On this point the _Melbourne Age_ not long since said: 'The growth of Australia into a nation will bring with it the burdens of a nation, among which {199} the burden of foreign relations is the worst, especially if the relationship concerns a hostile power. Australia is already concerned in the Russian advance on India. ...The possession of the Indian seaboard means so much to the safety of these colonies that the mere mention of it is sufficient to awaken attention on the subject: for if the peace of Australia demands that foreign nations shall not post themselves in the Pacific, still more vital is it that Russian guns shall not point over the Indian ocean, or Russian cruisers gather in Indian harbours. Australia shares in the danger, and is interested in meeting it, whether from the Imperial or the local point of view. Even as an independent state, Australia could not afford to agree to an occupation of India by Russia; in fact, our danger would be all the greater. If the Russians reach the sea-front the menace to Australia will be intolerable, and Australia has its own interest in preventing this. The defence of Australia begins on the hills outside Herat, and there already the attack has begun.' I have preferred to quote an Australian opinion upon this point to giving my own. But even the questions connected with the trade routes and India do not exhaust the European interests of Australia. She has Germany and France at her doors, the one in New Guinea and the other at New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. With both she has had irritating points of difference and to the presence of both in the Pacific she objects. {200} The nearness of the great Dutch colonies of Java and the neighbouring islands is not now a subject of anxiety, but should the course of European politics ever lead to the absorption of Holland by Germany, an apparently not impossible contingency, the Dutch colonies would become more serious factors in Australasian affairs, for a great European naval and military power would control a native population which numbers 20,000,000, inhabiting islands which stretch along and lie close to the uninhabited side of Australia. The present able administrator of New Guinea, Sir William McGregor, who has long made a special study of the political relations of the Pacific, expressed to me his opinion that Australasian independence, with the consequent withdrawal of Britain's protection, would almost certainly result in French and German efforts to secure positions in Australasia at the expense of the colonies.