Sydney Greenbie

“ Not even the speed of the fastest steamer afloat can transport the white man from his sky-scraper and subway civilization over the hump of the earth and down into the South Seas without his undergoing a psychological metamorphosis that is enchanting. He cannot take his hard-and-fast materialistic illusions along with him. Were he a passenger on the magic carpet itself, and both time and space eliminated, the instant he found himself among the tawny ones he would forget enough of square streets and square buildings, square meals and square deals, to become another person. ”

“ There he finds that in a way romance is not dead. The sedate housewife permits herself on occasion to flirt with the butcher or the baker; incidents the on-looker has not thought possible prevail here as well as in the markets of the Orient. And packages with the imprint of Japan, of China, coffee from South America, awaken in him memories irresistible. He goes away wishing he were again off there where New York seems like romance to him. The day will never come when silks and spices and marts will not conjure up in the minds of the most prosaic the very essence of romance. ”

“ The albatross had left us, and now the swarming is his artistry, so refined his "table manners." He does not gorge himself as does the sea-gull, nor is he ever heard to screech that selfish, hungry, insatiable screech. Silent, sadly voiceless, rhythmic and symbolic without being restrained by pride of art, he exemplifies right living. He is our link between shores, the one dream of reality on an ocean of opiate loveliness wherein there is little of earth's confusion and pain. For the traveler he keeps the balance between the deadly stability of land life and the dream-like mystery of the sea. ”

“ America began her adventures in the Pacific when she urged young men to go West. Now we have the whole continent, we have Hawaii, the Philippines, Pago Pago, Samoa, and Alaska,—a hefty armful. Are we going to let these things go, or are we simply going to drift to where they drag us into conflict with others who want them and want them badly? We cannot merely blow them full of democracy and then wait for any one who wishes to to prick the bubbles. For it must be borne in mind that the issues are clear. The Pacific cannot remain half-citizen and half-subject. ”

“ But the vulgar acquisition of wealth, the vulgar acquisition of political prestige in the world, the vulgar appeal for equality which no man or nation with true dignity and self-respect would mouth to the extent that Japanese officialdom has mouthed it, the vulgar wearing of its sensitiveness on its sleeve,—it is these with which bureaucratic Japan is preoccupied. While, at home, every effort on the part of Japanese to secure manhood suffrage, to arise to the dignity of true men, of which the masses are as capable as any race on earth, is discouraged. ”

“ The beaches are always crowded. Annette Kellerman is Australian, and somehow, whether as cause or effect, Sydney people are the most amphibious folk in the world. They seem to live in the water. Every spare hour is spent on the wide stretches of sand that lie warm and white in the blazing sun. But nothing takes precedence over the harbor in the adoration of Sydneyites.
Sydney is known for its gaiety, yet I was lonely in Sydney,—bitterly so. Perhaps people are too gay to think of others, perhaps their gaiety made me exaggerate my loneliness. ”

“ We need the Philippines more as a base for democratic experiment than as a fortified zone. We need them as one needs a medical laboratory for the manufacture of serums in the time of plague,—for the manufacture of the serum of political freedom, of the rights of people to develop and to learn to be free. And this experimental station should stand right there at the door of Japan—and of British and French concessionists, if you please, in China—and of China itself, for none of them has any faith in this educating of natives and making them your equals. ”

“ The din of human voices loses its shrill tone of bargaining, the rickshaw men trot regularly but more slowly. Carriers of sedan-chairs lag beneath their loads; their steps slow down to a walk. Women by the dozen slip by, still with their burdens, but their voices have a note of softness, pleasing sadness. And now comes the time of day when no matter in what station one's life may be cast, spirit and body shift to better adjustment. And through the dim blue mist the shuffling of feet is heard, or the sounding of loose wooden slippers like drops of water in a well. ”

“ There lay unimaginable peace. What the Pali affords in panorama, the bay at Kaneohe offers in concentrated form. Pink-and-white forests twenty to forty feet deep, with immense cavities and ledges of delicate coral, fringe the shore. Fish of exquisite color move in and out of these giant chambers, as much at home in one as in another. Droll, sleepy sponges, like lumps of porous mud, lie flat against the reefs, waiting for something edible to come their way. Long green sea-worms extend and contract like the tentacles of an octopus in an insatiable search for food. ”

“ For if Hong-Kong is an example of adulterated British imperialism, Shanghai is one of European internationalism grafted upon China. At Shanghai the forces of two contending racial streams meet, like the waters at the entrance of Port Philip, and here, though the surface is smooth and glassy, there are eddies and whirlpools within, which are a menace to any small craft that may attempt to cross.
How strange to wander about streets and buildings quite European but to see only here and there a white face! It is an ultra-modern city built upon a flat plain. ”

“ Fiji is to the Pacific what the eye is to the needle. Swift as are the vessels which thread the largest ocean on earth, travelers who do more than pass through Fiji on their way between America and the Antipodes are few. Yet the years have woven more than a mere patchwork of romance round these islands. In climate they are considered the most healthful of the South Sea groups, though socially and from the point of view of our civilization they do not occupy the same place in our sentiments as do Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Sandwich Islands. ”

“ The process of assimilation and decline is taking place with far more rapidity in Hawaii. Hawaii crashed like a meteor into America and was comminuted and absorbed. The finer dust of its primitive civilization is giving more color to our atmosphere than any other American possession. But the real Hawaii is rapidly receding into the past. On the beach at Waikiki there is a thatch-roofed hut, but like most of the Hawaiians themselves, it bears too obviously the ear-marks of the West, the imprint of invasion. ”

“ Things in the Far East are not going to pan out so easily, not in the matter of China and Japan. Ever since the first American clipper flirted with Chinese trade, American interests have been involved in the interests of China, and they will continue to be so involved. Without ordinary, decent, honest trade among nations, the relationship of peoples ceases to have its reason for existence. Just imagine a world of nothing but tourists! But decent trade is not the forcing of opium on a country against its will, as Britain forced it on China in the early days and as Japan forces it to-day. ”

“ All this must be done not by America alone, but by all the people now in a position to coöperate. Just as Japan codified her laws and changed them in conformity with those of the West, so as to regain full rights over foreigners in her own territory, so must all the nations reorganize their laws in conformity with the best interests of all. There must be judges in all lands who know the laws of other lands as well as their own and an attempt be made to bring them all in greater conformity to a universal standard of justice, of right and wrong. ”

“ As has been shown, they do not go as settlers because cheap continental labor makes it unprofitable. They go as business-men, as the advance-guard of the empire, as the rear-guard of the army. No one has ever raised a voice against the migration of Japanese to these unpopulated regions—with the exception, perhaps, of the natives. But ever and always one feels the hand of imperial Japan behind each little man from the empire, and that hold on her nationals is the thing that vigorous nations resent, because it threatens to impair their status. ”

“ As we have seen, the infusion of this flood of foreign blood into the thin native element has fairly swamped it. This jungle of humanity seems at first sight utterly beyond cultural purification. The streets throb with such multiplicity of little ways that one feels bewildered. One has to snatch a sample of the life and place it beneath the magnifying-glass of tradition and code to be able to separate it from the whole. And that I did one day in Honolulu. ”

“ Thus Suva, the eye of Fiji and of the needle of the Pacific, is threaded, but there is nothing to sew. The unexpected never happens. There are no poets or philosophers, no theaters or cabarets in Suva, as far as mere eye can see,—nothing but smell of mold and copra (cocoanut oil) .
In Suva one cannot long remain alert. The sun is stupefying. The person just arrived finds himself stifled by the sharp smells all about him as though the air were poisoned with too much life. ”

“ The colonies are sincere in their desire for amity with America; nor is it merely a matter of common language. No one who has taken the trouble to inquire into Far Eastern affairs finds the handicap of language even the remotest cause of misunderstanding. Actions speak louder than words, and none but the ignorant can now misread what is going on in Asia. Let but those actions coincide with the promises made, with the spirit of the alliance and with the constant expression of amity and good-will, and we shall see the mist of war in the Pacific clear as before the glories of the morning sun. ”

“ Nowhere in the whole Dominion did I come across concrete evidence of awakened consciousness on the part of the masses to their opportunities. None of that feverish haste to raise monuments of achievement to accompany the legislative enactments which have given New Zealand an illustrious place among the nations. True, the country is young; true, there are not enough people there to pile creation on creation. But that is not it. It is that they are not keyed up to any great notions of what they ought to expect of themselves, but are content with what freedom and leisure of life they possess. ”

“ The sedan-chairs that take one up the steeps and remind one of the swells on the China Sea in their motion, the thousands of rickishaws that roll swiftly, quietly over smoothly paved streets, the particularly attractive Chinese signs that lure one into dazzling shops with unmistakable Eastern atmosphere, the money-changers and the markets dripping with Oriental messes, left an impression on my mind that none of my later experiences can dispel. ”

“ They saw our smoke, but the steamer was hidden from them by mist. Then suddenly we shot into view. All the while we had been in the clearest sunshine, the sea glassy and the flying-fish darting about. It was no place for speed. We moved just fast enough to leave the scene undisturbed. And thus we stole into Torres Straits.
Of all the numerous harbors I have entered in the Pacific, none, with the exception of the Inland Sea in Japan, is more picturesque than that at Thursday Island. Shelter, space, and depth, and stillness! One's eyes sweep round this pearly promise with greed for its beauty. ”

“ The man who could be lonely in Honolulu would have to have his ears closed with cement. If New York were as talkative as Honolulu, not all of America's Main Streets together would drown it out.
For Honolulu teems with good-fellowship. It is the religion of Honolulu to have a good time, and every one feels impelled before God and Patria to live up to its precepts. Everybody not only has a good time but talks having a good time. Not that there are no undercurrents of jealousy and gossip. By no means. The stranger is let into these with the same gusto that swirls him into pleasurable activities. ”

“ Here round the Pacific we dwell, each in his own little hollow. May not this vast, generous ocean become the great experiment station for human commonalty, for distinction without extinction? The dreams that centered in the other great seas—the Mediterranean, the Atlantic—were only partially fulfilled. But here at the point where East is West, it ought to be possible, because of the very obvious differences, to maintain relations without irritating encroachment. There was a time when passionate desire justified a man taking a woman from another with the aid of a club. ”

“ It will be mine merely to depict in living examples the episodes that indicate their evanescence, and to point to the silent forces of regeneration that are at work,—forces that, having accomplished the virtual decease of some of the finest races in the world, and yet are bringing about their rebirth.
One cannot live in the tropics without romancing. The simplicity, the earnestness of life, devoid of many of the outer signs of avarice so consonant with the individualism of our civilization; the slovenliness unhampered by too many clothes,—these take one by a storm of pleasure. ”

“ For thousands of years these innumerable islands in the Pacific had been the habitation of passionate men, of men who had come out in their vessels from over Kim's way with decks that carried a hundred or more persons; persons who doubtless also entertained themselves with games because too busy to play; persons with hopes and aspirations. A thousand and more years ago the present inhabitants of Polynesia may have dreamed of rearing a new India, a wider Caucasia, just as the Pilgrims and the persecuted of Europe dreamed, or the ambitious Englanders of New Zealand. ”

“ I seldom dream, but at the moment of waking in strange surroundings after an unusual run of events my mind rehearses as in a dream the experiences gained during consciousness. When the knuckles of the Fijian—and he has knuckles—sounded on my door at seven to announce my morning tea, I woke with a sense of heaviness, as though submerged in a world from which I could never again escape. ”

“ Instantly one wants to know how it happens that these people came to be here, what accident or lure of paleolithic life led them into this isolation. One cannot get away from the feeling—however far inland one may go—that the outer casings of this little lump of solid earth beneath us is a fluent sea, a sea endless to unaided longing. Homesickness never was like that, for ordinary homesickness is too immediate, too personal. But this longing for contact which comes over one in the mid-Pacific islands is universal; it is a sudden consciousness of eternity, and of the atom. ”