Page:The empire and the century.djvu/519

 and a happy land,' he might reply, 'As wide as the breadth of the Tasman Sea.'

The same insular, self-contained temper is seen when we note their dealings with the tropic inlets of the South Seas. Favourably placed as New Zealand is for trade with these, large enough as she is to dominate these tiny coral or volcanic specks, a Polynesian hegemony has been from the first the natural dream of some of her more imaginative public men. Sir George Grey sketched such an island confederation nearly sixty years ago. Sir Julius Vogel, more suo, planned a gigantic Polynesian trading company. State-subsidized and territorial. Sir Robert Stout tried to annex Samoa. Mr. Seddon has actually obtained a transfer of the Hervey group and certain other islands, and has his eyes now on greater things in the direction of Fiji and Tonga. But to the main body of New Zealanders these schemes and annexations appeal as yet scarcely at all. They form their little South Sea dependencies very well. The trade of these Liliputs has increased by about 80 per cent. in New Zealand hands, and their ten or twelve thousand natives are better off than formerly. But the average New Zealander still takes but the mildest interest in Polynesia. It has always been so. When at the height of the Boer War the Imperial Government requited their patriotism by handing over Samoa to Germany and America, they shrugged their shoulders, and did not even murmur. Yet the Navigators' were then the only really valuable tropical, south of the line, which New Zealand could hope to possess. Silently she saw her last serious chance of a South Sea dominion slip away. Tonga may some day be willingly linked to her; but Tonga is a small matter. Fiji is not small, but there Australian influence is certain to be exerted against New Zealand. Any field, therefore, left for a Polynesian overlordship must be of very modest dimensions. Yet the gradual fading away of chance after chance, as group after group has passed into the hands of France, Germany, or the