[9] The Northern Territory has been the one part of Australia where coloured labour has been obtainable in practically any quantity for mining; yet it is the part of Australia where the experience of mine-owners has been generally the most disastrous. In 1906 the production amounted to £126,000; in the last four years, according to a report just furnished by the Chief Warden (1911), it has got down to £60,000 a year, and is now shrivelling so fast that the whole industry is threatened. "The values of the properties worked in the past are not accountable for this depressed condition," says the Chief Warden, "for there is every reason for the belief that, if the mineral wealth here were exploited, it would compare favourably with that of any of the States; but the depression has been caused chiefly through the pernicious system of mining that has been carried out in the past, and the wasteful expenditure in most instances of the capital forthcoming for development." [2] The Australian Labour organ, _The Worker_, boasted (Oct. 22, 1908): "When the law was not sufficient to guard race purity, 'selfish' Labour risked its life and liberty to go beyond the law, and to show, as was shown at another time in California, that the White Race would not tolerate Asiatic colonisation. The Chinese Exclusion Acts in various states of Australia were thus the monuments, not of the politicians who passed them into law, but of the courage of the workers who were willing--as the Eureka miners were willing--to sacrifice everything in the cause of a clean, free Australia." CHAPTER XVII SOME STRATEGICAL CONSIDERATIONS Soundly considered, any great strategical problem is a matter of: 1. Naval and military strength; rarely exercised separately but usually in combination. 2. Disposition of fortified stations and of bases of supplies. 3. The economic and political conditions of countries concerned. Such phrases as the "Blue-water School of Strategy" are either misleading, inasmuch as they give an incorrect impression of the ideas of the people described as belonging to such a school, wrongly representing them as considering naval strength, and naval strength alone, in a problem of attack and defence; or else they rightly describe an altogether incorrect conception of strategy. It will be found on examination of any great typical struggle between nations that all three matters I have mentioned have usually entered into the final determination of the issue; that superior military or naval force has often been countered by superior disposition of fortresses, fitting stations, and supply bases: that sometimes clear superiority both in armaments and disposition of armaments has been countered by greater financial and industrial resources and more resolute national character.