strange deities and jabbering a gibberish that would sound to an
American like a gramophone-shop gone crazy! While other nations make
their colonies _pay_ for the protection they give them, the British
people pay very heavily for the privilege (?) of sheltering and
civilizing these far-flung, strange peoples. No true friend of the
black man can consider the possibility of handing him back to the
cruelty of Teutonic "forced Kultur."

The most heartless of Japanese gardeners could never twist and torture
a plant into freak beauty more surely than the German system of
government would compress the governed into a sham civilization.
Australia would fight again sooner than that a German establishment
should offend our sense of justice and menace our peace near our
northern shores.

The western half of New Guinea (and the least known) belongs to
Holland, and it was in the waters of this coast that the Australians
whose story I am telling were living and working when the tocsin of war
sounded. These sons of empire were registered under a Dutch name with
their charter to work there from the Dutch Government, yet when they
heard that men were needed for the Australian army, they dropped
everything and hastened south to enlist. The long-obeyed calls of
large profits and novel experiences, the lure of an adventurous life,
were drowned by the bugle notes of the Australian "call to arms."

These were young men who had left the shores of their native country,
venturing farther out a-sea, ever seeking pearls of great price. They
had once been engaged in pearl-fishing from the northernmost point of
Australia--Thursday Island--that eastern and cosmopolitan village
squatting on the soil of a continent sacred to the white races.