The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

134 THE FOOT OF TIME
presented the school of thought of some considerable
portion of the inhabitants of this world.
Further, it may be taken as yet another axiom
that the detailed methods adopted as a last resort
(or as a first) by daughters of the portions of the
South Seas affecting this curious ambition are
actual, are usual. They are less revolting than the
negroid dances copied and named by civilisation
after negroes. The dance Blackbottom and its name
is more immoral, is more deliberately suggestive,
openly unclean, unashamedly insinuating than the
free, natural love ruling in parts of the Pacific.
The most degraded human minds existing to-day
dwell in skins which are white, in people who
should know better. There should be time to commence
the presumptious conversion of so-called
heathen after we have put our own infinitely worse
house in order; cleaned up our own wickedness,
which, with less excuse, exceeds that of our poor
victims. It is a curious anomaly for whites, who are
comparatively of the least religious of humanity, to
go out to teach religion to the greatest believers in
some higher power. Your Buddist, Mahomedan,
Brahmin, Parsee and all the rest of them really believe
and carry out the tenets of their faiths. We
pretend, try to, endeavour to believe under instruction
from a house ever divided against itself. Not
only divided under different methods, but the
teachers of the same system fighting one against
the other as to the precise detail imperative, without
which we are lost. The layman sits upon the fence
looking on in growing wonder. One wonders what
THE FOOT OF TIME 135
London, or Chicago, would think at being inundated
by Parsee missionaries trying to convert us
from lethargy to real faith in God. The beliefs of
the late emigrants from Persia are by no means
incompatible with Christianity; but your Parsi
really believes his tenets. If Chicago tolerated invasion
from Mahomedan she might learn much
that would improve her. Perhaps every inhabited
planet had its visitation. Why should we alone
have enjoyed such favour? The visiting of Mars
to inform them that their teaching was nothing
and ours everything would be somewhat presumptiou
s. In many respects Eastern faiths contradict
each other, and gainsay Eastern beliefs, less than
Western denominations of the same faith dissent
each from the other. Let us exchange pulpits and
take heart, take lesson from the East and leave their
real belief in God alone—they are nearer Heaven
than we are.
But there is another field. There are races who,
Unlike the East, are without intelligent belief. All
right. Visit them, tell them something helpful,
i ntellectual, feasible. Cut out their canker of
absurdity, superstitious cruelty, and ignorance. Put
medicine and hygiene in Africa and you have the
men, the real men, who are doing it. Encore!
There is nothing wrong with the individual, the
missionary. To the contrary, they are amongst
the flowers of mankind, brave, educated. There is
much for them to do where religious help is indicated
with skins that are coal black; much hygienic
instruction for them to teach in skins that are brown,