policies of squander and log-rolling evasion that have disgraced our democracy of recent years? None, so far as this paper knows; and the tragedy of the thing is that their opponents have been as somnolently indifferent as they. But if any of them imagine that “White Australia” is a mere shibboleth they are mad. The day it degenerates into that category the next stage will be easily reached.
There is a constructive side to the White Australia policy. It has been, and is now, being systematically neglected. Indeed, it has been worse than neglected. There is a poison for that policy; and loanmongers and bloaters and land jobbers and loafers of every sort have been mixing it in tons.
To say that compulsory service involves abandoning the ideal of a white nation is silly. But a White Australia living on imported goods acquired by foreign loans and leaning up against Cohen for a job is having a gamble with its very soul.
[Written to express the views of The Bulletin, within the limitations prescribed under the War Precautions Act, by S. H. Prior, D. M. Wright and F. J. Kirby, 214 George-street, Sydney.]
Source:
The Bulletin (Sydney, NSW), 2 November 1916, p. 6, columns 1-2
Editor’s notes:
anti = (in the context of the World War One conscription referendums in Australia) someone who opposes (especially in an active way) the conscription of citizens into the military
Cohen = a personification of Jewish wealth or wealthy Jews (including Jewish businessmen, Jewish banking interests, Jewish money lenders); Cohen is a common Jewish surname, following on from which the name has been used in connection with stereotypes regarding Jews and money, wealth, and financial occupations
Commonwealth = the Commonwealth of Australia; the Australian nation, federated on 1 January 1901
conscriptionist = (in the context of the World War One conscription referendums in Australia) someone who supports (especially in an active way) the conscription of citizens into the military
coolie = a low-cost Asian worker, unskilled labourer, or indentured labourer, especially one of Chinese or Indian ethnicity (can be spelt with or without a capital letter: Coolie, coolie, although usually the latter; plural: Coolies, coolies); of or relating to coolie labour
helot = (in the context of ancient Greece, especially Sparta) a member of a lower class, variously regarded as serfs, slaves, or having a position between slaves and free men; a bondman (or bondsman), an indentured servant, an indentured worker; a serf; a slave
See: 1) “helot: Greek serf”, Encyclopaedia Britannica
2) “Helots”, Wikipedia
Hughes = William Morris (Billy) Hughes (1862-1952), one of Australia’s longest-serving federal parliamentarians (1901-1952); he was Prime Minister of Australia 1915-1923 (which included the First World War, 1914-1918); he was born in Pimlico (London, England) in 1862, migrated to Australia in 1884, and died in Lindfield (Sydney, NSW) in 1952
See: 1) L. F. Fitzhardinge, “Hughes, William Morris (Billy) (1862–1952)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography
2) “Billy Hughes”, Wikipedia
kid = a young child
land jobber = (also spelt: land-jobber, landjobber) someone who buys and sells land; a land speculator; may particularly refer to someone who makes excessive profits from land speculation (also known as a “land shark”)
loanmonger = someone who lends money, especially one who lends money at a high rate; a bank; a banker; someone who deals in loans
loafer = someone who “loafs” about, a lazy person, an idler; someone who does not work hard, or who avoids work, or who does not work at all (possibly derived from the German word “landläufer”, meaning “tramp”)
shibboleth = a custom, tradition, behavior, mode of dress, principle, or belief which distinguishes one group or class of people from another (especially used regarding an old one which is now regarded as outmoded or no longer important; a common or old saying, or a belief, principle, or practice (especially one considered to be important by a group of people) which is now regarded as being old-fashioned, outdated, inappropriate, or wrong; may also refer to a word, choice of phrase, or peculiarity of pronunciation which distinguishes one group of people from another (may be used in common conversation, but which acts a test of belonging; a way or means of signaling affinity or loyalty, to affirm self-identification, or to assist in maintaining social segregation; a password)
somnolent = drowsy, sleepy
somnolently = drowsily, sleepily
War Precautions Act = an Act of the Parliament of Australia which gave the Australian government a wide range of special powers for the duration of the First World War (1914-1918) and for some time afterwards (the Act was repealed in 1920); the War Precautions Act has been described as being authoritarian, with it affecting democratic freedoms, common law rights, and trade union rights
See: 1) “Parliament and the war: War Precautions Act 1914”, To Our Last Shilling (Parliamentary Education Office)
2) “War Precautions Act 1914 –1915 How much freedom is appropriate in a time of war?”, Magna Carta and Modern Australia (Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House)
3) “Stephens, David: Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (23): ‘A wartime police state’: Australia’s War Precautions Act during the war for freedom”, Honest History
4) “Government powers”, ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee
5) “Australian at war! It did happen here!”, The Labor Daily (Sydney, NSW), 26 June 1937, p. 8 (p. 1 of the “Week-end Magazine Section”) (Late Extra edition)
6) “War Precautions Act 1914 (NO. 10, 1914)”, Australasian Legal Information Institute
7) “War Precautions Act 1914”, Federal Register of Legislation (Australian Government) [effective 29 Oct 1914 to 1 Dec 1920]
8) “War Precautions Act 1914”, Wikipedia
white-ant = (also spelt “white ant”, i.e. without a hyphen) a termite (a small white insect, known to feed on wood, and therefore can be very destructive to buildings, furniture, and other items which are completely or partially made of wood); someone who is accused (outright, or by implication) of acting as a termite and eating away or damaging an institution, organisation, idea, concept, or policy, with the usual implication being that what is being damaged is good for the community, and that therefore the “termites” are bad people (in this sense, the term is especially related to the fact that termites can eat away at, and severely damage, the wooden foundations of buildings); to undermine, sabotage, subvert, or bring down from within
wind = empty talk, idle talk, idle words, mere talk, mere words (by implication, without any substantive action to back up or follow on from the idea, message, or words being conveyed); spouting nonsense; boasting, bragging; talking in a conceited manner; talking in a pompous manner
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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