It was no affectation of coyness on the part of the successive British Governments which dictated a refusal when South Pacific annexations were mooted. Time after time it was made clear that the Home Country wanted no responsibilities there. Yet to-day, as the result mainly of the impulse of Empire and adventure in individual British men, the British Flag flies over the whole continent of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, a part of New Guinea, Fiji, and the Ellice, Gilbert, Kermadec, Friendly, Chatham, Cook, and many other groups. It is a strange instance of greatness thrust upon a people. FOOTNOTES: [4] Since writing, in March 1912, there has been an attempt on the part of the Australian Prime Minister to come to some closer naval arrangement with New Zealand; and the attempt seems to promise to be successful. CHAPTER IX THE NATIVE RACES The native races of the South Pacific, with the possible exception of the Maori, will have no influence in settling the destiny of the ocean. Neither the Australian aboriginal nor the Kanaka--under which last general title may be grouped all the tribes of Papua, the Solomons, the New Hebrides and other Oceanic islands--will provide the foundation of a nation. It is one of the curiosities of world-history that no great race has ever survived which had its origin in a land south of the Equator. From the earliest civilisations to the latest, there is not a single instance of a people of the southern hemisphere exercising any notable effect on the world's destinies. Sometimes there seems no adequate reason for this. That Africa north of the Equator should have produced a great civilisation, which was the early guide and instructor of the European civilisations, may be explained in part by the curious phenomenon of the Nile delta, a tract of land the irrigation of which at regular intervals by mysterious natural forces prompted inquiry, and suggested that all the asperities of Nature could be softened by effort. (The spirit of inquiry and the desire for artificial comfort are the great promptings to civilisation.) But it is difficult to understand why in America the aboriginal Mexicans should have been so much more warlike than the Peruvians or any other people in South America; and why the West Pacific should wash with its northern waters the lands of two great races, and with its southern waters flow past lands which, though of greater fertility, remained almost empty, or else were peopled by childlike races, careless of progress and keen only to enjoy the simple happiness offered by Nature's bounty.