Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

smiled as he answered, “Ah no—I’ll pretend she’s a half-caste of another race—Javanese or some such race that the mob doesn’t know much about and therefore’ll respect. She could pass for a half-caste Javanese. She could pass for a Javanese princess, in fact. Then she could marry well and mix with the best society.”

      Oscar wondered whether Differ were not drunk after all. He asked after a pause, “You mean that?”

      “Yes—to an extent. I mean I’m going to do all I can to make up for the crime of begetting her. Certainly I can’t let her stay here and live for ever regarded as an Aboriginal. And she’d be regarded the same down South if I didn’t say she was a half-caste of another breed.”

      “But that’s cruel—making her live a lie.”

      “How’s she going to live otherwise and be happy as she ought to be? You’ve got to lie to fools—or they’ll crush you for not being to their liking.”

      “Half-castes should be left in their place—with the Binghis. That’s the kindest way to treat ’em. If they don’t know they’ve got rights they won’t want ’em. What the eye doesn’t see, you know.”

      Differ smiled and stroked his chin, then said, “But why left with the Binghis?”

      “Because they’re half that.”

      “What about the other half—the white?”

      “That’s submerged.”

      Differ smiled again, and after a while said smoothly, “You look on Binghis as animals. They’re not really. They’ve got a different code to ours, that’s all—but one no more different in its way than a Chinaman’s. As a matter of fact their code of simple brotherhood is the true Christian one. Retarding sort of thing, of course, when considered in the light of our own barbarous ways, still, the recognised ethical one of civilisation, whether practised or no. Civilised people are still too raw and greedy to be true Christians. The Binghis are a very ancient race who’ve had the advantage of living in small numbers in a land that supplied their every need. Of course they had to limit their population and guard their game to make the advantage a permanent one. At any rate, they were able to overcome the sheer animal greed that is the chief character of the average creature of the races of the Northern Hemisphere. The Binghis are really highly intelligent. Apart from their own very wise practices, which naturally look ridiculous when judged beside our entirely different ones, see how eager they are to learn anything a whiteman’ll teach ’em. Trouble is whitemen won’t teach ’em anything that might raise ’em a bit—”

      “Go on! You can’t teach ’em. I’ve tried.”

      “Oh? Give’s an instance?”

      “Well—Oh I’ve tried lots of things—for instance I’ve tried to teach ’em about the cattle-market—commerce generally—in a very rough way, of course, so’s they won’t think the Government’s my father and keeps me for love, as they do with their communistic ideas—so’s they won’t pole and waste. I put it to ’em very simple. Just as you would to a child. Oh, but they haven’t any idea to this day what I meant.”

      “What language did you use?”

      “Why—Pidgin, of course.”

      “Ah! Now suppose I tried to explain to you in Pidgin how a locomotive works—” Oscar looked thoughtful. Differ went on, “If Binghis were taught English properly, sent to school like other people, instead of being excluded as they are—”

      “That may be so. But they’re filthy cows. No get away from that. Look at their quarters here.”

      “What about the slums of highly civilised cities? Why are teams of sanitary inspectors employed if the human race is naturally clean? Cleanliness as we know it, Oscar, is something we’ve learnt through living in crowds where it’s dangerous to be dirty. Binghis are clean enough in their camps. If they were properly taught they’d be clean elsewhere. Send ’em to school as infants.”

      “But would they go?”

      “Not they! Would anyone of us go if we could get out of it? I said send ’em, same as we’re sent as kids. Keep at it for generation after generation. Don’t look for immediate results. Consider how long it took to civilise our own race. Our condition is the result not of a mere ten years or so of schooling, but of ages. See that the Binghis get the same.”

      After a pause Oscar said, “Well it’s not much use worrying about ’em now. They’re dying out.”

      “What—with thousands upon thousands of ’em still in this country and many yet never seen a whiteman? Why, do you know that even as far as can be judged there are more more-or-less wild Binghis in this country than there are white people in India? Ah!—what you have just said, Oscar, was said twenty—fifty years ago too. If only the Nation’d give a little time to trying to understand the Binghi, they’d find he isn’t such a low fellow after all. All sorts of evil breeds—the sex-mad Hindoos, the voodooing Africans, the cannibals of Oceania, all dirty, diseased, slaving, and enslaving races—are being helped to decent civilised manhood by the thoughtful white people of the world, while we of this country, the richest in the world, just stand by and see our black compatriots wiped out. They’ll be like the Noble Redman someday—noble when gone! They put up as good a fight for their rights as the Redman, and without the guns of Frenchmen to help them. Why, the kids of this country honour the Redman in their games! What do they think of that just-as-good-if-not-better tracker and hunter and fighter the Binghi? And how was the Redman any better than the Binghi but in that he wore more clothes and rode a horse? You don’t need clothes in this country, and you can’t ride kangaroos. And look at the Maoris. They have seats in Parliament these days, go to the best schools, even receive knighthoods. They were as basely treated as the Binghis at first. How did they win honour? Why—someone put them in the way of handling firearms, sold them firearms as trade! And then one of them was taken to England, where he was given so many presents that he came back as a rich man able to buy enough firearms to start a great war against the whiteman. Matter of luck in getting hold of the firearms to show the whiteman they were as good as he. Poor Binghi missed it. Study the Binghi, Oscar, and you’ll find he’s a different man from you in many ways, but in all ways quite as good. Study him, and you’ll discover that dominant half of the inheritance of the half-caste you despise.”

      Oscar pondered for a while, then said, “Oh, but half-castes don’t seem to be any good at all. All the men here are loafers and bludgers, the women practically all whores—”

      “Do the men get a chance to work like whitemen? Look, the only half-castes of all the thousands in this country who are regularly employed are those who work on the night cart in town. Occasionally others get a casual labouring job. When it peters out they have to go back to the Old People for a feed. They get no schooling—”

      “There’s a school in the Half-castes’ Home.”

      “Bah! A kindergarten. A hundred children of all ages crowded into one small room and taught by an unqualified person. I’ll tell you something. Once I had a look at that school, hoping to get the job of running it, knowing that the teacher barely taught ’em more than A.B.C. and the fact that they’re base inferiors. The teacher there then—a woman—thought I was a visitor from South or somewhere. She led off by telling me not to get false notions into my head about her pupils’ unhappy lot. With a smile she told me they were Only Niggers. So ignorant of her job was she that one quarter-caste kiddie I pointed out she said was a half-caste, and to prove it called the child out and asked her, as one’d speak to a prisoner in jail, wasn’t her mother a lubra. As it happens I was right. A cruel ugly business. Of course the kiddie took it calmly, not knowing any other kind of treatment. Just think of it—when those kids leave that lousy school they have no-one to go to but the Binghis; and so they forget even the little they learn. The language of Compounds and Aboriginal reserves is Pidgin. A few score of words. No wonder such people come to think like animals! You said the women were whores. What chance have they to be anything else? Moral sense is something taught. It’s not taught to half-caste girls.