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Title: The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
Author: Theodore Lothrop Stoddard
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THE RISING TIDE OF COLOR AGAINST WHITE WORLD-SUPREMACY
THE RISING TIDE OF COLOR
AGAINST WHITE WORLD-SUPREMACY
BY LOTHROP STODDARD, A.M., PH.D. (Harv.)
AUTHOR OF "THE STAKES OF THE WAR,"
"PRESENT-DAY EUROPE: ITS NATIONAL STATES OF MIND,"
"THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN SAN DOMINGO," ETC.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MADISON GRANT
CHAIRMAN NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY; TRUSTEE AMERICAN
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY; COUNCILLOR AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY;
AUTHOR OF "THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE"
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_All rights reserved_
Published April, 1920
Reprinted June, July, September, October, 1920;
February, 1921
PREFACE
More than a decade ago I became convinced that the key-note of
twentieth-century world-politics would be the relations between the
primary races of mankind. Momentous modifications of existing
race-relations were evidently impending, and nothing could be more vital
to the course of human evolution than the character of these
modifications, since upon the _quality_ of human life all else depends.
Accordingly, my attention was thenceforth largely directed to racial
matters. In the preface to an historical monograph ("The French Revolution
in San Domingo") written shortly before the Great War, I stated: "The
world-wide struggle between the primary races of mankind--the 'conflict of
color,' as it has been happily termed--bids fair to be the fundamental
problem of the twentieth century, and great communities like the United
States of America, the South African Confederation, and Australasia regard
the 'color question' as perhaps the gravest problem of the future."
Those lines were penned in June, 1914. Before their publication the Great
War had burst upon the world. At that time several reviewers commented
upon the above dictum and wondered whether, had I written two months
later, I should have held a different opinion.
As a matter of fact, I should have expressed myself even more strongly to
the same effect. To me the Great War was from the first the White Civil
War, which, whatever its outcome, must gravely complicate the course of
racial relations.
Before the war I had hoped that the readjustments rendered inevitable by
the renascence of the brown and yellow peoples of Asia would be a gradual,
and in the main a pacific, process, kept within evolutionary bounds by the
white world's inherent strength and fundamental solidarity. The frightful
weakening of the white world during the war, however, opened up
revolutionary, even cataclysmic, possibilities.
In saying this I do not refer solely to military "perils." The subjugation
of white lands by colored armies may, of course, occur, especially if the
white world continues to rend itself with internecine wars. However, such
colored triumphs of arms are less to be dreaded than more enduring
conquests like migrations which would swamp whole populations and turn
countries now white into colored man's lands irretrievably lost to the
white world. Of course, these ominous possibilities existed even before
1914, but the war has rendered them much more probable.
The most disquieting feature of the present situation, however, is not the
war but the peace. The white world's inability to frame a constructive
settlement, the perpetuation of intestine hatreds, and the menace of fresh
white civil wars complicated by the spectre of social revolution, evoke
the dread thought that the late war may be merely the first stage in a
cycle of ruin.
In fact, so absorbed is the white world with its domestic dissensions that
it pays scant heed to racial problems whose importance for the future of
mankind far transcends the questions which engross its attention to-day.
This relative indifference to the larger racial issues has determined the
writing of the present book. So fundamental are these issues that a candid
discussion of them would seem to be timely and helpful.
In the following pages I have tried to analyze in their various aspects
the present relations between the white and non-white worlds. My task has
been greatly aided by the Introduction from the pen of Madison Grant, who
has admirably summarized the biological and historical background. A
life-long student of biology, Mr. Grant approaches the subject along that
line. My own avenue of approach being world-politics, the resulting
convergence of different view-points has been a most useful one.
For the stimulating counsel of Mr. Grant in the preparation of this book
my thanks are especially due. I desire also to acknowledge my indebtedness
for helpful suggestions to Messrs. Alleyne Ireland, Glenn Frank, and other
friends.
LOTHROP STODDARD.
NEW YORK CITY,
February 28, 1920.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY MADISON GRANT xi
PART I
THE RISING TIDE OF COLOR
CHAPTER
I. THE WORLD OF COLOR 3
II. YELLOW MAN'S LAND 17
III. BROWN MAN'S LAND 54
IV. BLACK MAN'S LAND 87
V. RED MAN'S LAND 104
PART II
THE EBBING TIDE OF WHITE
VI. THE WHITE FLOOD 145
VII. THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB 154
VIII. THE MODERN PELOPONNESIAN WAR 173
IX. THE SHATTERING OF WHITE SOLIDARITY 198
PART III
THE DELUGE ON THE DIKES
X. THE OUTER DIKES 225
XI. THE INNER DIKES 236
XII. THE CRISIS OF THE AGES 299
INDEX 311
MAPS
PAGE
I DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRIMARY RACES 14
II CATEGORIES OF WHITE WORLD-SUPREMACY 150
III DISTRIBUTION OF THE WHITE RACES 228
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Lothrop Stoddard's "The Rising Tide of Color," following so closely
the Great War, may appear to some unduly alarming, while others, as his
thread of argument unrolls, may recoil at the logic of his deductions.
In our present era of convulsive changes, a prophet must be bold, indeed,
to predict anything more definite than a mere trend in events, but the
study of the past is the one safe guide in forecasting the future.
Mr. Stoddard takes up the white man's world and its potential enemies as
they are to-day. A consideration of their early relations and of the
history of the Nordic race, since its first appearance three or four
thousand years ago, tends strongly to sustain and justify his conclusions.
For such a consideration we must first turn to the map, or, better, to the
globe.
Viewed in the light of geography and zoölogy, Europe west of Russia is but
a peninsula of Asia with the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea
included. True Africa, or rather Ethiopia, lies south of the Sahara Desert
and has virtually no connection with the North except along the valley of
the Nile.
This Eurasiatic continent has been, perhaps, since the origin of life
itself, the most active centre of evolution and radiation of the higher
forms.
Confining ourselves to the mammalian orders, we find that a majority of
them have originated and developed there and have spread thence to the
outlying land areas of the globe. All the evidence points to the origin of
the Primates in Eurasia and we have every reason to believe that this
continent was also the scene of the early evolution of man from his
anthropoid ancestors.
The impulse that inaugurated the development of mankind seems to have had
its basic cause in the stress of changing climatic conditions in central
Asia at the close of the Pliocene, and the human inhabitants of Eurasia
have ever since exhibited in a superlative degree the energy developed at
that time. This energy, however, has not been equally shared by the
various species of man, either extinct or living, and the survivors of the
earlier races are, for the most part, to be found on the other continents
and islands or in the extreme outlying regions of Eurasia itself.
In other words those groups of mankind which at an early period found
refuge in the Americas, in Australia, in Ethiopia, or in the islands of
the sea, represent to a large extent stages in man's physical and cultural
development, from which the more energized inhabitants of Eurasia have
long since emerged. In some cases, as in Mexico and Peru, the outlying
races developed in their isolation a limited culture of their own, but,
for the most part, they have exhibited, and continue to this day to
exhibit, a lack of capacity for sustained evolution from within as well as
a lack of capacity to adjust themselves of their own initiative to the
rapid changes which modern times impose upon them from without.
In Eurasia itself this same inequality of potential capacity is found, but
in a lesser degree, and consequently, in the progress of humanity, there
has been constant friction between those who push forward and those who
are unable to keep pace with changing conditions.
Owing to these causes the history of mankind has been that of a series of
impulses from the Eurasiatic continent upon the outlying regions of the
globe, but there has been an almost complete lack of reaction, either
racial or cultural, from them upon the masses of mankind in Eurasia
itself. There have been endless conflicts between the different sections
of Eurasia, but neither Amerinds, nor Austroloids, nor Negroes, have ever
made a concerted attack upon the great continent.
* * * * *
Without attempting a scientific classification of the inhabitants of
Eurasia, it is sufficient to describe the three main races. The first are
the yellow-skinned, straight black-haired, black-eyed, round-skulled
Mongols and Mongoloids massed in central and eastern Asia north of the
Himalayan system.
To the west of them, and merged with them, lie the Alpines, also
characterized by dark, but not straight, hair, dark eyes, relatively
short stature, and round skulls. These Alpines are thrust like a wedge
into Europe between the Nordics and the Mediterraneans, with a tip that
reaches the Atlantic Ocean. Those of western Europe are derived from one
or more very ancient waves of round-skulled invaders from the East, who
probably came by way of Asia Minor and the Balkans, but they have been so
long in their present homes that they retain little except their
brachycephalic skull-shape to connect them with the Asiatic Mongols.
South of the Himalayas and westward in a narrow belt to the Atlantic, and
on both sides of the Inland Sea, lies the Mediterranean race, more or less
swarthy-skinned, black-haired, dark-eyed, and long-skulled.
On the northwest, grouped around the Baltic and North Seas, lies the great
Nordic race. It is characterized by a fair white skin, wavy hair with a
range of color from dark brown to flaxen, light eyes, tall stature, and
long skulls.
These races show other physical characters which are definite but
difficult to describe, such as texture of skin and cast of features,
especially of the nose. The contrast of mental and spiritual endowments is
equally definite, but even more elusive of definition.
It is with the action and interaction of these three groups, together with
internal civil wars, that recorded history deals.
While, so far as we know, these three races have occupied their present
relative positions from the beginning, there have been profound changes
in their distribution.
The two essential phenomena, however, are, first, the retreat of the
Nordic race westward from the Grasslands of western Asia and eastern
Europe to the borders of the Atlantic, until it occupies a relatively
small area on the periphery of Eurasia.
The second phenomenon is of equal importance, namely, the more or less
thorough Nordicizing of the westernmost extensions of the other two races,
namely, the Mediterranean on the north coast of the Inland Sea, who have
been completely Aryanized in speech, and have been again and again
saturated with Nordic blood, and the even more profound Nordicization in
speech and in blood of the short, dark, round-skulled inhabitants of
central Europe, from Brittany through central France, southern Germany,
and northern Italy into Austrian and Balkan lands. So thorough has been
this process that the western Alpines have at the present time no separate
race consciousness and are to be considered as wholly European.
As to the Alpines of eastern and central Europe, the Slavs, the case is
somewhat different. East of a line drawn from the Adriatic to the Baltic
the Nordicizing process has been far less perfect, although nearly
complete as to speech, since all the Slavic languages are Aryan.
Throughout these Slavic lands, great accessions of pure Mongoloid blood
have been introduced within relatively recent centuries.
East of this belt of imperfectly Nordicized Alpines we reach the Asiatic
Alpines, as yet entirely untouched by western blood or culture. These
groups merge into the Mongoloids of eastern Asia.
So we find, thrust westward from the Heartland, a race touching the
Atlantic at Brittany, thoroughly Asiatic and Mongoloid in the east, very
imperfectly Nordicized in the centre, and thoroughly Nordicized culturally
in the far west of Europe, where it has become, and must be accepted as,
an integral part of the White World.
As to the great Nordic race, within relatively recent historic times it
occupied the Grasslands north of the Black and Caspian Seas eastward to
the Himalayas. Traces of Nordic peoples in central Asia are constantly
found, and when archæological research there becomes as intensive as in
Europe we shall be astonished to find how long, complete, and extended was
their occupation of western Asia.
During the second millennium before our era successive waves of Nordics
began to cross the Afghan passes into India until finally they imposed
their primitive Aryan language upon Hindustan and the countries lying to
the east.
All those regions lying northwest of the mountains appear to have been
largely a white man's country at the time of Alexander the Great. In
Turkestan the newly discovered Tokharian language, an Aryan tongue of the
western division, seems to have persisted down to the ninth century. The
decline of the Nordics in these lands, however, began probably far
earlier than Alexander's time, and must have been nearly completed at the
beginning of our era. Such blond traits as are still found in western Asia
are relatively unimportant, and for the last two thousand years these
countries must be regarded as lost to the Nordic race.
The impulse that drove the early Nordics like a fan over the Himalayan
passes into India, the later Nordics southward into Mesopotamian lands, as
Kassites, Mitanni, and Persians, into Greece and Anatolia as Achæans,
Dorians, and Phrygians, westward as the Aryan-speaking invaders of Italy
and as the Celtic vanguards of the Nordic race across the Rhine into Gaul,
Spain, and Britain, may well have been caused by Mongoloid pressure from
the heart of central Asia. Of course, we have no actual knowledge of this,
but the analogy to the history of later migrations is strong, and the
conviction is growing among historians that the impulse that drove the
Hellenic Nordics upon the early Ægean culture world was the same as that
which later drove Germanic Nordics into the Roman Empire.
North of the Caspian and Black Seas the boundaries of Europe receded
steadily before Asia for nearly a thousand years after our era opened, but
we have scant record of the struggles which resulted in the eviction of
the Nordics from their homes in Russia, Poland, the Austrian and east
German lands.
By the time of Charlemagne the White Man's world was reduced to
Scandinavia, Germany west of the Elbe, the British Isles, the Low
Countries, and northern France and Italy, with outlying groups in southern
France and Spain. This was the lowest ebb for the Nordics and it was the
crowning glory of Charlemagne's career that he not only turned back the
flood, but began the organization of a series of more or less Nordicized
marches or barrier states from the Baltic to the Adriatic, which have
served as ramparts against Asiatic pressure from his day to ours. West of
this line the feudal states of mediæval Europe developed into western
Christendom, the nucleus of the civilized world of to-day.
South of the Caspian and Black Seas, after the first swarming of the
Nordics over the mountains during the second millennium before Christ, the
East pressed steadily against Europe until the strain culminated in the
Persian Wars. The defeat of Asia in these wars resulted later in
Alexander's conquest of western Asia to the borders of India.
Alexander's empire temporarily established Hellenic institutions
throughout western Asia and some of the provinces remained superficially
Greek until they were incorporated in the Roman Empire and ultimately
became part of early Christendom. On the whole, however, from the time of
Alexander the elimination of European blood, classic culture, and,
finally, of Christianity, went on relentlessly.
By later Roman times the Aryan language of the Persians, Parthians, and
people of India together with some shreds of Greek learning were about all
the traces of Europe that were to be found east of the oscillating
boundary along the Euphrates.
The Roman and Byzantine Empires struggled for centuries to check the
advancing tide of Asiatics, but Arab expansions under the impulse of the
Mohammedan religion finally tore away all the eastern and southern coasts
of the Mediterranean Sea, while from an Arabized Spain they threatened
western Europe. With the White Man's world thus rapidly receding in the
south, a series of pure Mongol invasions from central Asia, sweeping north
of the Caspian and Black Seas, burst upon central Europe. Attila and his
Huns were the first to break through into Nordic lands as far as the
plains of northern France. None of the later hordes were able to force
their way so far into Nordic territories, but spent their strength upon
the Alpines of the Balkans and eastern Europe.
Eastern Germany, the Austrian states, Poland, and Russia had been Nordic
lands before the Slavs emerged after the fall of Rome. Whether the
occupation of Teutonic lands by the Wends and Slavs in eastern Europe was
an infiltration or a conquest is not known, but the conviction is growing
that, like other movements which preceded and followed, it was caused by
Mongoloid pressure.
That the western Slavs or Wends had been long Nordicized in speech is
indicated by the thoroughly Aryan character of the Slavic languages. They
found in the lands they occupied an underlying Teutonic population. They
cannot be regarded as the original owners of Poland, Bohemia, Silesia, or
other Wendish provinces of eastern Germany and Austria. The Teutonic
Marcomanni and Quadi were in Bohemia long before the Czechs came in
through the Moravian Gate in the sixth century. Pomerania and the Prussias
were the home of Teutonic Lombards, Burgunds, Vandals, and Suevi, while
the Crimea and the northwestern coast of the Black Sea were long held by
the Nordic Goths, who, just before our era, had migrated overland from the
Baltic by way of the Vistula.
No doubt some of this Nordic blood remained to ennoble the stock of the
later invaders, but by the time of Charlemagne, in the greater part of
Europe east of the Elbe, the Aryan language was the only bond with Europe.
When the Frankish Empire turned the tide and Christianized these Wendish
and Polish lands, civilization was carried eastward until it met the
Byzantine influences which brought to Russia and the lands east of the
Carpathians the culture and Orthodox Christianity of the Eastern or Greek
Empire.
The nucleus of Russia was organized in the ninth century by Scandinavian
Varangians, the Franks of the East, who founded the first civilized state
amid a welter of semi-Mongoloid tribes. How much Nordic blood they found
in the territories which afterward became Russia we have no means of
knowing, but it must have been considerable because we do know that from
the Middle Ages to the present time there has been a progressive increase
in brachycephaly or broad-headedness, to judge from the rise in the
percentage of round skulls found in the cemeteries of Moscow and elsewhere
in Russia.
Such was the condition of eastern Europe when a new and terrible series of
Mongoloid invasions swept over it, this time directly from the centre of
Asia.
The effect of these invasions was so profound and lasting that it may be
well to consider briefly the condition of eastern Europe after the
elimination of the Nordics and its partial occupation by the so-called
Slavs. Beginning with Attila and his Huns, in the fourth century, there
was a series of purely Mongoloid tribes entering from Asia in wave after
wave.
Similar waves ultimately passed south of the Black and Caspian Seas, and
were called Turks, but these were long held back by the power of the
Byzantine Empire, to which history has done scant justice.
In the north these invaders, called in the later days Tatars, but all
essentially of central Asiatic Mongol stock, occupied Balkan lands after
the expansion of the south Slavs in those countries. They are known by
various names, but they are all part of the same general movement,
although there was a gradual slowing down of the impulse. Prior to Jenghiz
Khan the later hordes did not reach quite as far west as the earlier ones.
The first wave, Attila's Huns, were followed during the succeeding
centuries by the Avars, the Bulgars, the Hunagar Magyars, the Patzinaks
and the Cumans. All of these tribes forced their way over the Carpathians
and the Danube, and much of their blood, notably in that of the Bulgars
and Magyars, is still to be found there. Most of them adopted Slavic
dialects and merged in the surrounding population, but the Magyars retain
their Asiatic speech to this day.
Other Tatar and Mongoloid tribes settled in southern and eastern Russia.
Chief among these were the Mongol Chazars, who founded an extensive and
powerful empire in southern and southeastern Russia as early as the eighth
century. It is interesting to note that they accepted Judaism and became
the ancestors of the majority of the Jews of eastern Europe, the
round-skulled Ashkenazim.
Into this mixed population of Christianized Slavs and more or less
Christianized and Slavized Mongols burst Jenghiz Khan with his great
hordes of pure Mongols. All southern Russia, Poland, and Hungary collapsed
before them, and in southern Russia the rule of the Mongol persisted for
centuries, in fact the Golden Horde of Tatars retained control of the
Crimea down to 1783.
Many of these later Tatars had accepted Islam, but entire groups of them
have retained their Asiatic speech and to this day profess the Mohammedan
religion.
The most lasting result of these Mongol invasions was that southern Poland
and all the countries east and north of the Carpathians, including Rumania
and the Ukraine, were saturated anew with Tatar blood, and, in dealing
with these populations and with the new nations founded among them, this
fact must not be forgotten.
The conflict between the East and the West--Europe and Asia--has thus
lasted for centuries, in fact it goes back to the Persian Wars and the
long and doubtful duel between Rome and Parthia along the eastern boundary
of Syria. As we have already said, the Saracens had torn away many of the
provinces of the Eastern Empire, and the Crusades, for a moment, had
rolled back the East, but the event was not decided until the Seljukian
and Osmanli Turks accepted Islam.
If these Turks had remained heathen they might have invaded and conquered
Asia Minor and the Balkan States, just as their cousins, the Tartars, had
subjected vast territories north of the Black Sea, but they could not have
held their conquests permanently unless they had been able to incorporate
the beaten natives into their own ranks through the proselytizing power of
Islam.
Even in Roman times the Greek world had been steadily losing, first its
Nordic blood and then later the blood of its Nordicized European
population, and it became in its declining years increasingly Asiatic
until the final fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Byzantium once fallen, the Turks advanced unchecked, conquering the Alpine
Slav kingdoms of the Balkans and menacing Christendom itself.
In these age-long conflicts between Asia and Europe the Crusades seem but
an episode, although tragically wasteful of Nordic stock. The Nordic
Frankish nobility of western Europe squandered its blood for two hundred
years on the desert sands of Syria and left no ethnic trace behind, save,
perhaps, some doubtful blond remnants in northern Syria and Edessa.
If the predictions of Mr. Stoddard's book seem far-fetched, one has but to
consider that four times since the fall of Rome Asia has conquered to the
very confines of Nordic Europe. The Nordicized Alpines of eastern Europe
and the Nordicized Mediterraneans of southern Europe have proved too
feeble to hold back the Asiatic hordes, Mongol or Saracen. It was not
until the realms of pure Nordics were reached that the invaders were
turned back. This is shown by the fact that the Arabs had quickly mastered
northern Africa and conquered Spain, where the Nordic Goths were too few
in number to hold them back, while southern France, which was not then,
and is not now, a Nordic land, had offered no serious resistance. It was
not until the Arabs, in 732, at Tours, dashed themselves to pieces against
the solid ranks of heavy-armed Nordics, that Islam receded.
The same fate had already been encountered by Attila and his Huns, who,
after dominating Hungary and southern Germany and destroying the
Burgundians on the Rhine, had pushed into northern France as far as
Châlons. Here, in 376, he was beaten, not by the Romanized Gauls but by
the Nordic Visigoths, whose king, Roderick, died on the field. These two
victories, one against the Arab south and the other over the Mongoloid
east, saved Nordic Europe, which was at that time shrunken to little more
than a fringe on the seacoast.
How slender the thread and how easily snapped, had the event of either day
turned out otherwise! Never again did Asia push so far west, but the
danger was not finally removed until Charlemagne and his successors had
organized the Western Empire.
Christendom, however, had sore trials ahead when the successors of Jenghiz
Khan destroyed Moscovy and Poland and devastated eastern Europe. The
victorious career of the Tatars was unchecked, from the Chinese Sea on the
east to the Indian Ocean on the south, until in 1241, at Wahlstatt in
Silesia, they encountered pure Nordic fighting men. Then the tide turned.
Though outnumbering the Christians five to one and victorious in the
battle itself, the Tatars were unable to push farther west and turned
south into Hungary and other Alpine lands.
Some conception of the almost unbelievable horrors that western Europe
escaped at this time may be gathered from the fate of the countries which
fell before the irresistible rush of the Mongols, whose sole discernible
motive seems to have been blood lust. The destruction wrought in China,
central Asia, and Persia is almost beyond conception. In twelve years, in
China and the neighboring states, Jenghiz Khan and his lieutenants
slaughtered more than 18,500,000 human beings. After the sack of Merv in
Khorasan, the "Garden of Asia," the corpses numbered 1,300,000, and after
Herat was taken 1,600,000 are said to have perished. Similar fates befell
every city of importance in central Asia, and to this day those once
populous provinces have never recovered. The cities of Russia and Poland
were burned, their inhabitants tortured and massacred, with the
consequence that progress was retarded for centuries.
Almost in modern times these same Mongoloid invaders, entering by way of
Asia Minor, and calling themselves Turks, after destroying the Eastern
Empire, the Balkan States, and Hungary, again met the Nordic chivalry of
western Europe under the walls of Vienna, in 1683, and again the Asiatics
went down in rout.
On these four separate occasions the Nordic race and it alone saved modern
civilization. The half-Nordicized lands to the south and to the east
collapsed under the invasions.
Unnumbered Nordic tribes, nameless and unsung, have been massacred, or
submerged, or driven from their lands. The survivors had been pushed ever
westward until their backs were against the Northern Ocean. There the
Nordics came to bay--the tide was turned. Few stop to reflect that it was
more than sixty years after the first American legislature sat at
Jamestown, Virginia, that Asia finally abandoned the conquest of Europe.
One of the chief results of forcing the Nordic race back to the seacoast
was the creation of maritime power and its development to a degree never
before known even in the days of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.
With the recession of the Turkish flood, modern Europe emerges and
inaugurates a counter-attack on Asia which has placed virtually the entire
world under European domination.
* * * * *
While in the mediæval conflicts between Europe and Asia the latter was the
aggressor, the case was otherwise in the early wars between the Nordic and
the Mediterranean peoples. Here for three thousand years the Nordics were
the aggressors, and, although these wars were terribly destructive to
their numbers, they were the medium through which classic civilization was
introduced into Nordic lands. As to the ethnic consequences, northern
barbarians poured over the passes of the Balkans, Alpines, and Pyrenees
into the sunny lands of the south only to slowly vanish in the languid
environment which lacked the stimulus of fierce strife with hostile nature
and savage rivals.
Nevertheless, long before the opening of the Christian era the Alpines of
western Europe were thoroughly Nordicized, and in the centuries that
followed, the old Nordic element in Spain, Italy, and France has been
again and again strongly reinforced, so that these lands are now an
integral part of the White World.
In recent centuries Russia was again superficially Nordicized with a top
dressing of Nordic nobility, chiefly coming from the Baltic provinces.
Along with this process there was everywhere in Europe a resurgence among
the submerged and forgotten Alpines and among the Mediterranean elements
of the British Isles, while Bolshevism in Russia means the elimination of
the Nordic aristocracy and the dominance of the half-Asiatic Slavic
peasantry.
* * * * *
All wars thus far discussed have been race wars of Europe against Asia, or
of the Nordics against Mediterraneans. The wars against the Mongols were
necessary and vital; there was no alternative except to fight to the
finish. But the wars of northern Europe against the south, from the racial
point of view, were not only useless but destructive. Bad as they were,
however, they left untouched to a large extent the broodland of the race
in the north and west.
Another class of wars, however, has been absolutely deadly to the Nordic
race. There must have been countless early struggles where one Nordic
tribe attacked and exterminated its rival, such as the Trojan War, fought
between Achæans and Phrygians, both Nordics, while the later Peloponnesian
War was a purely civil strife between Greeks and resulted in the racial
collapse of Hellas.
Rome, after she emerged triumphant from her struggle with the
Carthaginians, of Mediterranean race, plunged into a series of civil wars
which ended in the complete elimination of the native Nordic element in
Rome. Her conquests also were destructive to the Nordic race; particularly
so was that of Cæsar in Gaul, one of the few exceptional cases where the
north was permanently conquered by the south. The losses of that ten-year
conquest fell far more heavily upon the Nordic Celts in Gaul and Britain
than on the servile strata of the population.
In the same way the Saxon conquest of England destroyed the Nordic
Brythons to a greater degree than the pre-Nordic Neolithic Mediterranean
element. From that time on all the wars of Europe, other than those
against the Asiatics and Saracens, were essentially civil wars fought
between peoples or leaders of Nordic blood.
Mediæval Europe was one long welter of Nordic immolation until the Wars of
the Roses in England, the Hundred Years' War in the Lowlands, the
religious, revolutionary, and Napoleonic wars in France, and the ghastly
Thirty Years' War in Germany dangerously depleted the ruling Nordic race
and paved the way for the emergence from obscurity of the servile races
which for ages had been dominated by them.
To what extent the present war has fostered this tendency, time alone will
show, but Mr. Stoddard has pointed out some of the immediate and visible
results. The backbone of western civilization is racially Nordic, the
Alpines and Mediterraneans being effective precisely to the extent in
which they have been Nordicized and vitalized.
If this great race, with its capacity for leadership and fighting, should
ultimately pass, with it would pass that which we call civilization. It
would be succeeded by an unstable and bastardized population, where worth
and merit would have no inherent right to leadership and among which a
new and darker age would blot out our racial inheritance.
Such a catastrophe cannot threaten if the Nordic race will gather itself
together in time, shake off the shackles of an inveterate altruism,
discard the vain phantom of internationalism, and reassert the pride of
race and the right of merit to rule.
The Nordic race has been driven from many of its lands, but still grasps
firmly the control of the world, and it is certainly not at a greater
numerical disadvantage than often before in contrast to the teeming
population of eastern Asia.
It has repeatedly been confronted with crises where the accident of
battle, or the genius of a leader, saved a well-nigh hopeless day. It has
survived defeat, it has survived the greater danger of victory, and, if it
takes warning in time, it may face the future with assurance. Fight it
must, but let that fight be not a civil war against its own blood kindred
but against the dangerous foreign races, whether they advance sword in
hand or in the more insidious guise of beggars at our gates, pleading for
admittance to share our prosperity. If we continue to allow them to enter
they will in time drive us out of our own land by mere force of breeding.
The great hope of the future here in America lies in the realization of
the working class that competition of the Nordic with the alien is fatal,
whether the latter be the lowly immigrant from southern or eastern Europe
or whether he be the more obviously dangerous Oriental against whose
standards of living the white man cannot compete. In this country we must
look to such of our people--our farmers and artisans--as are still of
American blood to recognize and meet this danger.
Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of
idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the
perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap
labor.
To-day the need for statesmanship is great, and greater still is the need
for thorough knowledge of history. All over the world the first has been
lacking, and in the passions of the Great War the lessons of the past have
been forgotten both here and in Europe.
The establishment of a chain of Alpine states from the Baltic to the
Adriatic, as a sequel to the war, all of them organized at the expense of
the Nordic ruling classes, may bring Europe back to the days when
Charlemagne, marching from the Rhine to the Elbe, found the valley of that
river inhabited by heathen Wends. Beyond lay Asia, and his successors
spent a thousand years pushing eastward the frontiers of Europe.
Now that Asia, in the guise of Bolshevism with Semitic leadership and
Chinese executioners, is organizing an assault upon western Europe, the
new states--Slavic-Alpine in race, with little Nordic blood--may prove to
be not frontier guards of western Europe but vanguards of Asia in central
Europe. None of the earlier Alpine states have held firm against Asia, and
it is more than doubtful whether Poland, Bohemia, Rumania, Hungary, and
Jugo-Slavia can face the danger successfully, now that they have been
deprived of the Nordic ruling classes through democratic institutions.
Democratic ideals among an homogeneous population of Nordic blood, as in
England or America, is one thing, but it is quite another for the white
man to share his blood with, or intrust his ideals to, brown, yellow,
black, or red men.
This is suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing
folly will be the white man himself.
MADISON GRANT.
NEW YORK, March 1, 1920.
_PART I_
THE RISING TIDE OF COLOR
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD OF COLOR
The man who, on a quiet spring evening of the year 1914, opened his atlas
to a political map of the world and pored over its many-tinted patterns
probably got one fundamental impression: the overwhelming preponderance of
the white race in the ordering of the world's affairs. Judged by accepted
canons of statecraft, the white man towered the indisputable master of the
planet. Forth from Europe's teeming mother-hive the imperious Sons of
Japhet had swarmed for centuries to plant their laws, their customs, and
their battle-flags at the uttermost ends of the earth. Two whole
continents, North America and Australia, had been made virtually as white
in blood as the European motherland; two other continents, South America
and Africa, had been extensively colonized by white stocks; while even
huge Asia had seen its empty northern march, Siberia, pre-empted for the
white man's abode. Even where white populations had not locked themselves
to the soil few regions of the earth had escaped the white man's imperial
sway, and vast areas inhabited by uncounted myriads of dusky folk obeyed
the white man's will.
Beside the enormous area of white settlement or control, the regions under
non-white governance bulked small indeed. In eastern Asia, China, Japan,
and Siam; in western Asia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Persia; in Africa,
Abyssinia, and Liberia; and in America the minute state of Haiti: such was
the brief list of lands under non-white rule. In other words, of the
53,000,000 square miles which (excluding the polar regions) constitute the
land area of the globe, only 6,000,000 square miles had non-white
governments, and nearly two-thirds of this relatively modest remainder was
represented by China and its dependencies.
Since 1914 the world has been convulsed by the most terrible war in
recorded history. This war was primarily a struggle between the white
peoples, who have borne the brunt of the conflict and have suffered most
of the losses. Nevertheless, one of the war's results has been a further
whittling down of the areas standing outside white political control.
Turkey is to-day practically an Anglo-French condominium, Persia is
virtually a protectorate of the British Empire, while the United States
has thrown over the endemic anarchy of Haiti the ægis of the _Pax
Americana_. Study of the political map might thus apparently lead one to
conclude that white world-predominance is immutable, since the war's
ordeal has still further broadened the territorial basis of its authority.
At this point the reader is perhaps asking himself why this book was ever
undertaken. The answer is: the dangerous delusion created by viewing world
affairs solely from the angle of politics. The late war has taught many
lessons as to the unstable and transitory character of even the most
imposing political phenomena, while a better reading of history must bring
home the truth that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics, but
race. The reader has already encountered this fundamental truth on every
page of the Introduction. He will remember, for instance, how west-central
Asia, which in the dawn of history was predominantly white man's country,
is to-day racially brown man's land in which white blood survives only as
vestigial traces of vanishing significance. If this portion of Asia, the
former seat of mighty white empires and possibly the very homeland of the
white race itself, should have so entirely changed its ethnic character,
what assurance can the most impressive political panorama give us that the
present world-order may not swiftly and utterly pass away?
The force of this query is exemplified when we turn from the political to
the racial map of the globe. What a transformation! Instead of a world
politically nine-tenths white, we see a world of which only four-tenths at
the most can be considered predominantly white in blood, the rest of the
world being inhabited mainly by the other primary races of
mankind--yellows, browns, blacks, and reds. Speaking by continents,
Europe, North America to the Rio Grande, the southern portion of South
America, the Siberian part of Asia, and Australasia constitute the real
white world; while the bulk of Asia, virtually the whole of Africa, and
most of Central and South America form the world of color. The respective
areas of these two racially contrasted worlds are 22,000,000 square miles
for the whites and 31,000,000 square miles for the colored races.
Furthermore it must be remembered that fully one-third of the white area
(notably Australasia and Siberia) is very thinly inhabited and is thus
held by a very slender racial tenure--the only tenure which counts in the
long run.
The statistical disproportion between the white and colored worlds becomes
still more marked when we turn from surveys of area to tables of
population. The total number of human beings alive to-day is about
1,700,000,000. Of these 550,000,000 are white, while 1,150,000,000 are
colored. The colored races thus outnumber the whites more than two to one.
Another fact of capital importance is that the great bulk of the white
race is concentrated in the European continent. In 1914 the population of
Europe was approximately 450,000,000. The late war has undoubtedly caused
an absolute decrease of many millions of souls. Nevertheless, the basic
fact remains that some four-fifths of the entire white race is
concentrated on less than one-fifth of the white world's territorial area
(Europe), while the remaining one-fifth of the race (some 110,000,000
souls), scattered to the ends of the earth, must protect four-fifths of
the white territorial heritage against the pressure of colored races
eleven times its numerical strength.
As to the 1,150,000,000 of the colored world, they are divided, as already
stated, into four primary categories: yellows, browns, blacks, and reds.
The yellows are the most numerous of the colored races, numbering over
500,000,000. Their habitat is eastern Asia. Nearly as numerous and much
more wide-spread than the yellows are the browns, numbering some
450,000,000. The browns spread in a broad belt from the Pacific Ocean
westward across southern Asia and northern Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.
The blacks total about 150,000,000. Their centre is Africa south of the
Sahara Desert, but besides the African continent there are vestigial black
traces across southern Asia to the Pacific and also strong black outposts
in the Americas. Least numerous of the colored race-stocks are the
reds--the "Indians" of the western hemisphere. Mustering a total of less
than 40,000,000, the reds are almost all located south of the Rio Grande
in "Latin America."
Such is the ethnic make-up of that world of color which, as already seen,
outnumbers the white world two to one. That is a formidable ratio, and its
significance is heightened by the fact that this ratio seems destined to
shift still further in favor of color. There can be no doubt that at
present the colored races are increasing very much faster than the white.
Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites
tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks
in forty years. The whites are thus the slowest breeders, and they will
undoubtedly become slower still, since section after section of the white
race is revealing that lowered birth-rate which in France has reached the
extreme of a stationary population.
On the other hand, none of the colored races shows perceptible signs of
declining birth-rate, all tending to breed up to the limits of available
subsistence. Such checks as now limit the increase of colored populations
are wholly external, like famine, disease, and tribal warfare. But by a
curious irony of fate, the white man has long been busy removing these
checks to colored multiplication. The greater part of the colored world is
to-day under white political control. Wherever the white man goes he
attempts to impose the bases of his ordered civilization. He puts down
tribal war, he wages truceless combat against epidemic disease, and he so
improves communications that augmented and better distributed
food-supplies minimize the blight of famine. In response to these
life-saving activities the enormous death-rate which in the past has kept
the colored races from excessive multiplication is falling to proportions
comparable with the death-rate of white countries. But to lower the
colored world's prodigious birth-rate is quite another matter. The
consequence is a portentous increase of population in nearly every portion
of the colored world now under white political sway. In fact, even those
colored countries which have maintained their independence, such as China
and Japan, are adopting the white man's life-conserving methods and are
experiencing the same accelerated increase of population.
Now what must be the inevitable result of all this? It can mean only one
thing: a tremendous and steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus
colored men from overcrowded colored homelands. Remember that these
homelands are already populated up to the available limits of subsistence.
Of course present limits can in many cases be pushed back by better living
conditions, improved agriculture, and the rise of modern machine industry
such as is already under way in Japan. Nevertheless, in view of the
tremendous population increases which must occur, these can be only
palliatives. Where, then, should the congested colored world tend to pour
its accumulating human surplus, inexorably condemned to emigrate or
starve? The answer is: into those emptier regions of the earth under white
political control. But many of these relatively empty lands have been
definitely set aside by the white man as his own special heritage. The
upshot is that the rising flood of color finds itself walled in by white
dikes debarring it from many a promised land which it would fain deluge
with its dusky waves.
Thus the colored world, long restive under white political domination, is
being welded by the most fundamental of instincts, the instinct of
self-preservation, into a common solidarity of feeling against the
dominant white man, and in the fire of a common purpose internecine
differences tend, for the time at least, to be burned away. Before the
supreme fact of white political world-domination, antipathies within the
colored world must inevitably recede into the background.
The imperious urge of the colored world toward racial expansion was well
visualized by that keen English student of world affairs, Doctor E. J.
Dillon, when he wrote more than a decade ago: "The problem is one of life
and death--a veritable sphinx-question--to those most nearly concerned.
For, no race, however inferior it may be, will consent to famish slowly in
order that other people may fatten and take their ease, especially if it
has a good chance to make a fight for life."[1]
This white statement of the colored thesis is an accurate reflection of
what colored men say themselves. For example, a Japanese scholar,
Professor Ryutaro Nagai, writes: "The world was not made for the white
races, but for the other races as well. In Australia, South Africa,
Canada, and the United States, there are vast tracts of unoccupied
territory awaiting settlement, and although the citizens of the ruling
Powers refuse to take up the land, no yellow people are permitted to
enter. Thus the white races seem ready to commit to the savage birds and
beasts what they refuse to intrust to their brethren of the yellow race.
Surely the arrogance and avarice of the nobility in apportioning to
themselves the most and the best of the land in certain countries is as
nothing compared with the attitude of the white races toward those of a
different hue."[2]
The bitter resentment of white predominance and exclusiveness awakened in
many colored breasts is typified by the following lines penned by a brown
man, a British-educated Afghan, shortly before the European War.
Inveighing against our "racial prejudice, that cowardly, wretched
caste-mark of the European and the American the world over," he exultantly
predicts "a coming struggle between Asia, all Asia, against Europe and
America. You are heaping up material for a Jehad, a Pan-Islam, a Pan-Asia
Holy War, a gigantic day of reckoning, an invasion of a new Attila and
Tamerlane--who will use rifles and bullets, instead of lances and spears.
You are deaf to the voice of reason and fairness, and so you must be
taught with the whirring swish of the sword when it is red."[3]
Of course in these statements there is nothing either exceptional or
novel. The colored races never welcomed white predominance and were always
restive under white control. Down to the close of the nineteenth century,
however, they generally accepted white hegemony as a disagreeable but
inevitable fact. For four hundred years the white man had added continent
to continent in his imperial progress, equipped with resistless sea-power
and armed with a mechanical superiority that crushed down all local
efforts at resistance. In time, therefore, the colored races accorded to
white supremacy a fatalistic acquiescence, and, though never loved, the
white man was usually respected and universally feared.
During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, to be sure,
premonitory signs of a change in attitude began to appear. The yellow and
brown races, at least, stirred by the very impact of Western ideas,
measured the white man with a more critical eye and commenced to wonder
whether his superiority was due to anything more than a fortuitous
combination of circumstances which might be altered by efforts of their
own. Japan put this theory to the test by going sedulously to the white
man's school. The upshot was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, an event the
momentous character of which is even now not fully appreciated. Of course,
that war was merely the sign-manual of a whole nexus of forces making for
a revivified Asia. But it dramatized and clarified ideas which had been
germinating half-unconsciously in millions of colored minds, and both Asia
and Africa thrilled with joy and hope. Above all, the legend of white
invincibility lay, a fallen idol, in the dust. Nevertheless, though freed
from imaginary terrors, the colored world accurately gauged the white
man's practical strength and appreciated the magnitude of the task
involved in overthrowing white supremacy. That supremacy was no longer
acquiesced in as inevitable and hopes of ultimate success were confidently
entertained, but the process was usually conceived as a slow and difficult
one. Fear of white power and respect for white civilization thus remained
potent restraining factors.
Then came the Great War. The colored world suddenly saw the white peoples
which, in racial matters had hitherto maintained something of a united
front, locked in an internecine death-grapple of unparalleled ferocity; it
saw those same peoples put one another furiously to the ban as
irreconcilable foes; it saw white race-unity cleft by political and moral
gulfs which white men themselves continuously iterated would never be
filled. As colored men realized the significance of it all, they looked
into each other's eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes. The
white world was tearing itself to pieces. White solidarity was riven and
shattered. And--fear of white power and respect for white civilization
together dropped away like garments outworn. Through the bazaars of Asia
ran the sibilant whisper: "The East will see the West to bed!"
The chorus of mingled exultation, hate, and scorn sounded from every
portion of the colored world. Chinese scholars, Japanese professors, Hindu
pundits, Turkish journalists, and Afro-American editors, one and all
voiced drastic criticisms of white civilization and hailed the war as a
well-merited Nemesis on white arrogance and greed. This is how the
Constantinople _Tanine_, the most serious Turkish newspaper, characterized
the European Powers: "They would not look at the evils in their own
countries or elsewhere, but interfered at the slightest incident in our
borders; every day they would gnaw at some part of our rights and our
sovereignty; they would perform vivisection on our quivering flesh and cut
off great pieces of it. And we, with a forcibly controlled spirit of
rebellion in our hearts and with clinched but powerless fists, silent and
depressed, would murmur as the fire burned within: 'Oh, that they might
fall out with one another! Oh, that they might eat one another up!' And
lo! to-day they are eating each other up, just as the Turk wished they
would."[4]
The Afro-American author, W. E. Burghardt Dubois, wrote of the colored
world: "These nations and races, composing as they do a vast majority of
humanity, are going to endure this treatment just as long as they must and
not a moment longer. Then they are going to fight, and the War of the
Color Line will outdo in savage inhumanity any war this world has yet
seen. For colored folk have much to remember and they will not forget."[5]
"What does the European War mean to us Orientals?" queried the Japanese
writer, Yone Noguchi. "It means the saddest downfall of the so-called
western civilization; our belief that it was builded upon a higher and
sounder footing than ours was at once knocked down and killed; we are
sorry that we somehow overestimated its happy possibility and were
deceived and cheated by its superficial glory. My recent western journey
confirmed me that the so-called dynamic western civilization was all
against the Asiatic belief. And when one does not respect the others,
there will be only one thing to come, that is, fight, in action or
silence."[6]
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRIMARY RACES]
Such was the colored world's reaction to the white death-grapple, and as
the long struggle dragged on both Asia and Africa stirred to their very
depths. To be sure, no great explosions occurred during the war years,
albeit lifting veils of censorship reveal how narrowly such explosions
were averted. Nevertheless, Asia and Africa are to-day in acute ferment,
and we must not forget that this ferment is not primarily due to the war.
The war merely accelerated a movement already existent long before 1914.
Even if the Great War had been averted, the twentieth century must have
been a time of wide-spread racial readjustments in which the white man's
present position of political world-domination would have been sensibly
modified, especially in Asia. However, had the white race and white
civilization been spared the terrific material and moral losses involved
in the Great War and its still unliquidated aftermath, the process of
racial readjustment would have been far more gradual and would have been
fraught with far fewer cataclysmic possibilities. Had white strength
remained intact it would have acted as a powerful shock-absorber, taking
up and distributing the various colored impacts. As a result, the coming
modification of the world's racial equilibrium, though inevitable, would
have been so graduated that it would have seemed more an evolution than a
revolution. Such violent breaches as did occur might have been localized,
and anything like a general race-cataclysm would probably have been
impossible.
But it was not to be. The heart of the white world was divided against
itself, and on the fateful 1st of August, 1914, the white race, forgetting
ties of blood and culture, heedless of the growing pressure of the colored
world without, locked in a battle to the death. An ominous cycle opened
whose end no man can foresee. Armageddon engendered Versailles; earth's
worst war closed with an unconstructive peace which left old sores
unhealed and even dealt fresh wounds. The white world to-day lies
debilitated and uncured; the colored world views conditions which are a
standing incitement to rash dreams and violent action.
Such is the present status of the world's race-problem, expressed in
general terms. The analysis of the specific elements in that complex
problem will form the subject of the succeeding chapters.
CHAPTER II
YELLOW MAN'S LAND
Yellow Man's Land is the Far East. Here the group of kindred stocks
usually termed Mongolian have dwelt for unnumbered ages. Down to the most
recent times the yellows lived virtually a life apart. Sundered from the
rest of mankind by stupendous mountains, burning deserts, and the
illimitable ocean, the Far East constituted a world in itself, living its
own life and developing its own peculiar civilization. Only the wild
nomads of its northern marches--Huns, Mongols, Tartars, and the
like--succeeded in gaining direct contact with the brown and white worlds
to the West.
The ethnic focus of the yellow world has always been China. Since the dawn
of history this immense human ganglion has been the centre from which
civilization has radiated throughout the Far East. About this "Middle
Kingdom," as it sapiently styled itself, the other yellow folk were
disposed--Japanese and Koreans to the east; Siamese, Annamites, and
Cambodians to the south; and to the north the nomad Mongols and Manchus.
To all these peoples China was the august preceptor, sometimes chastising
their presumption, yet always instilling the principles of its ordered
civilization. However diverse may have been the individual developments
of the various Far Eastern peoples, they spring from a common Chinese
foundation. Despite modern Japan's meteoric rise to political mastery of
the Far East, it must not be forgotten that China remains not only the
cultural but also the territorial and racial centre of the yellow world.
Four-fifths of the yellow race is concentrated in China, there being
nearly 400,000,000 Chinese as against 60,000,000 Japanese, 16,000,000
Koreans, 26,000,000 Indo-Chinese, and perhaps 10,000,000 people of
non-Chinese stocks included within China's political frontiers.
The age-long seclusion of the yellow world, first decreed by nature, was
subsequently maintained by the voluntary decision of the yellow peoples
themselves. The great expansive movement of the white race which began
four centuries ago soon brought white men to the Far East, by sea in the
persons of the Portuguese navigators and by land with the Cossack
adventurers ranging through the empty spaces of Siberia. Yet after a brief
acquaintance with the white strangers the yellow world decided that it
wanted none of them, and they were rigidly excluded. This exclusion policy
was not a Chinese peculiarity; it was common to all the yellow peoples and
was adopted spontaneously at about the same time. In China, Japan, Korea,
and Indo-China, the same reaction produced the same results. The yellow
world instinctively felt the white man to be a destructive, dissolving
influence on its highly specialized line of evolution, which it wished to
maintain unaltered. For three centuries the yellow world succeeded in
maintaining its isolation, then, in the middle of the last century,
insistent white pressure broke down the barriers and forced the yellow
races into full contact with the outer world.
At the moment, the "opening" of the Far East was hailed by white men with
general approval, but of late years many white observers have regretted
this forcible dragging of reluctant races into the full stream of world
affairs. As an Australian writer, J. Liddell Kelly, remarks: "We have
erred grievously by prematurely forcing ourselves upon Asiatic races. The
instinct of the Asiatic in desiring isolation and separation from other
forms of civilization was much more correct than our craze for imposing
our forms of religion, morals, and industrialism upon them. It is not
race-hatred, nor even race-antagonism, that is at the root of this
attitude; it is an unerring intuition, which in years gone by has taught
the Asiatic that his evolution in the scale of civilization could best be
accomplished by his being allowed to develop on his own lines. Pernicious
European compulsion has led him to abandon that attitude. Let us not be
ashamed to confess that he was right and we were wrong."[7]
However, rightly or wrongly, the deed was done, and the yellow races,
forced into the world-arena, proceeded to adapt themselves to their new
political environment and to learn the correct methods of survival under
the strenuous conditions which there prevailed. In place of their
traditional equilibrated, self-sufficient order, the yellow peoples now
felt the ubiquitous impacts of the dynamic Western spirit, insistent upon
rapid material progress and forceful, expansive evolution. Japan was the
first yellow people to go methodically to the white man's school, and
Japan's rapid acquirement of the white man's technology soon showed itself
in dramatic demonstrations like her military triumphs over China in 1894,
and over Russia a decade later.
Japan's easy victory over huge China astounded the whole world. That these
"highly intelligent children," as one of the early British ministers to
Japan had characterized them, should have so rapidly acquired the
technique of Western methods was almost unbelievable. Indeed, the full
significance of the lesson was not immediately grasped, and the power of
New Japan was still underestimated. A good example of Europe's
underestimation of Japanese strength was the proposal a Dutch writer made
in 1896 to curb possible Japanese aggression on the Dutch Indies by taking
from Japan the island of Formosa which Japan had acquired from China as
one of the fruits of victory. "Holland," asserted this writer, "must take
possession of Formosa."[8] The grotesqueness of this dictum as it appears
to us in the light of subsequent history shows how the world has moved in
twenty-five years.
But even at that time Japan's expansionist tendencies were well
developed, and voices were warning against Japanese imperialism. In the
very month when our Hollander was advocating a Dutch seizure of Formosa,
an Australian wrote the following lines in a Melbourne newspaper
concerning his recent travels in Japan: "While in a car with several
Japanese officers, they were conversing about Australia, saying that it
was a fine, large country, with great forests and excellent soil for the
cultivation of rice and other products. The whites settled in Australia,
so thought these officers, are like the dog in the manger. Some one will
have to take a good part of Australia to develop it, for it is a pity to
see so fine a country lying waste. If any ill-feeling arose between the
two countries, it would be a wise thing to send some battleships to
Australia and annex part of it."[9]
Whatever may have been the world's misreading of the Chino-Japanese
conflict, the same cannot be said of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. The
echoes of that yellow triumph over one of the great white Powers
reverberated to the ends of the earth and started obscure trains of
consequences even to-day not yet fully disclosed. The war's reactions in
these remoter fields will be discussed in later chapters. Its effect upon
the Far East is our present concern. And the well-nigh unanimous opinion
of both natives and resident Europeans was that the war signified a
body-blow to white ascendancy. So profound an English student of the
Orient as Meredith Townsend wrote: "It may be taken as certain that the
victory of Japan will be profoundly felt by the majority of European
states. With the exception of Austria, all European countries have
implicated themselves in the great effort to conquer Asia, which has now
been going on for two centuries, but which, as this author thinks, must
now terminate.... The disposition, therefore, to edge out intrusive
Europeans from their Asiatic possessions is certain to exist even if it is
not manifested in Tokio, and it may be fostered by a movement of which, as
yet, but little has been said. No one who has ever studied the question
doubts that as there is a comity of Europe, so there is a comity of Asia,
a disposition to believe that Asia belongs of right to Asiatics, and that
any event which brings that right nearer to realization is to all Asiatics
a pleasurable one. Japanese victories will give new heart and energy to
all the Asiatic nations and tribes which now fret under European rule,
will inspire in them a new confidence in their own power to resist, and
will spread through them a strong impulse to avail themselves of Japanese
instruction. It will take, of course, many years to bring this new force
into play; but time matters nothing to Asiatics, and they all possess that
capacity for complete secrecy which the Japanese displayed."[10]
That Meredith Townsend was reading the Asiatic mind aright seems clear
from the pronouncements of Orientals themselves. For example, _Buddhism_,
of Rangoon, Burmah, a country of the Indo-Chinese borderland between the
yellow and brown worlds, expressed hopes for an Oriental alliance against
the whites. "It would, we think," said this paper, "be no great wonder if
a few years after the conclusion of this war saw the completion of a
defensive alliance between Japan, China, and not impossibly Siam--the
formulation of a new Monroe Doctrine for the Far East, guaranteeing the
integrity of existing states against further aggression from the West. The
West has justified--perhaps with some reason--every aggression on weaker
races by the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest; on the ground that
it is best for future humanity that the unfit should be eliminated and
give place to the most able race. That doctrine applies equally well to
any possible struggle between Aryan and Mongolian--whichever survives,
should it ever come to a struggle between the two for world-mastery, will,
on their own doctrine, be the one most fit to do so, and if the survivor
be the Mongolian, then is the Mongolian no 'peril' to humanity, but the
better part of it."[11]
The decade which elapsed between the Russo-Japanese and European Wars saw
in the Far East another event of the first magnitude: the Chinese
Revolution of 1911. Toward the close of the nineteenth century the world
had been earnestly discussing the "break-up" of China. The huge empire,
with its 400,000,000 of people, one-fourth the entire human race, seemed
at that time plunged in so hopeless a lethargy as to be foredoomed to
speedy ruin. About the apparently moribund carcass the eagles of the earth
were already gathered, planning a "partition of China" analogous to the
recent partition of Africa. The partition of China, however, never came
off. The prodigious moral shock of the Japanese War roused China's élite
to the imminence of their country's peril. First attempts at reform were
blocked by the Dowager Empress, but her reactionary lurch ended in the
Boxer nightmare and the frightful Occidental chastisement of 1900. This
time the lesson was learned. China was at last shaken broad awake. The
Bourbon Manchu court, it is true, wavered, but popular pressure forced it
to keep the upward path. Every year after 1900 saw increasingly rapid
reform--reform, be it noted, not imposed upon the country from above but
forced upon the rulers from below. When the slow-footed Manchus showed
themselves congenitally incapable of keeping step with the quickening
national pace, the rising tide of national life overwhelmed them in the
Republican Revolution of 1911, and they were no more.
Even with the Manchu handicap, the rate of progress during those years was
such as to amaze the wisest foreign observers. "Could the sage, Confucius,
have returned a decade ago," wrote that "old China hand," W. R. Manning,
in 1910, "he would have felt almost as much at home as when he departed
twenty-five centuries before. Should he return a decade hence he will feel
almost as much out of place as Rip Van Winkle, if the recent rate of
progress continues."[12] Toward the close of 1909 a close student of
things Chinese, Harlan P. Beach, remarked: "Those who, like myself, can
compare the China of twenty-five years ago with the China of this year,
can hardly believe our senses."[13] It was on top of all this that there
came the revolution, a happening hailed by so sophisticated an observer as
Doctor Dillon as "the most momentous event in a thousand years."[14]
Whatever may have been the political blunders of the revolutionists (and
they were many), the revolution's moral results were stupendous. The
stream of Western innovation flowed at a vastly accelerated pace into
every Chinese province. The popular masses were for the first time
awakened to genuine interest in political, as distinguished from economic
or personal, questions. Lastly, the semi-religious feeling of family
kinship, which in the past had been almost the sole recognized bond of
Chinese race-solidarity, was powerfully supplemented by those
distinctively modern concepts, national self-consciousness and articulate
patriotism.
Here was the Far Eastern situation at the outbreak of the Great War--a
thoroughly modernized, powerful Japan, and a thoroughly aroused, but still
disorganized, China. The Great War automatically made Japan supreme in the
Far East by temporarily reducing all the European Powers to ciphers in
Oriental affairs. How Japan proceeded to buttress this supremacy by
getting a strangle-hold on China, every one knows. Japan's methods were
brutal and cynical, though not a whit more so than the methods employed by
white nations seeking to attain vital ends. And "vital" is precisely how
Japan regards her hold over China. An essentially poor country with a
teeming population, Japan feels that the exploitation of China's
incalculable natural resources, a privileged position in the Chinese
market, and guidance of Chinese national evolution in ways not inimical to
Japan, can alone assure her future.
Japan's attitude toward her huge neighbor is one of mingled superiority
and apprehension. She banks on China's traditional pacifism, yet she is
too shrewd not to realize the explosive possibilities latent in the modern
nationalist idea. As a Japanese publicist, Adachi Kinnosuke, remarks: "The
Twentieth Century Jenghiz Khan threatening the Sun-Flag with a Mongol
horde armed with Krupp guns may possibly strike the Western sense of
humor. But it is not altogether pleasing to contemplate a neighbor of
400,000,000 population with modern armament and soldiers trained on the
modern plan. The awakening of China means all this and a little more which
we of the present are not sure of. Japan cannot forget that between this
nightmare of armed China and herself there is only a very narrow sea."[15]
Certainly, "Young China" has already displayed much of that unpleasant
ebullience which usually accompanies nationalist awakenings. A French
observer, Jean Rodes, writes on this point: "One of the things that most
disquiet thinking men is that this new generation, completely neglecting
Chinese studies while knowing nothing of Western science, yet convinced
that it knows everything, will no longer possess any standard of values,
national culture, or foreign culture. We can only await with apprehension
the results of such ignorance united with unbounded pride as characterize
the Chinese youth of to-day."[16] And another French observer, René Pinon,
as far back as 1905, found the primary school children of Kiang-Su
province chanting the following lines: "I pray that the frontiers of my
country become hard as bronze; that it surpass Europe and America; that it
subjugate Japan; that its land and sea armies cover themselves with
resplendent glory; that over the whole earth float the Dragon Standard;
that the universal mastery of the empire extend and progress. May our
empire, like a sleeping tiger suddenly awakened, spring roaring into the
arena of combats."[17]
Japan's masterful policy in China is thus unquestionably hazardous.
Chinese national feeling is to-day genuinely aroused against Japan, and
resentment over Japanese encroachments is bitter and wide-spread.
Nevertheless, Japan feels that the game is worth the risk and believes
that both Chinese race-psychology and the general drift of world affairs
combine to favor her ultimate success. She knows that China has in the
past always acquiesced in foreign domination when resistance has proved
patently impossible. She also feels that her aspirations for white
expulsion from the Far East and for the winning of wider spheres for
racial expansion should appeal strongly to yellow peoples generally and to
the Chinese in particular. To turn China's nascent nationalism into purely
anti-white channels and to transmute Chinese patriotism into a wider
"Pan-Mongolism" would constitute a Japanese triumph of incalculable
splendor. It would increase her effective force manyfold and would open up
almost limitless vistas of power and glory.
Nor are the Chinese themselves blind to the advantages of Chino-Japanese
co-operation. They have an instinctive assurance in their own capacities,
they know how they have ultimately digested all their conquerors, and many
Chinese to-day think that from a Chino-Japanese partnership, no matter how
framed, the inscrutable "Sons of Han" would eventually get the lion's
share. Certainly no one has ever denied the Chinaman's extraordinary
economic efficiency. Winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land
populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, the Chinese race is
selected as no other for survival under the fiercest conditions of
economic stress. At home the average Chinese lives his whole life
literally within a hand's breadth of starvation. Accordingly, when removed
to the easier environment of other lands, the Chinaman brings with him a
working capacity which simply appalls his competitors. That urbane
Celestial, Doctor Wu-Ting-Fang, well says of his own people: "Experience
proves that the Chinese as all-round laborers can easily outdistance all
competitors. They are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. They can work
under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race; in heat that
would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear,
sustaining their energies through long hours of unremitting toil with only
a few bowls of rice."[18] This Chinese estimate is echoed by the most
competent foreign observers. The Australian thinker, Charles H. Pearson,
wrote of the Chinese a generation ago in his epoch-making book, "National
Life and Character": "Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain
plateaux of Thibet and under the sun of Singapore; more versatile even
than Jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers
and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of
the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius
to develop their magnificent future."[19] And Lafcadio Hearn says: "A
people of hundreds of millions disciplined for thousands of years to the
most untiring industry and the most self-denying thrift, under conditions
which would mean worse than death for our working masses--a people, in
short, quite content to strive to the uttermost in exchange for the simple
privilege of life."[20]
This economic superiority of the Chinaman shows not only with other races,
but with his yellow kindred as well. As regards the Japanese, John
Chinaman has proved it to the hilt. Wherever the two have met in economic
competition, John has won hands down. Even in Japanese colonies like Korea
and Formosa, the Japanese, with all the backing of their government behind
them, have been worsted. In fact, Japan itself, so bitter at white
refusals to receive her emigrants, has been obliged to enact drastic
exclusion laws to protect her working classes from the influx of "Chinese
cheap labor." It seems, therefore, a just calculation when Chinese
estimate that Japanese triumphs against white adversaries would inure
largely to China's benefit. After all, Chinese and Japanese are
fundamentally of the same race and culture. They may have their very
bitter family quarrels, but in the last analysis they understand each
other and may arrive at surprisingly sudden agreements. One thing is
certain: both these over-populated lands will feel increasingly the
imperious need of racial expansion. For all these reasons, then, the
present political tension between China and Japan cannot be reckoned as
permanent, and we would do well to envisage the possibility of close
Chinese co-operation in the ambitious programme of Japanese foreign
policy.
This Japanese programme looks first to the prevention of all further white
encroachment in the Far East by the establishment of a Far Eastern Monroe
Doctrine based on Japanese predominance and backed if possible by the
moral support of the other Far Eastern peoples. The next stage in Japanese
foreign policy seems to be the systematic elimination of all existing
white holdings in the Far East. Thus far practically all Japanese appear
to be in substantial agreement. Beyond this point lies a wide realm of
aspiration ranging from determination to secure complete racial equality
and freedom of immigration into white lands to imperialistic dreams of
wholesale conquests and "world-dominion." These last items do not
represent the united aspiration of the Japanese nation, but they are
cherished by powerful circles which, owing to Japan's oligarchical system
of government, possess an influence over governmental action quite
disproportionate to their numbers.
Although Japanese plans and aspirations have broadened notably since 1914,
their outlines were well defined a decade earlier. Immediately after her
victory over Russia, Japan set herself to strengthen her influence all
over eastern Asia. Special efforts were made to establish intimate
relations with the other Asiatic peoples. Asiatic students were invited to
attend Japanese universities and as a matter of fact did attend by the
thousand, while a whole series of societies was formed having for their
object the knitting of close cultural and economic ties between Japan and
specific regions like China, Siam, the Pacific, and even India. The
capstone was a "Pan-Asiatic Association," founded by Count Okuma. Some of
the facts regarding these societies, about which too little is known, make
interesting reading. For instance, there was the "Pacific Ocean Society"
("Taheijoka"), whose preamble reads in part: "For a century the Pacific
Ocean has been a battle-ground wherein the nations have struggled for
supremacy. To-day the prosperity or decadence of a nation depends on its
power in the Pacific: to possess the empire of the Pacific is to be the
Master of the World. As Japan finds itself at the centre of that Ocean,
whose waves bathe its shores, it must reflect carefully and have clear
views on Pacific questions."[21]
Equally interesting is the "Indo-Japanese Association," whose activities
appear somewhat peculiar in view of the political alliance between Japan
and the British Empire. One of the first articles of its constitution
(from Count Okuma's pen, by the way) reads: "All men were born equal. The
Asiatics have the same claim to be called men as the Europeans themselves.
It is therefore quite unreasonable that the latter should have any right
to predominate over the former."[22] No mention is made anywhere in the
document of India's political connection with England. In fact, Count
Okuma, in the autumn of 1907, had this to say regarding India: "Being
oppressed by the Europeans, the 300,000,000 people of India are looking
for Japanese protection. They have commenced to boycott European
merchandise. If, therefore, the Japanese let the chance slip by and do not
go to India, the Indians will be disappointed. From old times, India has
been a land of treasure. Alexander the Great obtained there treasure
sufficient to load a hundred camels, and Mahmoud and Attila also obtained
riches from India. Why should not the Japanese stretch out their hands
toward that country, now that the people are looking to the Japanese? The
Japanese ought to go to India, the South Ocean, and other parts of the
world."[23]
In 1910, Putnam Weale, a competent English student of Oriental affairs,
asserted: "It can no longer be doubted that a very deliberate policy is
certainly being quietly and cleverly pursued. Despite all denials, it is a
fact that Japan has already a great hold in the schools and in the
vernacular newspapers all over eastern Asia, and that the gospel of 'Asia
for the Asiatics' is being steadily preached not only by her schoolmasters
and her editors, but by her merchants and peddlers, and every other man
who travels."[24]
Exactly how much these Japanese propagandist efforts accomplished is
impossible to say. Certain it is, however, that during the years just
previous to the Great War the white colonies in the Far East were
afflicted with considerable native unrest. In French Indo-China, for
example, revolutionary movements during the year 1908 necessitated
reinforcing the French garrison by nearly 10,000 men, and though the
disturbances were sternly repressed, fresh conspiracies were discovered
in 1911 and 1913. Much sedition and some sharp fighting also took place in
the Dutch Indies, while in the Philippines the independence movement
continued to gain ground.
What the growing self-consciousness of the Far East portended for the
white man's ultimate status in those regions was indicated by an English
publicist, J. D. Whelpley, who wrote, shortly after the outbreak of the
European War: "With the aid of Western ideas the Far East is fast
attaining a solidarity impossible under purely Oriental methods. The smug
satisfaction expressed in the West at what is called the 'modernization'
of the East shows lack of wisdom or an ineffective grasp of the meaning of
comparatively recent events in Japan, China, eastern Siberia, and even in
the Philippines. In years past the solidarity of the Far East was largely
in point of view, while in other matters the powerful nations of the West
played the game according to their own rules. To-day the solidarity of
mental outlook still maintains, while in addition there is rapidly coming
about a solidarity of political and material interests which in time will
reduce Western participation in Far Eastern affairs to that of a
comparatively unimportant factor. It might truly be said that this point
is already reached, and that it only needs an application of the test to
prove to the world that the Far East would resent Western interference as
an intolerable impertinence."[25]
The scope of Japan's aspirations, together with differences of outlook
between various sections of Japanese public opinion as to the rate of
progress feasible for Japanese expansion, account for Japan's differing
attitudes toward the white Powers. Officially, the keystone of Japan's
foreign policy since the beginning of the present century has been the
alliance with England, first negotiated in 1902 and renewed with extensive
modifications in 1911. The 1902 alliance was universally popular in Japan.
It was directed specifically against Russia and represented the common
apprehensions of both the contracting parties. By 1911, however, the
situation had radically altered. Japan's aspirations in the Far East,
particularly as regards China, were arousing wide-spread uneasiness in
many quarters, and the English communities in the Far East generally
condemned the new alliance as a gross blunder of British diplomacy. In
Japan also there was considerable protest. The official organs, to be
sure, stressed the necessity of friendship with the Mistress of the Seas
for an island empire like Japan, but opposition circles pointed to
England's practical refusal to be drawn into a war with the United States
under any circumstances which constituted the outstanding feature of the
new treaty and declared that Japan was giving much and receiving nothing
in return.
The growing divergence between Japanese and English views regarding China
increased anti-English feeling, and in 1912 the semi-official _Japan
Magazine_ asserted roundly that the general feeling in Japan was that the
alliance was a detriment rather than a benefit, going on to forecast a
possible alignment with Russia and Germany, and remarking of the latter:
"Germany's healthy imperialism and scientific development would have a
wholesome effect upon our nation and progress, while the German habit of
perseverance and frugality is just what we need. German wealth and
industry are gradually creeping upward to that of Great Britain and
America, and the efficiency of the German army and navy is a model for the
world. Her lease of the territory of Kiaochow Bay brings her into contact
with us, and her ambition to exploit the coal-mines of Shantung lends her
a community of interest with us. It is not too much to say that German
interests in China are greater than those of any other European Power. If
the alliance with England should ever be abrogated, we might be very glad
to shake hands with Germany."[26]
The outbreak of the European War gave Japan a golden opportunity (of which
she was not slow to take advantage) to eliminate one of the white Powers
from the Far East. The German stronghold of Kiaochow was promptly reduced,
while Germany's possessions in the Pacific Ocean north of the equator, the
Caroline, Pelew, Marianne, and Marshall island-groups, were likewise
occupied by Japanese forces. Here Japan stopped and politely declined all
proposals to send armies to Europe or western Asia. Her sphere was the Far
East; her real objectives were the reduction of white influence there and
the riveting of her control over China. Japanese comment was perfectly
candid on these matters. As the semi-official _Japanese Colonial Journal_
put it in the autumn of 1914: "To protect Chinese territory Japan is ready
to fight no matter what nation. Not only will Japan try to erase the
ambitions of Russia and Germany; it will also do its best to prevent
England and the United States from touching the Chinese cake. The solution
of the Chinese problem is of great importance for Japan, and Great Britain
has little to do with it."[27]
Equally frank were Japanese warnings to the English ally not to oppose
Japan's progress in China. English criticism of the series of ultimatums
by which Japan forced reluctant China to do her bidding roused angry
admonitions like the following from the Tokio _Universe_ in April, 1915:
"Hostile English opinion seems to want to oppose Japanese demands in
China. The English forget that Japan has, by her alliance, rendered them
signal services against Russia in 1905 and in the present war by assuring
security in their colonies of the Pacific and the Far East. If Japan
allied herself with England, it was with the object of establishing
Japanese preponderance in China and against the encroachments of Russia.
To-day the English seem to be neglecting their obligations toward Japan by
not supporting her cause. Let England beware! Japan will tolerate no
wavering; she is quite ready to abandon the Anglo-Japanese alliance and
turn to Russia--a Power with whom she can agree perfectly regarding Far
Eastern interests. In the future, even, she is ready to draw closer to
Germany. The English colonies will then be in great peril."[28]
As to the imminence of a Russo-Japanese understanding, the journal just
quoted proved a true prophet, for a year later, in July, 1916, the
Japanese and Russian Governments signed a diplomatic instrument which
amounted practically to an alliance. By this document Russia recognized
Japan's paramountcy over the bulk of China, while Japan recognized
Russia's special interests in China's Western dependencies, Mongolia and
Turkestan. Japan had thus eliminated another of the white Powers from the
Far East, since Russia renounced those ambitions to dominate China proper
which had provoked the war of 1904.
Meanwhile the press campaign against England continued. A typical sample
is this editorial from the Tokio _Yamato_: "Great Britain never wished at
heart to become Japan's ally. She did not wish to enter into such intimate
relations with us, for she privately regarded us as an upstart nation
radically different from us in blood and religion. It was simply the force
of circumstances which compelled her to enter into an alliance with us. It
is the height of conceit on our part to think that England really cared
for our friendship, for she never did. It was the Russian menace to India
and Persia on the one hand, and the German ascendancy on the other, which
compelled her to clasp our hands."[29]
At the same time many good things were being said about Germany. At no
time during the war was any real hostility to the Germans apparent in
Japan. Germany was of course expelled from her Far Eastern footholds in
smart, workmanlike fashion, but the fighting before Kiaochow was conducted
without a trace of hatred, the German prisoners were treated as honored
captives, and German civilians in Japan suffered no molestation. Japanese
writers were very frank in stating that, once Germany resigned herself to
exclusion from the Far East and acquiesced in Japanese predominance in
China, no reason existed why Japan and Germany should not be good friends.
Unofficial diplomatic exchanges certainly took place between the two
governments during the war, and no rancor for the past appears to exist on
either side to-day.
The year 1917 brought three momentous modifications into the
world-situation: the entrance of the United States and China into the
Great War and the Russian Revolution. The first two were intensely
distasteful to Japan. The transformation of virtually unarmed America into
a first-class fighting power reacted portentously upon the Far East, while
China's adhesion to the Grand Alliance (bitterly opposed in Tokio) rescued
her from diplomatic isolation and gave her potential friends. The Russian
Revolution was also a source of perplexity to Tokio. In 1916, as we have
seen, Japan had arrived at a thorough understanding with the Czarist
régime. The new Russian Government was an unknown quantity, acting quite
differently from the old.
Russia's collapse into Bolshevist anarchy, however, presently opened up
new vistas. Not merely northern Manchuria, but also the huge expanse of
Siberia, an almost empty world of vast potential riches, lay temptingly
exposed. At once the powerful imperialist elements in Japanese political
life began clamoring for "forward" action. An opportunity for such action
was soon vouchsafed by the Allied determination to send a composite force
to Siberia to checkmate the machinations of the Russian Bolsheviki, now
hostile to the Allies and playing into the hands of Germany. The
imperialist party at Tokio took the bit in its teeth, and, in flagrant
disregard of the inter-Allied agreement, poured a great army into Siberia,
occupying the whole country as far west as Lake Baikal. This was in the
spring of 1918. The Allies, then in their supreme death-grapple with the
Germans, dared not even protest, but in the autumn, when the battle-tide
had turned in Europe, Japan was called to account, the United States
taking the lead in the matter. A furious debate ensued at Tokio between
the imperialist and moderate parties, the hotter jingoes urging defiance
of the United States even at the risk of war. Then, suddenly, came the
news that Germany was cracking, and the moderates had their way. The
Japanese armies in Siberia were reduced, albeit they still remained the
most powerful military factor in the situation.
Germany's sudden collapse and the unexpectedly quick ending of the war was
a blow to Japanese hopes and plans in more ways than one. Despite
official felicitations, the nation could hardly disguise its chagrin. For
Japan the war had been an unmixed benefit. It had automatically made her
mistress of the Far East and had amazingly enriched her economic life.
Every succeeding month of hostilities had seen the white world grow weaker
and had conversely increased Japanese power. Japan had counted on at least
one more year of war. Small wonder that the sudden passing of this halcyon
time provoked disappointment and regret.
The above outline of Japanese foreign policy reveals beneath all its
surface mutations a fundamental continuity. Whatever may be its ultimate
goals, Japanese foreign policy has one minimum objective: Japan as hegemon
of a Far East in which white influence shall have been reduced to a
vanishing quantity. That is the bald truth of the matter--and no white man
has any reason for getting indignant about it. Granted that Japanese aims
endanger white vested interests in the Far East. Granted that this
involves rivalry and perhaps war. That is no reason for striking a moral
attitude and inveighing against Japanese "wickedness," as many people are
to-day doing. These mighty racial tides flow from the most elemental of
vital urges: self-expansion and self-preservation. Both outward thrust of
expanding life and counter-thrust of threatened life are equally normal
phenomena. To condemn the former as "criminal" and the latter as "selfish"
is either silly or hypocritical and tends to envenom with unnecessary
rancor what objective fairness might keep a candid struggle, inevitable
yet alleviated by mutual comprehension and respect. This is no mere plea
for "sportsmanship"; it is a very practical matter. There are critical
times ahead; times in which intense race-pressures will engender high
tensions and perhaps wars. If men will keep open minds and will eschew the
temptation to regard those opposing their desires to defend or possess
respectively as impious fiends, the struggles will lose half their
bitterness, and the wars (if wars there must be) will be shorn of half
their ferocity.
The unexpected ending of the European War was, as we have seen, a blow to
Japanese calculations. Nevertheless, the skill of her diplomats at the
ensuing Versailles Conference enabled Japan to harvest most of her war
gains. Japan's territorial acquisitions in China were definitely written
into the peace treaty, despite China's sullen veto, and Japan's
preponderance in Chinese affairs was tacitly acknowledged. Japan also took
advantage of the occasion to pose as the champion of the colored races by
urging the formal promulgation of "racial equality" as part of the peace
settlement, especially as regards immigration. Of course the Japanese
diplomats had no serious expectation of their demands being acceded to; in
fact, they might have been rather embarrassed if they had succeeded, in
view of Japan's own stringent laws against immigration and alien
landholding. Nevertheless, it was a politic move, useful for future
propagandist purposes, and it advertised Japan broadcast as the
standard-bearer of the colored cause.
The notable progress that Japan has made toward the mastery of the Far
East is written plainly upon the map, which strikingly portrays the
broadening territorial base of Japanese power effected in the past
twenty-five years. Japan now owns the whole island chain masking the
eastern sea frontage of Asia, from the tip of Kamchatka to the
Philippines, while her acquisition of Germany's Oceanican islands north of
the equator gives her important strategic outposts in mid-Pacific. Her
bridge-heads on the Asiatic continent are also strong and well located.
From the Korean peninsula (now an integral part of Japan) she firmly
grasps the vast Chinese dependency of Manchuria, while just south of
Manchuria across the narrow waters of the Pechili strait lies the rich
Chinese province of Shantung, become a Japanese sphere of influence as a
result of the late war. Thus Japan holds China's capital, Peking, as in
the jaws of a vice and can apply military pressure whenever she so
desires. In southern China lies another Japanese sphere of influence, the
province of Fukien opposite the Japanese island of Formosa. Lastly, all
over China runs a veritable network of Japanese concessions like the
recently acquired control of the great iron deposits near Hankow, far up
the Yangtse River in the heart of China.
Whether this Japanese _imperium_ over China maintains itself or not, one
thing seems certain: future white expansion in the Far East has become
impossible. Any such attempt would instantly weld together Japanese
imperialism and Chinese nationalism in a "sacred union" whose result would
probably be at the very least the prompt expulsion of the white man from
every foothold in eastern Asia.
That is what will probably come anyway as soon as Japan and China,
impelled by overcrowding and conscious of their united potentialities,
shall have arrived at a genuine understanding. Since population-pressure
seems to be the basic factor in the future course of Far Eastern affairs,
it would be well to survey possible outlets for surplus population within
the Far East itself, in order to determine how much of this race-expansion
can be satisfied at home, thereby diminishing, or at least postponing,
acute pressure upon the political and ethnic frontiers of the white world.
To begin with, the population of Japan (approximately 60,000,000) is
increasing at the rate of about 800,000 per year. China has no modern
vital statistics, but the annual increase of her 400,000,000 population,
at the Japanese rate, would be 6,000,000. Now the settled parts of both
Japan and China may be considered as fully populated so far as agriculture
is concerned, further extensive increases of population being dependent
upon the rise of machine industry. Both countries have, however, thinly
settled areas within their present political frontiers. Japan's northern
island of Hokkaido (Yezo) has a great amount of good agricultural land as
yet almost unoccupied, some of her other island possessions offer minor
outlets, while Korea and Manchuria afford extensive colonizing
possibilities albeit Chinese and Korean competition preclude a Japanese
colonization on the scale which the size and natural wealth of these
regions would at first sight seem to indicate. China has even more
extensive colonizable areas. Both Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, though
largely desert, contain within their vast areas enough fertile land to
support many millions of Chinese peasants as soon as modern roads and
railways are built. The Chinese colonization of Manchuria is also
proceeding apace, and will continue despite anything Japan may do to keep
it down. Lastly, the cold but enormous plateau of Tibet offers
considerable possibilities.
Allowing for all this, however, it cannot be said that either China or
Japan possess within their present political frontiers territories likely
to absorb those prodigious accretions of population which seem destined to
occur within the next couple of generations. From the resultant congestion
two avenues of escape will naturally present themselves: settlement of
other portions of the Far East to-day under white political control, but
inhabited by colored populations; and pressure into accessible areas not
merely under white political control, but also containing white
populations. It is obvious that these are two radically distinct issues,
for while a white nation might not unalterably oppose Mongolian
immigration into its colored dependencies, it would almost certainly
fight to the limit rather than witness the racial swamping of lands
settled by its own flesh and blood.
Considering the former issue, then, it would appear that virtually all the
peninsulas and archipelagoes lying between China and Australia offer
attractive fields for yellow, particularly Chinese, race-expansion.
Ethnically they are all colored men's lands; politically they are all,
save Siam, under white control; Britain, France, Holland, and the United
States being the titular owners of these extensive territories. So far as
the native races are concerned, none of them seem to possess the vitality
and economic efficiency needed to maintain themselves against unrestricted
Chinese immigration. Whether in the British Straits Settlements and North
Borneo, French Indo-China, the Dutch Indies, the American Philippines, or
independent Siam, the Chinaman, so far as he has been allowed, has
displayed his practical superiority, and in places where, like the Straits
Settlements, he has been allowed a free hand, he has virtually supplanted
the native stock, reducing the latter to an impotent and vanishing
minority. The chief barriers to Chinese race-expansion in these regions
are legal hindrances or prohibitions of immigration, and of course such
barriers are in their essence artificial and liable to removal under any
shift of circumstances. Many observers predict that most of these lands
will ultimately become Chinese. Says Alleyne Ireland, a recognized
authority on these regions: "There is every reason to suppose that,
throughout the tropics, possibly excepting India, the Chinaman, even
though he should continue to emigrate in no greater force than hitherto,
will gradually supersede all the native races."[30] Certainly, if this be
true, China has here a vast outlet for her surplus population. It has been
estimated that the undeveloped portions of the Dutch Indies alone are
capable of supporting 100,000,000 people living on the frugal Chinese
plane. Their present population is 8,000,000 semi-savages.
China's possibilities of race-expansion in the colored regions of the Far
East are thus excellent. The same cannot be said, however, for Japan. The
Japanese, bred in a distinctively temperate, island environment, have not
the Chinese adaptability to climatic variation. The Japanese, like the
white man, does not thrive in tropic heat, nor does he possess the white
man's ability to resist sub-Arctic cold. Formosa is not in the real
tropics, yet Japanese colonists have not done well there. On the other
hand, even the far-from-Arctic winters of Hokkaido (part of the Japanese
archipelago) seem too chilly for the Japanese taste.
Japan thus does not have the same vital interest as China in the Asiatic
tropics. Undoubtedly they would for Japan be valuable colonies of
exploitation, just as they to-day are thus valuable for white nations. But
they could never furnish outlets for Japan's excess population, and even
commercially Japan would be exposed to increasing Chinese competition,
since the Chinaman excels the Japanese in trade as well as in migrant
colonization. Japanese lack of climatic adaptability is also the reason
why Japan's present military excursion in eastern Siberia, even if it
should develop into permanent occupation, would yield no adequate solution
of Japan's population problem. For the Chinaman, Siberia would do very
well. He would breed amazingly there and would fill up the whole country
in a remarkably short space of time. But the Japanese peasant, so averse
to the winters of Hokkaido, would find the sub-Arctic rigors of Siberia
intolerable.
Thus, for Japanese migration, neither the empty spaces of northern or
southern Asia will do. The natural outlets lie outside Asia in the United
States, Australasia, and the temperate parts of Latin America. But all
these outlets are rigorously barred by the white man, who has marked them
for his own race-heritage, and nothing but force will break those barriers
down.
There lies a danger, not merely to the peace of the Far East, but to the
peace of the world. Fired by a fervent patriotism; resolved to make their
country a leader among the nations; the Japanese writhe at the
constriction of their present race-bounds. Placed on the flank of the
Chinese giant whose portentous growth she can accurately forecast, Japan
sees herself condemned to ultimate renunciation of her grandiose ambitions
unless she can somehow broaden the racial as well as the political basis
of her power. In short: Japan must find lands where Japanese can breed by
the tens of millions if she is not to be automatically overshadowed in
course of time, even assuming that she does not suffocate or blow up from
congestion before that time arrives. This is the secret of her aggressive
foreign policy, her chronic imperialism, her extravagant dreams of
conquest and "world-dominion."
The longing to hack a path to greatness by the samurai sword lurks ever in
the back of Japanese minds. The library of Nippon's chauvinist literature
is large and increasing. A good example of the earlier productions is
Satori Kato's brochure entitled "Mastery of the Pacific," published in
1909. Herein the author announces confidently: "In the event of war Japan
could, as if aided by a magician's wand, overrun the Pacific with fleets
manned by men who have made Nelson their model and transported to the
armadas of the Far East the spirit that was victorious at Trafalgar.
Whether Japan avows it or not, her persistent aim is to gain the mastery
of the Pacific. Although peace seems to prevail over the world at present,
no one can tell how soon the nations may be engaged in war. It does not
need the English alliance to secure success for Japan. That alliance may
be dissolved at any moment, but Japan will suffer no defeat. Her victory
will be won by her men, not by armor-plates--things weak by
comparison."[31]
The late war has of course greatly stimulated these bellicose emotions.
Viewing their own increased power and the debilitation of the white world,
Japanese jingoes glimpse prospects of glorious fishing in troubled
waters. The "world-dominion" note is stressed more often than of yore. For
instance, in the summer of 1919 the Tokio _Hochi_, Count Okuma's organ,
prophesied exultantly: "That age in which the Anglo-Japanese alliance was
the pivot and American-Japanese co-operation an essential factor of
Japanese diplomacy is gone. In future we must not look eastward for
friendship but westward. Let the Bolsheviki of Russia be put down and the
more peaceful party established in power. In them Japan will find a strong
ally. By marching then westward to the Balkans, to Germany, to France, and
Italy, the greater part of the world may be brought under our sway. The
tyranny of the Anglo-Saxons at the Peace Conference is such that it has
angered both gods and men. Some may abjectly follow them in consideration
of their petty interests, but things will ultimately settle down as has
just been indicated."[32]
Still more striking are the following citations from a Japanese
imperialist pronouncement written in the autumn of 1916:
"Fifty millions of our race wherewith to conquer and possess the earth! It
is indeed a glorious problem!... To begin with, we now have China; China
is our steed! Far shall we ride upon her! Even as Rome rode Latium to
conquer Italy, and Italy to conquer the Mediterranean; even as Napoleon
rode Italy and the Rhenish States to conquer Germany, and Germany to
conquer Europe; even as England to-day rides her colonies and her
so-called 'allies' to conquer her robust rival, Germany--even so shall we
ride China. So becomes our 50,000,000 race 500,000,000 strong; so grow our
paltry hundreds of millions of gold into billions!
"How well have done our people! How well have our statesmen led them! No
mistakes! There must be none now. In 1895 we conquered China--Russia,
Germany, and France stole from us the booty. How has our strength grown
since then--and still it grows! In ten years we punished and retook our
own from Russia; in twenty years we squared and retook from Germany; with
France there is no need for haste. She has already realized why we
withheld the troops which alone might have driven the invader from her
soil! Her fingers are clutching more tightly around her Oriental booty;
yet she knows it is ours for the taking. But there is no need of haste:
the world condemns the paltry thief; only the glorious conqueror wins the
plaudits and approval of mankind.
"We are now well astride of our steed, China; but the steed has long
roamed wild and is run down: it needs grooming, more grain, more training.
Further, our saddle and bridle are as yet mere makeshifts: would steed and
trappings stand the strain of war? And what would that strain be?
"As for America--that fatuous booby with much money and much sentiment,
but no cohesion, no brains of government; stood she alone we should not
need our China steed. Well did my friend speak the other day when he
called her people a race of thieves with the hearts of rabbits. America,
to any warrior race, is not as a foe, but as an immense melon, ripe for
the cutting. But there are other warrior races--England, Germany--would
they look on and let us slice and eat our fill? Would they?
"But, using China as our steed, should our first goal be the land? India?
Or the Pacific, the sea that must be our very own, even as the Atlantic is
now England's? The land is tempting and easy, but withal dangerous. Did we
begin there, the coarse white races would too soon awaken, and combine,
and forever immure us within our long since grown intolerable bounds. It
must, therefore, be the sea; but the sea means the Western Americas and
all the islands between; and with those must soon come Australia, India.
And then the battling for the balance of world-power, for the rest of
North America. Once that is ours, we own and control the whole--a dominion
worthy of our race!
"North America alone will support a billion people; that billion shall be
Japanese with their slaves. Not arid Asia, nor worn-out Europe (which,
with its peculiar and quaint relics and customs should in the interests of
history and culture, be in any case preserved), nor yet tropical Africa,
is fit for our people. But North America, that continent so succulently
green, fresh, and unsullied--except for the few chattering, mongrel
Yankees--should have been ours by right of discovery: it shall be ours by
the higher, nobler right of conquest."[33]
This apostle of Japanese world-dominion then goes on to discuss in detail
how his programme can best be attained. It should be remembered that at
the time he wrote America was still an unarmed nation, apparently ridden
by pacifism. Such imperialist extravagances as the above do not represent
the whole of Japan. But they do represent a powerful element in Japan,
against which the white world should be forewarned.
CHAPTER III
BROWN MAN'S LAND
Brown Man's Land is the Near and Middle East. The brown world stretches in
an immense belt clear across southern Asia and northern Africa, from the
Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans. The numbers of brown and yellow men are
not markedly unequal (450,000,000 browns as against 500,000,000 yellows),
but in most other respects the two worlds are sharply contrasted. In the
first place, while the yellow world is a fairly compact geographical
block, the brown world sprawls half-way round the globe, and is not only
much greater in size, but also infinitely more varied in natural features.
This geographical diversity is reflected both in its history and in the
character of its inhabitants. Unlike the secluded yellow world, the brown
world is nearly everywhere exposed to foreign influences and has undergone
an infinite series of evolutionary modifications. Racially it has been a
vast melting-pot, or series of melting-pots, wherein conquest and
migration have continually poured new heterogeneous elements, producing
the most diverse racial amalgamations. In fact, there is to-day no
generalized brown type-norm as there are generalized yellow or white
type-norms, but rather a series of types clearly distinguished from one
another. Some of these types, like the Persians and Ottoman Turks, are
largely white; others, like the southern Indians and Yemenite Arabs, are
largely black; while still others, like the Himalayan and Central Asian
peoples, have much yellow blood. Again, there is no generalized brown
culture like those possessed by yellows and whites. The great spiritual
bond is Islam, yet in India, the chief seat of brown population, Islam is
professed by only one-fifth of the inhabitants.
Nevertheless, there is a fundamental comity between the brown peoples.
This comity is subtle and intangible in character, yet it exists, and
under certain circumstances it is capable of momentous manifestations. Its
salient feature is the instinctive recognition by all Near and Middle
Eastern peoples that they are fellow Asiatics, however bitter may be their
internecine feuds. This instinctive Asiatic feeling has been noted by
historians for more than two thousand years, and it is just as true to-day
as in the past. Of course it comes out most strongly in face of the
non-Asiatic--which in practice has always meant the white man. The action
and reaction of the brown and white worlds has, indeed, been a constant
historic factor, the rôles of hammer and anvil being continually reversed
through the ages. For the last four centuries the white world has, in the
main, been the dynamic factor. Certainly, during the last hundred years
the white world has displayed an unprecedentedly aggressive vigor, the
brown world playing an almost passive rôle.
Here again is seen a difference between browns and yellows. The yellow
world did not feel the full tide of white aggression till the middle of
the last century, while even then it never really lost its political
independence and soon reacted so powerfully that its political freedom has
to-day been substantially regained. The brown world, on the other hand,
felt the impact of the white tide much earlier and was politically
overwhelmed. The so-called "independence" of brown states has long been
due more to white rivalries than to their own inherent strength. One by
one they have been swallowed up by the white Powers. In 1914 only three
(Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan) survived, and the late war has sent them
the way of the rest. Turkey and Persia have lost their independence,
however they may still be painted on the map, while Afghanistan has been
compelled to recognize white supremacy as never before. Thus the cycle is
fulfilled, and white political mastery over the brown world is complete.
Political triumphs, however, of themselves guarantee nothing, and the
permanence of the present order of things in the brown world appears more
than doubtful when we glance beyond the map. The brown world, like the
yellow world, is to-day in acute reaction against white supremacy. In
fact, the brown reaction began a full century ago, and has been gathering
headway ever since, moved thereto both by its own inherent vitality and by
the external stimulus of white aggression. The great dynamic of this brown
reaction is the Mohammedan Revival. But before analyzing that movement it
would be well to glance at the human elements involved.
Four salient groupings stand out among the brown peoples: India, Irán,
"Arabistán," and "Turkestán." The last two words are used in a special
sense to denote ethnic and cultural aggregations for which no precise
terms have hitherto been coined. India is the population-centre of the
brown world. More than 300,000,000 souls live within its
borders--two-thirds of all the brown men on earth. India has not, however,
been the brown world's spiritual or cultural dynamic, those forces coming
chiefly from the brown lands to the westward. Irán (the Persian plateau)
is comparatively small in area and has less than 15,000,000 inhabitants,
but its influence upon the brown world has been out of all proportion to
its size and population. "Arabistán" denotes the group of peoples, Arab in
blood or Arabized in language and culture, who inhabit the Arabian
peninsula and its adjacent annexes, Syria and Mesopotamia, together with
the vast band of North Africa lying between the Mediterranean and the
Sahara Desert. The total number of these Arabic peoples is 40,000,000,
three-fourths of them living in North Africa. The term "Turkestán" covers
the group of kindred peoples, often called "Turanians," who stretch from
Constantinople to Central Asia, including the Ottoman Turks of Asia Minor,
the Tartars of South Russia and Transcaucasia, and the Central Asian
Turkomans. They number in all about 25,000,000. Such are the four
outstanding race-factors in the brown world. Let us now examine that
spiritual factor, Islam, from which the brown renaissance originally
proceeded, and on which most of its present manifestations are based.
Islam's warlike vigor has impressed men's minds ever since the far-off
days when its pristine fervor bore the Fiery Crescent from France to
China. But with the passing cycles this fervor waned, and a century ago
Islam seemed plunged in the stupor of senile decay. The life appeared to
have gone out of it, leaving naught but the dry husks of empty formalism
and soulless ritual. Yet at this darkest hour a voice came crying from out
the vast Arabian desert, the cradle of Islam, calling the Faithful to
better things. This puritan reformer was the famous Abd-el-Wahab, and his
followers, known as Wahabees, soon spread over the length and breadth of
the Mohammedan world, purging Islam of its sloth and rekindling the fervor
of olden days. Thus began the great Mohammedan Revival.
That revival, like all truly regenerative movements, had its political as
well as its spiritual side. One of the first things which struck the
reformers was the political weakness of the Moslem world and its
increasing subjection to the Christian West. It was during the early
decades of the nineteenth century that the revival spread through Islam.
But this was the very time when Europe, recovering from the losses of the
Napoleonic Wars, began its unparalleled aggressions upon the Moslem East.
The result in Islam was a fusing of religion and patriotism into a "sacred
union" for the combined spiritual regeneration and political emancipation
of the Moslem world.
Of course Europe's material and military superiority were then so great
that speedy success was recognized to be a vain hope. Nevertheless, with
true Oriental patience, the reformers were content to work for distant
goals, and the results of their labors, though hidden from most Europeans,
was soon discernible to a few keen-sighted white observers. Half a century
ago the learned Orientalist Palgrave wrote these prophetic lines: "Islam
is even now an enormous power, full of self-sustaining vitality, with a
surplus for aggression; and a struggle with its combined energies would be
deadly indeed.... The Mohammedan peoples of the East have awakened to the
manifold strength and skill of their Western Christian rivals; and this
awakening, at first productive of respect and fear, not unmixed with
admiration, now wears the type of antagonistic dislike, and even of
intelligent hate. No more zealous Moslems are to be found in all the ranks
of Islam than they who have sojourned longest in Europe and acquired the
most intimate knowledge of its sciences and ways.... Mohammedans are
keenly alive to the ever-shifting uncertainties and divisions that
distract the Christianity of to-day, and to the woful instability of
modern European institutions. From their own point of view, Moslems are as
men standing on a secure rock, and they contrast the quiet fixity of their
own position with the unsettled and insecure restlessness of all
else."[34]
This stability to which Palgrave alludes must not be confused with dead
rigidity. Too many of us still think of the Moslem East as hopelessly
petrified. But those Westerners best acquainted with the Islamic world
assert that nothing could be farther from the truth; emphasizing, on the
contrary, Islam's present plasticity and rapid assimilation of Western
ideas and methods. "The alleged rigidity of Islam is a European myth,"[35]
says Theodore Morison, late principal of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental
College at Aligarh, India; and another Orientalist, Marmaduke Pickthall,
writes: "There is nothing in Islam, any more than in Christianity, which
should halt progress. The fact is that Christianity found, some time ago,
a _modus vivendi_ with modern life, while Islam has not yet arrived
thither. But this process is even now being worked out."[36]
The way in which the Mohammedan world has availed itself of white
institutions such as the newspaper in forging its new solidarity is well
portrayed by Bernard Temple. "It all comes to this, then," he writes.
"World-politics, as viewed by Mohammedanism's political leaders, resolve
themselves into a struggle--not necessarily a bloody struggle, but still
an intense and vital struggle--for place and power between the three great
divisions of mankind. The Moslem mind is deeply stirred by the prospect.
Every Moslem country is in communication with every other Moslem country:
directly, by means of special emissaries, pilgrims, travellers, traders,
and postal exchanges; indirectly, by means of Mohammedan newspapers,
books, pamphlets, leaflets, and periodicals. I have met with Cairo
newspapers in Bagdad, Teheran, and Peshawar; Constantinople newspapers in
Basra and Bombay; Calcutta newspapers in Mohammerah, Kerbela, and Port
Said."[37]
These European judgments are confirmed by what Asiatics say themselves.
For example, a Syrian Christian, Ameen Rihani, thus characterizes the
present strength and vitality of the Moslem world: "A nation of
250,000,000 souls, more than one-half under Christian rule, struggling to
shake off its fetters; to consolidate its opposing forces; replenishing
itself in the south and in the east from the inexhaustible sources of the
life primitive; assimilating in the north, but not without discrimination,
the civilization of Europe; a nation with a glorious past, a living faith
and language, an inspired Book, an undying hope, might be divided against
itself by European diplomacy but can never be subjugated by European
arms.... What Islam is losing on the borders of Europe it is gaining in
Africa and Central Asia through its modern propaganda, which is conducted
according to Christian methods. And this is one of the grand results of
'civilization by benevolent assimilation.' Europe drills the Moslem to be
a soldier who will ultimately turn his weapons against her; and she sends
her missionaries to awaken in the ulema the proselytizing evil."[38]
Typical of Mohammedan literature on this subject are the following
excerpts from a book published at Cairo in 1907 by an Egyptian, Yahya
Siddyk, significantly entitled "The Awakening of the Islamic Peoples in
the Fourteenth Century of the Hegira."[39] The book is doubly interesting
because the author has a thorough Western education, holding a law degree
from the French university of Toulouse, and is a judge on the Egyptian
bench. Although writing as far back as 1907, Yahya Siddyk clearly foresaw
the imminence of the European War. "Behold," he writes, "these Great
Powers ruining themselves in terrifying armaments; measuring each other's
strength with defiant glances; menacing each other; contracting alliances
which continually break and which presage those terrible shocks which
overturn the world and cover it with ruins, fire, and blood! The future is
God's, and nothing is lasting save His Will!"
He considers the white world degenerate. "Does this mean," he asks, "that
Europe, our 'enlightened guide,' has already reached the summit of its
evolution? Has it already exhausted its vital force by two or three
centuries of hyper-exertion? In other words: is it already stricken with
senility, and will it see itself soon obliged to yield its civilizing rôle
to other peoples less degenerate, less neurasthenic; that is to say,
younger, more robust, more healthy, than itself? In my opinion, the
present marks Europe's apogee, and its immoderate colonial expansion
means, not strength, but weakness. Despite the aureole of so much
grandeur, power, and glory, Europe is to-day more divided and more fragile
than ever, and ill conceals its malaise, its sufferings, and its anguish.
Its destiny is inexorably working out!...
"The contact of Europe on the East has caused us both much good and much
evil: good, in the material and intellectual sense; evil, from the moral
and political point of view. Exhausted by long struggles, enervated by a
brilliant civilization, the Moslem peoples inevitably fell into a malaise,
but they are not stricken, they are not dead! These peoples, conquered by
the force of cannon, have not in the least lost their unity, even under
the oppressive régimes to which the Europeans have long subjected them....
I have said that the European contact has been salutary to us from both
the material and the intellectual point of view. What reforming Moslem
Princes wished to impose by force on their Moslem subjects is to-day
realized a hundredfold. So great has been our progress in the last
twenty-five years in science, letters, and art that we may well hope to be
in all these things the equals of Europeans in less than half a
century....
"A new era opens for us with the fourteenth century of the Hegira, and
this happy century will mark our renaissance and our great future! A new
breath animates the Mohammedan peoples of all races; all Moslems are
penetrated with the necessity of work and instruction! We all wish to
travel, do business, tempt fortune, brave dangers. There is in the East,
among the Mohammedans, a surprising activity, an animation, unknown
twenty-five years ago.... There is to-day a real public opinion throughout
the East."
The author concludes: "Let us hold firm, each for all, and let us hope,
hope, hope! We are fairly launched on the path of progress: let us profit
by it! It is Europe's very tyranny which has wrought our transformation!
It is our continued contact with Europe which favors our evolution and
inevitably hastens our revival! It is simply History repeating itself; the
Will of God fulfilling itself despite all opposition and all
resistance.... Europe's tutelage over Asiatics is becoming more and more
nominal--the gates of Asia are closing against the European! Surely we
glimpse before us a revolution without parallel in the world's annals. A
new age is at hand!"[40]
If this be indeed the present spirit of Islam it is a portentous fact, for
its numerical strength is very great. The total number of Mohammedans is
estimated at from 200,000,000 to 250,000,000, and they not only
predominate throughout the brown world with the exception of India, but
they also count 10,000,000 adherents in China and are gaining prodigiously
among the blacks of Africa.
The proselyting power of Islam is extraordinary, and its hold upon its
votaries is even more remarkable. Throughout history there has been no
single instance where a people, once become Moslem, has ever abandoned the
faith. Extirpated they may have been, like the Moors of Spain, but
extirpation is not apostasy. This extreme tenacity of Islam, this ability
to keep its hold, once it has got a footing, under all circumstances short
of downright extirpation, must be borne in mind when considering the
future of regions where Islam is to-day advancing.
And, save in eastern Europe, it is to-day advancing along all its
far-flung frontiers. Its most signal victories are being won among the
negro races of central Africa, and this phase will be discussed in the
next chapter, but elsewhere the same conditions, in lesser degree,
prevail. Every Moslem is a born missionary and instinctively propagates
his faith among his non-Moslem neighbors. The quality of this missionary
temper has been well analyzed by Meredith Townsend. "All the emotions
which impel a Christian to proselytize," he writes, "are in a Mussulman
strengthened by all the motives which impel a political leader and all the
motives which sway a recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become a
passion, which, whenever success seems practicable, and especially success
on a large scale, develops in the quietest Mussulman a fury of ardor which
induces him to break down every obstacle, his own strongest prejudices
included, rather than stand for an instant in the neophyte's way. He
welcomes him as a son, and whatever his own lineage, and whether the
convert be negro, or Chinaman, or Indian, or even European, he will
without hesitation or scruple give him his own child in marriage, and
admit him fully, frankly, and finally into the most exclusive circle in
the world."[41]
Such is the vast and growing body of Islam, to-day seeking to weld its
forces into a higher unity for the combined objectives of spiritual
revival and political emancipation. This unitary movement is known as
"Pan-Islamism." Most Western observers seem to think that Pan-Islamism
centres in the "Caliphate," and European writers to-day hopefully discuss
whether the Caliphate's retention by the discredited Turkish Sultans, its
transferrence to the rulers of the new Arab Hedjaz Kingdom, or its total
suppression, will best clip Islam's wings.
This, however, is a very short-sighted and partial view. The Khalifa or
"Caliph" (to use the Europeanized form), the Prophet's representative on
earth, has played an important historic rôle, and the institution is still
venerated in Islam. But the Pan-Islamic leaders have long been working on
a much broader basis. Pan-Islamism's real driving power lies, not in the
Caliphate, but in institutions like the "Hajj" or pilgrimage to Mecca, the
propaganda of the "Habl-ul-Matin" or "Tie of True Believers," and the
great religious fraternities. The Meccan Hajj, where tens of thousands of
picked zealots gather every year from every quarter of the Moslem world,
is really an annual Pan-Islamic congress, where all the interests of the
faith are discussed at length, and where plans are elaborated for its
defense and propagation. Similarly ubiquitous is the Pan-Islamic
propaganda of the Habl-ul-Matin, which works tirelessly to compose
sectarian differences and traditional feuds. Lastly, the religious
brotherhoods cover the Islamic world with a network of far-flung
associations, quickening the zeal of their myriad members and
co-ordinating their energies for potential action.
The greatest of these brotherhoods (though there are others of importance)
is the famous Senussiyah, and its history well illustrates Islam's
evolution during the past hundred years. Its founder, Seyyid Mahommed ben
Senussi, was born in Algeria about the beginning of the nineteenth
century. He was of high Arab lineage, tracing his descent from Fatima, the
daughter of the Prophet. In early youth he went to Arabia and there came
under the influence of the Wahabee movement. In middle life he returned to
Africa, settling in the Sahara Desert, and there built up the fraternity
which bears his name. Before his death the order had spread to all parts
of the Mohammedan world, but it is in northern Africa that it has attained
its peculiar pre-eminence. The Senussi Order is divided into local
"Zawias" or lodges, all absolutely dependent upon the Grand Lodge, headed
by The Master, El Senussi. The Grand Mastership still remains in the
family, a grandson of the founder being the order's present head. The
Senussi stronghold is an oasis in the very heart of the Sahara. Only one
European eye has ever seen this mysterious spot. Surrounded by absolute
desert, with wells many leagues apart and the routes of approach known
only to experienced Senussi guides, every one of whom would suffer a
thousand deaths rather than betray him, El Senussi, The Master, sits
serenely apart, sending his orders throughout North Africa.
The Sahara itself is absolutely under Senussi control, while "Zawias"
abound in distant regions like Morocco, Lake Chad, and Somaliland. These
local Zawias are more than mere "lodges." Their spiritual and secular
heads, the "Mokaddem" or priest and the "Wekil" or civil governor, have
discretionary authority not merely over the Zawia members, but also over
the community at large--at least, so great is the awe inspired by the
Senussi throughout North Africa that a word from Wekil or Mokaddem is
always listened to and obeyed. Thus, beside the various European
authorities, British, French, or Italian as the case may be, there exists
an occult government with which the colonial authorities are careful not
to come into conflict.
On their part, the Senussi are equally careful to avoid a downright breach
with the European Powers. Their long-headed, cautious policy is truly
astonishing. For more than half a century the order has been a great
force, yet it has never risked the supreme adventure. In all the numerous
fanatic risings against Europeans which have occurred in various parts of
Africa, local Senussi have undoubtedly taken part, but the order has never
officially entered the lists.
These Fabian tactics as regards open warfare do not mean that the Senussi
are idle. Far from it. On the contrary, they are ceaselessly at work with
the spiritual arms of teaching, discipline, and conversion. The Senussi
programme is the welding, first of Moslem Africa, and later of the whole
Moslem world, into the revived "Imamat" of Islam's early days; into a
great theocracy, embracing all true believers--in other words,
Pan-Islamism. But they believe that the political liberation of Islam from
Christian domination must be preceded by a profound spiritual
regeneration, thereby engendering the moral forces necessary both for the
war of liberation and for the fruitful reconstruction which should follow
thereafter. This is the secret of the order's extraordinary
self-restraint. This is the reason why, year after year, and decade after
decade, the Senussi advance slowly, calmly, coldly, gathering great latent
power but avoiding the temptation to expend it one instant before the
proper time. Meanwhile they are covering Africa with their lodges and
schools, disciplining the people to the voice of their Mokaddems and
Wekils--and converting millions of pagan negroes to the faith of Islam.
And what is true of the Senussi holds equally for the other wise leaders
who guide the Pan-Islamic movement. They know both Europe's strength and
their own weakness. They know the peril of premature action. Feeling that
time is on their side, they are content to await the hour when internal
regeneration and external pressure shall have filled to overflowing the
cup of wrath. This is why Islam has offered only local resistance to the
unparalleled white aggressions of the last twenty years. This is the main
reason why there was no real "Holy War" in 1914. But the materials for a
Holy War have long been piling high, as a retrospective glance will show.
Europe's conquests of Africa and Central Asia toward the close of the last
century, and the subsequent Anglo-French agreement mutually appropriating
Egypt and Morocco, evoked murmurs of impotent fury from the Moslem world.
Under such circumstances the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 sent a feverish
tremor throughout Islam. The Japanese might be idolaters, but the
traditional Moslem loathing of idolaters as beings much lower than
Christians and Jews (recognized by Mohammed as "Peoples of The Book") was
quite effaced by the burning sense of subjugation to the Christian yoke.
Accordingly, the Japanese were hailed as heroes throughout Islam. Here we
see again that tendency toward an understanding between Asiatic and
African races and creeds (in other words, a "Pan-Colored" alliance against
white domination) which has been so patent in recent years. The way in
which Islamic peoples began looking to Japan is revealed by this editorial
in a Persian newspaper, written in the year 1906: "Desirous of becoming as
powerful as Japan and of safeguarding its national independence, Persia
should make common cause with it. An alliance becomes necessary. There
should be a Japanese ambassador at Teheran. Japanese instructors should be
chosen to reorganize the army. Commercial relations should also be
developed."[42] Indeed, some pious Moslems hoped to bring this heroic
people within the Islamic fold. Shortly after the Russo-Japanese War a
Chinese Mohammedan sheikh wrote: "If Japan thinks of becoming some day a
very great power and making Asia the dominator of the other continents, it
will be only by adopting the blessed religion of Islam."[43] And _Al
Mowwayad_, an Egyptian Nationalist journal, remarked: "England, with her
60,000,000 Indian Moslems, dreads this conversion. With a Mohammedan
Japan, Mussulman policy would change entirely."[44] As a matter of fact,
Mohammedan missionaries actually went to Japan, where they were smilingly
received. Of course the Japanese had not the faintest intention of turning
Moslems, but these spontaneous approaches from the brown world were quite
in line with their ambitious plans, which, as the reader will remember,
were just then taking concrete shape.
However, it soon became plain that Japan had no present intention of going
so far afield as Western Asia, and Islam presently had to mourn fresh
losses at Christian hands. In 1911 came Italy's barefaced raid on Turkey's
African dependency of Tripoli. So bitter was the anger in all Mohammedan
lands at this unprovoked aggression that many European observers became
seriously alarmed. "Why has Italy found 'defenseless' Tripoli such a
hornet's nest?" queried Gabriel Hanotaux, a former French minister of
foreign affairs. "It is because she has to do, not merely with Turkey, but
with Islam as well. Italy has set the ball rolling--so much the worse for
her--and for us all."[45] But the Tripoli expedition was only the
beginning of the Christian assault, for next year came the Balkan War,
which sheared away Turkey's European holdings to the walls of
Constantinople and left her crippled and discredited. At these disasters a
cry of wrathful anguish swept the world of Islam from end to end. Here is
how a leading Indian Moslem interpreted the Balkan conflict:
"The King of Greece orders a new crusade. From the London Chancelleries
rise calls to Christian fanaticism, and Saint Petersburg already speaks of
the planting of the cross on the dome of Sant' Sophia. To-day they speak
thus; to-morrow they will thus speak of Jerusalem and the Mosque of Omar.
Brothers! Be ye of one mind, that it is the duty of every true believer to
hasten beneath the Khalifa's banner and to sacrifice his life for the
safety of the faith."[46] And another Indian Moslem leader thus adjured
the British authorities: "I appeal to the present government to change its
anti-Turkish attitude before the fury of millions of Moslem fellow
subjects is kindled to a blaze and brings disaster."[47]
Still more significant were the appeals made by the Indian Moslems to
their Brahman fellow countrymen, the traditionally despised "Idolaters."
These appeals betokened a veritable revolution in outlook, as can be
gauged from the text of one of them, significantly entitled "The Message
of the East." "Spirit of the East," reads this noteworthy document, "arise
and repel the swelling flood of Western aggression! Children of Hindustan,
aid us with your wisdom, culture, and wealth; lend us your power, the
birthright and heritage of the Hindu! Let the Spirit Powers hidden in the
Himalayan mountain-peaks arise. Let prayers to the god of battles float
upward; prayers that right may triumph over might; and call to your myriad
gods to annihilate the armies of the foe!"[48] In China also the same
fraternizing spirit was visible. During the Republican Revolution the
Chinese Mohammedans, instead of holding jealously aloof, co-operated
whole-heartedly with their Buddhist and Confucian fellow citizens, and
Doctor Sun-Yat-Sen, the Republican leader, announced gratefully: "The
Chinese will never forget the assistance which their Moslem compatriots
have rendered in the interest of order and liberty."[49] The Great War
thus found Islam deeply stirred against European aggression, keenly
conscious of its own solidarity, and frankly reaching out for colored
allies in the projected struggle against white domination.
Under these circumstances it may at first sight appear strange that no
general Islamic explosion occurred when Turkey entered the lists at the
close of 1914 and the Sultan-Khalifa issued a formal summons to the Holy
War. Of course this summons was not the flat failure which Allied reports
led the West to believe at the time. As a matter of fact there was trouble
in practically every Mohammedan land under Allied control. To name only a
few of many instances: Egypt broke into a tumult smothered only by
overwhelming British reinforcements, Tripoli burst into a flame of
insurrection that drove the Italians headlong to the coast, Persia was
prevented from joining Turkey only by prompt Russian intervention, and the
Indian Northwest Frontier was the scene of fighting that required the
presence of a quarter of a million Anglo-Indian troops. The British
Government has officially admitted that during 1915 the Allies' Asiatic
and African possessions stood within a hand's breadth of a cataclysmic
insurrection.
That insurrection would certainly have taken place if Islam's leaders had
everywhere spoken the fateful word. But the word was not spoken. Instead,
influential Moslems outside of Turkey generally condemned the latter's
action and did all in their power to calm the passions of the fanatic
multitude. The attitude of these leaders does credit to their
discernment. They recognized that this was neither the time nor the
occasion for a decisive struggle with the West. They were not yet
materially prepared, and they had not perfected their understandings
either among themselves or with their prospective non-Moslem allies. Above
all, the moral urge was lacking. They knew that athwart the Khalifa's writ
was stencilled "Made in Germany." They knew that the "Young Turk" clique
which had engineered the coup was made up of Europeanized renegades, many
of them not even nominal Moslems, but atheistic Jews. Far-sighted Moslems
had no intention of pulling Germany's chestnuts out of the fire, nor did
they wish to further Prussian schemes of world-dominion which for
themselves would have meant a mere change of masters. Far better to let
the white world fight out its desperate feud, weaken itself, and reveal
fully its future intentions. Meanwhile Islam could bide its time, grow in
strength, and await the morrow.
The Versailles Peace Conference was just such a revelation of European
intentions as the Pan-Islamic leaders had been awaiting in order to
perfect their programmes and enlist the moral solidarity of their peoples.
At Versailles the European Powers showed unequivocally that they had no
intention of relaxing their hold upon the Near and Middle East. By a
number of secret treaties negotiated during the war the Ottoman Empire had
been virtually partitioned between the victorious Allies, and these secret
treaties formed the basis of the Versailles settlement. Furthermore,
Egypt had been declared a British protectorate at the very beginning of
the European struggle, while the Versailles Conference had scarcely
adjourned before England announced an "agreement" with Persia which made
that country another British protectorate, in fact, if not in name. The
upshot was, as already stated, that the Near and Middle East were
subjected to European political domination as never before.
But there was another side to the shield. During the war years the Allied
statesmen had officially proclaimed times without number that the war was
being fought to establish a new world-order based on such principles as
the rights of small nations and the liberty of all peoples. These
pronouncements had been treasured and memorized throughout the East. When,
therefore, the East saw a peace settlement based, not upon these high
professions, but upon the imperialistic secret treaties, it was fired with
a moral indignation and sense of outraged justice never known before. A
tide of impassioned determination began rising which has already set the
entire East in tumultuous ferment, and which seems merely the premonitory
ground-swell of a greater storm. Many European students of Eastern affairs
are gravely alarmed at the prospect. Here, for example, is the judgment of
Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, an Italian authority on Oriental and
Mohammedan questions. Speaking in the spring of 1919 on the war's effect
on the East, he said: "The convulsion has shaken Islamitic and Oriental
civilization to its foundations. The entire Oriental world, from China to
the Mediterranean, is in ferment. Everywhere the hidden fire of
anti-European hatred is burning. Riots in Morocco, risings in Algiers,
discontent in Tripoli, so-called Nationalist attempts in Egypt, Arabia,
and Lybia, are all different manifestations of the same deep sentiment,
and have as their object the rebellion of the Oriental world against
European civilization."[50]
The state of affairs in Egypt is a typical illustration of what has been
going on in the East ever since the close of the late war. Egypt was
occupied by England in 1882, and British rule has conferred immense
material benefits, raising the country from anarchic bankruptcy to ordered
prosperity. Yet British rule was never really popular, and as the years
passed a "Nationalist" movement steadily grew in strength, having for its
slogan the phrase "Egypt for the Egyptians," and demanding Britain's
complete evacuation of the country. This demand Great Britain refused even
to consider. Practically all Englishmen are agreed that Egypt with the
Suez Canal is the vital link between the eastern and western halves of the
British Empire, and they therefore consider the permanent occupation of
Egypt an absolute necessity. There is thus a clear deadlock between
British imperial and Egyptian national convictions.
Some years before the war Egypt became so unruly that England was obliged
to abandon all thoughts of conciliation and initiated a régime of frank
repression enforced by Lord Kitchener's heavy hand. The European War and
Turkey's adhesion to the Teutonic Powers caused fresh outbreaks in Egypt,
but these were quickly repressed and England took advantage of Ottoman
belligerency to abolish the fiction of Turkish overlordship and declare
Egypt a protectorate of the British Empire.
During the war Egypt, flooded with British troops, remained quiet, but the
end of the war gave the signal for an unparalleled outburst of Nationalist
activity. Basing their claims on such doctrines as the "rights of small
nations" and the "self-determination of peoples," the Nationalists
demanded immediate independence and attempted to get Egypt's case before
the Versailles Peace Conference. In defiance of English prohibitions, they
even held a popular plebiscite which upheld their claims. When the British
authorities answered this defiance by arresting Nationalist leaders, Egypt
flamed into rebellion from end to end. Everywhere it was the same story.
Railways and telegraph lines were systematically cut. Trains were stalled
and looted. Isolated British officers and soldiers were murdered. In Cairo
alone, thousands of houses were sacked by the mob. Soon the danger was
rendered more acute by the irruption out of the desert of swarms of
Bedouin Arabs bent on plunder. For a few days Egypt trembled on the verge
of anarchy, and the British Government admitted in Parliament that all
Egypt was in a state of insurrection.
The British authorities, however, met the crisis with vigor and
determination. The number of British troops in Egypt was very large,
trusty black regiments were hurried up from the Sudan, and the
well-disciplined Egyptian native police generally obeyed orders. The
result was that after several weeks of sharp fighting, lasting through the
spring of 1919, Egypt was again gotten under control. The outlook for the
future is, however, ominous in the extreme. Order is indeed restored, but
only the presence of massed British and Sudanese black troops guarantees
that order will be maintained. Even under the present régime of stern
martial law hardly a month passes without fresh rioting and heavy loss of
life. Egypt appears Nationalist to the core, its spokesmen swear they will
accept nothing short of independence, and in the long run Britain will
realize the truth of that pithy saying: "You can do everything with
bayonets except sit on them."
India is likewise in a state of profound unrest. The vast peninsula has
been controlled by England for almost two centuries, yet here again the
last two decades have witnessed a rapidly increasing movement against
British rule. This movement was at first confined to the upper-class
Hindus, the great Mohammedan element preserving its traditional loyalty to
the British "Raj," which it considered a protection against the
Brahmanistic Hindu majority. But, as already seen, the Pan-Islamic leaven
presently reached the Indian Moslems, European aggressions on Islam
stirred their resentment, and at length Moslem and Hindu adjourned their
ancient feud in their new solidarity against European tutelage.
The Great War provoked relatively little sedition in India. Groups of
Hindu extremists, to be sure, hatched terroristic plots and welcomed
German aid, but India as a whole backed England and helped win the war
with both money and men. At the same time, Indians gave notice that they
expected their loyalty to be rewarded, and at the close of the war various
memorials were drawn up calling for drastic modifications of the existing
governmental régime.
India is to-day governed by an English Civil Service whose fairness,
honesty, and general efficiency no informed person can seriously impugn.
But this no longer contents Indian aspirations. India desires not merely
good government but self-government. The ultimate goal of all Indian
reformers is emancipation from European tutelage, though they differ among
themselves as to how and when this emancipation is to be attained. The
most conservative would be content with self-government under British
guidance, the middle group asks for the full status of a Dominion of the
British Empire like Canada and Australia, while the radicals demand
complete independence. Even the most conservative of these demands would,
however, involve great changes of system and a diminution of British
control. Such demands arouse in England mistrust and apprehension.
Englishmen point out that India is not a nation but a congeries of
diverse peoples spiritually sundered by barriers of blood, language,
culture, and religion, and they conclude that, if England's control were
really relaxed, India would get out of hand and drift toward anarchy. As
for Indian independence, the average Englishman cannot abide the thought,
holding it fatal both for the British Empire and for India itself. The
result has been that England has failed to meet Indian demands, and this,
in turn, has roused an acute recrudescence of dissatisfaction and unrest.
The British Government has countered with coercive legislation like the
Rowlatt Acts and has sternly repressed rioting and terrorism. British
authority is still supreme in India. But it is an authority resting more
and more upon force. In fact, some Englishmen have long considered British
rule in India, despite its imposing appearance, a decidedly fragile
affair. Many years ago Meredith Townsend, who certainly knew India well,
wrote:
"The English think they will rule India for many centuries or forever. I
do not think so, holding rather the older belief that the empire which
came in a day will disappear in a night.... Above all this inconceivable
mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we
call here 'the Empire,' a corporation of less than 1,500 men, partly
chosen by examination, partly by co-optation, who are set to govern, and
who protect themselves in governing by finding pay for a minute white
garrison of 65,000 men, one-fifth of the Roman legions--though the masses
to be controlled are double the subjects of Rome. That corporation and
that garrison constitute the 'Indian Empire.' There is nothing else.
Banish those 1,500 men in black, defeat that slender garrison in red, and
the empire has ended, the structure disappears, and brown India emerges,
unchanged and unchangeable. To support the official world and its
garrison--both, recollect, smaller than those of Belgium--there is, except
Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. Not only is there no white race in
India, not only is there no white colony, but there is no white man who
purposes to remain.... There are no white servants, not even grooms, no
white policemen, no white postmen, no white anything. If the brown men
struck for a week, the 'Empire' would collapse like a house of cards, and
every ruling man would be a starving prisoner in his own house. He could
not move or feed himself or get water."[51]
These words aptly illustrate the truth stated at the beginning of this
book that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics but race, and
that the most imposing political phenomena, of themselves, mean nothing.
And that is just the fatal weakness underlying the white man's present
political domination over the brown world. Throughout that entire world
there is no settled white population save in the French colonies of
Algeria and Tunis along the Mediterranean seaboard, where whites form
perhaps one-sixth of the total. Elsewhere, from Morocco to the Dutch
Indies, there is in the racial sense, as Townsend well says, "no white
anything," and if white rule vanished to-morrow it would not leave a human
trace behind. White rule is therefore purely political, based on
prescription, prestige, and lack of effective opposition. These are indeed
fragile foundations. Let the brown world once make up its mind that the
white man _must_ go, and he _will_ go, for his position will have become
simply impossible. It is not solely a question of a "Holy War"; mere
passive resistance, if genuine and general, would shake white rule to its
foundations. And it is precisely the determination to get rid of white
rule which seems to be spreading like wild-fire over the brown world
to-day. The unrest which I have described in Egypt and India merely typify
what is going on in Morocco, Central Asia, the Dutch Indies, the
Philippines, and every other portion of the brown world whose inhabitants
are above the grade of savages.
Another factor favoring the prospects of brown emancipation is the lack of
sustained resistance which the white world would probably offer. For the
white world's interests in these regions, though great, are not
fundamental; that is to say, racial. However grievously they might suffer
politically and economically, racially the white peoples would lose almost
nothing. Here again we see the basic importance of race in human affairs.
Contrast, for example, England's attitude toward an insurgent India with
France's attitude toward an insurgent North Africa. England, with nothing
racial at stake, would hesitate before a reconquest of India involving
millions of soldiers and billions of treasure. France, on the other hand,
with nearly a million Europeans in her North African possessions, half of
these full-blooded Frenchmen, might risk her last franc and her last
_poilu_ rather than see these blood-brothers slaughtered and enslaved.
Assuming, then, what to-day seems probable, that white political control
over the brown world is destined to be sensibly curtailed if not generally
eliminated, what are the larger racial implications? Above all: will the
browns tend to impinge on white race-areas as the yellows show signs of
doing? Probably, no; at least, not to any great extent. In the first
place, the brown world has within its present confines plenty of room for
potential race-expansion. Outside India, Egypt, Java, and a few lesser
spots, there is scarcely a brown land where natural improvements such as
irrigation would not open up extensive settlement areas. Mesopotamia
alone, now almost uninhabited, might support a vast population, while
Persia could nourish several times its present inhabitants.
India, to be sure, is almost as congested as China, and the spectre of the
Indian coolie has lately alarmed white lands like Canada and South Africa
almost as much as the Chinese coolie has done. But an independent India
would fall under the same political blight as the rest of the brown
world--the blight of internecine dissensions and wars. The brown world's
present growing solidarity is not a positive but a negative phenomenon. It
is an alliance, against a common foe, of traditional enemies who, once the
bond was loosed in victory, would inevitably quarrel among themselves.
Turk would fly at Arab and Turkoman at Persian, as of yore, while India
would become a welter of contending Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Gurkhas, and
heaven knows what, until perchance disciplined anew by the pressure of a
Yellow Peril. In Western Asia it is possible that the spiritual and
cultural bonds of Islam might temper these struggles, but Western Asia is
precisely that part of the brown world where population-pressure is
absent. India, the overpeopled brown land, would undergo such a cycle of
strife as would devour its human surplus and render distant aggressions
impossible.
A potential brown menace to white race-areas would, indeed, arise in case
of a brown-yellow alliance against the white peoples. But such an alliance
could occur only in the first stages of a pan-colored war of liberation
while the pressure of white world-predominance was still keenly felt and
before the divisive tendencies within the brown world had begun to take
effect.
Short of such an alliance (wherein the browns would abet the yellows'
aggressive, racial objectives in return for yellow support of their own
essentially defensive, political ends), the brown world's emancipation
from white domination would apparently not result in more than local
pressures on white race-areas. It would, however, affect another sphere of
white political control--black Africa. The emancipation of brown, Islamic
North Africa would inevitably send a sympathetic thrill through every
portion of the Dark Continent and would stir both Mohammedan and pagan
negroes against white rule. Islam is, in fact, the intimate link between
the brown and black worlds. But this subject, with its momentous
implications, will be discussed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV
BLACK MAN'S LAND
Black Man's Land is primarily Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Here
dwell the bulk of all the 150,000,000 black men on earth. The negro and
negroid population of Africa is estimated at about
120,000,000--four-fifths of the black race-total. Besides its African
nucleus the black race has two distant outposts: the one in Australasia,
the other in the Americas. The Eastern blacks are found mainly in the
archipelagoes lying between the Asiatic land-mass and Australia. They are
the Oriental survivors of the black belt which in very ancient times
stretched uninterruptedly from Africa across southern Asia to the Pacific
Ocean. The Asiatic blacks were overwhelmed by other races ages ago, and
only a few wild tribes like the "Negritos" of the Philippines and the
jungle-dwellers of Indo-China and southern India survive as genuine
negroid stocks. All the peoples of southern Asia, however, are darkened by
this ancient negroid strain. The peoples of south India are notably tinged
with black blood. As for the pure blacks of the Australasian
archipelagoes, they are so few in numbers (about 3,000,000) and so low in
type that they are of negligible importance. Quite otherwise are the
blacks of the Far West. In the western hemisphere there are some
25,000,000 persons of more or less mixed black blood, brought thither in
modern times as slaves by the white conquerors of the New World. Still,
whatever may be the destiny of these transplanted black folk, the black
man's chief significance, from the world aspect, must remain bound up with
the great nucleus of negro population in the African homeland.
Black Africa, as I have said, lies south of the Sahara Desert. Here the
negro has dwelt for unnumbered ages. The key-note of black history, like
yellow history, has been isolation. Cut off from the Mediterranean by the
desert which he had no means of crossing, and bounded elsewhere by oceans
which he had no skill in navigating, the black man vegetated in savage
obscurity, his habitat being well named the "Dark Continent."
Until the white tide began breaking on its sea-fronts four centuries ago,
the black world's only external stimuli had come from brown men landing on
its eastern coasts or ascending the valley of the Nile. As time passed,
both brown and white pressures became more intense, albeit the browns long
led in the process of penetration. Advancing from the east and trickling
across the desert from the north, Arab or Arabized adventurers conquered
black Africa to the equator; and this political subjugation had also a
racial side, for the conquerors sowed their blood freely and set a
brownish stamp on many regions. As for the whites, they long remained mere
birds of passage. Half a century ago they possessed little more than
trading-posts along the littorals, their only real settlement lying in the
extreme south.
Then, suddenly, all was changed. In the closing decades of the nineteenth
century, Europe turned its gaze full upon the Dark Continent, and within a
generation Africa was partitioned between the European Powers. Negro and
Arab alike fell under European domination. Only minute Liberia and remote
Abyssinia retained a qualified independence. Furthermore, white settlement
also made distinct progress. The tropical bulk of Africa defied white
colonization, but the continent's northern and southern extremities were
climatically "white man's country." Accordingly, there are to-day nearly a
million whites settled along the Algerian and Tunisian seaboard, while in
South Africa, Dutch and British blood has built up a powerful commonwealth
containing fully one and one-half million white souls. In Africa, unlike
Asia, the European has taken root, and has thus gained at least local
tenures of a fundamental nature.
The crux of the African problem therefore resolves itself into the
question whether the white man, through consolidated racial holds north
and south, will be able to perpetuate his present political control over
the intermediate continental mass which climate debars him from
populating. This is a matter of great importance, for Africa is a land of
enormous potential wealth, the natural source of Europe's tropical raw
materials and foodstuffs. Whether Europe is to retain possession depends,
in the last analysis, on the character of the inhabitants. It is, then,
to the nature of the black man and his connection with the brown world
that we must direct our attention.
From the first glance we see that, in the negro, we are in the presence of
a being differing profoundly not merely from the white man but also from
those human types which we discovered in our surveys of the brown and
yellow worlds. The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the
other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal
vitality. In this he easily surpasses all other races. To it he owes his
intense emotionalism. To it, again, is due his extreme fecundity, the
negro being the quickest of breeders. This abounding vitality shows in
many other ways, such as the negro's ability to survive harsh conditions
of slavery under which other races have soon succumbed. Lastly, in ethnic
crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood,
once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again.
Negro fecundity is a prime factor in Africa's future. In the savage state
which until recently prevailed, black multiplication was kept down by a
wide variety of checks. Both natural and social causes combined to
maintain an extremely high death-rate. The negro's political ineptitude,
never rising above the tribal concept, kept black Africa a mosaic of
peoples, warring savagely among themselves and widely addicted to
cannibalism. Then, too, the native religions were usually sanguinary,
demanding a prodigality of human sacrifices. The killings ordained by
negro wizards and witch-doctors sometimes attained unbelievable
proportions. The combined result of all this was a wastage of life which
in other races would have spelled a declining population. Since the
establishment of white political control, however, these checks on black
fecundity are no longer operative. The white rulers fight filth and
disease, stop tribal wars, and stamp out superstitious abominations. In
consequence, population increases by leaps and bounds, the latent
possibilities being shown in the native reservations in South Africa,
where tribes have increased as much as tenfold in fifty or sixty years. It
is therefore practically certain that the African negroes will multiply
prodigiously in the next few decades.
Now, what will be the attitude of these augmenting black masses toward
white political dominion? To that momentous query no certain answer can be
made. One thing, however, seems clear: the black world's reaction to white
ascendancy will be markedly different from those of the brown and yellow
worlds, because of the profound dissimilarities between negroes and men of
other stocks. To begin with, the black peoples have no historic pasts.
Never having evolved civilizations of their own, they are practically
devoid of that accumulated mass of beliefs, thoughts, and experiences
which render Asiatics so, impenetrable and so hostile to white influences.
Although the white race displays sustained constructive power to an
unrivalled degree, particularly in its Nordic branches, the brown and
yellow peoples have contributed greatly to the civilization of the world
and have profoundly influenced human progress. The negro, on the contrary,
has contributed virtually nothing. Left to himself, he remained a savage,
and in the past his only quickening has been where brown men have imposed
their ideas and altered his blood. The originating powers of the European
and the Asiatic are not in him.
This lack of constructive originality, however, renders the negro
extremely susceptible to external influences. The Asiatic, conscious of
his past and his potentialities, is chary of foreign innovations and
refuses to recognize alien superiority. The negro, having no past,
welcomes novelty and tacitly admits that others are his masters. Both
brown and white men have been so accepted in Africa. The relatively faint
resistance offered by the naturally brave blacks to white and brown
conquest, the ready reception of Christianity and Islam, and the
extraordinary personal ascendancy acquired by individual Arabs and
Europeans, all indicate a willingness to accept foreign tutelage which in
the Asiatic is wholly absent.
The Arab and the European are, in fact, rivals for the mastership of black
Africa. The Arab had a long start, but the European suddenly overtook him
and brought not only the blacks but the African Arabs themselves under his
sway. It remains to be seen whether the Arab, allying himself with the
blacks, can oust his white rival. That some such move will be attempted,
in view of the brown world's renaissance in general and the extraordinary
activity of the Arab peoples in particular, seems a foregone conclusion.
How the matter will work out depends on three things: (1) the brown man's
inherent strength in Africa; (2) the possibilities of black disaffection
against white tutelage; (3) the white man's strength and power of
resistance.
The seat of brown power in Africa is of course the great belt of territory
north of the Sahara. From Egypt to Morocco the inhabitants are Arabized in
culture and Mohammedan in faith, while Arab blood has percolated ever
since the Moslem conquest twelve centuries ago. In the eastern half of
this zone Arabization has been complete, and Egypt, Tripoli, and the Sudan
can be considered as unalterably wedded to the brown Islamic world. The
zone's western half, however, is in different case. The majority of its
inhabitants are Berbers, an ancient stock generally considered white, with
close affinities to the Latin peoples across the Mediterranean. As usual,
blood tells. The Berbers have been under Arab tutelage for over a thousand
years, yet their whole manner of life remains distinct, they have largely
kept their language, and there has been comparatively little
intermarriage. Pure-blooded Arabs abound, but they are still, in a way,
foreigners. To-day the entire region is under white, French, rule.
Algeria, in particular, has been politically French for almost a hundred
years. Europeans have come in and number nearly a million souls. The Arab
element shows itself sullen and refractory, but the Berbers display much
less aversion to French rule, which, as usual, is considerate of native
susceptibilities. The French colonial authorities are alive to the
Berber's ethnic affinities and tactfully seek to stimulate his dormant
white consciousness. In Algeria intermarriage between Europeans and
Berbers has actually begun. Of course the process is merely in its first
stages. Still, the blood is there, the leaven is working, and in time
Northwest Africa may return to the white world, where it was in Roman days
and where it racially belongs. In the anti-European disturbances now
taking place in Algeria and Tunis it is safe to say that the Arab element
is making most of the trouble.
It is Northeast Africa, then, which is the real nucleus of Arabism. Here
Arabism and Islam rule unchecked, and in the preceding chapter we saw how
the Senussi Order was marshalling the fierce nomads of the desert. These
tribesmen are relatively few in numbers, but more splendid fighting
material does not exist in the wide world. Furthermore, the Arab-negroid
peoples which have developed along the southern edge of the desert so
blend the martial qualities of both strains that they frequently display
an almost demoniacal fighting-power. It is Pan-Islamism's hope to use
these Arab or Arabized fanatics as an officers' corps for the black
millions whom it is converting to the faith.
Concerning Islam's steady progress in black Africa there can be no shadow
of a doubt. Every candid European observer tells the same story.
"Mohammedanism," says Sir Charles Elliott, "can still give the natives a
motive for animosity against Europeans and a unity of which they are
otherwise incapable."[52] Twenty years ago another English observer, T. R.
Threlfall, wrote: "Mohammedanism is making marvellous progress in the
interior of Africa. It is crushing paganism out. Against it the Christian
propaganda is a myth.... The rapid spread of militant Mohammedanism among
the savage tribes to the north of the equator is a serious factor in the
fight for racial supremacy in Africa. With very few exceptions the colored
races of Africa are pre-eminently fighters. To them the law of the
stronger is supreme; they have been conquered, and in turn they conquered.
To them the fierce, warlike spirit inherent in Mohammedanism is infinitely
more attractive than is the gentle, peace-loving, high moral standard of
Christianity: hence, the rapid headway the former is making in central
Africa, and the certainty that it will soon spread to the south of the
Zambezi."[53]
The way in which Islam is marching southward is dramatically shown by a
recent incident. A few years ago the British authorities suddenly
discovered that Mohammedanism was pervading Nyassaland. An investigation
brought out the fact that it was the work of Zanzibar Arabs. They began
their propaganda about 1900. Ten years later almost every village in
southern Nyassaland had its Moslem teacher and its mosque-hut. Although
the movement was frankly anti-European, the British authorities did not
dare to check it for fear of repercussions elsewhere. Another interesting
fact, probably not unconnected, is that Nyassaland has lately been the
theatre of an anti-white "Christian" propaganda--the so-called "Ethiopian
Church," of which I shall presently speak.
Islam has thus two avenues of approach to the African negro--his natural
preference for a militant faith and his resentment at white tutelage. It
is the disinclination of the more martial African peoples for a pacific
creed which perhaps accounts for Christianity's slow progress among the
very warlike tribes of South Africa, such as the Zulus and the Matabele.
Islam is as yet unknown south of the Zambezi, but white men universally
dread the possibility of its appearance, fearing its effect upon the
natives. Of course Christianity has made distinct progress in the Dark
Continent. The natives of the South African Union are predominantly
Christianized. In east-central Africa Christianity has also gained many
converts, particularly in Uganda, while on the West African Guinea coast
Christian missions have long been established and have generally succeeded
in keeping Islam away from the seaboard. Certainly, all white men, whether
professing Christians or not, should welcome the success of missionary
efforts in Africa. The degrading fetishism and demonology which sum up the
native pagan cults cannot stand, and all negroes will some day be either
Christians or Moslems. In so far as he is Christianized, the negro's
savage instincts will be restrained and he will be disposed to acquiesce
in white tutelage. In so far as he is Islamized, the negro's warlike
propensities will be inflamed, and he will be used as the tool of Arab
Pan-Islamism seeking to drive the white man from Africa and make the
continent its very own.
As to specific anti-white sentiments among negroes untouched by Moslem
propaganda, such sentiments undoubtedly exist in many quarters. The
strongest manifestations are in South Africa, where interracial relations
are bad and becoming worse, but there is much diffused, half-articulate
dislike of white men throughout central Africa as well. Devoid though the
African savage is of either national or cultural consciousness, he could
not be expected to welcome a tutelage which imposed many irksome
restrictions upon him. Furthermore, the African negro does seem to possess
a certain rudimentary sense of race-solidarity. The existence of both
these sentiments is proved by the way in which the news of white military
reverses have at once been known and rejoiced in all over black Africa;
spread, it would seem, by those mysterious methods of communication
employed by negroes everywhere and called in our Southern States
"grape-vine telegraph." The Russo-Japanese War, for example, produced all
over the Dark Continent intensely exciting effects.
This generalized anti-white feeling has, during the past decade, taken
tangible form in South Africa. The white population of the Union, though
numbering 1,500,000, is surrounded by a black population four times as
great and increasing more rapidly, while in many sections the whites are
outnumbered ten to one. The result is a state of affairs exactly
paralleling conditions in our own South, the South African whites feeling
obliged to protect their ascendancy by elaborate legal regulations and
social taboos. The negroes have been rapidly growing more restive under
these discriminations, and unpleasant episodes like race-riots, rapings,
and lynchings are increasing in South Africa from year to year.
One of the most significant, not to say ominous, signs of the times is the
"Ethiopian Church" movement. The movement began about fifteen years ago,
some of its founders being Afro-American Methodist preachers--a fact which
throws a curious light on possible American negro reflexes upon their
ancestral homeland. The movement spread rapidly, many native mission
congregations cutting loose from white ecclesiastical control and joining
the negro organization. It also soon displayed frankly anti-white
tendencies, and the government became seriously alarmed at its unsettling
influence upon the native mind. It was suspected of having had a hand in
the Zulu rising which broke out in Natal in 1907 and which was put down
only after many whites and thousands of natives had lost their lives.
Shortly afterward the authorities outlawed the Ethiopian Church and
forbade Afro-American preachers to enter South Africa, but the movement,
though legally suppressed, lived surreptitiously on and appeared in new
quarters.
In 1915 a peculiarly fanatical form of Ethiopianism broke out in
Nyassaland. Its leader was a certain John Chilembwe, an Ethiopian preacher
who had been educated in the United States. His propaganda was bitterly
anti-white, asserting that Africa belonged to the black man, that the
white man was an intruder, and that he ought to be killed off until he
grew discouraged and abandoned the country. Chilembwe plotted a rising all
over Nyassaland, the killing of the white men, and the carrying off of the
white women. In January, 1915, the rising took place. Some plantations
were sacked and several whites killed, their heads being carried to
Chilembwe's "church," where a thanksgiving service for victory was held.
The whites, however, acted with great vigor, the poorly armed insurgents
were quickly scattered, and John Chilembwe himself was soon hunted down
and killed. In itself, the incident was of slight importance, but, taken
in connection with much else, it does not augur well for the future.[54]
An interesting indication of the growing sense of negro race-solidarity
was the "Pan-African Congress" held at Paris early in 1919. Here delegates
from black communities throughout the world gathered to discuss matters of
common interest. Most of the delegates were from Africa and the Americas,
but one delegate from New Guinea was also present, thus representing the
Australasian branch of the black race. The Congress was not largely
attended and was of a somewhat provisional character, but arrangements for
the holding of subsequent congresses were made.
Here, then, is the African problem's present status: To begin with, we
have a rapidly growing black population, increasingly restive under white
tutelage and continually excited by Pan-Islamic propaganda with the
further complication of another anti-white propaganda spread by negro
radicals from America.
The African situation is thus somewhat analogous to conditions in Asia.
But the analogy must not be pressed too far. In Asia white hegemony rests
solely on political bases, while the Asiatics themselves, browns and
yellows alike, display constructive power and possess civilizations built
up by their own efforts from the remote past. The Asiatics are to-day once
more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but
adapting, white ideas and methods. We behold an Asiatic _renaissance_,
whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that there have been
similar movements in past times.
None of this applies to Africa. The black race has never shown real
constructive power. It has never built up a native civilization. Such
progress as certain negro groups have made has been due to external
pressure and has never long outlived that pressure's removal, for the
negro, when left to himself, as in Haiti and Liberia, rapidly reverts to
his ancestral ways. The negro is a facile, even eager, imitator; but
there he stops. He adopts; but he does not adapt, assimilate, and give
forth creatively again.
The whole of history testifies to this truth. As the Englishman Meredith
Townsend says: "None of the black races, whether negro or Australian, have
shown within the historic time the capacity to develop civilization. They
have never passed the boundaries of their own habitats as conquerors, and
never exercised the smallest influence over peoples not black. They have
never founded a stone city, have never built a ship, have never produced a
literature, have never suggested a creed.... There seems to be no reason
for this except race. It is said that the negro has been buried in the
most 'massive' of the four continents, and has been, so to speak, lost to
humanity; but he was always on the Nile, the immediate road to the
Mediterranean, and in West and East Africa he was on the sea. Africa is
probably more fertile, and almost certainly richer than Asia, and is
pierced by rivers as mighty, and some of them at least as navigable. What
could a singularly healthy race, armed with a constitution which resists
the sun and defies malaria, wish for better than to be seated on the Nile,
or the Congo, or the Niger, in numbers amply sufficient to execute any
needed work, from the cutting of forests and the making of roads up to the
building of cities? How was the negro more secluded than the Peruvian; or
why was he 'shut up' worse than the Tartar of Samarcand, who one day shook
himself, gave up all tribal feuds, and, from the Sea of Okhotsk to the
Baltic and southward to the Nerbudda, mastered the world?... The negro
went by himself far beyond the Australian savage. He learned the use of
fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the value of shelter, the use of
the bow and the canoe, and the good of clothes; but there to all
appearances he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race like the
Arab, to advance another step."[55]
Unless, then, every lesson of history is to be disregarded, we must
conclude that black Africa is unable to stand alone. The black man's
numbers may increase prodigiously and acquire alien veneers, but the black
man's nature will not change. Black unrest may grow and cause much
trouble. Nevertheless, the white man must stand fast in Africa. No black
"renaissance" impends, and Africa, if abandoned by the whites, would
merely fall beneath the onset of the browns. And that would be a great
calamity. As stated in the preceding chapter, the brown peoples, of
themselves, do not directly menace white race-areas, while Pan-Islamism is
at present an essentially defensive movement. But Islam is militant by
nature, and the Arab is a restless and warlike breed. Pan-Islamism once
possessed of the Dark Continent and fired by militant zealots, might forge
black Africa into a sword of wrath, the executor of sinister adventures.
Fortunately the white man has every reason for keeping a firm hold on
Africa. Not only are its central tropics prime sources of raw materials
and foodstuffs which white direction can alone develop, but to north and
south the white man has struck deep roots into the soil. Both extremities
of the continent are "white man's country," where strong white peoples
should ultimately arise. Two of the chief white Powers, Britain and
France, are pledged to the hilt in this racial task and will spare no
effort to safeguard the heritage of their pioneering children. Brown
influence in Africa is strong, but it is supreme only in the northeast and
its line of communication with the Asiatic homeland runs over the narrow
neck of Suez. Should stern necessity arise, the white world could hold
Suez against Asiatic assault and crush brown resistance in Africa.
In short, the real danger to white control of Africa lies, not in brown
attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness through chronic
discord within the white world itself. And that subject must be reserved
for later chapters.
CHAPTER V
RED MAN'S LAND
Red Man's Land is the Americas between the Rio Grande and the tropic of
Capricorn. Here dwells the "Amerindian" race. At the time of Columbus the
whole western hemisphere was theirs, but the white man has extirpated or
absorbed them to north and south, so that to-day the United States and
Canada in North America and the southern portions of South America are
genuine "white man's country." In the intermediate zone above mentioned,
however, the Amerindian has survived and forms the majority of the
population, albeit considerably mixed with white and to a lesser degree
with negro blood. The total number of "Indians," including both
full-bloods and mixed types, is about 40,000,000--more than two-thirds of
the whole population. In addition, there are several million negroes and
mulattoes, mostly in Brazil. The white population of the intermediate
zone, even if we include "near-whites," does not average more than 10 per
cent, though it varies greatly with different regions. The reader should
remember that neither the West India Islands nor the southern portion of
the South American continent are included in this generalization. In the
West Indies the Amerindian has completely died out and has been replaced
by the negro, while southern South America, especially Argentina and
Uruguay, are genuine white man's country in which there is little Indian
and no negro blood. Despite these exceptions, however, the fact remains
that, taken as a whole, "Latin America," the vast land-block from the Rio
Grande to Cape Horn, is racially not "Latin" but Amerindian or negroid,
with a thin Spanish or Portuguese veneer. In other words, though commonly
considered part of the white world, most of Latin America is ethnically
colored man's land, which has been growing more colored for the past
hundred years.
Latin America's evolution was predetermined by the Spanish Conquest. That
very word "conquest" tells the story. The United States was _settled_ by
colonists planning homes and bringing their women. It was thus a genuine
migration, and resulted in a full transplanting of white stock to new
soil. The Indians encountered were wild nomads, fierce of temper and few
in number. After sharp conflicts they were extirpated, leaving virtually
no ethnic traces behind. The colonization of Latin America was the exact
antithesis. The Spanish _Conquistadores_ were bold warriors descending
upon vast regions inhabited by relatively dense populations, some of
which, as in Mexico and Peru, had attained a certain degree of
civilization. The Spaniards, invincible in their shining armor, paralyzed
with terror these people still dwelling in the age of bronze and polished
stone. With ridiculous ease mere handfuls of whites overthrew empires and
lorded it like gods over servile and adoring multitudes. Cortez marched
on Mexico with less than 600 followers, while Pizarro had but 310
companions when he started his conquest of Peru. Of course the fabulous
treasures amassed in these exploits drew swarms of bold adventurers from
Spain. Nevertheless, their numbers were always infinitesimal compared with
the vastness of the quarry, while the proportion of women immigrants
continued to lag far behind that of the men. The breeding of pure whites
in Latin America was thus both scanty and slow.
On the other hand, the breeding of mixed-bloods began at once and attained
notable proportions. Having slaughtered the Indian males or brigaded them
in slave-gangs, the Conquistadores took the Indian women to themselves.
The humblest man-at-arms had several female attendants, while the leaders
became veritable pashas with great harems of concubines. The result was a
prodigious output of half-breed children, known as "mestizos" or "cholos."
And soon a new ethnic complication was added. The Indians having developed
a melancholy trick of dying off under slavery, the Spaniards imported
African negroes to fill the servile ranks, and since they took negresses
as well as Indian women for concubines, other
half-breeds--mulattoes--appeared. Here and there Indians and negroes mated
on their own account, the offspring being known as "zambos." In time these
various hybrids bred among themselves, producing the most extraordinary
ethnic combinations. As Garcia-Calderon well puts it: "Grotesque
generations with every shade of complexion and every conformation of
skull were born in America--a crucible continually agitated by unheard-of
fusions of races.... But there was little Latin blood to be found in the
homes formed by the sensuality of the first conquerors of a desolated
America."[56]
To be sure, this mongrel population long remained politically negligible.
The Spaniards regarded themselves as a master-caste, and excluded all save
pure whites from civic rights and social privileges. In fact, the
European-born Spaniards refused to recognize even their colonial-born
kinsmen as their equals, and "Creoles"[57] could not aspire to the higher
distinctions or offices. This attitude was largely inspired by the desire
to maintain a lucrative monopoly. Yet the European's sense of superiority
had some valid grounds. There can be no doubt that the Creole whites, as a
class, showed increasing signs of degeneracy. Climate was a prime cause in
the hotter regions, but there were many plateau areas, as in Colombia,
Mexico, and Peru, which though geographically in the tropics had a
temperate climate from their elevation.
Even more than by climate the Creole was injured by contact with the
colored races. Pampered and corrupted from birth by obsequious slaves, the
Creole usually led an idle and vapid existence, disdaining work as
servile and debarred from higher callings by his European-born superiors.
As time passed, the degeneracy due to climate and custom was intensified
by degeneracy of blood. Despite legal enactment and social taboo, colored
strains percolated insidiously into the creole stock. The leading
families, by elaborate precautions, might succeed in keeping their
escutcheons clean, but humbler circles darkened significantly despite
fervid protestations of "pure-white" blood. Still, so long as Spain kept
her hold on Latin America, the process of miscegenation, socially
considered, was a slow one. The whole social system was based on the idea
of white superiority, and the colors were carefully graded. "In America,"
wrote Humboldt toward the close of Spanish rule, "the more or less white
skin determines the position which a man holds in society."[58]
The revolution against Spain had momentous consequences for the racial
future of Latin America. In the beginning, to be sure, it was a white
civil war--a revolt of the Creoles against European oppression and
discrimination. The heroes of the revolution--Bolívar, Miranda, San
Martín, and the rest--were aristocrats of pure-white blood. But the
revolution presently developed new features. To begin with, the struggle
was very long. Commencing in 1809, it lasted almost twenty years. The
whites were decimated by fratricidal fury, and when the Spanish cause was
finally lost, multitudes of loyalists mainly of the superior social
classes left the country. Meanwhile, the half-castes, who had rallied
wholesale to the revolutionary banner, were demanding their reward. The
Creoles wished to close the revolutionary cycle and establish a new
society based, like the old, upon white supremacy, with themselves
substituted for the Spaniards. Bolívar planned a limited monarchy and a
white electoral oligarchy. But this was far from suiting the half-castes.
For them the revolution had just begun. Raising the cry of "democracy,"
then become fashionable through the North American and French revolutions,
they proclaimed the doctrine of "equality" regardless of skin.
Disillusioned and full of foreboding, Bolívar, the master-spirit of the
revolution, disappeared from the scene, and his lieutenants, like the
generals of Alexander, quarrelled among themselves, split Latin America
into jarring fragments, and waged a long series of internecine wars. The
flood-gates of anarchy were opened, the result being a steady weakening of
the whites and a corresponding rise of the half-castes in the political
and social scale. Everywhere ambitious soldiers led the mongrel mob
against the white aristocracy, breaking its power and making themselves
dictators. These "caudillos" were apostles of equality and miscegenation.
Says Garcia-Calderon: "Tyrants found democracies; they lean on the support
of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the oligarchies; they
dominate the colonial nobility, favor the crossing of races, and free the
slaves."[59]
The consequences of all this were lamentable in the extreme. Latin
America's level of civilization fell far below that of colonial days.
Spanish rule, though narrow and tyrannical, had maintained peace and
social stability. Now all was a hideous chaos wherein frenzied castes and
colors grappled to the death. Ignorant mestizos and brutal negroes
trampled the fine flowers of culture under foot, while as by a malignant
inverse selection the most intelligent and the most cultivated perished.
These deplorable conditions prevailed in Latin America until well past the
middle of the nineteenth century. Of course, here as elsewhere, anarchy
engendered tyranny, and strong caudillos sometimes perpetuated their
dictatorship for decades, as in Paraguay under Doctor Francia and in
Mexico under Porfirio Diaz. However, these were mere interludes, of no
constructive import. Always the aging lion lost his grip, the lurking
hyenas of anarchy downed him at last, and the land sank once more into
revolutionary chaos. Some parts of Latin America did, indeed, definitely
emerge into the light of stable progress. But those favored regions owed
their deliverance, not to dictatorship, but to race. One of two factors
always operated: either (1) an efficient white oligarchy; or (2)
Aryanization through wholesale European immigration.
Stabilization through oligarchy is best illustrated by Chile. Chilean
history differs widely from that of the rest of Latin America. A land of
cool climate, no gold, and warlike Araucanian Indians, Chile attracted
the pioneering settler rather than the swashbuckling seeker of
treasure-trove. Now the pioneering types in Spain come mainly from those
northern provinces which have retained considerable Nordic blood. The
Chilean colonists were thus largely blond Asturians or austere, reasonable
Basques, seeking homes and bringing their women. Of course there was
crossing with the natives, but the fierce Araucanian aborigines clung to
their wild freedom and kept up an interminable frontier warfare in which
the occasions for race-mixture were relatively few. The country was thus
settled by a resident squirearchy of an almost English type. This ruling
gentry jealously guarded its racial integrity. In fact, it possessed not
merely a white but a Nordic race-consciousness. The Chilean gentry called
themselves sons of the Visigoths, scions of Euric and Pelayo, who had
found in remote Araucania a chance to slake their racial thirst for
fighting and freedom.
In Chile, as elsewhere, the revolution provoked a cycle of disorder. But
the cycle was short, and was more a political struggle between white
factions than a social welter of caste and race. Furthermore, Chile was
receiving fresh accessions of Nordic blood. Many English, Scotch, and
Irish gentleman-adventurers, taking part in the War of Independence,
settled down in a land so reminiscent of their own. Germans also came in
considerable numbers, settling especially in the colder south. Thus the
Chilean upper classes, always pure white, became steadily more Nordic in
ethnic character. The political and social results were unmistakable.
Chile rapidly evolved a stable society, essentially oligarchic and
consciously patterned on aristocratic England. Efficient, practical, and
extremely patriotic, the Chilean oligarchs made their country at once the
most stable and the most dynamic factor in Latin America.
The distinctly "Northern" character of Chile and the Chileans strike
foreign observers. Here, for example, are the impressions of a recent
visitor, the North American sociologist, Professor E. A. Ross. Landing at
the port of Valparaiso, he is "struck by signs of English influence. On
the commercial streets every third man suggests the Briton, while a large
proportion of the business people look as if they have their daily tub.
The cleanliness of the streets, the freshness of the parks and squares,
the dressing of the shop-windows, and the style of the mounted police
remind one of England."[60] As to the Nordic affinities of the upper
classes: "One sees it in stature, eye color, and ruddy complexion....
Among the pupils of Santiago College there are as many blonds as
brunets."[61] Even among the peon or "roto" class, despite considerable
Indian crossing, Professor Ross noted the strong Nordic strain, for he met
Chilean peasants "whose stature, broad shoulders, big faces, and tawny
mustaches proclaimed them as genuine Norsemen as the Icelanders in our
Red River Valley."[62]
Chile is thus the prime example of social stability and progress attained
through white oligarchic rule. Other, though less successful, instances
are to be noted in Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Peru and Colombia,
though geographically within the tropics, have extensive temperate
plateaux. Here numerous whites settled during the colonial period, forming
an upper caste over a large Indian population. Unlike Chile, few Nordics
came to leaven society with those qualities of constructive genius and
racial self-respect which are the special birthright of Nordic man. Unlike
Chile again, not only were there dense Indian masses, but there was also
an appreciable negro element. Lastly, the number of mixed-bloods was very
large. It is thus not surprising that for both Peru and Colombia the
revolution ushered in a period of turmoil from which neither have even yet
emerged. The whites have consistently fought among themselves, invoking
the half-castes as auxiliaries and using Indians and negroes as their
pawns. The whites are still the dominant element, but only the first
families retain their pure blood, and miscegenation creeps upward with
every successive generation. As for Costa Rica, it is a tiny bit of cool
hill-country, settled by whites in colonial times, and to-day rises an
oasis of civilization, above the tropic jungle of degenerate, mongrel
Central America.
The second method of social stabilization in Latin America--Aryanization
through wholesale European immigration--is exemplified by Argentina and
Uruguay. Neither of these lands had very promising beginnings. Their
populations, at the revolution, contained strong Indian infusions and
traces of negro blood, while after the revolution both fell under the sway
of tyrannical dictators who persecuted the white aristocrats and favored
miscegenation. However, Argentina and Uruguay possessed two notable
advantages: they were climatically white man's country, and they at first
contained a very small population. Since they produced neither gold nor
tropical luxuries, Spain had neglected them, so that at the revolution
they consisted of little more than the port-towns of Buenos Aires and
Montevideo with a few dependent river-settlements. Their vast hinterlands
of fertile prairie then harbored only wandering tribes of nomad savages.
During the last half of the nineteenth century, however, the development
of ocean transport gave these antipodean prairies value as stock-raising
and grain-growing sources for congested Europe, and Europe promptly sent
immigrants to supply her needs. This immigrant stream gradually swelled to
a veritable deluge. The human tide was, on the whole, of sound stock,
mostly Spaniards and north Italians, with some Nordic elements from
northern Europe in the upper strata. Thus Europe locked antipodean America
securely to the white world. As for the colonial stock, it merged easily
into the newer, kindred flood. Here and there signs of former
miscegenation still show, the Argentino being sometimes, as Madison Grant
well puts it, "suspiciously swarthy."[63] Nevertheless, these are but
vestigial traces which the ceaseless European inflow will ultimately
eradicate. The large impending German immigration to Argentina and Uruguay
should bring valuable Nordic elements.
This same tide of European immigration has likewise pretty well Aryanized
the southern provinces of Brazil, adjacent to the Uruguayan border. Those
provinces were neglected by Portugal as Argentina and Uruguay were by
Spain, and half a century ago they had a very sparse population. To-day
they support millions of European immigrants, mostly Italians and European
Portuguese, but with the further addition of nearly half a million
Germans. Brazil is, in fact, evolving into two racially distinct
communities. The southern provinces are white man's country, with little
Indian or negro blood, and with a distinct "color line." The tropical
north is saturated with Indian and negro strains, and the whites are
rapidly disappearing in a universal mongrelization. Ultimately this must
produce momentous political consequences.
Bearing in mind the exceptions above noted, let us now observe the vast
tropical and semi-tropical bulk of Latin America. Here we find notable
changes since colonial days. White predominance is substantially a thing
of the past. Persons of unmixed Spanish or Portuguese descent are
relatively few, most of the so-called "whites" being really _near_-whites,
more or less deeply tinged with colored bloods. It is a striking token of
white race-prestige that these near-whites, despite their degeneracy and
inefficiency, are yet the dominant element; occupying, in fact, much the
same status as the aristocratic Creoles immediately after the War of
Independence. Nevertheless, the near-whites' supremacy is now threatened.
Every decade of chronic anarchy favors the darker half-breeds, while below
these, in turn, the Indian and negro full-bloods are beginning to stir, as
in Mexico to-day.
Most informed observers agree that the mixed-bloods of Latin America are
distinctly inferior to the whites. This applies to both mestizos and
mulattoes, albeit the mestizo (the cross between white and Indian) seems
less inferior than the mulatto--the cross between white and black. As for
the zambo, the Indian-negro cross, everybody is agreed that it is a very
bad one. Analyses of these hybrid stocks show remarkable similarities to
the mongrel chaos of the declining Roman Empire. Here is the judgment of
Garcia-Calderon, a Peruvian scholar and generally considered the most
authoritative writer on Latin America. "The racial question," he writes,
"is a very serious problem in American history. It explains the progress
of certain peoples and the decadence of others, and it is the key to the
incurable disorder which divides America. Upon it depend a great number
of secondary phenomena; the public wealth, the industrial system, the
stability of governments, the solidity of patriotism.... This complication
of castes, this admixture of diverse bloods, has created many problems.
For example, is the formation of a national consciousness possible with
such disparate elements? Would such heterogeneous democracies be able to
resist the invasion of superior races? Finally, is the South American
half-caste absolutely incapable of organization and culture?"[64] While
qualifying his answers to these queries, Garcia-Calderon yet deplores the
half-caste's "decadence."[65] "In the Iberian democracies," he says, "an
inferior Latinity, a Latinity of the decadence, prevails; verbal
abundance, inflated rhetoric, oratorical exaggeration, just as in Roman
Spain.... The half-caste loves grace, verbal elegance, quibbles even, and
artistic form; great passions and desires do not move him. In religion he
is sceptical, indifferent, and in politics he disputes in the Byzantine
manner. No one could discover in him a trace of his Spanish forefather,
stoical and adventurous."[66] Garcia-Calderon therefore concludes: "The
mixture of rival castes, Iberians, Indians, and negroes, has generally had
disastrous consequences.... None of the conditions established by the
French psychologists are realized by the Latin American democracies, and
their populations are therefore degenerate. The lower castes struggle
successfully against the traditional rules: the order which formerly
existed is followed by moral anarchy; solid conviction by a superficial
scepticism; and the Castilian tenacity by indecision. The black race is
doing its work, and the continent is returning to its primitive
barbarism."[67] This melancholy fate can, according to Garcia-Calderon, be
averted only by wholesale white immigration: "In South America
civilization is dependent upon the numerical predominance of the
victorious Spaniard, on the triumph of the white man over the mulatto, the
negro, and the Indian. Only a plentiful European immigration can
re-establish the shattered equilibrium of the American races."[68]
Garcia-Calderon's pronouncements are echoed by foreign observers. During
his South American travels Professor Ross noted the same melancholy
symptoms and pointed out the same unique remedy. Speaking of Ecuador, he
says: "I found no foreigners who have faith in the future of this people.
They point out that while this was a Spanish colony there was a continual
flow of immigrants from Spain, many of whom, no doubt, were men of force.
Political separation interrupted this current, and since then the country
has really gone back. Spain had provided a ruling, organizing element,
and, with the cessation of the flow of Spaniards, the mixed-bloods took
charge of things, for the pure-white element is so small as to be
negligible. No one suggests that the mestizos equal the white stock either
in intellect or in character.... Among the rougher foreigners and
Peruvians the pet name for these people is 'monkeys.' The thoughtful often
liken them to Eurasians, clever enough, but lacking in solidity of
character. Natives and foreigners alike declare that a large white
immigration is the only hope for Ecuador."[69]
Concerning Bolivia, Professor Ross writes: "The wisest sociologist in
Bolivia told me that the zambo, resulting from the union of Indian with
negro, is inferior to both the parent races, and that likewise the mestizo
is inferior to both white and Indian in physical strength, resistance to
disease, longevity, and brains. The failure of the South American
republics has been due, he declares, to mestizo domination. Through the
colonial period there was a flow of Spaniards to the colonies, and all the
offices down to _corregidor_ and _cura_ were filled by white men. With
independence, the whites ceased coming, and the lower offices of state and
church were filled with mestizos. Then, too, the first crossing of white
with Indian gave a better result than the union between mestizos, so that
the stock has undergone progressive degeneration. The only thing, then,
that can make these countries progress is a large white immigration,
something much talked about by statesmen in all these countries, but which
has never materialized."[70]
These judgments refer particularly to Spanish America. Regarding
Portuguese Brazil, however, the verdict seems to be the same. Many years
ago Professor Agassiz wrote: "Let any one who doubts the evil of this
mixture of races, and is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down
all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the
deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more wide-spread
here than in any country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the
best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a
mongrel, nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy."[71]
The mongrel's political ascendancy produces precisely the results which
might have been expected. These unhappy beings, every cell of whose bodies
is a battle-ground of jarring heredities, express their souls in acts of
hectic violence and aimless instability. The normal state of tropical
America is anarchy, restrained only by domestic tyrants or foreign
masters. Garcia-Calderon exactly describes its psychology when he writes:
"Precocious, sensual, impressionable, the Americans of these vast
territories devote their energies to local politics. Industry, commerce,
and agriculture are in a state of decay, and the unruly imagination of the
Creole expends itself in constitutions, programmes, and lyrical
discourses; in these regions anarchy is sovereign mistress."[72] The
tropical republics display, indeed, a tendency toward "atomic
disintegration.... Given to dreaming, they are led by presidents suffering
from neurosis."[73]
The stock feature of the mongrel tropics is, of course, the "revolution."
These senseless and perennial outbursts are often ridiculed in the United
States as comic opera, but the grim truth of the matter is that few Latin
American revolutions are laughing matters. The numbers of men engaged may
not be very large according to our standards, but measured by the scanty
populations of the countries concerned, they lay a heavy blood-tax on the
suffering peoples. The tatterdemalion "armies" may excite our mirth, but
the battles are real enough, often fought out to the death with
razor-edged machetes and rusty bayonets, and there is no more ghastly
sight than a Latin American battle-field. The commandeerings, burnings,
rapings, and assassinations inflicted upon the hapless civilian population
cry to heaven. There is always wholesale destruction of property,
frequently appalling loss of life, and a general paralysis of economic and
social activity. These wretched lands have now been scourged by the
revolutionary plague for a hundred years, and W. B. Hale does not
overstate the consequences when he says: "Most of the countries clustering
about the Caribbean have sunk into deeper and deeper mires of misrule,
unmatched for profligacy and violence anywhere on earth. Revolution
follows revolution; one band of brigands succeeds another; atrocities
revenge atrocities; the plundered people grow more and more abject in
poverty and slavishness; vast natural resources lie neglected, while
populations decrease, civilization recedes, and the jungle advances."[74]
Of course, under these frightful circumstances, the national character,
weak enough at best, degenerates at an ever-quickening pace. Peaceful
effort of any sort appears vain and ridiculous, and men are taught that
wealth is procurable only by violence and extortion.
Another important point should be noted. I have said that Latin American
anarchy was restrained by dictatorship. But the reader must not infer that
dictatorships are halcyon times--for the dictated. On the contrary, they
are usually only a trifle less wretched and demoralizing than times of
revolution. The "caudillos" are nearly always very sinister figures. Often
they are ignorant brutes; oftener they are blood-thirsty, lecherous
monsters; oftenest they are human spiders who suck the land dry of all
fluid wealth, banking it abroad against the day when they shall fly before
the revolutionary blast to the safe haven of Paris and the congenial
debaucheries of Montmartre. The millions amassed by tyrants like Castro of
Venezuela and Zelaya of Nicaragua are almost beyond belief, considering
the backward, bankrupt lands they have "administered."
Yet how can it be otherwise? Consider Critchfield's incisive account of a
caudillo's accession to power: "When an ignorant and brutal man, whose
entire knowledge of the world is confined to a few Indian villages, and
whose total experience has been gained in the raising of cattle, doffs his
_alpagartes_, and, machete in hand, cuts his way to power in a few weeks,
with a savage horde at his back who know nothing of the amenities of
civilization and care less than they know--when such a man comes to
power, evil and evil only can result. Even if the new dictator were
well-intentioned, his entire ignorance of law and constitutional forms, of
commercial processes and manufacturing arts, and of the fundamental and
necessary principles underlying all stable and free governments, would
render a successful administration by him extremely difficult, if not
impossible. But he is surrounded by all the elements of vice and flattery,
and he is imbued with that vain and absurd egotism which makes men of
small caliber imagine themselves to be Napoleons or Cæsars. Thus do petty
despotisms, unrestrained by constitutional provisions or by anything like
a virile public opinion, lead from absurdity to outrage and crime."[75]
Such is the situation in mongrel-ruled America: revolution breeding
revolution, tyranny breeding tyranny, and the twain combining to ruin
their victims and force them ever deeper into the slough of degenerate
barbarism. The whites have lost their grip and are rapidly disappearing.
The mixed-breeds have had their chance and have grotesquely failed. The
oft-quoted panacea--white immigration--is under present conditions a vain
dream, for white immigrants will not expose themselves (and still less
their women) to the horrors of mongrel rule. So far, their, as internal
factors are concerned, anarchy seems destined to continue unchecked.
In fact, new conflicts loom on the horizon. The Indian masses, so docile
to the genuine white man, begin to stir. The aureole of white prestige has
been besmirched by the near-whites and half-castes who have traded so
recklessly upon its sanctions. Strong in the poise of normal heredity, the
Indian full-blood commences to despise these chaotic masters who turn his
homelands into bear-gardens and witches' sabbaths. An "Indianista"
movement is to-day on foot throughout mongrel-ruled America. It is most
pronounced in Mexico, whose interminable agony becomes more and more a war
of Indian resurgence, but it is also starting along the west coast of
South America. Long ago, wise old Professor Pearson saw how the wind was
blowing. Noting how whites and near-whites were "everywhere fighting and
intriguing for the spoils of office," he also noted that the Indian
masses, though relatively passive and "seemingly unobservant," were yet
"conquering a place for themselves in other ways than by increasing and
multiplying," and he concluded: "the general level of the autochthonous
race is being raised; it is acquiring riches and self-respect, and must
sooner or later get the country back into its hands."[76] Recent visitors
to the South American west coast note the signs of Indian unrest. Some
years ago Lord Bryce remarked of Bolivia: "There have been Indian risings,
and firearms are more largely in their hands than formerly. They so
preponderate in numbers that any movement which united them against the
upper class might, could they find a leader, have serious
consequences."[77] Still more recently Professor Ross wrote concerning
Peru: "In Cuzco I met a gentleman of education and travel who is said to
be the only living lineal descendant of the Incas. He has great influence
with the native element and voices their bitterness and their aspirations.
He declares that the politics of Peru is a struggle between the Spanish
mestizos of Lima and the coast and the natives of Cuzco and the interior,
and predicts an uprising unless Cuzco is made the capital of the nation.
He even dreams of a Kechua republic, with Cuzco as its capital and the
United States its guarantor, as she is guarantor of the Cuban
republic."[78] And of Bolivia, Professor Ross writes: "Lately there has
been a general movement of the Bolivian Indians for the recovery of the
lands of which they have been robbed piecemeal. Conflicts have broken out
and, although the government has punished the ringleaders, there is a
feeling that, so long as the exploiting of the Indian goes on, Bolivians
are living 'in the crater of a slumbering volcano.'"[79]
Since the white man has gone and the Indian is preparing to wrest the
sceptre of authority from the mongrel's worthless hands, let us examine
this Indian race, to see what potentiality it possesses of restoring order
and initiating progress.
To begin with, there can be no doubt that the Indian is superior to the
negro. The negro, even when quickened by foreign influences, never built
up anything approaching a real civilization; whereas the Indian, though
entirely sundered from the rest of mankind, evolved genuine polities and
cultures like the Aztec of Mexico, the Inca of Peru, and the Maya of
Yucatan. The Indian thus possesses creative capacity to an appreciable
degree. However, that degree seems strictly limited. The researches of
archæologists have sadly discounted the glowing tales of the
Conquistadores, and the "Empires" of Mexico and Peru, though far from
contemptible, certainly rank well below the achievements of European and
Asiatic races in mediæval and even in classic times.
The Indian possesses notable stability and poise, but the very intensity
of these qualities fetters his progress and renders questionable his
ability to rise to the modern plane. His conservatism is immense. With
incredible tenacity he clings to his ancestral ways and exhibits a dull
indifference to alien innovation. Of course the Indian sub-races differ
considerably among themselves, but the same fundamental tendencies are
visible in all of them. Says Professor Ellsworth Huntington: "The Indians
are very backward. They are dull of mind and slow to adopt new ideas.
Perhaps in the future they will change, but the fact that they have been
influenced so little by four hundred years of contact with the white man
does not afford much ground for hope. Judging from the past, there is no
reason to think that their character is likely to change for many
generations.... Those who dwell permanently in the white man's cities are
influenced somewhat, but here as in other cases the general tendency seems
to be to revert to the original condition as soon as the special impetus
of immediate contact with the white man is removed."[80] And Lord Bryce
writes in similar vein: "With plenty of stability, they lack initiative.
They make steady soldiers, and fight well under white or mestizo leaders,
but one seldom hears of a pure Indian accomplishing anything or rising
either through war or politics, or in any profession, above the level of
his class...."[81]
The truth about the Indian seems to be substantially this: Left alone, he
would probably have continued to progress, albeit much more slowly than
either white or Asiatic peoples. But the Indian was not left alone. On the
contrary, he was suddenly felled by brutal and fanatical conquerors, who
uprooted his native culture and plunged him into abject servitude. The
Indian's spiritual past was shorn away and his evolution was perverted.
Prevented from developing along his own lines, and constitutionally
incapable of adapting himself to the ways of his Spanish conquerors, the
Indian vegetated, learning nothing and forgetting much that he knew. This
has continued for four hundred years. Is it not likely that his ancestral
aptitudes have atrophied or decayed? Slavery and mental sloth have indeed
scarred him with their fell stigmata. Says Garcia-Calderon: "Without
sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted and laborious beast, he
decays and perishes; to forget the misery of his daily lot he drinks,
becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous progeny present the characteristics
of degeneracy."[82]
Furthermore, the Indian degenerates from another cause--mongrelization.
Miscegenation is a dual process. It works upward and downward at one and
the same time. In Latin America hybridization has been prodigious, the
hybrids to-day numbering millions. In some regions, as in Venezuela and
parts of Central America, there are very few full-blooded Indians left,
hybrids forming practically the entire population. Now, on the whole, the
white or "mestizo" crossing seems hurtful to the Indian, for what he gains
in intelligence he more than loses in character. But the mestizo crossing
is not the worst. There is another, much graver, racial danger. The hot
coastlands swarm with negroes, and the zambo or negro-Indian is
universally adjudged the worst of matings. Thus, for the Indian, white
blood appears harmful, while black blood is absolutely fatal. Yet the
mongrelizing tide sweeps steadily on. The Indian draws no "color line,"
and continually impairs the purity of his blood and the poise of his
heredity.
Bearing all the above facts in mind, can we believe the Indian capable of
drawing mongrel-ruled America from its slough of despond? Can he set it on
the path of orderly progress? It does not seem possible. Assuming for the
sake of argument complete freedom from foreign intervention, the Indian
might in time displace his mongrel rulers--provided he himself were not
also mongrelized. But the present "Indianista" movement is not a sign of
Indian political efficiency; not the harbinger of an Indian "renaissance."
It is the instinctive turning of the harried beast on his tormentor.
Maddened by the cruel vagaries of mongrel rule and increasingly conscious
of the mongrel's innate worthlessness, the Indian at last bares his teeth.
Under civilized white tutelage the "Indianista" movement would have been
practically inconceivable.
However, guesses as to the final outcome of an Indian-mongrel conflict are
academic speculation, because mongrel America will not be left to itself.
Mongrel America cannot stand alone. Indeed, it never has stood alone, for
it has always been bolstered up by the Monroe Doctrine. But for our
protection, outside forces would have long since rushed into this
political and economic vacuum, and every omen to-day denotes that this
vacuum, like all others, will presently be filled. A world close packed as
never before will not tolerate countries that are a torment to themselves
and a dangerous nuisance to their neighbors. A world half bankrupt will
not allow vast sources of potential wealth to lie in hands which idle or
misuse. Thus it is practically certain that mongrel America will presently
pass under foreign tutelage. Exactly how, is not yet clear. It may be done
by the United States alone, or, what is more probable, in "Pan-American"
co-operation with the lusty young white nations of the antipodean south.
It may be done by an even larger combination, including some European
states. After all, the details of such action do not lie within the scope
of this book, since they fall exclusively within the white man's sphere of
activity.
There is, however, another dynamic which might transform mongrel America.
This dynamic is yellow Asia. The Far East teems with virile and laborious
life. It thrills to novel ambitions and desires. Avid with the urge of
swarming myriads, it hungrily seeks outlets for its superabundant
vitality. We have already seen how the Mongolian has earmarked the whole
Far East for his own, and in subsequent pages we shall see how he also
beats restlessly against the white world's race-frontiers. But mongrel
America! What other field offers such tempting possibilities for Mongolian
race-expansion? Vast regions of incalculable, unexploited wealth, sparsely
inhabited by stagnant populations cursed with anarchy and feeble from
miscegenation--how could such lands resist the onslaught of tenacious and
indomitable millions? The answer is self-evident. They could not resist;
and such an invasion, once begun, would be consummated with a celerity and
thoroughness perhaps unexampled in human history.
Now the yellow world is alive to this momentous possibility. Japan, in
particular, has glimpsed in Latin America precious avenues to that racial
expansion which is the key-note of Japanese foreign policy. For years
Japanese statesmen and publicists have busied themselves with the problem.
The Chinese had, in fact, already pointed the way, for during the later
decades of the nineteenth century Chinamen frequented Latin America's
Pacific coast, economically vanquishing the natives with ease, and
settling in Peru in such numbers that the alarmed Peruvians hastily
stopped the inflow by drastic exclusion acts. The successes of these
Chinese pioneers, humble coolies entirely without official backing, have
fired the Japanese imagination. The Japanese press has long discussed
Latin America in optimistic vein. Count Okuma is a good exemplar of these
Japanese aspirations. Some years ago he told the American sociologist
Professor Ross: "South America, especially the northern part, will furnish
ample room for our surplus."[83] To his fellow countrymen Count Okuma was
still more specific. In 1907 he stated in the Tokio _Economist_ that the
Japanese were to overspread the earth like a cloud of locusts, alighting
on the North American coasts, and swarming into Central and South America.
Count Okuma expressed a strong preference for Latin American countries as
fields for Japanese immigration, because most of them were "much easier to
include within the sphere of influence of Japan in the future."[84]
And the Japanese have supplemented words with deeds. Especially since
1914, Japanese activity in Latin America has been ubiquitous and
striking. The west coast of South America, in particular, is to-day
flooded with Japanese goods, merchants, commercial missions, and financial
agents seeking concessions of every kind. Our State Department has had to
exercise special vigilance concerning Japanese concession-hunting in
Mexico.
Japan's present activity is of course mere reconnoitring--testings and
mappings of terrain for possible later action on a more extensive scale.
One thing alone gives Japan pause--our veto. Japan knows that real
aggression against our southern neighbors would spell war with the United
States. Japan does not contemplate war with us at present. She has many
fish to fry in the Far East. So in Latin America she plays safe. But she
bides her time. In Latin America itself she has friends--even partisans.
Japan seeks to mobilize to her profit that distrust of the "Yanqui" which
permeates Latin America. The half-castes, in particular, rage at our
"color line" and see in the United States the Nemesis of their anarchic
misrule. They flout the Monroe Doctrine, caress dreams of Japanese aid,
and welcome Nippon's pose as the champion of color throughout the world.
Japanese activities in Mexico are of especial interest. Here Japan has
three strong strings to her bow: (1) patriotic dislike of the United
States; (2) mestizo hatred of the white "gringo"; (3) the Indianista
movement. In Mexico the past decade of revolutionary turmoil has developed
into a complicated race-war of the mestizos against the white or
near-white upper class and of the Indian full-bloods against both whites
and mestizos. The one bond of union is dislike of the gringo, which often
rises to fanatical hatred. Our war against Mexico in 1847 has never been
forgotten, and many Mexicans cherish hopes of revenge and even aspire to
recover the territories then ceded to us. During the early stages of the
European War our military unpreparedness and apparent pacifism actually
emboldened some Mexican hotheads to concoct the notorious "Plan of San
Diego." The conspirators plotted to rouse the Mexican population of our
southern border, sow disaffection among our Southern negroes, and explode
the mine at the psychological moment by means of a "Reconquering Equitable
Army" invading Texas. Our whole Southwest was to be rejoined to Mexico,
while our Southern States were to form a black republic. The projected war
was conceived strictly in terms of race, the reconquering equitable army
to be composed solely of "Latins," negroes, and Japanese. The racial
results were to be decisive, for the entire white population of both our
South and Southwest was to be pitilessly massacred. Of course the plot
completely miscarried, and sporadic attempts to invade Texas during 1915
were easily repulsed.
Nevertheless, this incident reveals the trend of many Mexican minds. The
framers of the "Plan of San Diego" were not ignorant peons, but persons of
some standing. The outrages and tortures inflicted upon numerous Americans
in Mexico during recent years are further indications of that wide-spread
hatred which expresses itself in vitriolic outbursts like the following
editorial of a Mexican provincial paper, written during our chase after
the bandit Villa in 1916: "Above all, do not forget that at a time of
national need, humanity is a crime and frightfulness is a virtue. Pull out
eyes, snatch out hearts, tear open breasts, drink--if you can--the blood
in the skulls of the invaders from the cities of Yankeeland. In defense of
liberty be a Nero, be a Caligula--that is to be a good patriot. Peace
between Mexico and the United States will be closed in throes of terror
and barbarism."[85]
All this is naturally grist for the Japanese mill. Especially interesting
are Japanese attempts to play upon Mexican Indianista sentiment. Japanese
writers point out physical and cultural similarities between the Mexican
native races and themselves, deducing therefrom innate racial affinities
springing from the remote and forgotten past. All possible sympathetic
changes were rung during the diplomatic mission of Señor de la Barra to
Japan at the beginning of 1914. His reception in Tokio was a memorable
event. Señor de la Barra was greeted by cheering multitudes, and on every
occasion the manifold bonds between the two peoples were emphasized. This
of course occurred before the European War. During the war
Japanese-Mexican relations remained amicable. So far as official evidence
goes, the Japanese Government has never entered into any understandings
with the Mexican Government, though some Mexicans have hinted at a secret
agreement, and one Mexican writer, Gutierrez de Lara, asserts that in 1912
Francisco Madero, then President, "threw himself into the arms of Japan,"
and goes on: "We are well aware of the importance of this statement and of
its tremendous international significance, but we make it deliberately
with full confidence in our authority. Not only did Madero enlist the
ardent support of the South American republics in the cause of Mexico's
inviolability, but he entered into negotiations with the Japanese minister
in Mexico City for a close offensive and defensive alliance with Japan to
checkmate United States aggression. When during the fateful twelve days'
battle in Mexico City a rumor of American intervention, more alarming than
usual, was communicated to Madero, he remarked coldly that he was
thoroughly anxious for that intervention, for he was confident of the
surprise the American Government would receive in discovering that they
had to deal with Japan."[86]
But, after all, an official Japanese-Mexican understanding is not the
fundamental issue. The really significant thing is Mexican popular
antagonism to the United States, which is so wide-spread that Japan could
in a crisis probably count on Mexican benevolent neutrality if not on
Mexican support. The present Carranza government of Mexico is of course
notoriously anti-American. Its consistent policy, notably revealed in its
complaisance toward Germany and its intrigues with other anti-American
régimes like those of Colombia and Venezuela, makes Mexico the centre of
anti-Americanism in Latin America. As for the numerous Japanese residents
in Mexico, they have lost no opportunity to abet this attitude. Here, for
instance, is the text of a manifesto signed by prominent members of the
Japanese colony during the American-Mexican crisis of 1916: "Japanese:
Mexico is a friendly nation. Our commercial bonds with her are great. She
is, like us, a nation of heroes who will never consent to the
world-domination of a hard and brutal race, as are the Yankees. We cannot
abandon Mexico in her struggle against a nation supposedly stronger. The
Mexicans know how to defend themselves, but there is lacking aid which we
can furnish. If the Yankees invade Mexico, if they seize the California
coasts, Japanese commerce and the Japanese navy will face a grave peril.
The Yankees believe us impotent because of the European War, and we will
be expelled from American soil and our children from American schools. We
will aid the Mexicans. We will aid Mexico against Yankee rapacity. This
great and beautiful country is a victim of Yankee hatred toward Japan. Our
indifference would be a lack of patriotism, since the Yankees already are
against us and our divine Emperor. They have seized Hawaii, they have
seized the Philippine Islands, near our coasts, and are now about to
crush under foot our friend and possible ally, and injure our commerce and
imperil our naval power."[87]
The fact is that Latin America's attitude toward the yellow world tends
everywhere to crystallize along race lines. The half-castes, naturally
hostile to the United States, see in Japan a welcome offset to the
"Colossus of the North." The self-conscious Indianista elements likewise
heed Japanese suggestions of ethnic affinity. On the other hand, the
whites and near-whites instinctively react against Japanese advances. Even
those who have no love for the Yankee see in the Mongolian the greatest of
perils. Garcia-Calderon typifies this point of view. He dreads our
imperialistic tendencies, yet he reproves those Latin Americans who, in a
Japanese-American clash, would favor Japan. "Victorious," he writes, "the
Japanese would invade Western America and convert the Pacific into a vast
closed sea, closed to foreign ambitions, _mare nostrum_, peopled with
Japanese colonies. The Japanese hegemony would not be a mere change of
tutelage for the nations of America. In spite of essential differences,
the Latins oversea have certain common ties with the people of the
(United) States: a long-established religion, Christianity, and a
coherent, European, Occidental civilization. Perhaps there is some obscure
fraternity between the Japanese and the American Indians, between the
yellow men of Nippon and the copper-colored Quechuas, a disciplined and
sober people. But the ruling race, the dominant type of Spanish origin,
which imposes the civilization of the white man upon America, is hostile
to the entire invading East."[88]
White men throughout Latin America generally echo these sentiments. Chile
and Argentina repulse Oriental immigration, and the white oligarchs of
Peru dread keenly Japanese designs directed so specifically against their
country. Very recently a Peruvian, Doctor Jorge M. Corbacho,[89] wrote
most bitterly about the Japanese infiltration into Peru and adjacent
Bolivia, while some years ago Señor Augustin Edwards, owner of the leading
Chilean periodical, _El Mercurio_, denounced Count Okuma's menaces and
called for a Pan-American rampart against Asia from Behring Strait to Cape
Horn. "Japanese immigration," asserted Señor Edwards, "must be firmly
opposed, not only in South America, but in the whole American continent.
The same remark applies to Chinese immigration.... In short, these threats
of Okuma should induce the nations of South America to adopt the Monroe
Doctrine--an invincible weapon against the plans and intentions of that
'Empire of the Orient,' which has so lately risen up to new life, and
already manifests so dire a greed of conquest."[90] From Central America
similar voices arise. A Salvadorean writer urges political federation
with the United States as the sole refuge against the "Yellow Peril," to
avoid becoming "slaves and utterly insignificant";[91] and a well-known
Nicaraguan politician, Señor Moncada,[92] writes in similar vein.
The momentous implications of Mongolian pressure upon Latin America are
admirably described by Professor Ross. "Provided that no barrier be
interposed to the inflow from man-stifled Asia," he says, "it is well
within the bounds of probability that by the close of this century South
America will be the home of twenty or thirty millions of Orientals and
descendants of Orientals.... But Asiatic immigration of such volume would
change profoundly the destiny of South America. For one thing, it would
forestall and frustrate that great immigration of Europeans which South
American statesmen are counting on to relieve their countries from mestizo
unprogressiveness and misgovernment. The white race would withhold its
increase or look elsewhere for outlets; for those with the higher standard
of comfort always shun competition with those of a lower standard. Again,
large areas of South America might cease to be parts of Christendom. Some
of the republics there might come to be as dependent upon Asiatic Powers
as the Cuban republic is dependent upon the United States."[93]
Very pertinent is Professor Ross's warning as to the fate of the Indian
population--a warning which Indianista believers in Japanese "affinity"
should seriously take to heart. Whatever might be the lot of the Latin
American whites, Professor Ross points out that "an Asiatic influx would
seal the doom of the Indian element in these countries.... The Indians
could make no effective economic stand against the wide-awake,
resourceful, and aggressive Japanese or Chinese. The Oriental immigrants
could beat the Indians at every point, block every path upward, and even
turn them out of most of their present employments. In great part the
Indians would become a cringing _sudra_ caste, tilling the poorer lands
and confined to the menial or repulsive occupations. Filled with despair,
and abandoning themselves even more than they do now to pisco and coca,
they would shrivel into a numerically negligible element in the
population."[94]
Such are the underlying factors in the Latin American situation. Once more
we see the essential instability of mere political phenomena. Once more we
see the supreme importance of race. No conquest could have been completer
than that of the Spaniards four centuries ago. The Indians were helpless
as sheep before the mail-clad Conquistadores. And military conquest was
succeeded by complete political domination. The Indian even lost his
cultural heritage, and became a passive tool in the hands of his white
masters. But the Spaniard did not seal his title-deed with the indelible
signet of race. Indian blood remained numerically predominant, and the
conqueror further weakened his tenure by bringing in black blood--the most
irreducible of ethnic factors. The inflow of white blood was small, and
much of what did come lost itself in the dismal swamp of miscegenation.
Lastly, the whites quarrelled among themselves.
The result was inevitable. The colonial whites triumphed only by aid of
the half-castes, who promptly claimed their reward. A fresh struggle
ensued, ending (save in the antipodean regions) in the triumph of the
half-castes. But these, in turn, had called in the Indians and negroes.
Furthermore, the half-castes recklessly squandered the white political
heritage. So the colored full-bloods stirred in their turn, and a new
movement began which, if allowed to run its natural course, might result
in complete de-Aryanization. In other words, the white race has been going
back, and Latin America has been getting more Indian and negro for the
past hundred years.
This cycle, however, now nears its end. Latin America will be neither red
nor black. It will ultimately be either white or yellow. The Indian is
patently unable to construct a progressive civilization. As for the negro,
he has proved as incapable in the New World as in the Old. Everywhere his
presence has spelled regression, and his one New World field of
triumph--Haiti--has resulted in an abysmal plunge to the jungle-level of
Guinea and the Congo. Thus is created a political vacuum. And this vacuum
unerring nature makes ready to fill.
The Latin American situation is, indeed, akin to that of Africa. Latin
America, like Africa, cannot stand alone. An inexorable dilemma impends:
white or yellow. The white man has been first in the field and holds the
central colored zone between two strong bases, north and south, where his
tenure is the unimpeachable title of race. The yellow man has to conquer
every step, though he has already acquired footholds and has behind him
the welling reservoirs of Asia. Nevertheless, white victory in Latin
America is sure--if internecine discord does not rob the white world of
its strength. In Latin America, as in Africa, therefore, the whites must
stand fast--and stand together.
_PART II_
THE EBBING TIDE OF WHITE
CHAPTER VI
THE WHITE FLOOD
The world-wide expansion of the white race during the four centuries
between 1500 and 1900 is the most prodigious phenomenon in all recorded
history. In my opening pages I sketched both the magnitude of this
expansion and its ethnic and political implications. I there showed that
the white stocks together constitute the most numerous single branch of
the human species, nearly one-third of all the human souls on earth to-day
being whites. I also showed that white men racially occupy four-tenths of
the entire habitable land-area of the globe, while nearly nine-tenths of
this area is under white political control. Such a situation is
unprecedented. Never before has a race acquired such combined
preponderance of numbers and dominion.
This white expansion becomes doubly interesting when we realize how sudden
was its inception and how rapid its evolution. A single decade before the
voyage of Columbus, he would have been a bold prophet who should have
predicted this high destiny. At the close of the fifteenth century the
white race was confined to western and central Europe, together with
Scandinavia and the northwestern parts of European Russia. The total white
race-area was then not much over 2,000,000 square miles--barely one-tenth
its area to-day. And in numbers the proportion was almost as unfavorable.
At that moment (say, A. D. 1480) England could muster only about 2,000,000
inhabitants, the entire population of the British Isles not much exceeding
3,000,000 souls. To be sure, the continent was relatively better peopled.
Still, the population of Europe in 1480 was probably not one-sixth that of
1914.
Furthermore, population had dwindled notably in the preceding one hundred
and fifty years. During the fourteenth century Europe had been hideously
scourged by the "Black Death" (bubonic plague), which carried off fully
one-half of its inhabitants, while thereafter a series of great wars had
destroyed immense numbers of people. These losses had not been repaired.
Mediæval society was a static, equilibrated affair, which did not favor
rapid human multiplication. In fact, European life had been intensive and
recessive ever since the fall of the Roman Empire a thousand years before.
Europe's one mediæval attempt at expansion (the Crusades) had utterly
failed. In fact, far from expanding, white Europe had been continuously
assailed by brown and yellow Asia. Beginning with the Huns in the last
days of Rome, continuing with the Arabs, and ending with the Mongols and
Ottoman Turks, Europe had undergone a millennium of Asiatic aggression;
and though Europe had substantially maintained its freedom, many of its
outlying marches had fallen under Asiatic domination. In 1480, for
example, the Turk was marching triumphantly across southeastern Europe,
embryonic Russia was a Tartar dependency, while the Moor still clung to
southern Spain.
The outlook for the white race at the close of the fifteenth century thus
seemed gloomy rather than bright. With a stationary or declining
population, exposed to the assaults of powerful external foes, and racked
by internal pains betokening the demise of the mediæval order, white
Europe's future appeared a far from happy one.
Suddenly, in two short years, all was changed. In 1492 Columbus discovered
America, and in 1494 Vasco da Gama, doubling Africa, found the way to
India. The effect of these discoveries cannot be overestimated. We can
hardly conceive how our mediæval forefathers viewed the ocean. To them the
ocean was a numbing, constricting presence; the abode of darkness and
horror. No wonder mediæval Europe was static, since it faced on ruthless,
aggressive Asia, and backed on nowhere. Then, in the twinkling of an eye,
dead-end Europe became mistress of the ocean--and thereby mistress of the
world.
No such strategical opportunity had, in fact, ever been vouchsafed. From
classic times down to the end of the fifteenth century, white Europe had
confronted only the most martial and enterprising of Asiatics. With such
peoples war and trade had alike to be conducted on practically equal
terms, and by frontal assault no decisive victory could be won. But, after
the great discoveries, the white man could flank his old opponents. Whole
new worlds peopled by primitive races were unmasked, where the white man's
weapons made victory certain, and whence he could draw stores of wealth to
quicken his home life and initiate a progress that would soon place him
immeasurably above his once-dreaded assailants.
And the white man proved worthy of his opportunity. His inherent racial
aptitudes had been stimulated by his past. The hard conditions of mediæval
life had disciplined him to adversity and had weeded him by natural
selection. The hammer of Asiatic invasion, clanging for a thousand years
on the brown-yellow anvil, had tempered the iron of Europe into the finest
steel. The white man could think, could create, could fight superlatively
well. No wonder that redskins and negroes feared and adored him as a god,
while the somnolent races of the Farther East, stunned by this strange
apparition rising from the pathless ocean, offered no effective
opposition.
Thus began the swarming of the whites, like bees from the hive, to the
uttermost ends of the earth. And, in return, Europe was quickened to
intenser vitality. Goods, tools, ideas, men: all were produced at an
unprecedented rate. So, by action and reaction, white progress grew by
leaps and bounds. The Spanish and Portuguese pioneers presently showed
signs of lassitude, but the northern nations--even more vigorous and
audacious--instantly sprang to the front and carried forward the proud
oriflamme of white expansion and world-dominion. For four hundred years
the pace never slackened, and at the close of the nineteenth century the
white man stood the indubitable master of the world.
Now four hundred years of unbroken triumph naturally bred in the white
race an instinctive belief that its expansion would continue indefinitely,
leading automatically to ever higher and more splendid destinies. Before
the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 the thought that white expansion could be
stayed, much less reversed, never entered the head of one white man in a
thousand. Why should it, since centuries of experience had taught the
exact contrary? The settlement of America, Australasia, and Siberia, where
the few colored aborigines vanished like smoke before the white advance;
the conquest of brown Asia and the partition of Africa, where colored
millions bowed with only sporadic resistance to mere handfuls of whites;
both sets of phenomena combined to persuade the white man that he was
invincible, and that the colored types would everywhere give way before
him and his civilization. The continued existence of dense colored
populations in the tropics was ascribed to climate; and even in the
tropics it was assumed that whites would universally form a governing
caste, directing by virtue of higher intelligence and more resolute will,
and exploiting natural resources to the incalculable profit of the whole
white race. Indeed, some persons believed that the tropics would become
available for white settlement as soon as science had mastered tropical
diseases and had prescribed an adequate hygiene.
This uncritical optimism, suggested by experience, was fortified by
ill-assimilated knowledge. During the closing decades of the past century,
not only were biology and economics less advanced than to-day, but they
were also infinitely less widely understood, exact knowledge being
confined to academic circles. The general public had only a vulgarized
smattering, mostly crystallizing about catchwords into which men read
their prepossessions and their prejudices. For instance: biologists had
recently formulated the law of the "Survival of the Fittest." This sounded
very well. Accordingly, the public, in conformity with the prevailing
optimism, promptly interpreted "fittest" as synonymous with "best," in
utter disregard of the grim truth that by "fittest" nature denotes only
the type best adapted to existing conditions of environment, and that if
the environment favors a low type, this low type (unless humanly
prevented) will win, regardless of all other considerations. So again with
economics. A generation ago relatively few persons realized that
low-standard men would drive out high-standard men as inevitably as bad
money drives out good, no matter what the results to society and the
future of mankind. These are but two instances of that shallow, cock-sure
nineteenth-century optimism, based upon ignorance and destined to be so
swiftly and tragically disillusioned.
However, for the moment, ignorance was bliss. Accordingly, the _fin de
siècle_ white world, having partitioned Africa and fairly well dominated
brown Asia, prepared to extend its sway over the one portion of the
colored world which had hitherto escaped subjection--the yellow Far East.
Men began speaking glibly of "manifest destiny" or piously of "the white
man's burden." European publicists wrote didactically on "the break-up of
China," while Russia, bestriding Siberia, dipped behemoth paws in Pacific
waters and eyed Japan.
[Illustration: CATEGORIES OF WHITE WORLD-SUPREMACY]
Such was the white world's confident, aggressive temper at the close of
the last century. To be sure, voices were occasionally raised warning that
all was not well. Such were the writings of Professor Pearson and Meredith
Townsend. But the white world gave these Cassandras the reception always
accorded prophets of evil in joyous times--it ignored them or laughed them
to scorn. In fact, few of the prophets displayed Pearson's immediate
certainty. Most of them qualified their prophecies with the comforting
assurance that the ills predicted were relatively remote.
Meredith Townsend is a good case in point. The reader may recall his
prophecy of white expulsion from Asia, quoted in my second chapter.[95]
That prophecy occurs in the preface to the fourth edition, published in
1911, and written in the light of the Russo-Japanese War. Now, of course,
Mr. Townsend's main thesis--Europe's inability permanently to master and
assimilate Asia--had been elaborated by him long before the close of the
nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the preface to the fourth edition speaks
of Europe's failure to conquer Asia as absolute and eviction from present
holdings as probable within a relatively short time; whereas, in his
original introduction, written in 1899, he foresaw a great European
assault upon Asia, which would probably succeed and from which Asia would
shake itself free only after the lapse of more than a century.
In fact, Mr. Townsend's words of 1899 so exactly portray white confidence
at that moment that I cannot do better than quote him. His object in
publishing his book is, he says, "to make Asia stand out clearer in
English eyes, because it is evident to me that the white races under the
pressure of an entirely new impulse are about to renew their periodic
attempt to conquer or at least to dominate that vast continent.... So
grand is the prize that failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less
alter their conviction. If these movements follow historic lines they will
recur for a time upon a constantly ascending scale, each repulse eliciting
a greater effort, until at last Asia like Africa is 'partitioned,' that
is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. If Europe
can avoid internal war, or war with a much-aggrandized America, she will
by A. D. 2000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to
enjoy."[96] If the reader will compare these lines with Mr. Townsend's
1911 judgment, he will get a good idea of the momentous change wrought in
white minds by Asia's awakening during the first decade of the twentieth
century as typified by the Russo-Japanese War.
1900 was, indeed, the high-water mark of the white tide which had been
flooding for four hundred years. At that moment the white man stood on the
pinnacle of his prestige and power. Pass four short years, and the flash
of the Japanese guns across the murky waters of Port Arthur harbor
revealed to a startled world--the beginning of the ebb.
CHAPTER VII
THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB
The Russo-Japanese War is one of those landmarks in human history whose
significance increases with the lapse of time. That war was momentous, not
only for what it did, but even more for what it revealed. The legend of
white invincibility was shattered, the veil of prestige that draped white
civilization was torn aside, and the white world's manifold ills were laid
bare for candid examination.
Of course previous blindness to the trend of things had not been
universal. The white world had had its Cassandras, while keen-sighted
Asiatics had discerned symptoms of white weakness. Nevertheless, so
imposing was the white world's aspect and so unbroken its triumphant
progress that these seers had been a small and discredited minority. The
mass of mankind, white and non-white alike, remained oblivious to signs of
change.
This, after all, was but natural. Not only had the white advance been
continuous, but its tempo had been ever increasing. The nineteenth
century, in particular, witnessed an unprecedented outburst of white
activity. We have already surveyed white territorial gains, both as to
area of settlement and sphere of political control. But along many other
lines white expansion was equally remarkable. White race-increase--the
basis of all else--was truly phenomenal. In the year 1500 the white race
(then confined to Europe) could not have numbered more than 70,000,000. In
1800 the population of Europe was 150,000,000, while the whites living
outside Europe numbered over 10,000,000. The white race had thus a trifle
more than doubled its numbers in three centuries. But in the year 1900 the
population of Europe was nearly 450,000,000, while the extra-European
whites numbered fully 100,000,000. Thus the whites had increased threefold
in the European homeland, while in the new areas of settlement outside
Europe they had increased tenfold. The total number of whites at the end
of the nineteenth century was thus nearly 550,000,000--a gain in numbers
of almost 400,000,000, or over 400 per cent. This spelled an increase six
times as great as that of the preceding three centuries.
White race-growth is most strikingly exemplified by the increase of its
most expansive and successful branch--the Anglo-Saxons. In 1480, as
already seen, the population of England proper was not much over
2,000,000. Of course this figure was abnormally low even for mediæval
times, it being due to the terrible vital losses of the Wars of the Roses,
then drawing to a close. A century later, under Elizabeth, the population
of England had risen to 4,000,000. In 1900 the population of England was
31,000,000, and in 1910 it was 35,000,000, the population of the British
Isles at the latter date being 45,500,000. But in the intervening
centuries British blood had migrated to the ends of the earth, so that the
total number of Anglo-Saxons in the world to-day cannot be much less than
100,000,000. This figure includes Scotch and Scotch-Irish strains (which
are of course identical with English in the Anglo-Saxon sense), and adopts
the current estimate that some 50,000,000 of people in the United States
are predominantly of Anglo-Saxon origin. Thus, in four centuries, the
Anglo-Saxons multiplied between forty and fifty fold.
The prodigious increase of the white race during the nineteenth century
was due not only to territorial expansion but even more to those
astounding triumphs of science and invention which gave the race
unprecedented mastery over the resources of nature. This material advance
is usually known as the "industrial revolution." The industrial revolution
began in the later decades of the eighteenth century, but it matured
during the first half of the nineteenth century, when it swiftly and
utterly transformed the face of things.
This transformation was, indeed, absolutely unprecedented in the world's
history. Hitherto man's material progress had been a gradual evolution.
With the exception of gunpowder, he had tapped no new sources of material
energy since very ancient times. The horse-drawn mail-coach of our
great-grandfathers was merely a logical elaboration of the horse-drawn
Egyptian chariot; the wind-driven clipper-ship traced its line unbroken to
Ulysses's lateen bark before Troy; while industry still relied on the
brawn of man and beast or upon the simple action of wind and waterfall.
Suddenly all was changed. Steam, electricity, petrol, the Hertzian wave,
harnessed nature's hidden powers, conquered distance, and shrunk the
terrestrial globe to the measure of human hands. Man entered a new
material world, differing not merely in degree but in kind from that of
previous generations.
When I say "Man," I mean, so far as the nineteenth century was concerned,
the white man. It was the white man's brain which had conceived all this,
and it was the white man alone who at first reaped the benefits. The two
outstanding features of the new order were the rise of machine industry
with its incalculable acceleration of mass-production, and the correlative
development of cheap and rapid transportation. Both these factors favored
a prodigious increase in population, particularly in Europe, since Europe
became the workshop of the world. In fact, during the nineteenth century,
Europe was transformed from a semi-rural continent into a swarming hive of
industry, gorged with goods, capital, and men, pouring forth its wares to
the remotest corners of the earth, and drawing thence fresh stores of raw
material for new fabrication and exchange. The amount of wealth amassed by
the white world in general and by Europe in particular since the beginning
of the nineteenth century is simply incalculable. Some faint conception of
it can be gathered from the growth of world-trade. In the year 1818 the
entire volume of international commerce was valued at only $2,000,000,000.
In other words, after countless millenniums of human life upon our globe,
man had been able to produce only that relatively modest volume of
world-exchange. In 1850 the volume of world-trade had grown to
$4,000,000,000. In 1900 it had increased to $20,000,000,000, and in 1913
it swelled to the inconceivable total of $40,000,000,000--a twentyfold
increase in a short hundred years.
Such were the splendid achievements of nineteenth-century civilization.
But there was a seamy side to this cloth of gold. The vices of our age
have been portrayed by a thousand censorious pens, and there is no need
here to recapitulate them. They can mostly be summed up by the word
"Materialism." That absorption in material questions and neglect of
idealistic values which characterized the nineteenth century has been
variously accounted for. But, after all, was it not primarily due to the
profound disturbance caused by drastic environmental change? Civilized man
had just entered a new material world, differing not merely in degree but
in kind from that of his ancestors. It is a scientific truism that every
living organism, in order to survive, must adapt itself to its
environment. Therefore any change of environment must evoke an immediate
readjustment on the part of the organism, and the more pronounced the
environmental change, the more rapid and thoroughgoing the organic
readjustment must be. Above all, speed is essential. Nature brooks no
delay, and the disharmonic organism must attune itself or perish.
Now, is not readaptation precisely the problem with which civilized man
has been increasingly confronted for the past hundred years? No one surely
can deny that our present environment differs vastly from that of our
ancestors. But if this be so, the necessity for profound and rapid
adaptation becomes equally true. In fact, the race has instinctively
sensed this necessity, and has bent its best energies to the task,
particularly on the materialistic side. That was only natural. The
pioneer's preoccupation with material matters in opening up new country is
self-evident, but what is not so generally recognized is the fact that
nineteenth-century Europe and the eastern United States are in many
respects environmentally "newer" than remote backwoods settlements.
Of course the changed character of our civilization called for idealistic
adaptations no less sweeping. These were neglected, because their
necessity was not so compellingly patent. Indeed, man was distinctly
attached to his existing idealistic outfit, to the elaboration of which he
had so assiduously devoted himself in former days, and which had fairly
served the requirements of his simpler past. Therefore nineteenth-century
man concentrated intensively, exclusively upon materialistic problems,
feeling that he could thus concentrate because he believed that the
idealistic conquests of preceding epochs had given him sound moral bases
upon which to build the new material edifice.
Unfortunately, that which had at first been merely a means to an end
presently became an end in itself. Losing sight of his idealisms,
nineteenth-century man evolved a thoroughly materialistic philosophy. The
upshot was a warped, one-sided development which quickly revealed its
unsoundness. The fact that man was much less culpable for his errors than
many moralists aver is quite beside the point, so far as consequences are
concerned. Nature takes no excuses. She demands results, and when these
are not forthcoming she inexorably inflicts her penalties.
As the nineteenth century drew toward its close the symptoms of a profound
_malaise_ appeared on every side. Even those most fundamental of all
factors, the vitality and quality of the race, were not immune. Vital
statistics began to display features highly disquieting to thoughtful
minds. The most striking of these phenomena was the declining birth-rate
which affected nearly all the white nations toward the close of the
nineteenth century and which in France resulted in a virtually stationary
population.
Of course the mere fact of a lessened birth-rate, taken by itself, is not
the unmixed evil which many persons assume. Man's potential reproductive
capacity, like that of all other species, is very great. In fact, the
whole course of biological progress has been marked by a steady checking
of that reproductive exuberance which ran riot at the beginning of life on
earth. As Havelock Ellis well says: "Of one minute organism it is
estimated that, if its reproduction were not checked by death or
destruction, in thirty days it would form a mass a million times larger
than the sun. The conger-eel lays 15,000,000 eggs, and if they all grew
up, and reproduced themselves on the same scale, in two years the whole
sea would become a wriggling mass of fish. As we approach the higher forms
of life reproduction gradually dies down. The animals nearest to man
produce few offspring, but they surround them with parental care, until
they are able to lead independent lives with a fair chance of surviving.
The whole process may be regarded as a mechanism for slowly subordinating
quantity to quality, and so promoting the evolution of life to ever higher
stages."[97]
While man's reproductive power is slight from the standpoint of bacteria
and conger-eels, it is yet far from negligible, as is shown by the
birth-rate of the less-advanced human types at all times, and by the
birth-rate of the higher types under exceptionally favorable
circumstances. The nineteenth century was one of these favorable
occasions. In the new areas of settlement outside Europe, vast regions
practically untenanted by colored competitors invited the white colonists
to increase and multiply; while Europe itself, though historically "old
country," was so transformed environmentally by the industrial revolution
that it suddenly became capable of supporting a much larger population
than heretofore. By the close of the century, however, the most pressing
economic stimuli to rapid multiplication had waned in Europe and in many
of the race dependencies. Therefore the rate of increase, even under the
most favorable biological circumstances, should have shown a decline.
The trouble was that this diminishing human output was of less and less
biological value. Wherever one looked in the white world, it was precisely
those peoples of highest genetic worth whose birth-rate fell off most
sharply, while within the ranks of the several peoples it was those social
classes containing the highest proportion of able strains which were
contributing the smallest quotas to the population. Everywhere the better
types (on which the future of the race depends) were numerically
stationary or dwindling, while conversely, the lower types were gaining
ground, their birth-rate showing relatively slight diminution.
This "disgenic" trend, so ominous for the future of the race, is a
melancholy commonplace of our time, and many efforts have been made to
measure its progress in economic or social terms. One of the most striking
and easily measured examples, however, is furnished by the category of
race. As explained in the Introduction, the white race divides into three
main sub-species--the Nordics, the Alpines, and the Mediterraneans. All
three are good stocks, ranking in genetic worth well above the various
colored races. However, there seems to be no question that the Nordic is
far and away the most valuable type; standing, indeed, at the head of the
whole human genus. As Madison Grant well expresses it, the Nordic is "The
Great Race."
Now it is the Nordics who are most affected by the disgenic aspects of our
civilization. In the newer areas of white settlement like our Pacific
coast or the Canadian Northwest, to be sure, the Nordics even now thrive
and multiply. But in all those regions which typify the transformation of
the industrial revolution, the Nordics do not fit into the altered
environment as well as either Alpines or Mediterraneans, and hence tend to
disappear. Before the industrial revolution the Nordic's chief eliminator
was war. His pre-eminent fighting ability, together with the position of
leadership which he had generally acquired, threw on his shoulders the
brunt of battle and exposed him to the greatest losses, whereas the more
stolid Alpine and the less robust Mediterranean stayed at home and
reproduced their kind. The chronic turmoil of both the mediæval and modern
periods imposed a perpetual drain on the Nordic stock, while the era of
discovery and colonization which began with the sixteenth century further
depleted the Nordic ranks in Europe, since it was adventurous Nordics who
formed the overwhelming majority of explorers and pioneers to new lands.
Thus, even at the end of the eighteenth century, Europe was much less
Nordic than it had been a thousand years before.
Nevertheless, down to the close of the eighteenth century, the Nordics
suffered from no other notable handicaps than war and migration, and even
enjoyed some marked advantages. Being a high type, the Nordic is naturally
a "high standard" man. He requires healthful living conditions, and
quickly pines when deprived of good food, fresh air, and exercise. Down to
the close of the eighteenth century, Europe was predominantly
agricultural. In cool northern and central Europe, therefore, environment
actually favored the big, blond Nordics, especially as against the
slighter, less muscular Mediterranean; while in the hotter south the
Nordic upper class, being the rulers, were protected from field labor, and
thus survived as an aristocracy. In peaceful times, therefore, the Nordics
multiplied and repaired the gaps wrought by proscription and war.
The industrial revolution, however, profoundly modified this state of
things. Europe was transformed from an agricultural to an urbanized,
industrial area. Numberless cities and manufacturing centres grew up,
where men were close packed and were subjected to all the evils of
congested living. Of course such conditions are not ideal for any stock.
Nevertheless, the Nordic suffered more than any one else. The cramped
factory and the crowded city weeded out the big, blond Nordic with
portentous rapidity, whereas the little brunet Mediterranean, in
particular, adapted himself to the operative's bench or the clerk's stool,
prospered--and reproduced his kind.
The result of these new handicaps, combined with the continuance of the
traditional handicaps (war and migration), has been a startling decrease
of Nordics all over Europe throughout the nineteenth century, with a
corresponding resurgence of the Alpine, and still more of the
Mediterranean, elements. In the United States it has been the same story.
Our country, originally settled almost exclusively by Nordics, was toward
the close of the nineteenth century invaded by hordes of immigrant Alpines
and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and
Jews. As a result, the Nordic native American has been crowded out with
amazing rapidity by these swarming, prolific aliens, and after two short
generations he has in many of our urban areas become almost extinct.
The racial displacements induced by a changed economic or social
environment are, indeed, almost incalculable. Contrary to the popular
belief, nothing is more _unstable_ than the ethnic make-up of a people.
Above all, there is no more absurd fallacy than the shibboleth of the
"melting-pot." As a matter of fact, the melting-pot may mix but does not
melt. Each race-type, formed ages ago, and "set" by millenniums of
isolation and inbreeding, is a stubbornly persistent entity. Each type
possesses a special set of characters: not merely the physical characters
visible to the naked eye, but moral, intellectual, and spiritual
characters as well. All these characters are transmitted substantially
unchanged from generation to generation. To be sure, where members of the
same race-stock intermarry (as English and Swedish Nordics, or French and
British Mediterraneans), there seems to be genuine amalgamation. In most
other cases, however, the result is not a blend but a mechanical mixture.
Where the parent stocks are very diverse, as in matings between whites,
negroes, and Amerindians, the offspring is a mongrel--a walking chaos, so
consumed by his jarring heredities that he is quite worthless. We have
already viewed the mongrel and his works in Latin America.
Such are the two extremes. Where intermarriage takes place between stocks
relatively near together, as in crossings between the main divisions of
the white species, the result may not be bad, and is sometimes distinctly
good. Nevertheless, there is no true amalgamation. The different
race-characters remain distinct in the mixed offspring. If the race-types
have generally intermarried, the country is really occupied by two or more
races, the races always tending to sort themselves out again as pure types
by Mendelian inheritance. Now one of these race-types will be favored by
the environment, and it will accordingly tend to gain at the other's
expense, while conversely the other types will tend to be bred out and to
disappear. Sometimes a modification of the environment through social
changes will suddenly reverse this process and will penalize a hitherto
favored type. We then witness a "resurgence," or increase, of the
previously submerged element.
A striking instance of this is going on in England. England is inhabited
by two race-stocks--Nordics and Mediterraneans. Down to the eighteenth
century, England, being an agricultural country with a cool climate,
favored the Nordics, and but for the Nordic handicaps of war and
migration the Mediterraneans might have been entirely eliminated. Two
hundred years ago the Mediterranean element in England was probably very
small. The industrial revolution, however, reversed the selective process,
and to-day the small, dark types in England increase noticeably with every
generation. The swart "cockney" is a resurgence of the primitive
Mediterranean stock, and is probably a faithful replica of his ancestors
of Neolithic times.
Such was the ominous "seamy side" of nineteenth-century civilization. The
regressive trend was, in fact, a vicious circle. An ill-balanced, faulty
environment penalized the superior strains and favored the inferior types;
while, conversely, the impoverishing race-stocks, drained of their
geniuses and overloading with dullards and degenerates, were increasingly
unable to evolve environmental remedies.
Thus, by action and reaction, the situation grew steadily worse,
disclosing its parlous state by numberless symptoms of social ill-health.
All the unlovely _fin de siècle_ phenomena, such as the decay of ideals,
rampant materialism, political disruption, social unrest, and the
"decadence" of art and literature, were merely manifestations of the same
basic ills.
Of course a thoughtful minority, undazzled by the prevalent optimism,
pointed out evils and suggested remedies. Unfortunately these "remedies"
were superficial, because the reformers confused manifestations with
causes and combated symptoms instead of fighting the disease. For
example: the white world's troubles were widely ascribed to the loss of
its traditional ideals, especially the decay of religious faith. But, as
the Belgian sociologist Réné Gérard acutely remarks, "to reason in this
manner is, we think, to mistake the effect for the cause. To believe that
philosophic and religious doctrines create morals and civilizations is a
seductive error, but a fatal one. To transplant the beliefs and the
institutions of a people to new regions in the hope of transplanting
thither their virtues and their civilization as well is the vainest of
follies.... The greater or less degree of vigor in a people depends on the
power of its vital instinct, of its greater or less faculty for adapting
itself to and dominating the conditions of the moment. When the vital
instinct of a people is healthy, it readily suggests to the people the
religious and moral doctrines which assure its survival. It is not,
therefore, because a people possesses a definite belief that it is healthy
and vigorous, but rather because the people is healthy and vigorous that
it adopts or invents the belief which is useful to itself. In this way, it
is not because it ceases to believe that it falls into decay, it is
because it is in decay that it abandons the fertile dream of its ancestors
without replacing this by a new dream, equally fortifying and creative of
energy."[98]
Thus we return once more to the basic principle of race. For what is
"vital instinct" but the imperious urge of superior heredity? As Madison
Grant well says: "The lesson is always the same, namely, that race is
everything. Without race there can be nothing except the slave wearing his
master's clothes, stealing his master's proud name, adopting his master's
tongue, and living in the crumbling ruins of his master's palace."[99]
The disastrous consequences of failure to realize this basic truth is
nowhere more strikingly exemplified than in the field of white
world-politics during the half-century preceding the Great War. That
period was dominated by two antithetical schools of political thinking:
national-imperialism and internationalism. Swayed by the ill-balanced
spirit of the times, both schools developed extremist tendencies; the
former producing such monstrous aberrations as Pan-Germanism and
Pan-Slavism, the latter evolving almost equally vicious concepts like
cosmopolitanism and proletarianism. The adherents of these rival schools
combated one another and wrangled among themselves. They both disregarded
the basic significance of race, together with its immediate corollary, the
essential solidarity of the white world.
As a matter of fact, white solidarity has been one of the great constants
of history. For ages the white peoples have possessed a true "symbiosis"
or common life, ceaselessly mingling their bloods and exchanging their
ideas. Accordingly, the various white nations which are the race's
political expression may be regarded as so many planets gravitating about
the sun of a common civilization. No such sustained and intimate
race-solidarity has ever before been recorded in human annals. Not even
the solidarity of the yellow peoples is comparable in scope.
Of course the white world's internal frictions have been legion, and at
certain times these frictions have become so acute that white men have
been led to disregard or even to deny their fundamental unity. This is
perhaps also because white solidarity is so pervasive that we _live in
it_, and thus ordinarily do not perceive it any more than we do the air we
breathe. Should white men ever really lose their instinct of
race-solidarity, they would asphyxiate racially as swiftly and surely as
they would asphyxiate physically if the atmospheric oxygen should suddenly
be withdrawn. However, down to 1914 at least, the white world never came
within measurable distance of this fatal possibility. On the contrary, the
white peoples were continually expressing their fundamental solidarity by
various unifying concepts like the "Pax Romana" of antiquity, the "Civitas
Dei" or Christian commonwealth of the Middle Ages, and the "European
Concert" of nineteenth-century diplomacy.
It was typical of the _malaise_ which was overtaking the white world that
the close of the nineteenth century should have witnessed an ominous
ignoring of white solidarity; that national-imperialists should have
breathed mutual slaughter while internationalists caressed visions of
"human solidarity" culminating in universal race-amalgamation; lastly,
that Asia's incipient revolt against white supremacy, typified by the
Russo-Japanese War, should have found zealous white sponsors and abetters.
Nothing, indeed, better illustrates the white world's unsoundness at the
beginning of the present century than its reaction to the Russo-Japanese
conflict. The tremendous significance of that event was no more lost upon
the whites than it was upon the colored peoples. Most far-seeing white men
recognized it as an omen of evil import for their race-future. And yet,
even in the first access of apprehension, these same persons generally
admitted that they saw no prospect of healing, constructive action to
remedy the ills which were driving the white world along the downward
path. Analyzing the possibility of Europe's presenting a common front to
the perils disclosed by the Japanese victories, the French publicist Réné
Pinon sadly concluded in the negative, believing that political passions,
social hates, and national rivalries would speak louder than the general
interest. "Contemporary Europe," he wrote, in 1905, "is probably not ready
to receive and understand the lesson of the war. What are the examples of
history to those gigantic commercial houses, uneasy for their New Year's
balances, which are our modern nations? It is in the nature of States
founded on mercantilism to content themselves with a hand-to-mouth policy,
without general views or idealism, satisfied with immediate gains and
unable to prepare against a distant future.
"Whence, in the Europe of to-day, could come the principle of an
_entente_, and on what could it be based? Too many divergent interests,
too many rival ambitions, too many festering hates, too many 'dead who
speak,' are present to stifle the voice of Europe's conscience.
"However menacing the external danger, we fear that political rancors
would not down; that the enemy from without would find accomplices, or at
least unconscious auxiliaries, within. Far more than in its regiments and
battleships, the power of Japan lies in our discords, in the absence of an
ideal capable of lifting the European peoples above the daily pursuit of
immediate interests, capable of stirring their hearts with the thrill of a
common emotion. The true 'Yellow Peril' lies within us."[100]
Réné Pinon was a true prophet. Not only was the "writing on the wall" not
taken to heart, the decade following the Russo-Japanese conflict witnessed
a prodigious aggravation of all the ills which had afflicted white
civilization during the nineteenth century. As if scourged by a tragic
fate, the white world hurtled along the downward path, until it entered
the fell shadow of--the modern Peloponnesian War.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MODERN PELOPONNESIAN WAR
The Peloponnesian War was the suicide of Greek civilization. It is the
saddest page of history. In the brief Periclean epoch preceding the
catastrophe Hellas had shone forth with unparalleled splendor, and even
those wonderful achievements seemed but the prelude to still loftier
heights of glory. On the eve of its self-immolation the Greek race, far
from being exhausted, was bubbling over with exuberant vitality and
creative genius.
But the half-blown rose was nipped by the canker of discord. Jealous
rivalries and mad ambitions smouldered till they burst into a consuming
flame. For a generation Hellas tore itself to pieces in a delirium of
fratricidal strife. And even this was not the worst. The "peace" which
closed the Peloponnesian War was no peace. It was a mere truce, dictated
by the victors of the moment to sullen and vengeful enemies. Imposed by
the sword and infused with no healing or constructive virtue, the
Peloponnesian War was but the first of a war cycle which completed
Hellas's ruin.
The irreparable disaster had, indeed, occurred: the gulfs of sundering
hatred had become fixed, and the sentiment of Greek race-unity was
destroyed. Having lost its soul, the Greek race soon lost its body as
well. Drained of its best strains, the diminished remnant bowed to
foreign masters and bastardized its blood with the hordes of inferior
aliens who swarmed into the land. By the time of the Roman conquest the
Greeks were degenerate, and the Roman epithet "Græculus" was a term of
deserved contempt.
Thus perished the Greeks--the fairest slip that ever budded on the tree of
life. They perished by their own hands, in the flower of their youth,
carrying with them to the grave, unborn, potencies which might have
blessed and brightened the world for ages. Nature is inexorable. No living
being stands above her law; and protozoön or demigod, if they transgress,
alike must die.
The Greek tragedy should be a warning to our own day. Despite many
unlikenesses, the nineteenth century was strangely reminiscent of the
Periclean age. In creative energy and fecund achievement, surely, its like
had not been seen since "the glory that was Greece," and the way seemed
opening to yet higher destinies.
But the brilliant sunrise was presently dimmed by gathering clouds. The
birth of the twentieth century was attended with disquieting omens. The
ills which had afflicted the preceding epoch grew more acute,
synchronizing into an all-pervading, militant unrest. The spirit of change
was in the air. Ancient ideals and shibboleths withered before the fiery
breath of a destructive criticism, while the solid crust of tradition
cracked and heaved under the premonitory tremors of volcanic forces
working far below. Everywhere were seen bursting forth increasingly acute
eruptions of human energy: a triumph of the dynamic over the static
elements of life; a growing preference for violent and revolutionary, as
contrasted with peaceful and evolutionary, solutions, running the whole
politico-social gamut from "Imperialism" to "Syndicalism." Everywhere
could be discerned the spirit of unrest setting the stage for the great
catastrophe.
Grave disorders were simply inevitable. They might perhaps have been
localized. They might even have taken other forms. But the ills of our
civilization were too deep-seated to have avoided grave disturbances. The
Prussian plotters of "Weltmacht" did, indeed, precipitate the impending
crisis in its most virulent and concentrated form, yet after all they were
but sublimations of the abnormal trend of the times.
The best proof of this is the white world's acutely pathological condition
during the entire decade previous to the Great War. That fierce quest
after alliances and mad piling-up of armaments; those paroxysmal "crises"
which racked diplomacy's feverish frame; those ferocious struggles which
desolated the Balkans: what were all these but symptoms denoting a
consuming disease? To-day, by contrast, we think of the Great War as
having smitten a world basking in profound peace. What a delusion! Cast
back the mind's eye, and recall how hectic was the eve of the Great War,
not merely in politics but in most other fields as well. Those opening
months of 1914! Why, Europe seethed from end to end! When the Great War
began, England was on the verge of civil strife, Russia was in the throes
of an acute social revolt, Italy had just passed through a "red week"
threatening anarchy, and every European country was suffering from grave
internal disorders. It was a strange, nightmarish time, that early summer
of 1914, to-day quite overshadowed by subsequent events, but which later
generations will assign a proper place in the chain of world-history.
Well, Armageddon began and ran its horrid course. With the grim chronology
of those dreary years this book is not concerned. It is with the aftermath
that we here deal. And that is a sufficiently gloomy theme. The material
losses are prodigious, the vital losses appalling, while the spiritual
losses have well-nigh bankrupted the human soul.
Turning first to the material losses, they are of course in the broadest
sense incalculable, but approximate estimates have been made. Perhaps the
best of them is the analysis made by Professor Ernest L. Bogert, who
places the direct costs of the war at $186,000,000,000 and the indirect
costs at $151,000,000,000, thus arriving at the stupendous total of
$337,000,000,000. These well-nigh inconceivable estimates still do not
adequately represent the total losses, figured even in monetary terms,
for, as Professor Bogert remarks: "The figures presented in this summary
are both incomprehensible and appalling, yet even these do not take into
account the effect of the war on life, human vitality, economic
well-being, ethics, morality, or other phases of human relationships and
activities which have been disorganized and injured. It is evident from
the present disturbances in Europe that the real costs of the war cannot
be measured by the direct money outlays of the belligerents during the
five years of its duration, but that the very breakdown of modern economic
society might be the price exacted."[101]
Yet prodigious as has been the destruction of wealth, the destruction of
life is even more serious. Wealth can sooner or later be replaced, while
vital losses are, by their very nature, irreparable. Never before were
such masses of men arrayed for mutual slaughter. During the late war
nearly 60,000,000 soldiers were mobilized, and the combatants suffered
33,000,000 casualties, of whom nearly 8,000,000 were killed or died of
disease, nearly 19,000,000 were wounded, and 7,000,000 taken prisoners.
The greatest sufferer was Russia, which had over 9,000,000 casualties,
while next in order came Germany with 6,000,000 and France with 4,500,000
casualties. The British Empire had 3,000,000 casualties. America's losses
were relatively slight, our total casualties being a trifle under 300,000.
And this is only the beginning of the story. The figures just quoted refer
only to fighting men. They take no account of the civilian population. But
the civilian losses were simply incalculable, especially in eastern Europe
and the Ottoman Empire. It is estimated that for every soldier killed,
five civilians perished by hunger, exposure, disease, massacre, or
heightened infant mortality. The civilian deaths in Poland and Russia are
placed at many millions, while other millions died in Turkey and Serbia
through massacre and starvation. One item alone will give some idea of the
wastage of human life during the war. The deaths beyond the normal
mortality due to influenza and pneumonia induced by the war are estimated
at 4,000,000. The total loss of life directly attributable to the war is
probably fully 40,000,000, while if decreased birth-rates be added the
total would rise to nearly 50,000,000. Furthermore, so far as civilian
deaths are concerned, the terrible conditions prevailing over a great part
of Europe since the close of 1918 have caused additional losses relatively
as severe as those during the war years.
The way in which Europe's population has been literally decimated by the
late war is shown by the example of France. In 1914 the population of
France was 39,700,000. From this relatively moderate population nearly
8,000,000 men were mobilized during the war. Of these, nearly 1,400,000
were killed, 3,000,000 were wounded, and more than 400,000 were made
prisoners. Of the wounded, between 800,000 and 900,000 were left permanent
physical wrecks. Thus fully 2,000,000 men--mostly drawn from the flower of
French manhood--were dead or hopelessly incapacitated.
Meanwhile, the civilian population was also shrinking. Omitting the
civilian deaths in the northern departments under German occupation, the
excess of deaths over births was more than 50,000 for 1914, and averaged
nearly 300,000 for the four succeeding war years. And the most alarming
feature was that these losses were mainly due, not to deaths of adults,
but to a slump in the birth-rate. French births, which had been 600,000 in
1913, dropped to 315,000 in 1916 and 343,000 in 1917. All told, it seems
probable that between 1913 and 1919 the population of France diminished by
almost 3,000,000--nearly one-tenth of the entire population.
France's vital losses are only typical of what has to a greater or less
extent occurred all over Europe. The disgenic effect of the Great War is
simply appalling. The war was nothing short of a headlong plunge into
white race-suicide. It was essentially a civil war between closely related
white stocks; a war wherein every physical and mental effective was
gathered up and hurled into a hell of lethal machinery which killed out
unerringly the youngest, the bravest, and the best.
Even in the first frenzied hours of August, 1914, wise men realized the
horror that stood upon the threshold. The crowd might cheer, but the
reflective already mourned in prospect the losses which were in store. As
the English writer Harold Begbie then said: "Remember this. Among the
young conscript soldiers of Europe who will die in thousands, and perhaps
millions, are the very flower of civilization; we shall destroy brains
which might have discovered for us in ten or twenty years easements for
the worst of human pains and solutions for the worst of social dangers. We
shall blot those souls out of our common existence. We shall destroy
utterly those splendid burning spirits reaching out to enlighten our
darkness. Our fathers destroyed those strange and valuable creatures whom
they called 'witches.' We are destroying the brightest of our
angels."[102]
But it is doubtful if any of these seers realized the full price which the
race was destined to pay during more than four long, agonizing years.
Never before had war shown itself such an unerring gleaner of the best
racial values. As early as the summer of 1915 Mr. Will Irwin, an American
war correspondent, remarked the growing convictions among all classes,
soldiers as well as civilians, that the war was fatally impoverishing the
race. "I have talked," he wrote, "with British officers and British
Tommies, with English ladies of fashion and English housewives, with
French deputies and French cabmen, and in all minds alike I find the same
idea fixed--what is to become of the French race and the British race,
yes, and the German race, if this thing keeps up?"
Mr. Irwin then goes on to describe the cumulative process by which the
fittest were selected--for death.
"I take it for granted," he says, "that, in a general way, the bravest are
the best, physically and spiritually. Now, in this war of machinery, this
meat-mill, it is the bravest who lead the charges and attempt the daring
feats, and, correspondingly, the loss is greatest among those bravest.
"So much when the army gets into line. But in the conscript countries,
like France and Germany, there is a process of selection in picking the
army by which the best--speaking in general terms--go out to die, while
the weakest remain. The undersized, the undermuscled, the underbrained,
the men twisted by hereditary deformity or devitalized by hereditary
disease--they remain at home to propagate the breed. The rest--all the
rest--go out to take chances.
"Furthermore, as modern conscript armies are organized, it is the youngest
men who sustain the heaviest losses--the men who are not yet fathers. And
from the point of view of the race, that is, perhaps, the most melancholy
fact of all.
"All the able-bodied men between the ages of nineteen and forty-five are
in the ranks. But the older men do not take many chances with death....
These European conscript armies are arranged in classes according to age,
and the younger classes are the men who do most of the actual fighting.
The men in their late thirties or their forties, the 'territorials,' guard
the lines, garrison the towns, generally attend to the business of running
up the supplies. When we come to gather the statistics of this war we
shall find that an overwhelming majority of the dead were less than thirty
years old, and probably that the majority were under twenty-five. Now, the
territorial of forty or forty-five has usually given to the state as many
children as he is going to give, while the man of twenty-five or under
has usually given the state no children at all."[103]
Mr. Irwin was gauging the racial cost by the criterion of youth. A leading
English scholar, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, obtained equally alarming results by
applying the test of genius. He analyzed the casualty lists "filled with
names which, but for the fatal accidents of war, would certainly have been
made illustrious for splendid service to the great cause of life.... A
government actuated by a cold calculus of economic efficiency would have
made some provision for sheltering from the hazards of war young men on
whose exceptional intellectual powers our future progress might be thought
to depend. But this has not been done, and it is impossible to estimate
the extent to which the world will be impoverished in quality by the
disappearance of so much youthful genius and talent.... The spiritual loss
to the universe cannot be computed, and probably will exceed the injury
inflicted on the world by the wide and protracted prevalence of the
celibate orders in the Middle Ages."[104]
The American biologist S. K. Humphrey did not underestimate the extent of
the slaughter of genius-bearing strains when he wrote: "It is safe to say
that among the millions killed will be a million who are carrying
_superlatively_ effective inheritances--the dependence of the race's
future. Nothing is more absurd than the notion that these inheritances can
be replaced in a few generations by encouraging the fecundity of the
survivors. They are gone forever. The survivors are going to reproduce
their own less-valuable kind. Words fail to convey the appalling nature of
the loss."[105]
It is the same melancholy tale when we apply the test of race. Of course
the war bore heavily on all the white race-stocks, but it was the
Nordics--the best of all human breeds--who suffered far and away the
greatest losses. War, as we have seen, was always the Nordic's deadliest
scourge, and never was this truer than in the late struggle. From the
racial standpoint, indeed, Armageddon was a Nordic civil war, most of the
officers and a large proportion of the men on both sides belonging to the
Nordic race. Everywhere it was the same story: the Nordic went forth
eagerly to battle, while the more stolid Alpine and, above all, the little
brunet Mediterranean either stayed at home or even when at the front
showed less fighting spirit, took fewer chances, and oftener saved their
skins.
The Great War has thus unquestionably left Europe much poorer in Nordic
blood, while conversely it has relatively favored the Mediterraneans.
Madison Grant well says: "As in all wars since Roman times, from the
breeding point of view the little dark man is the final winner."[106]
Furthermore, it must be remembered that those disgenic effects which I
have been discussing refer solely to losses inflicted upon the actual
combatants. But we have already seen that for every soldier killed the war
took five civilian lives. In fact, the war's profoundly devitalizing
effects upon the general population can hardly be overestimated. Those
effects include not merely such obvious matters as privation and disease,
but also obscurer yet highly destructive factors like nervous shock and
prolonged overstrain. To take merely one instance, consider Havelock
Ellis's remarks concerning "the ever-widening circles of anguish and
misery and destitution which every fatal bullet imposes on humanity." He
concludes: "It is probable that for every 10,000,000 soldiers who fall on
the field, 50,000,000 other persons at home are plunged into grief, or
poverty, or some form of life-diminishing trouble."[107]
Most serious has been the war's effect upon the children. At home, as at
the front, it is the young who have been sacrificed. The heaviest civilian
losses have come through increased infant mortality and decreased
birth-rates. The "slaughter of the innocents" has thus been twofold: it
has slain millions of those already alive, and it has prevented millions
more from being born or conceived. The decreased fecundity of women during
the war even under good material conditions apparently shows that war's
psychological reflexes tend to induce sterility.
An Italian savant, Professor Sergi, has elaborated this hypothesis in
considerable detail. He contends that "war continued for a long time is
the origin of this phenomenon (relative sterility), not only in the
absolute sense of the loss of men in battle, but also through a series of
special conditions which arise simultaneously with an unbalancing of vital
processes and which create in the latter a complex phenomenon difficult to
examine in every one of its elements.
"The biological disturbance does not derive solely from the destruction of
young lives, the ones best adapted to fecundity, but also from the
unfavorable conditions into which a nation is unexpectedly thrown; from
these come disorders of a mental and sentimental nature, nervousness,
anxiety, grief, and pain of all kinds, to which the serious economic
conditions of war-time also contribute; all these things have a harmful
effect on the general organic economy of nations."[108]
From the combination of these losses on the battle-field and in the cradle
arises what the biologist Doctor Saleeby terms "the menace of the dearth
of youth." The European populations to-day contain an undue proportion of
adults and the aged, while "the younger generation is no longer knocking
at the door. We senescents may grow old in peace; but the facts bode ill
for our national future."[109]
Furthermore, this "dearth of youth" will not be easily repaired. The war
may be over, but its aftermath is only a degree less unfavorable to human
multiplication, especially of the better kinds. Bad industrial conditions
and the fearfully high cost of living continue to depress the birth-rate
of all save the most reckless and improvident elements, whose increase is
a curse rather than a blessing.
To show only one of the many causes that to-day keep down the birth-rate,
take the crushing burden of taxation, which hits especially the increase
of the upper classes. The London _Saturday Review_ recently explained this
very clearly when it wrote: "From a man with £2,000 a year the
tax-gatherer takes £600. The remaining £1,400, owing to the decreased
value of money, has a purchasing power about equal to £700 a year before
the war. No young man will therefore think of marrying on less than £2,000
a year. We are thinking of the young man in the upper and middle classes.
The man who starts with nothing does not, as a rule, arrive at £2,000 a
year until he is past the marrying age. So the continuance of the species
will be carried on almost exclusively by the class of manual workers of a
low average caliber of brain. The matter is very serious. Reading the
letters and memoirs of a hundred years ago, one is struck by the size of
the families of the aristocracy. One smiles at reading of the overflowing
nurseries of Edens, and Cokes, and Fitzgeralds. Fourteen or fifteen
children were not at all unusual amongst the county families."[110]
Europe's convalescence must, at the very best, be a slow and difficult
one. Both materially and spiritually the situation is the reverse of
bright. To begin with, the political situation is highly unsatisfactory.
The diplomatic arrangements made by the Versailles Peace Conference offer
neither stability nor permanence. In the next chapter I shall have more to
say about the Versailles Conference. For the moment, let me quote the
observations of the well-known British publicist J. L. Garvin, who
adequately summarizes the situation when he says: "As matters stand, no
great war ever was followed by a more disquieting and limited peace.
Everywhere the democratic atmosphere is charged with agitation. There is
still war or anarchy, or both, between the Baltic and the Pacific across a
sixth part of the whole earth. Without a restored Russia no outlook can be
confident. Either a Bolshevist or reactionary or even a patriotic junction
between Germany and Russia might disrupt civilization as violently as
before or to even worse effect."[111]
Political uncertainty is a poor basis on which to rebuild Europe's
shattered economic life. And this economic reconstruction would, under the
most favorable circumstances, be very difficult. We have already seen how,
owing to the industrial revolution, Europe became the world's chief
workshop, exporting manufactured products in return for foodstuffs to feed
its workers and raw materials to feed its machines, these imports being
drawn from the four quarters of the globe. In other words, Europe had
ceased to be self-sufficing, the very life of its industries and its urban
populations being dependent upon foreign importations from the most
distant regions. Europe's prosperity before the war was due to the
development of a marvellous system of world-trade; intricate, nicely
adjusted, functioning with great efficiency, and running at high speed.
Then down upon this delicately organized mechanism crashed the trip-hammer
of the Great War, literally smashing it to pieces. To reconstruct so
intricate a fabric takes time. Meanwhile, how are the huge urban masses to
live, unfitted and unable as they are to draw their sustenance from their
native soil? If their sufferings become too great there is a real danger
that all Europe may collapse into hopeless chaos. Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip
did not overstate the danger when he wrote: "I believe it is possible that
there may be let loose in Europe forces that will be more terribly
destructive than have been the forces of the Great War."[112]
The best description of Europe's economic situation is undoubtedly that of
Mr. Herbert Hoover, who, from his experience as inter-Allied food
controller, is peculiarly qualified to pass authoritative judgment. Says
Mr. Hoover:
"The economic difficulties of Europe as a whole at the signature of peace
may be almost summarized in the phrase 'demoralized productivity.' The
production of necessaries for this 450,000,000 population (including
Russia) has never been at so low an ebb as at this day.
"A summary of the unemployment bureaus in Europe will show that 15,000,000
families are receiving unemployment allowances in one form or another, and
are, in the main, being paid by constant inflation of currency. A rough
estimate would indicate that the population of Europe is at least
100,000,000 greater than can be supported without imports, and must live
by the production and distribution of exports; and their situation is
aggravated not only by lack of raw materials, and imports, but also by low
production of European raw materials. Due to the same low production,
Europe is to-day importing vast quantities of certain commodities which
she formerly produced for herself and can again produce. Generally, in
production, she is not only far below even the level of the time of the
signing of the armistice, but far below the maintenance of life and health
without an unparalleled rate of import....
"From all these causes, accumulated to different intensity in different
localities, there is the essential fact that, unless productivity can be
rapidly increased, there can be nothing but political, moral, and economic
chaos, finally interpreting itself in loss of life on a scale hitherto
undreamed of."[113]
Such are the material and vital losses inflicted by the Great War. They
are prodigious, and they will not easily be repaired. Europe starts its
reconstruction under heavy handicaps, not the least of these being the
drain upon its superior stocks, which has deprived it of much of the
creative energy that it so desperately needs. Those 16,000,000 or more
dead or incapacitated soldiers represented the flower of Europe's young
manhood--the very men who are especially needed to-day. It is young men
who normally alone possess both maximum driving power and maximum
plasticity of mind. All the European belligerents are dangerously
impoverished in their stock of youth. The resultant handicap both to
Europe's working ability and Europe's brain-activity is only too plain.
Moreover, material and even vital losses do not tell the whole story. The
moral and spiritual losses, though not easily measured, are perhaps even
more appalling. In fact, the darkest cloud on the horizon is possibly the
danger that reconstruction will be primarily material at the expense of
moral and spiritual values, thus leading to a warped development even more
pronounced than that of the nineteenth century and leading inevitably to
yet more disastrous consequences.
The danger of purely material reconstruction is of course the peril which
lurks behind every great war, and which in the past has wrought such
tragic havoc. At the beginning of the late war we heard much talk of its
morally "regenerative" effects, but as the grim holocaust went on year
after year, far-sighted moralists warned against a fatal drain of
Europe's idealistic forces which might break the thin crust of European
civilization so painfully wrought since the Dark Ages.
That these warning voices were not without reason is proved by the chaos
of spiritual, moral, and even intellectual values which exists in Europe
to-day, giving play to such monstrous insanities as Bolshevism. The danger
is that this chaos may be prolonged and deepened by the complex of two
concurrent factors: spiritual drain during the war, and spiritual neglect
in the immediate future due to overconcentration upon material
reconstruction.
Many of the world's best minds are seriously concerned at the outlook. For
example, Doctor Gore, the Bishop of Oxford, writes: "There is the usual
depression and lowering of moral aims which always follows times of war.
For the real terror of the time of war is not during the war; then war has
certain very ennobling powers. It is after-war periods which are the curse
of the world, and it looks as if the same were going to prove true of this
war. I own that I never felt anxiety such as I do now. I think the aspect
of things has never been so dark as at this moment. I think the temper of
the nations has degraded since the declaration of the armistice to a
degree that is almost terrifying."[114]
The intellectual impoverishment wrought by the war is well summarized by
Professor C. G. Shaw. "We did more before the war than we shall do after
it," he writes. "War will have so exhausted man's powers of action and
thought that he will have little wit or will left for the promotion of
anything over and above necessary repair."[115]
Europe's general impoverishment in all respects was vividly portrayed by a
leading article of the London _Saturday Review_ entitled "The True
Destructiveness of War." Pointing to the devastated areas of northern
France as merely symptomatic of the devastation wrought in spiritual as
well as material fields, it said:
"Reflection only adds to the effect upon us of these miles of wasted
country and ruined towns. All this represents not a thousandth part of the
desolation which the war has brought upon our civilization. These
devastated areas scarring the face of Europe are but a symbol of the
desolation which will shadow the life of the world for at least a
generation. The coming years will be bleak, in respect of all the generous
and gracious things which are the products of leisure and of minds not
wholly taken up by the necessity to live by bread alone. For a generation
the world will have to concentrate upon material problems.
"The tragedy of the Great War--a tragedy which enhances the desolation of
Rheims--is that it should have killed almost everything which the best of
our soldiers died to preserve, and that it should have raised more
problems than it has solved.
"We would sacrifice a dozen cathedrals to preserve what the war has
destroyed in England.... We would readily surrender our ten best
cathedrals to be battered by the artillery of Hindenburg as a ransom.
Surely it would be better to lose Westminster Abbey than never again to
have anybody worthy to be buried there."[116]
Europe is, indeed, passing through the most critical spiritual phase of
the war's aftermath--what I may term the zero hour of the spirit. When the
trenches used to fill with infantry waiting in the first cold flicker of
the dawn for the signal to go "over the top," they called it the "zero
hour." Well, Europe now faces the zero hour of peace. It is neither a
pleasant nor a stimulating moment. The "tumult and the shouting" have
died. The captains, kings--and presidents--have departed. War's hectic
urge wanes, losses are counted, the heroic pose is dropped. Such is the
moment when the peoples are bidden to go "over the top" once more, this
time toward peace objectives no less difficult than those of the
battle-field. Weakened, tired Europe knows this, feels this--and dreads
the plunge into the unknown. Hence the _malaise_ of the zero hour.
The extraordinary turmoil of the European soul is strikingly set forth by
the French thinker Paul Valéry.
"We civilizations," he writes, "now know that we are mortal. We had heard
tell of whole worlds vanished, of empires gone to the bottom with all
their engines; sunk to the inexplorable bottom of the centuries with their
gods and their laws, their academies, their science, pure and applied;
their grammars, their dictionaries, their classics, their romantics and
their symbolists, their critics and their critics' critics. We knew well
that all the apparent earth is made of ashes, and that ashes have a
meaning. We perceived, through the mists of history, phantoms and huge
ships laden with riches and spiritual things. We could not count them. But
these wrecks, after all, were no concern of ours.
"Elam, Nineveh, Babylon were vague and lovely names, and the total ruin of
these worlds meant as little to us as their very existence. But France,
England, Russia--these would also be lovely names. Lusitania also is a
lovely name. And now we see that the abyss of history is large enough for
every one. We feel that a civilization is as fragile as a life.
Circumstances which would send the works of Baudelaire and Keats to rejoin
the works of Menander are no longer in the least inconceivable; they are
in all the newspapers....
"Thus the spiritual Persepolis is ravaged equally with the material Susa.
All is not lost, but everything has felt itself perish.
"An extraordinary tremor has run through the spinal marrow of Europe. It
has felt, in all its thinking substance, that it recognized itself no
longer, that it no longer resembled itself, that it was about to lose
consciousness--a consciousness acquired by centuries of tolerable
disasters, by thousands of men of the first rank, by geographical, racial,
historical chances innumerable....
"The military crisis is perhaps at an end; the economic crisis is visibly
at its zenith; but the intellectual crisis--it is with difficulty that we
can seize its true centre, its exact phase. The facts, however, are clear
and pitiless: there are thousands of young writers and young artists who
are dead. There is the lost illusion of a European culture, and the
demonstration of the impotence of knowledge to save anything whatever;
there is science, mortally wounded in its moral ambitions, and, as it
were, dishonored by its applications; there is idealism, victor with
difficulty, grievously mutilated, responsible for its dreams; realism,
deceived, beaten, with crimes and misdeeds heaped upon it; covetousness
and renunciation equally put out; religions confused among the armies,
cross against cross, crescent against crescent; there are the sceptics
themselves, disconcerted by events so sudden, so violent, and so moving,
which play with our thoughts as a cat with a mouse--the sceptics lose
their doubts, rediscover them, lose them again, and can no longer make use
of the movements of their minds.
"The rolling of the ship has been so heavy that at the last the best-hung
lamps have been upset.
"From an immense terrace of Elsinore which extends from Basle to Cologne,
and touches the sands of Nieuport, the marshes of the Somme, the chalk of
Champagne, and the granite of Alsace, the Hamlet of Europe now looks upon
millions of ghosts."[117]
Such is Europe's deplorable condition as she staggers forth from the
hideous ordeal of the Great War; her fluid capital dissipated, her fixed
capital impaired, her industrial fabric rent and tattered, her finances
threatened with bankruptcy, the flower of her manhood dead on the
battle-field, her populations devitalized and discouraged, her children
stunted by malnutrition. A sombre picture.
And Europe is the white homeland, the heart of the white world. It is
Europe that has suffered practically all the losses of Armageddon, which
may be considered the white civil war. The colored world remains virtually
unscathed.
Here is the truth of the matter: The white world to-day stands at the
crossroads of life and death. It stands where the Greek world stood at the
close of the Peloponnesian War. A fever has racked the white frame and
undermined its constitution. The unsound therapeutics of its diplomatic
practitioners retard convalescence and endanger real recovery. Worst of
all, the instinct of race-solidarity has partially atrophied.
Grave as is the situation, it is not yet irreparable, any more than
Greece's condition was hopeless after Ægospotami. It was not the
Peloponnesian War which sealed Hellas's doom, but the cycle of political
anarchy and moral chaos of which the Peloponnesian War was merely the
opening phase. Our world is too vigorous for even the Great War, of
itself, to prove a mortal wound.
The white world thus still has its choice. But it must be a positive
choice. Decisions--firm decisions--must be made. Constructive
measures--drastic measures--must be taken. Above all: time presses, and
drift is fatal. The tide ebbs. The swimmer must put forth strong strokes
to reach the shore. Else--swift oblivion in the dark ocean.
CHAPTER IX
THE SHATTERING OF WHITE SOLIDARITY
The instinctive comity of the white peoples is, as I have already said,
perhaps the greatest constant of history. It is the psychological basis of
white civilization. Cohesive instinct is as vital to race as gravitation
is to matter. Without them, atomic disintegration would alike result. In
speaking of race-instinct, I am not referring merely to the ethnic
theories that have been elaborated at various times. Those theories were,
after all, but attempts to explain intellectually the urge of that
profound emotion known to sociologists as the "consciousness of kind."
White race-consciousness has been of course perturbed by numberless
internal frictions, which have at times produced partial inhibitions of
unitary feeling. Nevertheless, when really faced by non-white opposition,
white men have in the past instinctively tended to close their ranks
against the common foe. One of the Great War's most deplorable results has
been an unprecedented weakening of white solidarity which, if not
repaired, may produce the most disastrous consequences.
During the nineteenth century the sentiment of white solidarity was
strong. The great explorers and empire-builders who spread white
ascendancy to the ends of the earth felt that they were apostles of their
race and civilization as well as of a particular country. Rivalries might
be keen and colonial boundary questions acute; nevertheless, in their
calmer moments, the white peoples felt that the expansion of one white
nation buttressed the expansion of all.
Professor Pearson undoubtedly voiced the spirit of the day when he wrote
(about 1890) that it would be well "if European statesmen could understand
that the wars which carry desolation into civilized countries are allowing
the lower races to recruit their numbers and strength. Two centuries hence
it may be matter of serious concern to the world if Russia has been
displaced by China on the Amoor, if France has not been able to colonize
North Africa, or if England is not holding India. For civilized men there
can be only one fatherland, and whatever extends the influence of those
races that have taken their faith from Palestine, their laws of beauty
from Greece, and their civil law from Rome, ought to be matter of
rejoicing to Russian, German, Anglo-Saxon, and Frenchman alike."[118]
The progress of science also fortified white race-consciousness with its
sanctions. The researches of European scholars identified the founders of
our civilization with a race of tall, white-skinned barbarians, possessing
regular features, brown or blond hair, and light eyes. This was, of
course, what we now know as the Nordic type. At first the problem was ill
understood, the tests applied being language and culture rather than
physical characteristics. For these reasons the early "Caucasian" and
"Aryan" hypotheses were self-contradictory and inadequate. Nevertheless,
the basis was sound, and the effects on white popular psychology were
excellent.
Particularly good were the effects upon the peoples predominantly of
Nordic blood. Obviously typifying as they did the prehistoric creators of
white civilization, Nordics everywhere were strengthened in consciousness
of genetic worth, feeling of responsibility for world-progress, and urge
toward fraternal collaboration. The supreme value of Nordic blood was
clearly analyzed by the French thinker Count Arthur de Gobineau as early
as 1854[119] (albeit Gobineau employed the misleading "Aryan"
terminology), and his thesis was subsequently elaborated by many other
writers, notably by Englishmen, Germans, and Scandinavians.
The results of all this were plainly apparent by the closing years of the
nineteenth century. Quickened Nordic race-consciousness played an
important part in stimulating Anglo-American fraternization, and induced
acts like the Oxford Scholarship legacy of Cecil Rhodes. The trend of this
movement, though cross-cut by nationalistic considerations, was clearly in
the direction of a Nordic _entente_--a Pan-Nordic syndication of power for
the safeguarding of the race-heritage and the harmonious evolution of the
whole white world. It was a glorious aspiration, which, had it been
realized, would have averted Armageddon.
Unfortunately the aspiration remained a dream. The ill-balanced tendencies
of the late nineteenth century were against it, and they ultimately
prevailed. The abnormal growth of national-imperialism, in particular,
wrought fatal havoc. The exponents of imperialistic propagandas like
Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism put forth literally boundless pretensions,
planning the domination of the entire planet by their special brand of
national-imperialism. Such men had scant regard for race-lines. All who
stood outside their particular nationalistic group were vowed to the same
subjection.
Indeed, the national-imperialists presently seized upon race teachings,
and prostituted them to their own ends. A notable example of this is the
extreme Pan-German propaganda of Houston Stewart Chamberlain[120] and his
fellows. Chamberlain makes two cardinal assumptions: he conceives modern
Germany as racially almost purely Nordic; and he regards all Nordics
outside the German linguistic-cultural group as either unconscious or
renegade Teutons who must at all costs be brought into the German fold. To
any one who understands the scientific realities of race, the monstrous
absurdity of these assumptions is instantly apparent. The fact is that
modern Germany, far from being purely Nordic, is mainly Alpine in race.
Nordic blood preponderates only in the northwest, and is merely veneered
over the rest of Germany, especially in the upper classes. While the
_Germania_ of Roman days was unquestionably a Nordic land, it has been
computed that of the 70,000,000 inhabitants of the German Empire in 1914,
only 9,000,000 were purely Nordic in character. This displacement of the
German Nordics since classic times is chiefly due to Germany's troubled
history, especially to the horrible Thirty Years' War which virtually
annihilated the Nordics of south Germany. This racial displacement has
wrought correspondingly profound changes in the character of the German
people.
The truth of the matter is, of course, that the Pan-Germans were thinking
in terms of nationality instead of race, and that they were using
pseudo-racial arguments as camouflage for essentially political ends. The
pity of it is that these arguments have had such disastrous repercussions
in the genuine racial sphere. The late war has not only exploded
Pan-Germanism, it has also discredited Nordic race-feeling, so unjustly
confused by many persons with Pan-German nationalistic propaganda. Such
persons should remember that the overwhelming majority of Nordics live
outside of Germany, being mainly found in Scandinavia, the Anglo-Saxon
countries, northern France, the Netherlands, and Baltic Russia. To let
Teuton propaganda gull us into thinking of Germany as the Nordic
fatherland is both a danger and an absurdity.
While Pan-Germanism was mainly responsible for precipitating Armageddon
with all its disastrous consequences, it was Russian Pan-Slavism which
dealt the first shrewd blow to white solidarity. Toward the close of the
nineteenth century, Pan-Slavism's "Eastern" wing, led by Prince Ukhtomsky
and other chauvinists of his ilk, went so far in its imperialistic
obsession as actually to deny Russia's white blood. These Pan-Slavists
boldly proclaimed the morbid, mystical dogma that Russia was Asiatic, not
European, and thereupon attempted to seize China as a lever for upsetting,
first the rest of Asia, and then the non-Russian white world--elegantly
described as "the rotten west." The white Power immediately menaced was,
of course, England, who in acute fear for her Indian Empire, promptly
riposted by allying herself with Japan. Russia was diplomatically isolated
and militarily beaten in the Russo-Japanese War. Thus the Russo-Japanese
War, that destroyer of white prestige whose ominous results we have
already noted, was precipitated mainly by the reckless short-sightedness
of white men themselves.
A second blow to white solidarity was presently administered--this time by
England in concluding her second alliance-treaty with Japan. The original
alliance, signed in 1902, was negotiated for a definite, limited
objective--the checkmating of Russia's over-weening imperialism. Even that
instrument was dangerous, but under the circumstances it was justifiable
and inevitable. The second alliance-treaty, however, was so general and
far-reaching in character that practically all white men in the Far East,
including most emphatically Englishmen themselves, pronounced it a great
disaster.
Meanwhile, German imperialism was plotting even deadlier strokes at white
race-comity, not merely by preparing war against white neighbors in
Europe, but also by ingratiating itself with the Moslem East and by toying
with schemes for building up a black military empire in central Africa.
Lastly, France was actually recruiting black, brown, and yellow hordes for
use on European battle-fields; while Italy, by her buccaneering raid on
Tripoli, outraged Islam's sense of justice and strained its patience to
the breaking-point.
Thus, in the years preceding Armageddon, all the European Powers displayed
a reckless absorption in particularistic ambitions and showed a callous
indifference to larger race-interests. The rapid weakening of white
solidarity was clearly apparent.
However, white solidarity, though diplomatically compromised, was
emotionally not yet really undermined. Those dangerous games above
mentioned were largely the work of cynical chancelleries and
ultra-imperialist propagandas. The average European, whatever his
nationality, still tended to react instinctively against such practices.
This was shown by the sharp criticism which arose from the most varied
quarters. For example: Russia and Britain were alike sternly taken to task
both at home and abroad for their respective Far Eastern policies;
proposed German alliances with Pan-Islamism and Japan preached by
disciples of _Machtpolitik_ were strenuously opposed as race-treason by
powerful sections of German thought; while Italy's Tripolitan imbroglio
was generally denounced as the most foolhardy trifling with the common
European interest.
A good illustration of instinctive white solidarity in the early years of
the twentieth century is a French journalist's description of the attitude
of the white spectators (of various nationalities) gathered to watch the
landing in Japan of the first Russian prisoners taken in the
Russo-Japanese War. This writer depicts in moving language the literally
horrifying effect of the spectacle upon himself and his fellows. "What a
triumph," he exclaims, "what a revenge for the little Nippons to see thus
humiliated these big, splendid men who, for them, represented, not only
Russians, but those Europeans whom they so detest! This scene tragic in
its simplicity, this grief passing amid joy, these whites, vanquished and
captives, defiling before those free and triumphant yellows--this was not
Russia beaten by Japan, not the defeat of one nation by another; it was
something new, enormous, prodigious; it was the victory of one world over
another; it was the revenge which effaced the centuries of humiliations
borne by Asia; it was the awakening hope of the Oriental peoples; it was
the first blow given to the other race, to that accursed race of the West,
which, for so many years, had triumphed without even having to struggle.
And the Japanese crowd felt all this, and the few other Asiatics who found
themselves there shared in this triumph. The humiliation of these whites
was solemn, frightful. I completely forgot that these captives were
Russians, and I would add that the other Europeans there, though
anti-Russian, felt the same _malaise_: they also were forced to feel that
these captives were their own kind. When we took the train for Kobè, an
instinctive solidarity drove us huddling into the same compartment."[121]
Thus white solidarity, while unquestionably weakened, was still a weighty
factor down to August, 1914. But the first shots of Armageddon saw white
solidarity literally blown from the muzzles of the guns. An explosion of
internecine hatred burst forth more intense and general than any ever
known before. Both sets of combatants proclaimed a duel to the death; both
sides vowed the enemy to something near annihilation; while even
scientists and _littérateurs_, disrupting the ancient commonwealths of
wisdom and beauty, put one another furiously to the ban.
In their savage death-grapple neither side hesitated for an instant to
grasp at any weapon, whatever the ultimate consequences to the race. The
Allies poured into white Europe colored hordes of every pigment under the
sun; the Teutonic Powers wielded Pan-Islam as a besom of wrath to sweep
clean every white foothold in Hither Asia and North Africa; while far and
wide over the Dark Continent black armies fought for their respective
masters--and learned the hidden weakness of the white man's power. In the
Far East, Japan, left to her own devices, bent amorphous China to her
imperious will, thereby raising up a potential menace for the entire
earth. Every day the tide of intestine hatred within the white world rose
higher, until the very concept of a common blood and cultural past seemed
in danger of being blotted out.
A symposium of the "hate literature" of the Great War is fortunately no
part of my task, but the reader will readily recall both its abysmal fury
and its irreconcilable implications. The most appalling feature was the
way in which many writers assumed that this state of mind would be
permanent; that the end of the Great War might be only the beginning of a
war-cycle leading to the utter disruption of white solidarity and
civilization. In the spring of 1916, the London _Nation_ remarked
gloomily: "Europe is now being mentally conceived as inevitably and
permanently dual. We are ceasing to think of Europe. The normal end of war
(which is peace) is to be submerged in the idea of a war-series
indefinitely prolonged. Soon the entire Continent will have but one
longing--the longing for rest. The cup is to be dashed from its lips! For
a world steeped in fear and ruled by the barren logomachy of hate,
diplomatic intercourse would almost cease to be possible.... In the matter
of culture, modern Europe would tend to relapse to a state inferior even
to that of mediæval Europe, and to sink far below that of the
Renaissance."[122]
In similar vein, the noted German historian Eduard Meyer[123] predicted
that Armageddon was only the first of a long series of Anglo-German "Punic
Wars" in which modern civilization would retrograde to a condition of
semi-barbarism. Germany, according to this prophecy, would be the
victor--but a Pyrrhic victor, for the colored races, taking advantage of
white decadence, would destroy European supremacy and involve all the
white nations in a common ruin.
The ulcerated state of European war-psychology did, in fact, lend ominous
emphasis to these gloomy prognostications. Before 1914, as we have seen,
imperialistic trafficking with common race-interests usually roused
wide-spread criticism, while even more, the use of colored troops in white
quarrels always roused bitter popular condemnation. In the darkest hours
of the Boer War, English public opinion had refused to sanction the use of
either black African or brown Indian troops against the white foe, while
French plans for raising black armies of African savages for use in Europe
were almost universally reprobated. Before Armageddon there thus existed a
genuine moral repugnance against settling domestic differences by calling
in the alien without the gates.
The Great War, however, sent all such scruples promptly into the discard.
Not only did the belligerent governments use all the colored troops they
could equip, but the belligerent peoples hailed this action with
unqualified approval. The Allies were of course the more successful in
practice, but the Germans were just as eager, and the exertions of the
Prussian General Liman von Sanders actually got Turkish divisions to the
European battle-fronts.
The psychological effect of these colored auxiliaries in deepening the
hatred of the white combatants was deplorable. Germany's use of Turks
raised among the Allies wrathful emotions reminiscent of the Crusades,
while the havoc wrought in the Teutonic ranks by black Senegalese and
yellow Gurkhas, together with Allied utterances like Lord Curzon's wish to
see Bengal lancers on the Unter den Linden and Gurkhas camping at Sans
Souci, so maddened the German people that the very suggestion of white
solidarity was jeeringly scoffed at as the most idiotic sentimentality.
Here is a German officer's account of a Senegalese attack on his position,
which vividly depicts the mingled horror and fury awakened in German
hearts by these black opponents: "They came. First singly, at wide
intervals. Feeling their way, like the arms of a horrible cuttlefish.
Eager, grasping, like the claws of a mighty monster. Thus they rushed
closer, flickering and sometimes disappearing in the cloud. Entire bodies
and single limbs, now showing in the harsh glare, now sinking in the
shadows, came nearer and nearer. Strong, wild fellows, their log-like,
fat, black skulls wrapped in pieces of dirty rags. Showing their grinning
teeth like panthers, with their bellies drawn in and their necks stretched
forward. Some with bayonets on their rifles. Many only armed with knives.
Monsters all, in their confused hatred. Frightful their distorted, dark
grimaces. Horrible their unnaturally wide-opened, burning, bloodshot eyes.
Eyes that seem like terrible beings themselves. Like unearthly, hell-born
beings. Eyes that seemed to run ahead of their owners, lashed, unchained,
no longer to be restrained. On they came like dogs gone mad and cats
spitting and yowling, with a burning lust for human blood, with a cruel
dissemblance of their beastly malice. Behind them came the first wave of
the attackers, in close order, a solid, rolling black wall, rising and
falling, swaying and heaving, impenetrable, endless."[124]
Here, again, is the proposal of a British officer, to raise a million
black savages from England's African colonies for use on the Western
Front. Major Stuart-Stephens exults in Britain's "almost unlimited
reservoir of African man-power." In northern Nigeria alone, he remarks,
there are to-day more than 700,000 warlike tribesmen. "Let them be used!"
says the major. "These 'bonny fechters' are now engaged in the pastoral
arts of peace. But I would make bold to assert that a couple of hundred
thousand could, after six months' training, be usefully employed in
daredevil charges into German trenches." Major Stuart-Stephens hopes that
at least the Sudanese battalions will be transferred _en masse_ to the
Western Front. "This," he concludes, "would mean the placing at once in
the trenches of, say, 70,000 big, lusty coal-black devils, the time of
whose life is the wielding of the bayonet, and whose advent would not be
regarded by the Boches as a pleasing omen of more to come of the same
sort."[125]
The military possibilities are truly engaging! There are literally tens of
millions of fighting blacks and scores of millions of fighting Asiatics
now living under white rule who could conceivably be armed and shipped to
European battle-fields. After which, of course, Europe, the white
homeland, would be--a queer place.
Fortunately for our race, the late war did not see this sort of thing
carried to its logical conclusion. But the harm done was bad enough. The
white world grew accustomed to the use of colored mercenaries and to the
contracting of alliances with colored peoples against white opponents as a
mere matter of course.
The German war-mind, in particular, teemed with colored alliance-projects.
Unable to compete with the Allies in getting colored troops to Europe,
Germans planned to revenge themselves in other fields. The Turkish
alliance and the resulting "Holy War" proclamation were hailed with
delight. "Over there in Turkey," wrote the well-known German publicist
Ernst Jaeckh, "stretch Anatolia and Mesopotamia: Anatolia, the 'Land of
the Sunrise'; Mesopotamia, the region of ancient paradise. May these names
be to us a sign: may this World War bring to Germany and Turkey the
sunrise and the paradise of a new time; may it confer upon an assured
Turkey and a Greater Germany the blessing of a fruitful Turco-Teutonic
collaboration in peace after a victorious Turco-Teutonic collaboration in
war."[126]
The scope of Germany's Asiatic aspirations during the war is exemplified
by an article from the pen of the learned Orientalist Professor Bernhardt
Molden.[127] Germany's aid to Turkey, contends Professor Molden, is merely
symptomatic of her policy to raise the other Asiatic peoples now crushed
beneath English and Russian domination. Thus Germany will create puissant
allies for the "Second Punic War." Germany must therefore strive to
solidify the great Central Asian _bloc_--Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan,
China. Professor Molden urges a "Pan-Asian railroad" from Constantinople
to Peking. This should be especially alluring to Afghanistan, which would
thereby become one of the great pivots of world-politics and trade. In
fine: "Germany must free Asia." As another prominent German writer,
Friedrich Delitzsch, wrote in similar vein: "To renovate the East--such is
Germany's mission."[128]
In such a mood, Germans hailed Japan's absence of genuine hostility with
the greatest satisfaction. The gust of rage which swept Germany at
Japan's seizure of Kiao-chao was soon allayed by numerous writers
preaching reconciliation and eventual alliance with the mistress of the
Far East. Typical of this pro-Japanese propaganda is an article by Herr J.
Witte, a former official in the Far East, which appeared in 1915. Herr
Witte chides his countrymen for their talk about the Yellow Peril. Such a
peril may exist in the future, but it is not pressing at this moment, "at
any rate for us Germans, who have no great territorial possessions in the
Far East.... We might permit ourselves to speak of a Yellow Peril if there
was a white solidarity. This, however, does not exist. We are learning
this just now by bitter experience on our own flesh and blood. Our foes
have marshalled peoples of all races against us in battle. So long as this
helps them, all race-antipathies and race-interests are to them matters of
supreme indifference. Under these circumstances, in the midst of a
life-and-death struggle against the peoples of the white race, shall we
play the rôle of guardian angel of these peoples against the yellow
peoples? For us, as Germans, there is now only one supreme life-interest,
to which all other interests must be subordinated: the safety and
advancement of Germany and of _Deutschtum_ in the world." Herr Witte
therefore advocates a "close political understanding between Germany and
Japan. In future we can accomplish nothing in the teeth of Japan.
Therefore we must get on good terms with Japan. And we can do it, too.
Germany is, in fact, the country above all others who in the future has
the best prospect of allying herself advantageously with the Far Eastern
peoples."[129]
And so it went throughout the war-years: both sides using all possible
colored aid to down the white foe; both sides alike reckless of the
ultimate racial consequences.
In fact, leaving ultimate consequences aside, many persons feared during
the later phases of the war that Europe might be headed for immediate
dissolution. As early as mid-1916, Lord Loreburn expressed apprehension
lest the war was entailing general bankruptcy and "such a destruction of
the male youth of Europe as will break the thin crust of civilization
which has been built up since the Dark Ages."[130] These fears were
intensified by the Russian revolution of 1917, with its hideous corollary
of Bolshevism which definitely triumphed before the close of that year.
The Bolshevik triumph evoked despairing predictions like Lord Lansdowne's:
"We are not going to lose this war, but its prolongation will spell ruin
for the civilized world."[131]
Well, the war was prolonged for another year, ending in the triumph of the
Allies and America, though leaving Europe in the deplorable condition
reviewed in the preceding chapter. The hopes of mankind were now centred
on the Peace Conference, but these hopes were oversanguine, for the
Versailles "settlement" was riddled with political and economic
imperfections from the Saar to Shantung.
This was what a sceptical minority had feared from the first. At the very
beginning of the war, for instance, the French publicist Urbain Gohier had
predicted that when the diplomats gathered at the end of the conflict they
would find the problem of constructive settlement insoluble.[132]
Most persons, however, had been more hopeful. Disappointment and
disillusionment were therefore correspondingly intense. The majority of
liberal-minded, forward-looking men and women throughout the world
deplored the Versailles settlement's faulty character, some, however,
accepting the situation as the best of a bad business, others entirely
repudiating it on the ground that by crystallizing an intolerable status
it would entail worse disasters in the near future.
General Smuts, the South African delegate to the Conference, well
represents the first attitude. In a formal protest against the Versailles
settlement, General Smuts stated: "I have signed the peace treaty, not
because I consider it a satisfactory document, but because it is
imperatively necessary to close the war; because the world needs peace
above all, and nothing could be more fatal than the continuance of the
state of suspense between war and peace. The six months since the
armistice was signed have, perhaps, been as upsetting, unsettling, and
ruinous to Europe as the previous four years of war. I look upon the peace
treaty as the close of these two chapters of war and armistice, and only
on that ground do I agree to it. I say this now, not in criticism, but in
faith; not because I wish to find fault with the work done, but rather
because I feel that in the treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace
to which our peoples were looking, and because I feel that the real work
of making peace will only begin after this treaty has been signed, and a
definite halt has thereby been called to the destructive passions that
have been desolating Europe for nearly five years."[133]
The English economist J. L. Garvin, who, like General Smuts, accepted the
treaty _faute de mieux_, makes these trenchant comments upon the
settlement itself: "Derisive human genius surveying with pity and laughter
the present state of mankind and some of the obsolete means adopted at
Paris to remedy it, might do most good by another satire like Rabelais,
Gulliver, or Candide. But let us put from us here the temptation to
conjure up vistas of the grotesque. Let us pursue these plain studies in
common sense. A treaty even when signed is paper. It is in itself
inoperative without the action or control of living forces which it seeks
to express or repress. Treaties not drawn against sound and certain assets
may be dishonored in the sequel like bad checks or bills. You do not get
peace merely by putting it on paper. And, much more to the point, all
that is called peace does not necessarily spell prosperity any more than
all that glitters is gold. You can 'make a solitude and call it peace.'
The quintessence of death or stupefaction resembles a kind of peace. You
can prolong relative stagnation and depression and yet say that it is
peace. But that would not be the reconciling and lasting, the constructive
and the creative peace, as it was visioned by the Allied peoples in their
greatest moments of insight and inspiration during the war. For that
higher and wiser thing we lavished our pent-up energies and the
accumulated treasure of a hundred years, and sent so many of our best to
die."[134]
That veteran student of world-politics Doctor E. J. Dillon put the matter
succinctly when he wrote: "The peace is being made not, as originally
projected, on the basis of the fourteen points, nor on the lines of
territorial equilibrium, but by a compromise which misses the advantage of
either, and combines certain evils of both. The treaty has failed to lay
the axe to the roots of war, has perhaps increased their number while
purporting to destroy them. The germs of future conflicts, not only
between the recent belligerents, but also between other groups of states,
are numerous, and if present symptoms may be trusted will sprout up in the
fulness of time."[135]
The badness of the Versailles treaties is nowhere more manifest than in
the way they have alienated idealistic support and enthusiasm from the
inchoate League of Nations. Multitudes of persons once zealous Leaguers
now feel that the League has no moral foundation. Such persons contend
that even were the covenant theoretically perfect, the League could no
more succeed on the basis of the present peace settlement than a
flawlessly designed palace could be erected if superimposed upon a
quicksand.
Europe is thus in evil case. Her statesmen have failed to formulate a
constructive settlement. Old problems remain unsolved while fresh problems
arise. The danger is redoubled by the fact that both Europe and the entire
world are faced with a new peril--Bolshevism. The menace of Bolshevism is
simply incalculable. Bolshevism is a peril in some ways unprecedented in
the world's history. It is not merely a war against a social system, not
merely a war against our civilization; it is a war of the hand against the
brain. For the first time since man was man there is a definite schism
between the hand and the head. Every principle which mankind has thus far
evolved: community of interest, the solidarity of civilization and
culture, the dignity of labor, of muscle, of brawn, dominated and
illumined by intellect and spirit--all these Bolshevism howls down and
tramples in the mud.
Bolshevism's cardinal tenets--the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the
destruction of the "classes" by social war--are of truly hideous import.
The "classes," as conceived by Bolshevism, are very numerous. They
comprise not merely the "idle rich," but also the whole of the upper and
middle social strata, the landowning country folk, the skilled working
men; in short, all except those who work with their untutored hands,
_plus_ the elect few who philosophize for those who work with their
untutored hands.
The effect of such ideas, if successful, not only on our civilization, but
also on the very fibre of the race, can be imagined. The death or
degradation of nearly all persons displaying constructive ability, and the
tyranny of the ignorant and anti-social elements, would be the most
gigantic triumph of disgenics ever seen. Beside it the ill effects of war
would pale into insignificance. Civilization would wither like a plant
stricken by blight, while the race, summarily drained of its good blood,
would sink like lead into the depths of degenerate barbarism.
This is precisely what is occurring in Russia to-day. Bolshevism has ruled
Russia less than three years--and Russia is ruined. She ekes out a bare
existence on the remains of past accumulations, on the surviving scraps of
her material and spiritual capital. Everywhere are hunger, cold, disease,
terror, physical and moral death. The "proletariat" is making its "clean
sweep." The "classes" are being systematically eliminated by execution,
massacre, and starvation. The racial impoverishment is simply
incalculable. Meanwhile Lenine, surrounded by his Chinese executioners,
sits behind the Kremlin walls, a modern Jenghiz Khan plotting the plunder
of a world.
Lenine's Chinese "braves" are merely symptomatic of the intrigues which
Bolshevism is carrying on throughout the non-white world. Bolshevism is,
in fact, as anti-racial as it is anti-social. To the Bolshevik mind, with
its furious hatred of constructive ability and its fanatical determination
to enforce levelling, proletarian equality, the very existence of superior
biological values is a crime. Bolshevism has vowed the proletarianization
of the world, beginning with the white peoples. To this end it not only
foments social revolution within the white world itself, but it also seeks
to enlist the colored races in its grand assault on civilization. The
rulers of Soviet Russia are well aware of the profound ferment now going
on in colored lands. They watch this ferment with the same terrible glee
that they watched the Great War and the fiasco of Versailles--and they
plot to turn it to the same profit.
Accordingly, in every quarter of the globe, in Asia, Africa, Latin
America, and the United States, Bolshevik agitators whisper in the ears of
discontented colored men their gospel of hatred and revenge. Every
nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social
discrimination, is fuel for Bolshevism's hellish incitement to racial as
well as to class war.
And this Bolshevik propaganda has not been in vain. Its results already
show in the most diverse quarters, and they are ominous for the future.
China, Japan, Afghanistan, India, Java, Persia, Turkey, Egypt, Brazil,
Chile, Peru, Mexico, and the "black belts" of our own United States: here
is a partial list of the lands where the Bolshevik leaven in color is
clearly at work.
Bolshevism thus reveals itself as the arch-enemy of civilization and the
race. Bolshevism is the renegade, the traitor within the gates, who would
betray the citadel, degrade the very fibre of our being, and ultimately
hurl a rebarbarized, racially impoverished world into the most debased and
hopeless of mongrelizations.
Therefore, Bolshevism must be crushed out with iron heels, no matter what
the cost. If this means more war, let it mean more war. We know only too
well war's dreadful toll, particularly on racial values. But what
war-losses could compare with the losses inflicted by the living death of
Bolshevism? There are some things worse than war, and Bolshevism stands
foremost among those dread alternatives.
So ends our survey of the white world as it emerges from the Great War.
The prospect is not a brilliant one. Weakened and impoverished by
Armageddon, handicapped by an unconstructive peace, and facing internal
Bolshevist disaffection which must at all costs be mastered, the white
world is ill-prepared to confront--the rising tide of color. What that
tide portends will be the subject of the concluding chapters.
_PART III_
THE DELUGE ON THE DIKES
CHAPTER X
THE OUTER DIKES
In my first chapter I showed that the rising tide of color to-day finds
itself confronted by dikes erected by the white race during the centuries
of its expansion. The reader will also remember that white expansion has
taken two forms: settlement and political control. These two phases differ
profoundly in character. Areas of settlement like North America have
become integral portions of the white world. On the other hand, regions of
political control like India are merely white dependencies, highly
valuable perhaps, yet in the last analysis held by title of the sword.
Between these clearly contrasted categories lies an intermediate class of
territories typified by South Africa, where whites have settled in large
numbers without displacing the native populations. Lastly, there exist
certain white territories which may be called "enclaves." These enclaves
have become thoroughly white by settlement, yet they are so distant from
the main body of the white world and so contiguous to colored race-areas
that white tenure does not possess that security which settlement and
displacement of the aborigines normally confer. Australia typifies this
anomalous class of cases.
The white defenses against the colored tide can be divided into what may
be termed the "outer" and the "inner" dikes. The outer dikes (the regions
of white political control) contain no settled white population, so that
their abandonment, whatever the political or economic loss, would not
directly affect white race-integrity. The question of their retention or
abandonment should therefore (save in a few exceptional cases) be judged
by political, economic, or strategic considerations. The inner dikes (the
areas of white settlement), however, are a very different matter. Peopled
as they are wholly or largely by whites, they have become parts of the
race-heritage, which should be defended to the last extremity no matter if
the costs involved are greater than their mere economic value would
warrant. They are the true bulwarks of the race, the patrimony of future
generations who have a right to demand of us that they shall be born white
in a white man's land. Ill will it fare if ever our race should close its
ears to this most elemental call of the blood. Then, indeed, would be
manifest the writing on the wall.
That issue, however, is reserved for the next chapter. Let us here examine
the matter of the outer dikes--the regions of white political control.
There, where the white man is not settler but suzerain, his suzerainty
should, in the last analysis, depend on the character of the inhabitants.
Right here, let us clear away the doctrinaire pedantry that commonly
obscures discussion about the retention or abandonment of white political
control over racially non-white regions. Argument usually tends to
crystallize around two antitheses. On the one side are the doctrinaire
liberals, who maintain the "imprescriptible right" of every human group to
attain independence, and of every sovereign state to retain independence.
On the opposite side are the doctrinaire imperialists, who maintain the
equally imprescriptible right of their particular nation to "vital
expansion" regardless of injuries thereby inflicted upon other nations.
Now I submit that both these assumptions are unwarranted. There is no
"imprescriptible right" to either independence or empire. It depends on
the realities of each particular case. The extreme cases at either end of
the scale can be adjudged offhand by ordinary common sense. No one except
a doctrinaire liberal would be likely to assert that the Andaman Islanders
had an imprescriptible right to independence, or that Haiti, which owed
its independence only to a turn in European politics,[136] should forever
remain a sovereign--international nuisance. On the other hand, the whole
world (with the exception of Teutonic imperialists) denounced Germany's
attempt to swallow highly civilized Belgium as a crime against humanity.
In other words: realities, not abstract theories, decide. That does not
please the doctrinaires, who insist on setting up Procrustean beds of
theory on which realities should be racked or crammed. It does, however,
conform to the dictates of nature, which decree that what is attuned shall
live while the disharmonic and degenerate shall pass away. And nature
usually has the last word.
Surveying the regions of white political control over non-white peoples in
this realistic way, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of doctrinaire theory
and blind prejudice, we may arrive at a series of conclusions which,
though lacking the trim symmetry of the idealogue, will correspond to the
facts in the various cases.
One thing is certain: the white man will have to recognize that the
practically absolute world-dominion which he exercised during the
nineteenth century can no longer be maintained. Largely because of that
very dominion, colored races have been drawn out of their traditional
isolation and have been quickened by white ideas, while the
life-conserving nature of white rule has everywhere favored colored
multiplication. These factors have combined to produce a wide-spread
ferment which has been clearly visible for the past two decades, and which
is destined to grow more acute in the near future.
This ferment would have developed even if the Great War had never
occurred. However, the white world's weakening through Armageddon has
immensely accelerated the process and has opened up the possibility of
violent "short cuts" which would have mutually disastrous consequences.
Especially has it evoked in bellicose and fanatical minds the vision of a
"Pan-Colored" alliance for the universal overthrow of white hegemony at a
single stroke--a dream which would turn into a nightmare of race-war
beside which the late struggle in Europe would seem the veriest child's
play.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF THE WHITE RACES]
The effective centres of colored unrest are the brown and yellow worlds of
Asia. Both those worlds are not merely in negative opposition to white
hegemony, but are experiencing a real _renaissance_ whose genuineness is
best attested by the fact that it is a faithful replica of similar
movements in past times. White men must get out of their heads the idea
that Asiatics are necessarily "inferior." As a matter of fact, while
Asiatics do not seem to possess that sustained constructive power with
which the whites, particularly the Nordics, are endowed, the browns and
yellows are yet gifted peoples who have profoundly influenced human
progress in the past and who undoubtedly will contribute much to
world-civilization. The Asiatics have by their own efforts built up
admirable cultures rooted in remote antiquity and worthy of all respect.
They are to-day once more displaying their innate capacity by not merely
adopting, but adapting, white ideas and methods. That this profound
Asiatic renaissance will eventually result in the substantial elimination
of white political control from Anatolia to the Philippines is as natural
as it is inevitable.
This does not mean a precipitate white "scuttle" from Asia. Far from it.
It does mean, however, a candid facing of realities and a basing of policy
on realities rather than on prepossessions or prejudices. Unless the white
man does this, he will injure himself more than any one else. If Asia is
to-day really renascent, Asia will ultimately reap the political fruits.
Men worthy of independence will sooner or later get independence. This is
as certain as is the converse truth that men unworthy of independence,
though they cry for it never so loudly, will either remain subject or will
quickly relapse into subjection should they by some lucky circumstance
obtain what they could only misuse.
If, then, Asia deserves to be free, she will be free. The only question
is, how she will attain her freedom. Shall it be an evolutionary process,
in the main peaceful, based upon mutual respect, with mutual recognition
of both increasing Asiatic fitness and white vested interests? Or shall it
come through cataclysmic revolution? This is the dilemma which those
imperialists should ponder who object to any relaxation of white political
control over Asia because of the "value" of the subject regions. That
white control over Asiatic lands has been, and still is, immensely
profitable, cannot be denied. But what basis for this value is there
except lack of effective opposition? If real, sustained opposition now
develops, if subject Asia becomes chronically rebellious, if its peoples
resolutely boycott white goods--as China and India have shown Asiatics
capable of doing, will not white control be transformed from an asset into
a liability? Above all, let us remember that no race-values are involved.
No white race-areas would have to be abandoned to non-white domination.
White control over Asia is political, and can thus be judged by the
criteria of material interest undisturbed by the categorical imperative of
race-duty.
The need for sympathetic open-mindedness toward awakening Asia if
cataclysmic disasters are to be averted becomes all the clearer when we
realize that on important issues lying outside Asia the white world must
resolutely oppose Asiatic desires. We whites should be the more generous
in our attitude toward Asia because imperative reasons of self-protection
require us to deny to Asiatics some of their best opportunities in the
outer world.
In my opening chapters I discussed the rapid growth of Asiatic populations
and the resultant steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus Asiatics
(principally yellow men, but also in lesser degree brown men) from
overcrowded homelands toward the less-crowded regions of the earth. It is,
in fact, Asiatics, and above all Mongolian Asiatics, who form the first
waves of the rising tide of color. Unfortunately, the white world cannot
permit this rising tide free scope. White men cannot, under peril of their
very race-existence, allow wholesale Asiatic immigration into white
race-areas. This prohibition, which will be discussed in the next chapter,
is already a serious blow to Asiatic aspirations.
But the matter does not end there. The white world also cannot permit with
safety to itself wholesale Asiatic penetration of non-Asiatic colored
regions like black Africa and tropical Latin America. To permit Asiatic
colonization and ultimate control of these vast territories with their
incalculable resources would be to overturn in favor of Asia the
political, the economic, and eventually the racial balance of power in the
world. At present the white man controls these regions. And he must stand
fast. No other course is possible. Neither black Africa nor mongrel-ruled
tropical America can stand alone. If the white man goes, the Asiatic
comes--browns to Africa, yellows to Latin America. And there is no reason
under heaven why we whites should deliberately present Asia with the
richest regions of the tropics, to our own impoverishment and probable
undoing.
Our race-duty is therefore clear. We must resolutely oppose both Asiatic
permeation of white race-areas and Asiatic inundation of those non-white,
but equally non-Asiatic, regions inhabited by the really inferior races.
But we should also recognize that by taking this attitude we debar
Asiatics from golden opportunities and render impossible the realization
of aspirations intrinsically just as normal and laudable as our own. And,
having closed in their faces so many doors of hope, can we refuse to
discuss with gifted and capable Asiatics the problem of turning over to
them the keys of their own house without causing festering hatreds whose
poison may spread far beyond Asia into other colored lands and possibly
into white lands as well? Neither a Pan-Colored nor a Colored-Bolshevist
alliance are impossibilities, far-fetched though these terms may sound.
The fact is, we whites are in no position to indulge in the luxury of
Bourbonism. Weakened by Armageddon, hampered by Versailles, and harassed
by Bolshevism, the white world can ill afford to flout legitimate Asiatic
aspirations to independence. Our imperialists may argue that this means
abandoning "outer dikes," but I contend that white positions in Asia are
not protective dikes but strategic blockhouses, built upon the sands
during the long Asiatic ebb-tide, and which the now rising Asiatic waves
must ultimately engulf. Is it not the part of wisdom to quit these
outposts before they collapse into the swirling waters? Our true "outer
dikes" stand, not in Asia, but in Africa and Latin America. Let us not
exhaust ourselves by stubborn resistance in Asia which in the end must
prove futile. Let us conserve our strength, remembering that by the time
Asia has been submerged the flood should have lost much of its pent-up
power.
Particularly should this be true of the moral "imponderables." By taking a
reasonable, conciliatory attitude toward Asiatic aspirations to
independence we would thereby eliminate the moral factors in Asia's
present hostility toward ourselves. Many Asiatics would still be our foes
from resentment at balked expansion, but we should have separated the
sheep from the goats.
And the sheep are the more numerous. There are of course irreconcilables
like Japanese imperialists and Pan-Islamic fanatics who would like to
upset the whole world. However, taken by and large, Asia is peopled
neither by fire-eating jingoes nor howling dervishes. The average Asiatic
is by nature less restless, less ambitious, and consequently less
aggressive than ourselves. To-day Asiatics are everywhere aroused by a
whole complex of stimuli like overcrowding, white domination, and white
denial of nationalistic aspirations, to an access of hatred and fury.
Those last-mentioned stimuli to anti-white hostility we can remove. The
first-mentioned cause of hostility--over-population--we cannot remove.
Only the Asiatic himself can do that by controlling his reckless
procreation. Of course over-population is of itself a sufficiently serious
provoker of trouble. There is no more certain breeder of strife than the
expansive urge of a fast-breeding people. Nevertheless, this hostile
stimulus applies primarily to yellow Asia. Brown Asia, once free or
clearly on the road to freedom, would be either satisfied or engrossed in
its intestine broils. At any rate, the twin spectres of a Pan-Asian or a
Pan-Colored alliance would probably vanish like a mirage of the desert,
and the white world would be far better able to deal with yellow pressure
on its race-frontiers--no light task, weakened and distracted as the
white world finds itself to-day.
Unfortunately, no such wise foresight seems to have been vouchsafed our
statesmen. Imperialistic secret treaties formed the basis for Versailles's
treatment of Asiatic questions, and those treaties were drawn precisely as
though Armageddon were a skirmish and Asia the sleeping giant of a century
ago. Upon the brown world, in particular, white domination was riveted
rather than relaxed.
This amazing disregard of present-day realities augurs ill for the future.
Indeed, its evil first-fruits are already apparent. The brown world,
convinced that its aspirations can be realized only by force, turns to the
yellow world and listens to Bolshevik propaganda, while Pan-Islamism
redoubles its efforts in Africa.
Thus is once more manifest the diplomatic bankruptcy of Versailles. The
white man, like King Canute, seats himself upon the tidal sands and bids
the waves be stayed. He will be lucky if he escapes merely with wet
shoes.
CHAPTER XI
THE INNER DIKES
We come now to the frontiers of the white world--to its true frontiers,
marked, not by boundary-stones, but by flesh and blood. These frontiers
are not continuous: far from the European homeland, some run in remote
quarters of the earth, sundered by vast stretches of ocean and connected
only by the slate-gray thread of sea-power--the master-talisman which the
white man still grasps firmly in his hand.
But against these race-frontiers--these "inner dikes"--the rising tide of
color has for decades been beating, and will beat yet more fiercely as
congesting population, quickened self-consciousness, and heightened sense
of power impel the colored world to expansion and dominion. Above the
eastern horizon the dark storm-clouds lower, and the weakened, distracted
white world must soon face a colored peril threatening its integrity and
perhaps its existence. This colored peril has three facets: the peril of
arms, the peril of markets, and the peril of migration. All three contain
ominous potentialities, both singly and in combination. Let us review them
in turn, to appraise their dynamic possibilities.
First, the peril of arms. The military potencies of the colored races have
been the subject of earnest, and frequently alarmist, speculation for the
past twenty years, particularly since the Russo-Japanese War. The
exciting effects of Pan-Islamism upon the warlike peoples of Asia and
Africa have been frequently discussed, while the "Yellow Peril" has long
been a journalistic commonplace.
How shall we appraise the colored peril of arms? On the whole, it would
appear as though the colored military danger, in its isolated, purely
aggressive aspect, had been exaggerated. Visions of a united Asia, rising
suddenly in fanatic frenzy and hurling brown and yellow myriads upon the
white West _seem_ to be the products of superheated imaginations. I say
"seem," because there are unquestionably mysterious emotional depths in
the Asiatic soul which may yet justify the prophets of cataclysmic war. As
Hyndman says: "With all the facts before us, and with prejudice thrown
aside, we are still unable to lay bare the causes of the gigantic Asian
movements of the past. They were certainly not all economic in their
origin, unless we stretch the boundaries of theory so far as to include
the massacre of whole populations and the destruction of their wealth
within the limits of the invaders' desire for material gain. And, whether
these movements arose from material or emotional causes, they have been
before, and they may occur again. Forecast here is impossible. A new
Mohammed is quite as likely to make his appearance as a new Buddha, a
reborn Confucius, or a modern Christ.... Asia raided and scourged Europe
for more than a thousand years. Now, for five hundred years, the
counter-attack of Europe upon Asia has been steadily going on, and it may
be that the land of long memories will cherish some desire to avenge this
period of wrong and rapine in turn. The seed of hatred has already been
but too well sown."[137]
Of course, on this particular point, forecast is, indeed, impossible.
Nevertheless, the point should be noted, for Asiatic war-fever may appear,
if not in isolation, then in conjunction with other stimuli to warlike
action, like population-pressure or imperialistic ambition, which to-day
exist and whose amplitude can be approximately gauged. We have already
analyzed the military potencies of Pan-Islamism and Japan, and China also
should not be forgotten. Pacifist though China has long been, she has had
her bellicose moments in the past and may have them in the future. Should
this occur, China, as the world's greatest reservoir of intelligent
man-power, would be immensely formidable. Pearson visualizes a China
"become an aggressive military power, sending out her armies in millions
to cross the Himalayas and traverse the Steppes, or occupying the islands
and the northern parts of Australia, by pouring in immigrants protected by
fleets. Luther's old name for the Turks, that they were 'the people of the
wrath of God,' may receive a new and terrible application."[138]
Granted that the Chinese will never become the fighting equals of the
world's warrior races, their incredible numbers combined with their
tenacious vitality might overcome opponents individually their superiors.
Says Professor Ross: "To the West the toughness of the Chinese physique
may have a sinister military significance. Nobody fears lest in a stand-up
fight Chinese troops could whip an equal number of well-conditioned white
troops. But few battles are fought by men fresh from tent and mess. In the
course of a prolonged campaign involving irregular provisioning, bad
drinking-water, lying out, loss of sleep, exhausting marches, exposure,
excitement, and anxiety, it may be that the white soldiers would be worn
down worse than the yellow soldiers. In that case the hardier men with
less of the martial spirit might in the closing grapple beat the better
fighters with the less endurance."[139]
The potentialities of the Chinese soldier would acquire vastly greater
significance if China should be thoroughly subjugated by, or solidly
leagued to, ambitious and militaristic Japan. The combined military
energies of the Far East, welded into an aggressive unity, would be a
weapon of tremendous striking-power.
The colored peril of arms may thus be summarized: The brown and yellow
races possess great military potentialities. These (barring the action of
certain ill-understood emotional stimuli) are unlikely to flame out in
spontaneous fanaticism; but, on the other hand, they are very likely to
be mobilized for political reasons like revolt against white dominion or
for social reasons like over-population. The black race offers no real
danger except as the tool of Pan-Islamism. As for the red men of the
Americas, they are of merely local significance.
We are now ready to examine the economic facet of the colored peril: the
industrial-mercantile phase. In the second part of this volume I showed
the profound effect of the "industrial revolution" in furthering white
world-supremacy, and I pointed out the tremendous advantages accruing to
the white world from exploitation of undeveloped colored lands and from
exports of manufactured goods to colored markets. The prodigious wealth
thereby amassed has been a prime cause of white prosperity, has buttressed
the maintenance of white world-hegemony, and has made possible much of the
prodigious increase of white population.
We little realize what the loss of these advantages would mean. As a
matter of fact, it would mean throughout the white world diminished
prosperity, lessened political and military strength, and such relative
economic and social stagnation as would depress national vigor and check
population. It is even possible to visualize a white world reverting to
the condition of Europe in the fifteenth century--thrown back upon itself,
on the defensive, and with a static rather than a progressive
civilization. Such conditions could of course occur only as the result of
colored military and industrial triumphs of the most sweeping character.
But the possibility exists, nevertheless, as I shall endeavor to show.
Down to the close of the nineteenth century white supremacy was as
absolute in industry as it was in politics and war. Even the civilized
brown and yellow peoples were negligible from the industrial point of
view. Asia was economically on an agricultural basis. Such industries as
she possessed were still in the "house-industry" stage, and her products,
while often exquisite in quality, were produced by such slow, antiquated
methods that their quantity was limited and their market-price relatively
high. Despite very low wages, Asiatic products not only could not compete
in the world-market with European and American machine-made, mass-produced
articles, but were hard hit in their home-markets as well. The way in
which an ancient Asiatic handicraft like the Indian textiles was literally
annihilated by the destructive competition of Lancashire cottons is only
one of many similar instances.
With the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Asia began to show
signs of an economic activity as striking in its way as the activity which
Asia was displaying in idealistic and political fields. Japan had already
laid the foundations of her flourishing industrial life based on the most
up-to-date Western models, while in other Asiatic lands, notably in China
and India, the whir of machinery and the smoke of tall factory chimneys
proclaimed that the East was fathoming the industrial secrets of the
West.
What Asiatics were seeking in their industrial revival was well expressed
a decade ago by a Hindu, who wrote in a leading Indian periodical: "In one
respect the Orient is really menacing the West, and so earnest and
open-minded is Asia that no pretense or apology whatever is made about it.
The Easterner has thrown down the industrial gantlet, and from now on Asia
is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the
Occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the East, and
the Oriental endeavoring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he
has been an easy victor.... In competing with the Occidental
commercialists, the Oriental has awakened to a dynamic realization of the
futility of pitting unimproved machinery and methods against modern
methods and appliances. Casting aside his former sense of
self-complacency, he is studying the sciences and arts that have given the
West its material prosperity. He is putting the results of his
investigations to practical use, as a rule, recasting the Occidental
methods and tools to suit his peculiar needs, and in some instances
improving upon them."[140]
The accuracy of this Hindu statement of Asia's industrial awakening is
indorsed by the statements of white observers. At the very moment when the
above article was penned, an American economic writer, Clarence Poe, was
making a study tour of the Orient, from which he brought back the
following report: "The real cause of Asia's poverty lies in just two
things: the failure of Asiatic governments to educate their people, and
the failure of the people to increase their productive capacity by the use
of machinery. Ignorance and lack of machinery are responsible for Asia's
poverty; knowledge and modern tools are responsible for America's
prosperity." But, continues Mr. Poe, we must watch out. Asia now realizes
these things and is doing much to remedy the situation. Hence, "we must
face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are
strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and
hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets
in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial
readjustment."[141] And more recently another American observer of Asiatic
economic conditions reports: "All Asia is being permeated with modern
industry and present-day mechanical progress."[142]
Take, for example, the momentous possibilities involved in the industrial
awakening of China. China is not merely the most populous of lands,
containing as it does nearly one-fourth of all the human beings on earth,
but it is also dowered with immense natural resources, notably coal and
iron--the prime requisites of modern industrial life. Hitherto China has
been on an agricultural basis, with virtually no exploitation of her
mineral wealth and with no industry in the modern sense. But the day when
any considerable fraction of China's laborious millions turn from the
plough and handicrafts to the factory must see a portentous reaction in
the most distant markets.
Thirty years ago, Professor Pearson forecast China's imminent industrial
transformation. "Does any one doubt," he asks, "that the day is at hand
when China will have cheap fuel from her coal-mines, cheap transport by
railways and steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop
her industries? Whenever that day comes, she may wrest the control of the
world's markets, especially throughout Asia, from England and
Germany."[143]
Much of what Professor Pearson prophesied has already come to pass, for
China to-day has the beginnings of a promising industrial life. Even a
decade ago Professor Ross wrote of industrial conditions there:
"Assuredly the cheapness of Chinese labor is something to make a factory
owner's mouth water. The women reelers in the silk filatures of Shanghai
get from eight to eleven cents for eleven hours of work. But Shanghai is
dear; and, besides, everybody there complains that the laborers are
knowing and spoiled. In the steel works at Hanyang common labor gets three
dollars a month, just a tenth of what raw Slavs command in the South
Chicago iron-works. Skilled mechanics get from eight to twelve dollars. In
a coal-mine near Ichang a thousand miles up the Yangtse the coolie
receives one cent for carrying a 400-pound load of coal on his back down
to the river a mile and a half away. He averages ten loads a day but must
rest every other week. The miners get seven cents a day and found; that
is, a cent's worth of rice and meal. They work eleven hours a day up to
their knees in water, and all have swollen legs. After a week of it they
have to lie off a couple of days. No wonder the cost of this coal
(semi-bituminous) at the pit's mouth is only thirty-five cents a ton. At
Chengtu servants get a dollar and a half a month and find themselves.
Across Szechuan lusty coolies were glad to carry our chairs half a day for
four cents each. In Sianfu the common coolie gets three cents a day and
feeds himself, or eighty cents a month. Through Shansi roving harvesters
were earning from four to twelve cents a day, and farm-hands got five or
six dollars a year and their keep. Speaking broadly, in any part of the
empire, willing laborers of fair intelligence may be had in any number at
from eight to fifteen cents a day.
"With an ocean of such labor power to draw on, China would appear to be on
the eve of a manufacturing development that will act like a continental
upheaval in changing the trade map of the world. The impression is
deepened by the tale of industries that have already sprung up."[144]
Of course there is another side to the story. Low wages alone do not
insure cheap production. As Professor Ross remarks: "For all his native
capacity, the coolie will need a long course of schooling, industrial
training, and factory atmosphere before he inches up abreast of the German
or American working man."[145] In the technical and directing staffs there
is the same absence of the modern industrial spirit, resulting in chronic
mismanagement, while Chinese industry is further handicapped by
traditional evils like "squeeze," nepotism, lust for quick profits, and
incapacity for sustained business team-play. These failings are not
peculiar to China; they hamper the industrial development of other Asiatic
countries, notably India. Still, the way in which Japanese industry, with
all its faults, is perfecting both its technic and its methods shows that
these failings will be gradually overcome and indicates that within a
generation Asiatic industry will probably be sufficiently advanced to
supply at least the Asiatic home-markets with most of the staple
manufactures.
Thus it looks as though white manufactures will tend to be progressively
eliminated from Asiatic markets, even under conditions of absolutely free
competition. But it is a very moot point whether competition will remain
free--whether, on the contrary, white wares will not be increasingly
penalized. The Asiatic takes a keen interest in his industrial development
and consciously favors it even where whites are in political control. The
"swadeshi" movement in India is a good example, while the Chinese and
Egyptian boycotts of foreign as against native goods are further
instances in point. The Japanese have supplemented these spontaneous
popular movements by systematic governmental discrimination in favor of
Japanese products and the elimination of white competition from Japan and
its dependencies. This Japanese policy has been markedly successful, and
should Japan's present hegemony over China be perpetuated the white man
may soon find himself economically as well as politically expelled from
the whole Far East.
A decade ago Putnam Weale wrote warningly: "If China is forced, owing to
the short-sighted diplomacy of those for whom the question has really
supreme importance, to make common cause with Japan as a _pis aller_, then
it may be accepted as inevitable that in the course of time there will be
created a _mare clausum_, which will extend from the island of Saghalien
down to Cochin-China and Siam, including all the island-groups, and the
shores of which will be openly hostile to the white man....
"And since there will be no danger from the competition of white workmen,
but rather from the white man's ships, the white man's merchants, his
inventions, his produce--it will be these which will be subjected to
humiliating conditions.... It is not a very far cry from tariffs on goods
to tariffs and restrictions on foreign shipping, on foreign merchants, on
everything foreign--restrictions which by imposing vast and unequal
burdens on the activities of aliens will soon totally destroy such
activities.... What can very easily happen is that the federation of
eastern Asia and the yellow races will be finally arranged in such a
manner as to exclude the white man and his commerce more completely than
any one yet dreams of."[146]
This latter misfortune may be averted by concerted white action, but it is
difficult to see how the gradual elimination of white goods from Asiatic
markets as the result of successful Asiatic competition can be averted.
Certainly the stubborn maintenance of white political domination over a
rebellious Asia would be no remedy. That would merely intensify swadeshi
boycotts in the subject regions, while in the lands freed from white
political control it would further Japan's policy of excluding everything
white. If Asiatics resolve to buy their own products instead of ours we
may as well reconcile ourselves to the loss. Here again frank recognition
of the inevitable will enable us to take a much stronger and more
justifiable position on the larger world-aspects of the problem.
For Asia's industrial transformation is destined to cause momentous
reactions in other parts of the globe. If Asiatic industry really does get
on an efficient basis, its potentialities are so tremendous that it must
presently not only monopolize the home-markets but also seek to invade
white markets as well, thus presenting the white world with commercial and
economic problems as unwelcome as they will be novel.
Again, industrialization will in some respects aggravate Asiatic longings
for migration and dominion. In my opening pages I mentioned
industrialization as a probable reliever of population-pressure in Asiatic
countries by affording new livelihoods to the congested masses. This is
true. But, looking a trifle farther, we can also see that
industrialization would stimulate a further prodigious increase of
population. Consider the growth of Europe's population during the
nineteenth century under the stimulus of the industrial revolution, making
possible the existence in our industrialized Europe of three times as many
people as existed in the agricultural Europe of a hundred years ago. Why
should not a similar development occur in Asia? To-day Asia, though still
upon a basis as agricultural as eighteenth-century Europe, contains fully
900,000,000 people. That even a partially industrialized Asia might
support twice that number would (judging by the European precedent) be far
from improbable.
But this would mean vastly increased incentives to expansion--commercial,
political, racial--beyond the bounds of Asia. It would mean intensified
encroachments, not only upon areas of white settlement, but perhaps even
more upon non-Asiatic colored regions of white political control like
Africa and tropical America. Here again we see why the white man, however
conciliatory in Asia, must stand like flint in Africa and Latin America.
To allow the whole tropic belt clear round the world to pass into Asiatic
hands would practically spell white race-suicide.
Professor Pearson paints a truly terrible picture of the stagnation and
hopelessness which would ensue. "Let us conceive," he writes, "the leading
European nations to be stationary, while the black and yellow belt,
including China, Malaysia, India, central Africa, and tropical America, is
all teeming with life, developed by industrial enterprise, fairly well
administered by native governments, and owning the better part of the
carrying trade of the world. Can any one suppose that, in such a condition
of political society, the habitual temper of mind in Europe would not be
profoundly changed? Depression, hopelessness, a disregard of invention and
improvement, would replace the sanguine confidence of races that at
present are always panting for new worlds to conquer. Here and there, it
may be, the more adventurous would profit by the traditions of old
supremacy to get their services accepted in the new nations, but as a rule
there would be no outlet for energy, no future for statesmanship. The
despondency of the English people, when their dream of conquest in France
was dissipated, was attended with a complete decay of thought, with civil
war, and with a standing still, or perhaps a decline of population, and to
a less degree of wealth.... It is conceivable that our later world may
find itself deprived of all that is valued on earth, of the pageantry of
subject provinces and the reality of commerce, while it has neither a
disinterred literature to amuse it nor a vitalized religion to give it
spiritual strength."[147]
To sum up: The economic phase of the colored peril, though not yet a
major factor, must still be seriously reckoned with by forward-looking
statesmanship as something which will increasingly complicate the
relations of the white and non-white worlds. In fact, even to-day it tends
to intensify Asiatic desires for expansion, and thus exacerbates the
third, or migratory, phase of the colored peril, which is already upon us.
The question of Asiatic immigration is incomparably the greatest external
problem which faces the white world. Supreme phase of the colored peril,
it already presses, and is destined to press harder in the near future. It
infinitely transcends the peril of arms or markets, since it threatens not
merely our supremacy or prosperity but our very race-existence, the
wellsprings of being, the sacred heritage of our children.
That this is no overstatement of the issue, a bare recital of a few
biological axioms will show. We have already seen that nothing is more
_unstable_ than the racial make-up of a people, while, conversely, nothing
is more _unchanging_ than the racial divisions of mankind. We have seen
that true amalgamation is possible only between members of the same
race-stock, while in crossings between stocks even as relatively near
together as the main divisions of the white species, the race-characters
do not really fuse but remain distinct in the mixed offspring and tend
constantly to resort themselves as pure types by Mendelian inheritance.
Thus a country inhabited by a mixed population is really inhabited by
different races, one of which always tends to dominate and breed the
other out--the outbred strains being lost to the world forever.
Now, since the various human stocks differ widely in genetic worth,
nothing should be more carefully studied than the relative values of the
different strains in a population, and nothing should be more rigidly
scrutinized than new strains seeking to add themselves to a population,
because such new strains may hold simply incalculable potentialities for
good or for evil. The potential reproductive powers of any stock are
almost unlimited. Therefore the introduction of even a small group of
prolific and adaptable but racially undesirable aliens may result in their
subsequent prodigious multiplication, thereby either replacing better
native stocks or degrading these by the injection of inferior blood.
The admission of aliens should, indeed, be regarded just as solemnly as
the begetting of children, for the racial effect is essentially the same.
There is no more damning indictment of our lopsided, materialistic
civilization than the way in which, throughout the nineteenth century,
immigration was almost universally regarded, not from the racial, but from
the material point of view, the immigrant being viewed not as a creator of
race-values but as a mere vocal tool for the production of material
wealth.
Immigration is thus, from the racial standpoint, a form of procreation,
and like the more immediate form of procreation it may be either the
greatest blessing or the greatest curse. Human history is largely the
story of migrations, making now for good and now for ill. Migration
peopled Europe with superior white stocks displacing ape-like aborigines,
and settled North America with Nordics instead of nomad redskins. But
migration also bastardized the Roman world with Levantine mongrels,
drowned the West Indies under a black tide, and is filling our own land
with the sweepings of the European east and south.
Migration, like other natural movements, is of itself a blind force. It is
man's divine privilege as well as duty, having been vouchsafed knowledge
of the laws of life, to direct these blind forces, rejecting the bad and
selecting the good for the evolution of higher and nobler destinies.
Colored immigration is merely the most extreme phase of a phenomenon which
has already moulded prodigiously the development of the white world. In
fact, before discussing the specific problems of colored immigration, it
would be well to survey the effects of the immigration of various white
stocks. When we have grasped the momentous changes wrought by the
introduction of even relatively near-related and hence relatively
assimilable strains, we will be better able to realize the far more
momentous consequences which the introduction of colored stocks into white
lands would entail.
The racial effects of immigration are ably summarized by that lifelong
student of immigration problems, Prescott F. Hall. These effects are, he
truly remarks, "more far-reaching and potent than all others. The
government, the state, society, industry, the political party, social and
political ideals, all are concepts and conventions created by individual
men; and when individuals change these change with them. Recent
discoveries in biology show that in the long run heredity is far more
important than environment or education; for though the latter can
develop, it cannot create. They also show what can be done in a few years
in altering species, and in producing new ones with qualities hitherto
unknown, or unknown in combination."[148]
The ways in which admixture of alien blood can modify or even destroy the
very soul of a people have been fully analyzed both by biologists and by
social psychologists like Doctor Gustave Le Bon.[149] The way in which
wholesale immigration, even though mainly white, has already profoundly
modified American national character is succinctly stated by Mr. Eliot
Norton. "If," he writes, "one considers the American people from, say,
1775 to 1860, it is clear that a well-defined national character was in
process of formation. What variations there were, were all of the same
type, and these variations would have slowly grown less and less marked.
It needs little study to see of what great value to any body of men,
women, and children a national or racial type is. It furnishes a standard
of conduct by which any one can set his course. The world is a difficult
place in which to live, and to establish moral standards has been one of
the chief occupations of mankind. Without such standards, man feels as a
mariner without a compass. Religions, rules, laws, and customs are only
the national character in the form of standards of conduct. Now national
character can be formed only in a population which is stable. The repeated
introduction into a body of men of other men of different type or types
cannot but tend to prevent its formation. Thus the 19,000,000 of
immigrants that have landed have tended to break up the type which was
forming, and to make the formation of any other type difficult. Every
million more will only intensify this result, and the absence of a
national character is a loss to every man, woman, and child. It will show
itself in our religions, rules of conduct, in our laws, in our
customs."[150]
The vital necessity of restriction and selection in immigration to
conserve and build race-values is thus set forth by Mr. Hall:
"There is one aspect of immigration restriction in the various countries
which does not often receive much attention; namely, the possibility of
its use as a method of world-eugenics. Most persons think of migration in
terms of space--as the moving of a certain number of people from one part
of the earth's surface to another. Whereas the much more important aspect
of it is that of a functioning in time.
"This comes from two facts. The first is that the vacuum left in any
country by emigration is rapidly filled up through a rise in the
birth-rate.... The second fact is that immigration to any country of a
given stratum of population tends to sterilize all strata of higher social
and economic levels already in that country. So true is this that nearly
all students of the matter are agreed that the United States would have a
larger population to-day if there had been no immigration since 1820, and,
it is needless to add, a much more homogeneous population. As long as the
people of any community are relatively homogeneous, what differences of
wealth and social position there may be do not affect the birth-rate, or
do so only after a considerable time. But put into that community a number
of immigrants, inferior mentally, socially, and economically, and the
natives are unwilling to have their children associate with them in work
or social life. They then limit the number of their children in order to
give them the capital or education to enter occupations in which they will
not be brought into contact with the new arrivals. This result is quite
apparent in New England, where successive waves of immigration from lower
and lower levels have been coming in for eighty years. In the West, the
same New England stock has a much higher birth-rate, showing that its
fertility is in no way diminished. In the South, where until very recently
there was no immigration at all, and the only socially inferior race was
clearly separated by the accident of color, the birth-rate has remained
very high, and the very large families of the colonial period are even now
not uncommon.
"This is not to say that other causes do not contribute to lower the
birth-rate of a country, for that is an almost world-wide phenomenon. But
the desire to be separated from inferiors is as strong a motive to
birth-control as the desire for luxury or to ape one's economic superiors.
Races follow Gresham's law as to money: the poorer of two kinds in the
same place tends to supplant the better. Mark you, _supplant_, not drive
out. One of the most common fallacies is the idea that the natives whose
places are taken by the lower immigrants are 'driven up' to more
responsible positions. A few may be pushed up; more are driven to a new
locality, as happened in the mining regions; _but most are prevented from
coming into existence at all_.
"What is the result, then, of the migration of 1,000,000 persons of lower
level into a country where the average is of a higher level? Considering
the world as a whole, there are, after a few years, 2,000,000 persons of
the lower type in the world, and probably from 500,000 to 1,000,000 less
of the higher type. The proportion of lower to higher in the country from
which the migration goes may remain the same; but in the country receiving
it, it has _risen_. Is the world as a whole the gainer?
"Of course the euthenist[151] says at once that these immigrants are
improved. We may grant that, although the improvement is probably much
exaggerated. You cannot make bad stock into good by changing its meridian,
any more than you can turn a cart-horse into a hunter by putting it into a
fine stable, or make a mongrel into a fine dog by teaching it tricks. But
such improvement as there is involves time, expense, and trouble; and,
when it is done, has anything been gained? Will any one say that the races
that have supplanted the old Nordic stock in New England are any better,
or as good, as the descendants of that stock would have been if their
birth-rate had not been lowered?
"Further, in addition to the purely biological aspects of the matter,
there are certain psychological ones. Although a cosmopolitan atmosphere
furnishes a certain freedom in which strong congenital talents can
develop, it is a question whether as many are not injured as helped by
this. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that for the
production of great men, a certain homogeneity of environment is
necessary. The reason of this is very simple. In a homogeneous community,
opinions on a large number of matters are fixed. The individual does not
have to attend to such things, but is free to go ahead on some special
line of his own, to concentrate to his limit on his work, even though that
work be fighting the common opinions.
"But in a community of many races, there is either cross-breeding or there
is not. If there is, the children of such cross-breeding are liable to
inherit two souls, two temperaments, two sets of opinions, with the
result in many cases that they are unable to think or act strongly and
consistently in any direction. The classic examples are Cuba, Mexico, and
Brazil. On the other hand, if there is no cross-breeding, the diversity
exists in the original races, and in a community full of diverse ideals of
all kinds much of the energy of the higher type of man is dissipated in
two ways. First, in the intellectual field there is much more doubt about
everything, and he tends to weigh, discuss, and agitate many more
subjects, in order to arrive at a conclusion amid the opposing views.
Second, in practical affairs, much time and strength have to be devoted to
keeping things going along old lines, which could have been spent in new
research and development. In how many of our large cities to-day are men
of the highest type spending their whole time fighting, often in vain, to
maintain standards of honesty, decency, and order, and in trying to
compose the various ethnic elements, who should be free to build new
structures upon the old!
"The moral seems to be this: Eugenics among individuals is encouraging the
propagation of the fit, and limiting or preventing the multiplication of
the unfit. World-eugenics is doing precisely the same thing as to races
considered as wholes. Immigration restriction is a species of segregation
on a large scale, by which inferior stocks can be prevented from both
diluting and supplanting good stocks. Just as we isolate bacterial
invasions, and starve out the bacteria by limiting the area and amount of
their food-supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its
native habitat, where its own multiplication in a limited area will, as
with all organisms, eventually limit its numbers and therefore its
influence. On the other hand, the superior races, more self-limiting than
the others, with the benefits of more space and nourishment will tend to
still higher levels.
"This result is not merely a selfish benefit to the higher races, but a
good to the world as a whole. The object is to produce the greatest number
of those fittest not 'for survival' merely, but fittest for all purposes.
The lower types among men progress, so far as their racial inheritance
allows them to, chiefly by imitation and emulation. The presence of the
highest development and the highest institutions among any race is a
distinct benefit to all the others. It is a gift of _psychological
environment_ to any one capable of appreciation."[152]
The impossibility of any advanced and prosperous community maintaining its
social standards and handing them down to its posterity in these days of
cheap and rapid transportation except by restrictions upon immigrations is
thus explained by Professor Ross: "Now that cheap travel stirs the social
deeps and far-beckoning opportunity fills the steerage, immigration
becomes ever more serious to the people that hopes to rid itself at least
of slums, 'masses,' and 'submerged.' What is the good of practising
prudence in the family if hungry strangers may crowd in and occupy at the
banquet table of life the places reserved for its children? Shall it, in
order to relieve the teeming lands of their unemployed, abide in the pit
of wolfish competition and renounce the fair prospect of growth in
suavity, comfort, and refinement? If not, then the low-pressure society
must not only slam its doors upon the indraft, but must double-lock them
with forts and iron-clads, lest they be burst open by assault from some
quarter where 'cannon food' is cheap."[153]
These admirable summaries of the immigration problem in its world-aspect
are strikingly illustrated by our own country, which may be considered as
the leading, if not the "horrible," example. Probably few persons fully
appreciate what magnificent racial treasures America possessed at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. The colonial stock was perhaps the
finest that nature had evolved since the classic Greeks. It was the very
pick of the Nordics of the British Isles and adjacent regions of the
European continent--picked at a time when those countries were more Nordic
than now, since the industrial revolution had not yet begun and the
consequent resurgence of the Mediterranean and Alpine elements had not
taken place.
The immigrants of colonial times were largely exiles for conscience's
sake, while the very process of migration was so difficult and hazardous
that only persons of courage, initiative, and strong will-power would
voluntarily face the long voyage overseas to a life of struggle in an
untamed wilderness haunted by ferocious savages.
Thus the entire process of colonial settlement was one continuous, drastic
cycle of eugenic selection. Only the racially fit ordinarily came, while
the few unfit who did come were mostly weeded out by the exacting
requirements of early American life.
The eugenic results were magnificent. As Madison Grant well says: "Nature
had vouchsafed to the Americans of a century ago the greatest opportunity
in recorded history to produce in the isolation of a continent a powerful
and racially homogeneous people, and had provided for the experiment a
pure race of one of the most gifted and vigorous stocks on earth, a stock
free from the diseases, physical and moral, which have again and again
sapped the vigor of the older lands. Our grandfathers threw away this
opportunity in the blissful ignorance of national childhood and
inexperience."[154] The number of great names which America produced at
the beginning of its national life shows the high level of ability
possessed by this relatively small people (only about 3,000,000 whites in
1790). With our hundred-odd millions we have no such output of genius
to-day.
The opening decades of the nineteenth century seemed to portend for
America the most glorious of futures. For nearly seventy years after the
Revolution, immigration was small, and during that long period of ethnic
isolation the colonial stock, unperturbed by alien influences, adjusted
its cultural differences and began to display the traits of a genuine new
type, harmonious in basic homogeneity and incalculably rich in racial
promise. The general level of ability continued high and the output of
talent remained extraordinarily large. Perhaps the best feature of the
nascent "native American" race was its strong idealism. Despite the
materialistic blight which was then creeping over the white world, the
native American displayed characteristics more reminiscent of his
Elizabethan forebears than of the materialistic Hanoverian Englishman. It
was a wonderful time--and it was only the dawn!
But the full day of that wondrous dawning never came. In the late forties
of the nineteenth century the first waves of the modern immigrant tide
began breaking on our shores, and the tide swelled to a veritable deluge
which never slackened till temporarily restrained by the late war. This
immigration, to be sure, first came mainly from northern Europe, was thus
largely composed of kindred stocks, and contributed many valuable
elements. Only during the last thirty years have we been deluged by the
truly alien hordes of the European east and south. But, even at its best,
the immigrant tide could not measure up to the colonial stock _which it
displaced_, not reinforced, while latterly it became a menace to the very
existence of our race, ideals, and institutions. All our slowly acquired
balance--physical, mental, and spiritual--has been upset, and we to-day
flounder in a veritable Serbonian bog, painfully trying to regain the
solid ground on which our grandsires confidently stood.
The dangerous fallacy in that short-sighted idealism which seeks to make
America the haven of refuge for the poor and oppressed of all lands, and
its evil effects not only on America but on the rest of the world as well,
has been convincingly exposed by Professor Ross. He has scant patience
with those social "uplifters" whose sympathy with the visible alien at the
gate is so keen that they have no feeling for the _invisible_ children of
_our_ poor who will find the chances gone, nor for those at the gate of
the to-be, who might have been born, but will not be.
"I am not of those," he writes, "who consider humanity and forget the
nation, who pity the living but not the unborn. To me, those who are to
come after us stretch forth beseeching hands as well as do the masses on
the other side of the globe. Nor do I regard America as something to be
spent quickly and cheerfully for the benefit of pent-up millions in the
backward lands. What if we become crowded without their ceasing to be so?
I regard it (America) as a nation whose future may be of unspeakable value
to the rest of mankind, provided that the easier conditions of life here
be made permanent by high standards of living, institutions, and ideals,
which finally may be appropriated by all men. We could have helped the
Chinese a little by letting their surplus millions swarm in upon us a
generation ago; but we have helped them infinitely more by protecting our
standards and having something worth their copying when the time
came."[155]
The perturbing influence of recent immigration must vex American life for
many decades. Even if laws are passed to-morrow so drastic as to shut out
permanently the influx of undesirable elements, it will yet take several
generations before the combined action of assimilation and elimination
shall have restabilized our population and evolved a new type-norm
approaching in fixity that which was on the point of crystallizing
three-quarters of a century ago.
The biologist Humphrey thus punctures the "melting-pot" delusion: "Our
'melting-pot,'" he writes, "would not give us in a thousand years what
enthusiasts expect of it--a _fusing_ of all our various racial elements
into a new type which shall be the true American. It _will_ give us for
many generations a perplexing diversity in ancestry, and since our
successors must reach back into their ancestry for characteristics, this
diversity will increase the uncertainty of their inheritances. They will
inherit no stable blended character, because there is no such thing. They
will inherit from a mixture of unlike characteristics contributed by
unlike peoples, and in their inheritance they will have certain of these
characteristics in full identity, while certain others they will not have
at all."[156]
Thus, under even the most favorable circumstances, we are in for
generations of racial readjustment--an immense travail, essentially
needless, since the final product will probably not measure up to the
colonial standard. We will probably never (unless we adopt positive
eugenic measures) be the race we might have been if America had been
reserved for the descendants of the picked Nordics of colonial times.
But that is no reason for folding our hands in despairing inaction. On the
contrary, we should be up and doing, for though some of our race-heritage
has been lost, more yet remains. We can still be a very great people--if
we will it so. Heaven be praised, the colonial stock was immensely
prolific before the alien tide wrought its sterilizing havoc. Even to-day
nearly one-half of our population is of the old blood, while many millions
of the immigrant stock are sound in quality and assimilable in kind.
Only--the immigrant tide must at all costs be stopped and America given a
chance to stabilize her ethnic being. It is the old story of the sibylline
books. Some, to be sure, are ashes of the dead past; all the more should
we conserve the precious volumes which remain.
One fact should be clearly understood: If America is not true to her own
race-soul, she will inevitably lose it, and the brightest star that has
appeared since Hellas will fall like a meteor from the human sky, its
brilliant radiance fading into the night. "We Americans," says Madison
Grant, "must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our
social development during the past century and the maudlin sentimentalism
that has made America 'an asylum for the oppressed,' are sweeping the
nation toward a racial abyss. If the melting-pot is allowed to boil
without control and we continue to follow our national motto and
deliberately blind ourselves to 'all distinctions of race, creed, or
color,' the type of native American of colonial descent will become as
extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles and the Viking of the days
of Rollo."[157]
And let us not lay any sacrificial unction to our souls. If we cheat our
country and the world of the splendid promise of American life, we shall
have no one to blame but ourselves, and we shall deserve, not pity, but
contempt. As Professor Ross well puts it: "A people that has no more
respect for its ancestors and no more pride of race than this deserves the
extinction that surely awaits it."[158]
This extended discussion of the evil effects of even white immigration
has, in my opinion, been necessary in order to get a proper perspective
for viewing the problem of colored immigration. For it is perfectly
obvious that if the influx of inferior kindred stocks is bad, the influx
of wholly alien stocks is infinitely worse. When we see the damage wrought
in America, for example, by the coming of persons who, after all, belong
mostly to branches of the white race and who nearly all possess the basic
ideals of white civilization, we can grasp the incalculably greater damage
which would be wrought by the coming of persons wholly alien in blood and
possessed of idealistic and cultural backgrounds absolutely different from
ours. If the white immigrant can gravely disorder the national life, it is
not too much to say that the colored immigrant would doom it to certain
death.
This doom would be all the more certain because of the enormous potential
volume of colored immigration. Beside it, the white immigrant tide of the
past century would pale into insignificance. Leaving all other parts of
the colored world out of the present discussion, three Asiatic
countries--China, Japan, and India--together have a population of nearly
800,000,000. That is practically twice the population of Europe--the
source of white immigration. And the vast majority of these 800,000,000
Asiatics are potential immigrants into white territories. Their standards
of living are so inconceivably low, their congestion is so painful, and
their consequent desire for relief so keen that the high-standard,
relatively empty white world seems to them a perfect paradise. Only the
barrier of the white man's veto has prevented a perfect deluge of colored
men into white lands, and even as it is the desperate seekers after fuller
life have crept and crawled through every crevice in that barrier, until
even these advance-guards to-day constitute serious local problems along
the white world's race-frontiers.
The simple truth of the matter is this: A mighty problem--a planet-wide
problem--confronts us to-day and will increasingly confront us in the days
to come. Says Putnam Weale: "A struggle has begun between the white man
and all the other men of the world to decide whether non-white men--that
is, yellow men, or brown men, or black men--may or may not invade the
white man's countries in order there to gain their livelihood. The
standard of living being low in the lands of colored men and high in the
lands of the white man, it has naturally followed that it has been in the
highest degree attractive for men of color during the past few decades to
proceed to regions where their labor is rewarded on a scale far above
their actual requirements--that is, on the white man's scale. This simple
economic truth creates the inevitable contest which has for years filled
all the countries bordering on the Pacific with great dread; and which, in
spite of the temporary truce which the so-called 'Exclusion Policy' has
now enforced, will go much farther than it has yet gone."[159]
The world-wide significance of colored immigration and the momentous
conflicts which it will probably provoke are ably visualized by Professor
Ross.
"The rush of developments," he writes, "makes it certain that the vision
of a globe 'lapped in universal law' is premature. If the seers of the
mid-century who looked for the speedy triumph of free trade had read their
Malthus aright, they might have anticipated the tariff barriers that have
arisen on all hands within the last thirty years. So, to-day one needs no
prophet's mantle to foresee that presently the world will be cut up with
immigration barriers which will never be levelled until the intelligent
accommodation of numbers to resources has greatly equalized
population-pressure all over the globe.... Dams against the color races,
with spillways of course for students, merchants, and travellers, will
presently enclose the white man's world. Within this area minor dams will
protect the high wages of the less prolific peoples against the surplus
labor of the more prolific.
"Assuredly, every small-family nation will try to raise such a dam, and
every big-family nation will try to break it down. The outlook for peace
and disarmament is, therefore, far from bright. One needs but compare the
population-pressures in France, Germany, Russia, and Japan to realize
that, even to-day, the real enemy of the dove of peace is not the eagle of
pride or the vulture of greed, but the stork!
"The great point of doubt in birth restriction is the ability of the
Western nations to retain control of the vast African, Australasian, and
South American areas they have staked out as preserves to be peopled at
their leisure with the diminishing overflow of their population. If
underbreeding should leave them without the military strength that alone
can defend their far-flung frontiers in the southern hemisphere, those
huge underdeveloped regions will assuredly be filled with the children of
the brown and the yellow races."[160]
Thus, white men, of whatever country and however far removed from personal
contact with colored competitors, must realize that the question of
colored immigration vitally concerns every white man, woman, and child;
because nowhere--_absolutely nowhere_--can white labor compete on equal
terms with colored immigrant labor. The grim truth is that there are
enough hard-working colored men to swamp the whole white world.
No palliatives will serve to mitigate the ultimate issue, for if the white
race should to-day surrender enough of its frontiers to ease the existing
colored population-pressure, so quickly would these surrendered regions be
swamped, and so rapidly would the fast-breeding colored races fill the
homeland gaps, that in a very short time the diminished white world would
be faced with an even louder colored clamor for admittance--backed by an
increased power to enforce the colored will.
The profoundly destructive effects of colored competition upon white
standards of labor and living has long been admitted by all candid
students of the problem. So warm a champion of Asiatics as Mr. Hyndman
acknowledges that "the white workers cannot hold their own permanently
against Chinese competition in the labor market. The lower standard of
life, the greater persistence, the superior education of the Chinese will
beat them, and will continue to beat them."[161]
Wherever the white man has been exposed to colored competition,
particularly Asiatic competition, the story is the same. Says the
Australian Professor Pearson: "No one in California or Australia, where
the effects of Chinese competition have been studied, has, I believe, the
smallest doubt that Chinese laborers, if allowed to come in freely, could
starve all the white men in either country out of it, or force them to
submit to harder work and a much lower standard of wages."[162]
And a South African, writing of the effects of Hindu immigration into
Natal, remarks in similar vein: "The condition of South Africa--especially
of Natal--is a warning to other lands to bar Asiatic immigrants.... Both
economically and socially the presence of a large Oriental population is
bad. The Asiatics either force out the white workers, or compel the latter
to live down to the Asiatic level. There must be a marked deterioration
amongst the white working classes, which renders useless a great deal of
the effort made in educational work. The white population is educated and
trained according to the best ideas of the highest form of Western
civilization--and has to compete for a livelihood against Asiatics! In
South Africa this competition is driving out the white working class,
because the average European cannot live down to the Asiatic level--and if
it is essential that the European must do so, for the sake of his own
happiness, do not educate him up to better things. If cheapness is the
only consideration, if low wages are to come before everything else, then
it is not only waste of money, but absolute cruelty, to inspire in the
white working classes tastes and aspirations which it is impossible for
them to realize. To meet Asiatic competition squarely, it would be
necessary to train the white children to be Asiatics. Even the
pro-Orientals would hardly advocate this."[163]
The lines just quoted squarely counter the "survival of the fittest" plea
so often made by Asiatic propagandists for colored immigration. The
argument runs that, since the Oriental laborer is able to underbid the
white laborer, the Oriental is the "fittest" and should therefore be
allowed to supplant the white man in the interests of human progress. This
is of course merely clever use of the well-known fallacy which confuses
the terms "fittest" and "best." The idea that, because a certain human
type "fits" in certain ways a particular environment (often an unhealthy,
man-made social environment), it should be allowed to drive out another
type endowed with much richer potentialities for the highest forms of
human evolution, is a sophistry as absurd as it is dangerous.
Professor Ross puts the matter very aptly when he remarks concerning
Chinese immigration: "The competition of white laborer and yellow is not
so simple a test of human worth as some may imagine. Under good conditions
the white man can best the yellow man in turning off work. But under bad
conditions the yellow man can best the white man, because he can better
endure spoiled food, poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt,
discomfort, and microbes. Reilly can _outdo_ Ah-San, but Ah-San can
_underlive_ Reilly. Ah-San cannot take away Reilly's job as being a better
workman; but because he can live and do some work at a wage on which
Reilly cannot keep himself fit to work at all, three or four Ah-Sans can
take Reilly's job from him. And they will do it, too, unless they are
barred out of the market where Reilly is selling his labor. Reilly's
endeavor to exclude Ah-San from his labor market is not the case of a man
dreading to pit himself on equal terms against a better man. Indeed, it is
not quite so simple and selfish and narrow-minded as all that. It is a
case of a man fitted to get the most out of good conditions refusing to
yield his place to a weaker man able to withstand bad conditions."[164]
All this is no disparagement of the Asiatic. He is perfectly justified in
trying to win broader opportunities in white lands. But we whites are
equally justified in keeping these opportunities for ourselves and our
children. The hard facts are that there is not enough for both; that when
the enormous outward thrust of colored population-pressure bursts into a
white land _it cannot let live_, but automatically crushes the white man
out--first the white laborer, then the white merchant, lastly the white
aristocrat; until every vestige of white has gone from that land forever.
This inexorable process is thus described by an Australian: "The colored
races become agencies of economic disturbance and social degradation. They
sap and destroy the upward tendencies of the poorer whites. The latter,
instead of always having something better to look at and strive after,
have a lower standard of living, health, and cleanliness set before them,
and the results are disastrous. They sink to the lower level of the
Asiatics, and the degrading tendency proceeds upward by saturation,
affecting several grades of society.... There is an insidious, yet
irresistible, process of social degradation. The colored race does not
intentionally, or even consciously, lower the European; it simply happens
so, by virtue of a natural law which neither race can control. As debased
coinage will drive out good currency, so a lowered standard of living will
inexorably spread until its effects are universally felt."[165]
It all comes down to a question of self-preservation. And, despite what
sentimentalists may say, self-preservation _is_ the first law of nature.
To love one's cultural, idealistic, and racial heritage; to swear to pass
that heritage unimpaired to one's children; to fight, and, if need be, to
die in its defense: all this is eternally right and proper, and no amount
of casuistry or sentimentality can alter that unalterable truth. An
Englishman put the thing in a nutshell when he wrote: "Asiatic immigration
is not a question of sentiment, but of sheer existence. The whole problem
is summed up in Lafcadio Hearn's pregnant phrase: 'The East can
_underlive_ the West.'"[166]
Rigorous exclusion of colored immigrants is thus vitally necessary for the
white peoples. Unfortunately, this exclusion policy will not be easily
maintained. Colored population-pressure is insistent and increasing, while
the matter is still further complicated by the fact that, while no white
_community_ can gain by colored immigration, white
_individuals_--employers of labor--may be great gainers and hence often
tend to put private interest above racial duty. Barring a handful of
sincere but misguided cosmopolitan enthusiasts, it is unscrupulous
business interests which are behind every white proposal to relax the
exclusion laws protecting white areas.
In fairness to these business interests, however, let us realize their
great temptations. To the average employer, especially in the newer areas
of white settlement where white labor is scarce and dictatorial, what
could be more enticing than the vision of a boundless supply of cheap and
eager colored labor?
Consider this Californian appraisement of the Chinese coolie: "The Chinese
coolie is the ideal industrial machine, the perfect human ox. He will
transform less food into more work, with less administrative friction,
than any other creature. Even now, when the scarcity of Chinese labor and
the consequent rise in wages have eliminated the question of cheapness,
the Chinese have still the advantage over all other servile labor in
convenience and efficiency. They are patient, docile, industrious, and
above all 'honest' in the business sense that they keep their contracts.
Also, they cost nothing but money. Any other sort of labor costs human
effort and worry, in addition to the money. But Chinese labor can be
bought like any other commodity, at so much a dozen or a hundred. The
Chinese contractor delivers the agreed number of men, at the agreed time
and place, for the agreed price, and if any one should drop out he finds
another in his place. The men board and lodge themselves, and when the
work is done they disappear from the employer's ken until again needed.
The entire transaction consists in paying the Chinese contractor an agreed
number of dollars for an agreed result. This elimination of the human
element reduces the labor problem to something the employer can
understand. The Chinese labor-machine, from his standpoint, is
perfect."[167]
What is true of the Chinese is true to a somewhat lesser extent of all
"coolie" labor. Hence, once introduced into a white country, it becomes
immensely popular--among employers. How it was working out in South
Africa, before the exclusion acts there, is clearly explained in the
following lines: "The experience of South Africa is that when once Asiatic
labor is admitted, the tendency is for it to grow. One manufacturer
secures it and is able to cut prices to such an extent that the other
manufacturers are forced either to employ Asiatics also or to reduce white
wages to the Asiatic level. Oriental labor is something which does not
stand still. The taste for it grows. A party springs up financially
interested in increasing it. In Natal to-day the suggestion that Indian
labor should no longer be imported is met by an outcry from the planters,
the farmers, and landowners, and a certain number of manufacturers, that
industries and agriculture will be ruined. So the coolie ships continue to
arrive at Durban, and Natal becomes more and more a land of black and
brown people and less a land of white people. Instead of becoming a Canada
or New Zealand, it is becoming a Trinidad or Cuba. Instead of white
settlers, there are brown settlers.... The working-class white population
has to go, as it is going in Natal. The country becomes a country of white
landlords and supervisors controlling a horde of Asiatics. It does not
produce a nation or a free people. It becomes what in the old days of
English colonization was called a 'plantation.'"[168]
All this gives a clearer idea of the difficulties involved in a successful
guarding of the gates. But it also confirms the conviction that the gates
must be strictly guarded. If anything further were needed to reinforce
that conviction it should be the present state of those white outposts
where the gates have been left ajar.
Hawaii is a good example. This mid-Pacific archipelago was brought under
white control by masterful American Nordics, who established Anglo-Saxon
institutions and taught the natives the rudiments of Anglo-Saxon
civilization. The native Hawaiians, like the other Polynesian races, could
not stand the pressure of white civilization, and withered away. But the
white oligarchy which controlled the islands determined to turn their
marvellous fertility to immediate profit. Labor was imported from the ends
of the earth, the sole test being working ability without regard to race
or color. There followed a great influx of Asiatic labor--at first Chinese
until annexation to the United States brought Hawaii under our Chinese
exclusion laws; later on Filipinos, Koreans, and, above all, Japanese.
The results are highly instructive. These Asiatics arrived as agricultural
laborers to work on the plantations. But they did not stay there. Saving
their wages, they pushed vigorously into all the middle walks of life. The
Hawaiian fisherman and the American artisan or shopkeeper were alike
ousted by ruthless undercutting. To-day the American mechanic, the
American storekeeper, the American farmer, even the American contractor,
is a rare bird indeed, while Japanese corporations are buying up the
finest plantations and growing the finest pineapples and sugar. Fully half
the population of the islands is Japanese, while the Americans are being
literally encysted as a small and dwindling aristocracy. In 1917 the
births of the two races were: American, 295; Japanese, 5,000! Comment is
superfluous.
Clear round the globe, the island of Mauritius, the half-way house between
Asia and Africa, tells the same tale. Originally settled by Europeans,
mostly French, Mauritius imported negroes from Africa to work its rich
soil. This at once made impossible the existence of a white laboring
class, though the upper, middle, and artisan classes remained unaffected
by the economically backward blacks. A hundred years ago one-third of the
population were whites. But after the abolition of slavery the negroes
quit work, and Asiatics were imported to take their place. The upshot was
that the whites were presently swamped beneath the Asiatic tide--here
mostly Hindus. To-day the Hindus alone form more than two-thirds of the
whole population, the whites numbering less than one-tenth. Indeed, the
very outward aspect of the island is changing. The old French landmarks
are going, and the fabled land of "Paul and Virginia" is becoming a bit of
Hindustan, with a Chinese fringe. Even Port Louis, the capital town, has
mostly passed from white to Indian or Chinese hands.
Now what do these two world-sundered cases mean? They mean, as an English
writer justly remarks, "that under the British flag Mauritius has become
an outpost of Asia, just as Hawaii is another such and under the Stars and
Stripes."[169] And, of course, there is Natal, already mentioned, which,
at the moment when the recent South African Exclusion Act stayed the
Hindu tide, had not only been partially transformed into an Asiatic land,
but was fast becoming a centre of Asiatic radiation all over South Africa.
With such grim warnings before their eyes, it is not strange that the
lusty young Anglo-Saxon communities bordering the Pacific--Australia, New
Zealand, British Columbia, and our own "coast"--have one and all set their
faces like flint against the Oriental and have emblazoned across their
portals the legend: "All White." Nothing is more striking than the
instinctive and instantaneous solidarity which binds together Australians
and Afrikanders, Californians and Canadians, into a "sacred union" at the
mere whisper of Asiatic immigration.
Everywhere the slogan is the same. "The 'White Australia' idea," cries an
antipodean writer, "is not a political theory. It is a gospel. It counts
for more than religion; for more than flag, because the flag waves over
all kinds of races; for more than the empire, for the empire is mostly
black, or brown or yellow; is largely heathen, largely polygamous, partly
cannibal. In fact, the White Australia doctrine is based on the necessity
for choosing between national existence and national suicide."[170] "White
Australia!" writes another Australian in similar vein. "Australians of all
classes and political affiliations regard the policy much as Americans
regard the Constitution. It is their most articulate article of faith.
The reason is not far to seek.... Australian civilization is little more
than a partial fringe round the continental coastline of 12,210 miles. The
coast and its hinterlands are settled and developed, although not
completely for the entire circumference; in the centre of the country lie
the apparently illimitable wastes of the Never-Never Land, occupied
entirely by scrub, snakes, sand, and blackfellows. The almost manless
regions of the island-continent are a terrible menace. It is impossible to
police at all adequately such an enormous area. And the peoples of Asia,
beating at the bars that confine them, rousing at last from their age-long
slumber, are chafing at the restraints imposed upon their free entry into
and settlement of such uninhabited, undeveloped lands."[171]
So the Australians, 5,000,000 whites in a far-off continent as large as
the United States, defy clamoring Asia and swear to keep Australia a white
man's land. Says Professor Pearson: "We are guarding the last part of the
world in which the higher races can increase and live freely, for the
higher civilization. We are denying the yellow race nothing but what it
can find in the home of its birth, or in countries like the Indian
Archipelago, where the white man can never live except as an exotic."[172]
So Australia has raised drastic immigration barriers conceived on the
lines laid down by Sir Henry Parkes many years ago: "It is our duty to
preserve the type of the British nation, and we ought not for any
consideration whatever to admit any element that would detract from, or in
any appreciable degree lower, that admirable type of nationality. We
should not encourage or admit amongst us any class of persons whatever
whom we are not prepared to advance to all our franchises, to all our
privileges as citizens, and all our social rights, including the right of
marriage. I maintain that no class of persons should be admitted here who
cannot come amongst us, take up all our rights, perform on a ground of
equality all our duties, and share in our august and lofty work of
founding a free nation."[173]
From Canada rises an equally uncompromising determination. Listen to Mr.
Vrooman, a high official of British Columbia: "Our province is becoming
Orientalized, and one of our most important questions is whether it is to
remain a British province or become an Oriental colony--for we have three
races demanding seats in our drawing-room, as well as places at our
board--the Japanese, Chinese, and East Indian."[174] And a well-known
Canadian writer, Miss Laut, thus defines the issue: "If the resident Hindu
had a vote--and as a British subject, why not?--and if he could break down
the immigration exclusion act, he could outvote the native-born Canadian
in ten years. In Canada are 5,500,000 native-born, 2,000,000 aliens. In
India are hundreds of millions breaking the dikes of their own natural
barriers and ready to flood any open land. Take down the barriers on the
Pacific coast, and there would be 10,000,000 Hindus in Canada in ten
years."[175]
Our Pacific coast takes precisely the same attitude. Says Chester H.
Rowell, a California writer: "There is no right way to solve a race
problem except to stop it before it begins.... The Pacific coast is the
frontier of the white man's world, the culmination of the westward
migration which is the white man's whole history. It will remain the
frontier so long as we regard it as such; no longer. Unless it is
maintained there, there is no other line at which it can be maintained
without more effort than American government and American civilization are
able to sustain. The multitudes of Asia are awake, after their long sleep,
as the multitudes of Europe were when our present flood of immigration
began. We know what could happen, on the Asiatic side, by what did happen
and is happening on the European side. On that side we have survived....
But against Asiatic immigration we could not survive. The numbers who
would come would be greater than we could encyst, and the races who would
come are those which we could never absorb. The permanence not merely of
American civilization, but of the white race on this continent, depends on
our not doing on the Pacific side what we have done on the Atlantic
coast."[176]
Says another Californian, Justice Burnett: "The Pacific States comprise an
empire of vast potentialities and capable of supporting a population of
many millions. Those now living there propose that it shall continue to be
a home for them and their children, and that they shall not be overwhelmed
and driven eastward by an ever-increasing yellow and brown flood."[177]
All "economic" arguments are summarily put aside. "They say," writes
another Californian, "that our fruit-orchards, mines, and seed-farms
cannot be worked without them (Oriental laborers). It were better that
they never be developed than that our white laborers be degraded and
driven from the soil. The same arguments were used a century and more ago
to justify the importation of African labor.... As it is now, no
self-respecting white laborer will work beside the Mongolian upon any
terms. The proposition, whether we shall have white or yellow labor on the
Pacific coast, must soon be settled, for we cannot have both. If the
Mongolian is permitted to occupy the land, the white laborer from east of
the Rockies will not come here--he will shun California as he would a
pestilence. And who can blame him?"[178]
The middle as well as the working class is imperilled by any large number
of Orientals, for "The presence of the Japanese trader means that the
white man must either go out of business or abandon his standard of
comfort and sink to the level of the Asiatic, who will sleep under his
counter and subsist upon food that would mean starvation to his white
rival."[179]
Indeed, Californian assertions that Oriental immigration menaces, not
merely the coast, but the whole continent, seem well taken. This view was
officially indorsed by Mr. Caminetti, Commissioner-General of Immigration,
who testified before a Congressional committee some years ago: "Asiatic
immigration is a menace to the whole country, and particularly to the
Pacific coast. The danger is general. No part of the United States is
immune. The Chinese are now spread over the entire country, and the
Japanese want to encroach. The Chinese have become so acclimated that they
can prosper in any part of our country.... I would have a law to register
the Asiatic laborers who come into the country. It is impossible to
protect ourselves from persons who come in surreptitiously."[180]
Fortunately, the majority of thinking Americans are to-day convinced that
Oriental immigration must not be tolerated. Most of our leading men have
so expressed themselves. For example, Woodrow Wilson, during his first
presidential campaign, declared on May 3, 1912: "In the matter of Chinese
and Japanese coolie immigration, I stand for the national policy of
exclusion. The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We
cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the
Caucasian race. Their lower standard of living as laborers will crowd out
the white agriculturist and is in other fields a most serious industrial
menace. The success of free democratic institutions demands of our people
education, intelligence, and patriotism, and the State should protect them
against unjust and impossible competition. Remunerative labor is the basis
of contentment. Democracy rests on the equality of the citizen. Oriental
coolieism will give us another race-problem to solve and surely we have
had our lesson."[181]
The necessity for rigid Oriental exclusion is nowhere better exemplified
than by the alarm felt to-day in California by the extraordinarily high
birth-rate of its Japanese residents. There are probably not over 150,000
Japanese in the whole United States, their numbers being kept down by the
"Gentlemen's Agreement" entered into by the Japanese and American
Governments. But, few though they are, they bring in their women--and
these women bring many children into the world. The California Japanese
settle in compact agricultural colonies, which so teem with babies that a
leading California organ, the Los Angeles _Times_, thus seriously
discusses the matter:
"There may have been a time when an anti-Japanese land bill would have
limited Japanese immigration. But such a law would be impotent now to keep
native Japanese from possessing themselves of the choicest agricultural
and horticultural land in California. For there are now more than 30,000
children in the State of Japanese parentage, native-born; they possess all
the rights of leasing and ownership held by white children born here....
The birth statistics seem to prove that the danger is not from the
Japanese soldiers, but from the picture brides. The fruitfulness of those
brides is almost uncanny.... Here is a Japanese problem of sufficient
gravity to merit serious consideration. We are threatened with an
over-production of Japanese children. First come the men, then the picture
brides, then the families. If California is to be preserved for the next
generation as a 'white man's country' there must be some movement started
that will restrict the Japanese birth-rate in California. When a condition
is reached in which two children of Japanese parentage are born in some
districts for every white child, it is about time something else was done
than making speeches about it in the American Senate.... If the same
present birth-ratio were maintained for the next ten years, there would be
150,000 children of Japanese descent born in California in 1929 and but
40,000 white children. And in 1949 the majority of the population of
California would be Japanese, ruling the State."[182]
The alarm of our California contemporary may, in this particular instance,
be exaggerated. Nevertheless, when we remember the practically unlimited
expansive possibilities of even small human groups under favorable
conditions, the picture drawn contains no features inherently impossible
of realization. What is absolutely certain is that any wholesale Oriental
influx would inevitably doom the whites, first of the Pacific coast, and
later of the whole United States, to social sterilization and ultimate
racial extinction.
Thus all those newer regions of the white world won by the white expansion
of the last four centuries are alike menaced by the colored migration
peril; whether these regions be under-developed, under-populated frontier
marches like Australia and British Columbia, or older and better-populated
countries like the United States.
And let not Europe, the white brood-land, the heart of the white world,
think itself immune. In the last analysis, the self-same peril menaces it
too. This has long been recognized by far-sighted men. For many years
economists and sociologists have discussed the possibility of Asiatic
immigration into Europe. Low as wages and living standards are in many
European countries, they are yet far higher than in the congested East,
while the rapid progress of social betterment throughout Europe must
further widen the gap and make the white continent seem a more and more
desirable haven for the swarming, black-haired bread-seekers of China,
India, and Japan.
Indeed, a few observers of modern conditions have come to the conclusion
that this invasion of Europe by Asiatic labor is unescapable, and they
have drawn the most pessimistic conclusions. For example, more than a
decade ago an English writer asserted gloomily: "No level-headed thinker
can imagine that it will always be possible to prevent the free migration
of intelligent races, representing in the aggregate half the peoples of
the world, should those peoples actively conceive that their welfare
demands that they should seek employment in Europe. In these days of rapid
transit, of aviation, such a measure of repression is impossible.... We
shall not be destroyed, perhaps, by the sudden onrush of invaders, as Rome
was overwhelmed by the northern hordes; we shall be gradually subdued and
absorbed by the 'peaceful penetration' of more virile races."[183]
Now, mark you! All that I have thus far written concerning colored
immigration has been written without reference to the late war. In other
words, the colored-migration peril would have been just as grave as I have
described it even if the white world were still as strong as in the years
before 1914.
But the war has of course immensely aggravated an already critical
situation. The war has shaken both the material and psychological bases of
white resistance to colored infiltration, while it has correspondingly
strengthened Asiatic hopes and hardened Asiatic determination to break
down the barriers debarring colored men from white lands.
Asia's perception of what the war signified in this respect was
instantaneous. The war was not a month old before Japanese journals were
suggesting a relaxation of Asiatic exclusion laws in the British colonies
as a natural corollary to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and Anglo-Japanese
comradeship in arms. Said the Tokio _Mainichi Deupo_ in August, 1914: "We
are convinced that it is a matter of the utmost importance that Britons
beyond the seas should make a better attempt at fraternizing with Japan,
as better relations between the English-speaking races and Japan will have
a vital bearing on the destiny of the empire. There is no reason why the
British colonies fronting on the Pacific should not actively participate
in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Britain needs population for her surplus
land and Japan needs land for her surplus population. This fact alone
should draw the two races closer together. Moreover, the British people
have ample capital but deficiency of labor, while it is the reverse with
Japan.... The harmonious co-operation of Britain and her colonies with
Japan insures safety to British and Japanese interests alike. Without such
co-operation, Japan and Great Britain are both unsafe."[184]
What this "co-operation" implies was very frankly stated by _The Japan
Magazine_ at about the same date: "There is nothing that would do so much
to bind East and West firmly together as the opening of the British
colonies to Japanese immigration. Then, indeed, Britain would be a lion
endowed with wings. Large numbers of Japanese in the British colonies
would mean that Britain would have the assistance of Japan in the
protection of her colonies. But if an anti-Japanese agitation is
permitted, both countries will be making the worst instead of the best of
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Thus it would be allowed to make Japan an
enemy instead of a friend. It seems that the British people both at home
and in the colonies are not yet alive to the importance of the policy
suggested, and it is, therefore, pointed out and emphasized before it is
too late."[185]
The covert threat embodied in those last lines was a forerunner of the
storm of anti-white abuse which rose from the more bellicose sections of
the Japanese press as soon as it became evident that neither the British
Dominions nor the United States were going to relax their immigration
laws. Some of this anti-white comment, directed particularly against the
Anglo-Saxon peoples, I have already noted in the second chapter of this
book, but such comment as bears directly on immigration matters I have
reserved for discussion at this point.
For example, the Tokio _Yorodzu_ wrote early in 1916: "Japan has been most
faithful to the requirements of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and yet the
treatment meted out to our countrymen in Canada, Australia, and other
British colonies has been a glaring insult to us."[186] A year later a
writer in _The Japan Magazine_ declared: "The agitation against Japanese
in foreign countries must cease, even if Japan has to take up arms to stop
it. She should not allow her immigration to be treated as a
race-question."[187] And in 1919 the _Yorodzu_ thus paid its respects to
the exclusionist activity of our Pacific coast States: "Whatever may be
their object, their actions are more despicable than those of the Germans
whose barbarities they attacked as worthy of Huns. At least, these
Americans are barbarians who are on a lower plane of civilization than the
Japanese."[188]
The war produced no letting down of immigration barriers along the white
world's exposed frontiers, where men are fully alive to the peril. But the
war did produce temporary waverings of sentiment in the United States,
while in Europe colored labor was imported wholesale in ways which may
have ominous consequences.
Our own acute labor shortage during the war, particularly in agriculture,
led many Americans, especially employers, to cast longing eyes at the
tempting reservoirs of Asia. Typical of this attitude is an article by
Hudson Maxim in the spring of 1918. Mr. Maxim urged the importation of a
million Chinese to solve our farming and domestic-service problems.
"If it is possible," he wrote, "by the employment of Chinese methods of
intensive farming, to increase the production of our lands to such an
extent, how stupendous would be the benefit of wide introduction of such
methods. The exhausted lands of New England could be made to produce like
a tropical garden. The vast areas of the great West that are to-day not
producing 10 per cent of what they ought to produce could be made to
produce the other 90 per cent by the introduction of Chinese labor.... The
average American does not like farming. The sons of the prosperous farmers
do not take kindly to the tilling of the soil with their own hands. They
prefer the excitement and the diversions and stimulus of the life of city
and town, and they leave the farm for the office and factory....
"Chinese, imported as agricultural laborers and household servants, would
solve the agricultural labor problem and the servant problem, and we
should have the best agricultural workers in the world and the best
household servants in the world, in unlimited numbers."[189]
Now I submit that such arguments, however well-intentioned, are nothing
short of race-treason. If there be one truth which history has proved, it
is the solemn truth that those who _work_ the land will ultimately _own_
the land.
Furthermore, the countryside is the seed-bed from which the city
populations are normally recruited. The one bright spot in our otherwise
dubious ethnic future is the fact that most of our unassimilable aliens
have stopped in the towns, while many of the most assimilable immigrants
have settled in the country, thus reinforcing rather than replacing our
native American rural population. Any suggestion which advocates the
settlement of our countryside by Asiatics and the deliberate driving of
our native stocks to the towns, there to be sterilized and eliminated, is
simply unspeakable.
Fortunately, such fatal counsels were with us never acted upon, albeit
they should be remembered as lurking perils which will probably be urged
again in future times of stress. But during Europe's war-agony, yellow,
brown, and black men were imported wholesale, not only for the armies, but
also for the factories and fields. These colored aliens have mostly been
shipped back to their homes. Nevertheless, they have carried with them
vivid recollections of the marvellous West, and the tale will spread to
the remotest corners of the colored world, stirring hard-pressed colored
bread-seekers to distant ventures. Furthermore, Europe has had a practical
demonstration of the colored alien's manifold usefulness, and if Europe's
troubles are prolonged, the colored man may be increasingly employed there
both in peace and war.
Even during the war the French and English working classes felt the
pressure of colored competition. Race-feeling grew strained, and presently
both England and France witnessed the (to them) unwonted spectacles of
race-riots in their port-towns where the colored aliens were most thickly
gathered. An American observer thus describes the "breaking of the
exclusion walls erected against the Chinese":
"In London, one Wednesday evening, twenty-four months ago (_i. e._, in
1916), there was a mass-meeting held on the corner of Piggot Street,
Limehouse, to protest against the influx of John Chinaman into bonny old
England.... The London navvies that night heard a protest against 'the
Chinese invasion' of Britain. They knew that down on the London docks
there were two Chinamen to every white man since the coming of war. They
knew that many of these yellow aliens were married. They knew, too, that a
big Chinese restaurant had just opened down the West India Dock Road.
"The Sailors' and Firemen's Union--one of the most powerful in
England--carried the protest into the Trades-Union Congress held at
Birmingham. There, alarm was voiced at the steady increase in the number
of Chinese hands on Britain's ships. It was an increase, true, since the
stress of war-times had begun to try Britain. But what England's sons of
the seven seas wanted to know was: when is 'this Orientalizing' of the
British marine to stop?... The seamen's unions were willing to do their
bit for John Bull, but they wondered what was going to happen after the
coming of peace. Would the Chinese continue to man John Bull's ships?...
"Such is one manifestation of the decisive lifting of gates and barriers
that has taken place since the white world went to war. To-day the
Chinese--for decades finding a wall in every white man's country--are
numbered by the tens of thousands in the service of the Allies. They have
made good. They are a war-factor.... All told, 200,000 Chinese are
'carrying on' in the war-zone, laboring behind the lines, in
munition-works and factories, manning ships....
"What will happen when peace comes upon this red world--a world turned
topsyturvy by the white man's Great War, which has taken John Chinaman
from Shantung, Chihli, and Kwangtung to that battle-ground in France?...
That makes the drafting of China's man-power one of the most supremely
important events in the Great War. The family of nations is taking on a
new meaning--John Chinaman overseas has a place in it. As Italian
harvest-labor before the war went to and from Argentina for a few months'
work, so the Chinese have gone to Europe under contract and go home again.
Perhaps this action will have a bearing on the solution of the Far West's
agricultural labor problem.
"Do not believe for a moment that the armies of Chinese in Europe will
forget the lessons taught them in the West. When these sons of Han come
home, the Great War will be found to have given birth to a new East."[190]
So ends our survey. It has girdled the globe. And the lesson is always the
same: Colored migration is a _universal_ peril, menacing every part of the
white world. Nowhere can the white man endure colored competition;
everywhere "the East can _underlive_ the West." The grim truth of the
matter is this: The whole white race is exposed, immediately or
ultimately, to the possibility of social sterilization and final
replacement or absorption by the teeming colored races.
What this unspeakable catastrophe would mean for the future of the planet,
and how the peril may be averted, will form the subject of my concluding
pages.
CHAPTER XII
THE CRISIS OF THE AGES
Ours is a solemn moment. We stand at a crisis--the supreme crisis of the
ages. For unnumbered millenniums man has toiled upward from the dank
jungles of savagery toward glorious heights which his mental and spiritual
potentialities give promise that he shall attain. His path has been slow
and wavering. Time and again he has lost his way and plunged into deep
valleys. Man's trail is littered with the wrecks of dead civilizations and
dotted with the graves of promising peoples stricken by an untimely end.
Humanity has thus suffered many a disaster. Yet none of these disasters
were fatal, because they were merely local. Those wrecked civilizations
and blighted peoples were only parts of a larger whole. Always some strong
barbarians, endowed with rich, unspoiled heredities, caught the falling
torch and bore it onward flaming high once more.
Out of the prehistoric shadows the white races pressed to the front and
proved in a myriad ways their fitness for the hegemony of mankind.
Gradually they forged a common civilization; then, when vouchsafed their
unique opportunity of oceanic mastery four centuries ago, they spread over
the earth, filling its empty spaces with their superior breeds and
assuring to themselves an unparalleled paramountcy of numbers and
dominion.
Three centuries later the whites took a fresh leap forward. The nineteenth
century was a new age of discovery--this time into the realms of science.
The hidden powers of nature were unveiled, incalculable energies were
tamed to human use, terrestrial distance was abridged, and at last the
planet was integrated under the hegemony of a single race with a common
civilization.
The prospects were magnificent, the potentialities of progress apparently
unlimited. Yet there were commensurate perils. Towering heights mean
abysmal depths, while the very possibility of supreme success implies the
possibility of supreme failure. All these marvellous achievements were due
solely to superior heredity, and the mere maintenance of what had been won
depended absolutely upon the prior maintenance of race-values.
Civilization of itself means nothing. It is merely an effect, whose cause
is the creative urge of superior germ-plasm. Civilization is the body; the
race is the soul. Let the soul vanish, and the body moulders into the
inanimate dust from which it came.
Two things are necessary for the continued existence of a race: it must
remain itself, and it must breed its best. Every race is the result of
ages of development which evolves specialized capacities that make the
race what it is and render it capable of creative achievement. These
specialized capacities (which particularly mark the superior races),
being relatively recent developments, are highly unstable. They are what
biologists call "recessive" characters; that is, they are not nearly so
"dominant" as the older, generalized characters which races inherit from
remote ages and which have therefore been more firmly stamped upon the
germ-plasm. Hence, when a highly specialized stock interbreeds with a
different stock, the newer, less stable, specialized characters are bred
out, the variation, no matter how great its potential value to human
evolution, being _irretrievably lost_. This occurs even in the mating of
two superior stocks if these stocks are widely dissimilar in character.
The valuable specializations of both breeds cancel out, and the mixed
offspring tend strongly to revert to generalized mediocrity.
And, of course, the more primitive a type is, the more prepotent it is.
This is why crossings with the negro are uniformly fatal. Whites,
Amerindians, or Asiatics--all are alike vanquished by the invincible
prepotency of the more primitive, generalized, and lower negro blood.
There is no immediate danger of the world being swamped by black blood.
But there is a very imminent danger that the white stocks may be swamped
by Asiatic blood.
The white man's very triumphs have evoked this danger. His virtual
abolition of distance has destroyed the protection which nature once
conferred. Formerly mankind dwelt in such dispersed isolation that
wholesale contact of distant, diverse stocks was practically impossible.
But with the development of cheap and rapid transportation, nature's
barriers are down. Unless man erects and maintains artificial barriers the
various races will increasingly mingle, and the inevitable result will be
the supplanting or absorption of the higher by the lower types.
We can see this process working out in almost every phase of modern
migration. The white immigration into Latin America is the exception which
proves the rule. That particular migration is, of course, beneficent,
since it means the influx of relatively high types into undeveloped lands,
sparsely populated by types either no higher or much lower than the new
arrivals. But almost everywhere else, whether we consider interwhite
migrations or colored encroachments on white lands, the net result is an
expansion of lower and a contraction of higher stocks, the process being
thus a disgenic one. Even in Asia the evils of modern migration are
beginning to show. The Japanese Government has been obliged to prohibit
the influx of Chinese and Korean coolies who were undercutting Japanese
labor and thus undermining the economic bases of Japanese life.
Furthermore, modern migration is itself only one aspect of a still more
fundamental disgenic trend. The whole course of modern urban and
industrial life is disgenic. Over and above immigration, the tendency is
toward a replacement of the more valuable by the less valuable elements of
the population. All over the civilized world racial values are
diminishing, and the logical end of this disgenic process is racial
bankruptcy and the collapse of civilization.
Now why is all this? It is primarily because we have not yet adjusted
ourselves to the radically new environment into which our epochal
scientific discoveries led us a century ago. Such adaptation as we have
effected has been almost wholly on the material side. The no less sweeping
idealistic adaptations which the situation calls for have not been made.
Hence, modern civilization has been one-sided, abnormal, unhealthy--and
nature is exacting penalties which will increase in severity until we
either fully adapt or _finally perish_.
"Finally perish!" That is the exact alternative which confronts the white
race. For white civilization is to-day conterminous with the white race.
The civilizations of the past were local. They were confined to a
particular people or group of peoples. If they failed, there were always
some unspoiled, well-endowed barbarians to step forward and "carry on."
But to-day _there are no more white barbarians_. The earth has grown
small, and men are everywhere in close touch. If white civilization goes
down, the white race is irretrievably ruined. It will be swamped by the
triumphant colored races, who will obliterate the white man by elimination
or absorption. What has taken place in Central Asia, once a white and now
a brown or yellow land, will take place in Australasia, Europe, and
America. Not to-day, nor yet to-morrow; perhaps not for generations; but
surely in the end. If the present drift be not changed, we whites are all
ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order, the doom will sooner
or later overtake us all.
And that would mean that the race obviously endowed with the greatest
creative ability, the race which had achieved most in the past and which
gave the richer promise for the future, had passed away, carrying with it
to the grave those potencies upon which the realization of man's highest
hopes depends. A million years of human evolution might go uncrowned, and
earth's supreme life-product, man, might never fulfil his potential
destiny. This is why we to-day face "The Crisis of the Ages."
To many minds the mere possibility of such a catastrophe may seem
unthinkable. Yet a dispassionate survey of the past shows that it is not
only possible but probable if present conditions go on unchanged. The
whole history of life, both human and subhuman, teaches us that nature
will not condone disobedience; that, as I have already phrased it, "no
living being stands above her law, and protozoön or demigod, if they
transgress, alike must die."
Now we have transgressed; grievously transgressed--and we are suffering
grievous penalties. But pain is really kind. Pain is the importunate
tocsin which rouses to dangerous realities and spurs to the seeking of a
cure.
As a matter of fact we are confusedly aware of our evil plight, and legion
are the remedies to-day proposed. Some of these are mere quack nostrums.
Others contain valuable remedial properties. To be sure, there is probably
no _one_ curative agent, since our troubles are complex and magic elixirs
heal only in the realm of dreams. But one element should be fundamental to
all the compoundings of the social pharmacopoeia. That element is
_blood_.
It is clean, virile, genius-bearing blood, streaming down the ages through
the unerring action of heredity, which, in anything like a favorable
environment, will multiply itself, solve our problems, and sweep us on to
higher and nobler destinies. What we to-day need above all else is a
changed attitude of mind--a recognition of the supreme importance of
heredity, not merely in scientific treatises but in the practical ordering
of the world's affairs. We are where we are to-day primarily because we
have neglected this vital principle; because we have concerned ourselves
with dead things instead of with living beings.
This disregard of heredity is perhaps not strange. It is barely a
generation since its fundamental importance was scientifically
established, and the world's conversion to even the most vital truth takes
time. In fact, we also have much to unlearn. A little while ago we were
taught that all men were equal and that good conditions could, of
themselves, quickly perfect mankind. The seductive charm of these
dangerous fallacies lingers and makes us loath to put them resolutely
aside.
Fortunately, we now know the truth. At last we have been vouchsafed clear
insight into the laws of life. We now know that men are not, and never
will be, equal. We know that environment and education can develop only
what heredity brings. We know that the acquirements of individuals are
either not inherited at all or are inherited in so slight a degree as to
make no perceptible difference from generation to generation. In other
words: we now know that heredity is paramount in human evolution, all
other things being secondary factors.
This basic truth is already accepted by large numbers of thinking men and
women all over the civilized world, and if it becomes firmly fixed in the
popular consciousness it will work nothing short of a revolution in the
ordering of the world's affairs.
For race-betterment is such an intensely _practical_ matter! When peoples
come to realize that the _quality_ of the population is the source of all
their prosperity, progress, security, and even existence; when they
realize that a single genius may be worth more in actual dollars than a
dozen gold-mines, while, conversely, racial decline spells material
impoverishment and decay; when such things are really believed, we shall
see much-abused "eugenics" actually moulding social programmes and
political policies. Were the white world to-day really convinced of the
supreme importance of race-values, how long would it take to stop debasing
immigration, reform social abuses that are killing out the fittest
strains, and put an end to the feuds which have just sent us through hell
and threaten to send us promptly back again?
Well, perhaps our change of heart may come sooner than now appears. The
horrors of the war, the disappointment of the peace, the terror of
Bolshevism, and the rising tide of color have knocked a good deal of the
nonsense out of us, and have given multitudes a hunger for realities who
were before content with a diet of phrases. Said wise old Benjamin
Franklin: "Dame Experience sets a dear school, but fools will have no
other." Our course at the dame's school is already well under way and
promises to be exceeding dear.
Only, it is to be hoped our education will be rapid, for time presses and
the hour is grave. If certain lessons are not learned and acted upon
shortly, we may be overwhelmed by irreparable disasters and all our dear
schooling will go for naught.
What are the things we _must_ do promptly if we would avert the worst?
This "irreducible minimum" runs about as follows:
First and foremost, the wretched Versailles business will have to be
thoroughly revised. As it stands, dragon's teeth have been sown over both
Europe and Asia, and unless they be plucked up they will presently grow a
crop of cataclysms which will seal the white world's doom.
Secondly, some sort of provisional understanding must be arrived at
between the white world and renascent Asia. We whites will have to
abandon our tacit assumption of permanent domination over Asia, while
Asiatics will have to forego their dreams of migration to white lands and
penetration of Africa and Latin America. Unless some such understanding is
arrived at, the world will drift into a gigantic race-war--and genuine
race-war means war to the knife. Such a hideous catastrophe should be
abhorrent to both sides. Nevertheless, Asia should be given clearly to
understand that we cannot permit either migration to white lands or
penetration of the non-Asiatic tropics, and that for these matters we
prefer to fight to a finish rather than yield to a finish--because our
"finish" is precisely what surrender on these points would mean.
Thirdly, even within the white world, migrations of lower human types like
those which have worked such havoc in the United States must be rigorously
curtailed. Such migrations upset standards, sterilize better stocks,
increase low types, and compromise national futures more than war,
revolutions, or native deterioration.
Such are the things which simply _must_ be done if we are to get through
the next few decades without convulsions which may render impossible the
white world's recovery.
These things will not bring in the millennium. Far from it. Our ills are
so deep-seated that in nearly every civilized country racial values would
continue to depreciate even if all three were carried into effect. But
they will at least give our wounds a chance to heal, and they will give
the new biological revelation time to permeate the popular consciousness
and transfuse with a new idealism our materialistic age. As the years
pass, the supreme importance of heredity and the supreme value of superior
stocks will sink into our being, and we will acquire a true
_race_-consciousness (as opposed to national or cultural consciousness)
which will bridge political gulfs, remedy social abuses, and exorcise the
lurking spectre of miscegenation.
In those better days, we or the next generation will take in hand the
problem of race-depreciation, and segregation of defectives and abolition
of handicaps penalizing the better stocks will put an end to our present
racial decline. By that time biological knowledge will have so increased
and the popular philosophy of life will have been so idealized that it
will be possible to inaugurate positive measures of race-betterment which
will unquestionably yield the most wonderful results.
Those splendid tasks are probably not ours. They are for our successors in
a happier age. But we have our task, and God knows it is a hard one--the
salvage of a shipwrecked world! Ours it is to make possible that happier
age, whose full-fruits we shall never see.
Well, what of it? Does not the new idealism teach us that we are links in
a vital chain, charged with high duties both to the dead and the unborn?
In very truth we are at once sons of sires who sleep in calm assurance
that we will not betray the trust they confided to our hands, and sires
of sons who in the Beyond wait confident that we shall not cheat them of
their birthright.
Let us, then, act in the spirit of Kipling's immortal lines:
"Our Fathers in a wondrous age,
Ere yet the Earth was small,
Ensured to us an heritage,
And doubted not at all
That we, the children of their heart,
Which then did beat so high,
In later time should play like part
For our posterity.
* * * * *
Then, fretful, murmur not they gave
So great a charge to keep,
Nor dream that awestruck Time shall save
Their labor while we sleep.
Dear-bought and clear, a thousand year
Our fathers' title runs.
Make we likewise their sacrifice,
Defrauding not our sons."[191]
INDEX
Abd-el-Wahab, 58
Abyssinia, 4, 89
Afghanistan, independence of, 4, 56;
Germany's relations with, 212;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220
Africa, 3, 5;
effect of Russo-Japanese War on, 12, 15;
partition of, 24, 89, 149 _ff._, 152;
European conquests in, 70;
growth of Mohammedanism in, 65;
67;
Germany in, 204
North, brown race in, 7;
57, 68, 83 _ff._, 199;
Bolshevik agitators in, 220;
brown power in, 93 _ff._;
spread of Arab blood in, 93;
native white blood in, 93 _ff._;
rule of Islam in, 94, 101, 235, 142, 147
South, 10, 84;
home of black race, 7, 54, 87 _ff._;
white colonization of, 89;
wealth of, 89 _ff._;
result of white rule in, 91, 92;
spread of Islam in, 94 _ff._, 235;
Christianity in, 95 _ff._;
anti-white sentiment in, 97 _ff._;
uprising of 1915, 99;
situation of, 100 _ff._;
white settlement in, 225;
danger of Asiatic penetration into, 232, 249;
results of Asiatic penetration into, 272 _ff._, 277;
Exclusion Act in, 281, 308;
result of Asiatic labor in, 278, 280;
Mauritius settled from, 280
Algeria, 67;
riots in, 77, 82;
white blood in, 93 _ff._
Allies of the Great War, 40, 214
_Al Mowwayad_, 71
Alpine race, 162 _ff._, 165;
and the war, 183;
202, 261
America, 4;
black race in, 7, 87 _ff._ 99;
race prejudice in, 11;
36;
military preparations in, 39;
Japan's attitude toward, 51 _ff._;
red man in, 104;
discovery of, 147;
settlement of, 149;
cost of war in, 177;
triumph of, 214;
danger to white race in, 303
Central, white civilization in, 113;
race-mixture in, 128 _ff._;
Japanese in, 131, 138 _ff._
Latin, red man in, 7, 104;
Japanese in, 48, 131 _ff._;
evolution of, 105;
mixed blood in, 106 _ff._, 116 _ff._, 124, 128 _ff._, 166;
revolution in, 108 _ff._;
results of revolution in, 110 _ff._;
oligarchies in, 110 _ff._;
immigration into, 114;
loss of white supremacy in, 115;
anarchy in, 120 _ff._;
inability of, to rule self, 128 _ff._;
Asiatics in, 130 _ff._, 308;
anti-Americanism in, 136;
attitude of, toward yellow race, 137 _ff._;
pressure of yellow race on, 139;
present situation in, 140 _ff._;
future of, 141 _ff._;
Bolshevik agitation in, 220;
danger of Asiatic penetration of, 232 _ff._, 249 _ff._, 303;
white migration into, 302
North, white man's land, 3, 5, 104, 225;
attitude of Japs toward, 52;
Japs in, 131;
Nordics in, 253;
result of immigration on, 254 _ff._, 261 _ff._;
need for prohibiting immigration into, 266 _ff._;
a frontier against Asia, 284
South, colonization of, 3;
white man's country, 5, 104;
colored man's country, 6;
half-caste in, 117;
need for white immigration into, 118;
"Indianista" movement, 124;
Japs in, 131, 139.
_See also_ Latin America
American Indian, home of, 104;
number of, 104;
Spanish Conquest of, 104 _ff._;
racial mixtures of, 106 _ff._, 116 _ff._, 119 _ff._, 128, 301;
relations with Spaniards, 107;
in Chile, 111 _ff._;
in Peru, 113;
in Colombia, 113;
in Costa Rica, 113;
in Argentina, 114;
in Uruguay, 114;
in northern Brazil, 115;
anti-white sentiment among, 124 _ff._;
ancient civilizations among, 126;
capability of, 126 _ff._;
influence of Spaniards on, 127;
"Indianista" movement, 129;
Japanese relations with, 137 _ff._, 146
Amerindian. _See_ American Indian
Amoor, 199
Anatolia, 211, 229
Andaman Islanders, 227
Anglo-French agreement, 70
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 291 _ff._
Anglo-Oriental College, 60
Anglo-Saxons, Japanese agitation against, 50, 292;
race-growth of, 155 _ff._;
"sacred union" of, 281
Annamites, 17
Arab-negroid, 94
Arabia, location of, 57;
Senussi in, 67;
nationalist movements in, 77
Arabistan, definition of, 57;
population of, 57
Arabs, 88 _ff._, 92 _ff._, 102, 146
Araucania, 111
Argentina, white man in, 105;
population of, 114;
agricultural development of, 114;
immigration into, 115;
Japanese immigration into, 138
Aryan race, 23, 200
Asia, 3, 4;
home-land of white race, 5;
of yellow race, 7;
of brown race, 7;
black race in, 7;
antagonism toward white continents, 11 _ff._, 15, 22;
Japan in, 43, 48, 52, 71;
European conquests in, 70;
renaissance in, 100;
Latin America invaded by, 130, 138, 142;
Europe assailed by, 146 _ff._, 237;
white man in, 149 _ff._, 237 _ff._;
anti-white sentiment in, 171, 237;
Russia in, 203, 205 _ff._;
Bolshevik agitators in, 220;
centre of colored unrest, 229 _ff._;
non-Asiatic lands penetrated by, 232;
independence of, 232 _ff._;
economic activity in, 241 _ff._, 244, 248;
causes of poverty in, 243;
population of, 249;
Hawaii penetrated by, 279;
Mauritius settled by, 280;
Pacific coast settled by, 284;
need in U. S. for laborers from, 293;
evils of modern migration in, 302;
white world's need for understanding with, 307 _ff._
Asia Minor, 57
Asturians, 111
Australasia, 5, 6, 48, 87, 303
Australia, 10;
Japanese desire for, 21, 52;
Chinese need for land in, 46;
80;
black race in, 87;
settlement of, 149;
225;
Chinese invasion of, 238, 272;
"White Australia" doctrine in, 281 _ff._;
number of white in, 282;
immigration menace to, 289;
Japanese in, 292
Austria, 22
Aztec civilization, 126, 297
Bagdad, 61
Balkans, 50
Balkans, war, 72
Basques, 111
Basra, 61
Behring Strait, 138
Belgium, 82
Bengal lancers, 209
Berbers, white blood of, 93;
acceptance of French rule, 94;
European intermarriage with, 94
Birmingham, 296
Black Death, 146
Black race, 5;
numbers of, 7, 87;
home of, 7, 87 _ff._;
Mohammedanism in, 65, 69;
brown race's relations with, 85 _ff._, 88, 92 _ff._;
white race's relations with, 88 _ff._, 91, 149;
character of, 90, 100 _ff._;
other races compared with, 91 _ff._;
influence of other races on, 92;
spread of Islam in, 95 _ff._, 235, 240;
spread of Christianity in, 97 _ff._;
anti-white sentiments of, 97;
"Ethiopian Church" movement and, 98 _ff._;
in Latin America, 110, 116 _ff._, 141 _ff._;
race-mixtures with, 116 _ff._, 126, 128, 142, 301;
Germany's relations with, 204;
France's relations with, 204;
in European War, 206, 209 _ff._, 295;
white lands entered by, 269
Boer War, 208
Bolivar, 108 _ff._
Bolivia, mixed blood in, 119;
need of immigration in, 119;
Indian rising in, 124 _ff._;
Japanese immigration into, 138
Bolsheviki, 50
Bolshevism, 191, 214, 218;
tenets of, 218 _ff._;
menace to white race, 220 _ff._, 233
Bombay, 61
Brahman. _See_ Hindu
Brazil, 103;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220;
Portugal's neglect of, 115;
immigration into, 115;
white man in, 115;
Indians in, 115;
result of race-mixtures in, 120, 259
British Columbia, exclusion policy of, 281, 283;
colored immigration menace against, 289
British Dominion. _See_ British Empire
British Empire, 4;
Japan's relations with, 32;
India's relations with, 32;
Egypt's relations with, 78;
war losses of, 177;
immigration laws of, 292.
_See_ England and Great Britain
British Straits Settlements, 46
Brown race, 5;
numbers of, 7, 54;
home of, 7, 54;
12, 17, 22;
types of, 54 _ff._;
unity of, 55;
white race's relations with, 50 _ff._, 149;
groupings of, 57;
Islam's relations with, 58 _ff._;
unrest under white rule, 83 _ff._, 229, 234;
possibility of brown-yellow alliance, 85 _ff._;
black race's relations with, 88, 91, 92 _ff._, 100 _ff._;
Europe assailed by, 146, 148;
Germany's relations with, 204;
France's relations with, 204;
Italy's relations with, 204;
in European War, 208 _ff._, 295;
Africa colonized by, 232;
military potency of, 237 _ff._;
industrial conditions of, 241;
white lands penetrated by, 269;
Mauritius settled by, 280;
South Africa penetrated by, 277 _ff._;
Central Asia taken by, 303
Bryce, Lord, 124, 127
Buddhism, 23, 73, 228
Buenos Aires, 114
Cairo, 61, 62, 78
Calcutta, 61
California, result of Chinese labor in, 272;
exclusion policy of, 285;
Japanese in, 287 _ff._
Cambodians, 17
Canada, desire of yellow race for, 10;
80;
fear of Asiatic immigration into, 84;
white man's country, 104;
278;
exclusion policy of, 281, 283;
population of, 284;
Nordics in, 163;
danger of Hindu immigration into, 283 _ff._;
Caribbean, 121;
Caroline Islands, 36;
Carranza, 136;
Cape Horn, 105, 138;
Castro of Venezuela, 122;
Caucasian, 200
Chengtu, 245
Chile, 110;
Nordic colonists of, 111;
race-mixture in, 111;
stabilization of, 112;
characteristics of, 112;
progress of, 113;
Japanese immigration into, 138;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220
Chilembwe, John, 99
China, white control of, 4;
independence of, 8;
yellow world centred in, 17, 18;
population of, 18;
exclusion policy, 18;
Japanese war with, 20 _ff._, 23 _ff._;
revolution in, 23 _ff._, 73;
partition of, 23;
Boxer War in, 24;
Japan's relations with, 26 _ff._, 30 _ff._, 34, 38 _ff._, 42, 43,
50 _ff._, 58, 207, 239, 247, 302;
"Young China" movement in, 26;
economic efficiency of, 28 _ff._;
population of, 44;
colonizing possibilities of, 45 _ff._;
Mohammedans in, 73;
effect of war on, 77;
congestion in, 84;
Latin America penetrated by, 131, 140;
"break-up" of, 151, 199;
Russia's relations with, 203;
Germany's relations with, 212;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220;
white goods boycotted by, 230, 246 _ff._;
military potency of, 238 _ff._;
industrial life of, 241, 243 _ff._, 250;
labor conditions in, 244 _ff._, 268, 273 _ff._, 276 _ff._;
Hawaii settled by, 279;
British Columbia penetrated by, 283;
United States settled by, 286;
Europe penetrated by, 289;
U. S. need for, 293 _ff._;
England settled by, 296;
in war zone, 297
Christianity, in Africa, 92, 95 _ff._;
in Latin America, 137
Civitas Dei, 170
Cochin-China, 247
Colombia, settlement of, 107, 113;
revolution in, 113;
anti-American sentiment in, 136
Colored-Bolshevist alliance, 233
Columbus, Christopher, 103, 145, 147
Confucius, 24;
followers of, 73
Congo, 101, 142
_Conquistadores_, 105 _ff._, 126, 140
Constantinople, 57, 61, 72, 212
Constantinople _Tanine_, 13
_Contemporary Review_, 25
Cortez, 106
Costa Rica, 113
Creoles, 107 and _n._;
degeneracy of, 107 _ff._;
anti-Spain revolt of, 108 _ff._;
"democracy" of, 109;
status of, 116
Crusades, 146, 209
Cuba, 125, 139;
cross-breeding in, 259, 278
Cuzco, 125
"Dark Continent," 88 _ff._, 97, 102
de Gama, Vasco, 147
de la Barra, Señor, 134
Diaz, Porfirio, 110
Dillon, Doctor E. J., 10, 25, 217
Durban, 278
Dutch Indies, 20, 34, 46;
colonization of, 47;
population of, 47, 82
Ecuador, mixed blood in, 118;
need for immigration into, 119
Egypt, taken by England, 70, 76 _ff._;
1914 revolt in, 74;
nationalist movement in, 77 _ff._;
effect of Versailles Conference on, 78;
insurrection in, 78 _ff._;
unrest in, 83, 84;
Islam's ascendancy in, 93;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220;
white products boycotted in, 246 _ff._
_El Mercurio_ (Chile), 138
England, India's relations with, 32, 79 _ff._;
Japan's relations with, 35 _ff._, 50 _ff._, 71;
Islamite appeal to, 73;
Egypt's relations with, 77 _ff._;
Chile compared with, 112;
1480 population of, 146, 155 _ff._;
race-stocks in, beginning of war in, 176, 180;
cost of war to, 192, 194, 199;
Russia's threat against, 203;
Japan allied with, 203 _ff._;
China's industrial rivalry with, 244;
colored labor in, 295 _ff._;
race-riots in, 296 _ff._
English Civil Service, 80
"Ethiopian Church," 96;
founding of, 98;
anti-white teachings of, 98;
Zulu rebellion caused by, 98
Ethiopianism, 99
Europe, 3, 5, 6, 11;
Asia's hostility toward, 11, 46, 52;
Moslem East attacked by, 58;
relations with Islam, 61;
height attained by, 62 _ff._, 89;
Argentine and Uruguay settled by, 114, 142;
Black Death in, 146;
expansion attempted by, 146;
Asia's attacks on, 146 _ff._;
results of discovery of America in, 147;
results of Asian conflicts on, 148, 151 _ff._;
industrial revolution in, 157 _ff._, 161, 164;
Nordic ranks in, 163;
results of Russo-Jap War in, 171 _ff._;
results of Versailles Conference on, 216, 218, 307;
Bolshevism's menace to, 220 _ff._;
effect of colored migration on, 253, 268;
danger of Oriental immigration into, 289 _ff._;
colored labor imported into, 293, 295 _ff._
_See also_ European War
"European Concert," 170
European War, 4, 11, 13 _ff._, 25, 33, 36, 39 _ff._;
Germany's collapse in, 40;
end of, 42;
prophecy of, 62;
Islam at beginning of, 73;
Egypt at beginning of, 76;
East affected by, 77;
India in, 80;
U. S. in, 133, 134, 136, 169, 175, 176;
cost of, 176 _ff._;
in civil life, 178 _ff._, 181 _ff._;
results of, 187 _ff._, 190 _ff._, 206;
"hate literature" of, 207;
use of colored troops in, 208 _ff._, 214, 220, 290;
Asia's attitude affected by, 290 _ff._;
colored labor in, 293 _ff._
"Exclusion Policy," 269
Far East. _See_ China, Japan
Fatima, 67
Filipinos in Hawaii, 279
Fisher, H. A. L., 182
Formosa, 20 _ff._, 30, 43, 47
France, birth-rate of, 8, 46;
Japan's attitude toward, 50 _ff._, 83 _ff._, 103;
cost of war in, 177, 179 _ff._;
conscription in, 181, 194;
Nordics in, 202, 204, 250, 270;
colored labor in, 296 _ff._;
race-riots in, 296
"Gentlemen's Agreement," 287
Germany, Chinese interests of, 36;
Japan's relations with, 36, 39, 212 _ff._;
Asiatic expulsion of, 36 _ff._;
Bolshevism's aid to, 40;
collapse of, 40, 50 _ff._;
Islam's relations with, 75;
South American immigrations of, 111, 115;
Mexico's relations with, 136;
cost of war in, 177, 180;
conscription in, 181;
Russia's relations with, 187;
Nordic race in, 201;
Alpine race in, 202;
population of, 202;
in central Africa, 204;
Belgium invaded by, 228;
Chinese industrial rivalry with, 244, 270
Grand Alliance, 39
Grant, Madison, 115, 162, 169, 183, 262
Great Britain, 36 _ff._;
Japan's relations with, 38, 291 _ff._
_See also_ England and British Empire
Great War. _See_ European War
Greece, 72, 196, 199
Guinea, 142
Gurkhas, 209
"Habl-ul-Matin," 66 _ff._
Haiti, 4, 100, 142, 227 and _n._
"Hajj," 66 _ff._
Hall, Prescott F., 253, 255
Hangkow, 43
Hanyang, 244
Hawaii, 136;
white rule in, 279;
Asiatic labor in, 279 _ff._;
U. S. annexation of, 279;
Americans in, 279 _ff._
Hedjaz Kingdom, 66
Himalayans, 55, 238
Hindustan, Islam's relations with, 73;
England's relations with, 79;
Mauritius a part of, 280
Hokkaido, 44, 47 _ff._
Holland, 20, 46
Huns, 17, 146
Ichang, 244
Incas, 125 _ff._
India, Japanese relations with, 31 _ff._;
English relations with, 32, 80;
population of, 32, 57;
wealth of, 33;
Russian menace to, 38, 203;
47, 52;
southern, 55;
brown world centred in, 57;
revolt in Northwest, 74;
unrest in, 79;
government of, 80 _ff._;
congestion in, 84 _ff._, 250, 268;
"Negritos" in, 87, 147, 199;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220, 225;
foreign goods boycotted by, 230;
industrial growth of, 241;
handicaps to, 246;
"Swadeshi" movement, 246, 248;
in South Africa, 278;
in British Columbia, 283;
in Europe, 289
Indian Archipelago, 282
"Indianista" movement, 124, 129, 132;
Japanese support of, 134, 137, 140
Indians of America. _See_ American Indians
Indo-China, population of, 18;
exclusion policy of, 18, 23;
revolutions in, 33 _ff._, 46, 87
Indo-Japanese Association, 32
Iran, population of, 57;
influence on, 57
Islam, brown race united by, 55;
in India, 55, 73, 79, 85;
57;
power of, 58 _ff._;
revival of, 58;
progress of, 60, 64 _ff._;
communication in, 61;
numerical strength of, 61, 64;
European relations with, 62 _ff._;
proselytizing power of, 65;
the Senussi in, 67 _ff._;
effect of Russo-Japanese War on, 70;
Japanese relations with, 70 _ff._;
Tripoli taken from, 71 _ff._, 204;
effect of Balkan War on, 72;
England's relations with, 73;
in China, 73;
in the European War, 74;
Versailles Conference and, 75 _ff._;
black race's relations with, 86, 92, 94;
South African progress of, 94 _ff._, 102
Italy, 50;
Tripoli seized by, 71 _ff._, 205;
South American immigration from, 114 _ff._;
conditions in, 176
Japan, independence of, 4, 8;
effect of white civilization on, 9, 12;
Russian war with, 12, 20 _ff._, 17;
population of, 18, 44;
exclusion policy of, 18;
Western civilization in, 20;
Chinese war with, 20 _ff._;
imperialism in, 21;
European War and, 25, 39, 41;
Chinese subjection to, 23, 26 _ff._, 30, 37, 247;
white race expelled from Asia by, 31;
Asia influenced by, 31, 33, 43;
England's relations with, 35, 203 _ff._, 291 _ff._;
Germany's relations with, 36, 212 _ff._;
Russian understanding with, 38;
in Siberia, 40;
Versailles Conference and, 42;
colonizing possibilities of, 45;
climatic requirements of, 47 _ff._;
militarism of, 49 _ff._;
Islam's relations with, 71 _ff._;
Latin America's relations with, 130 _ff._, 137;
American relations with, 132, 136, 286 _ff._;
Mexican relations with, 132 _ff._;
Indians affected by, 140;
power of, 172, 238;
Russian prisoners in, 205 _ff._;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220;
industrial conditions in, 241, 246 _ff._;
excess population in, 268, 270;
Hawaii settled by, 279 _ff._;
British Columbia settled by, 283;
Chinese excluded by, 302;
Koreans excluded by, 302
_Japan Magazine_, 35, 291, 293
_Japanese Colonial Journal_, 37
Java, 84;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220
Jerusalem, 72
Jews in America, 165
Kamchatka, 43
Kechua republic, possibility of, 125
Kerbela, 61
Kiang Su, province of, 27
Kiaochow Bay, Germany's lease of, 36;
Germany driven from, 36, 39, 213
Kitchener, Lord, 78
Kobè, 206
Korea, population of, 17;
exclusion policy in, 18;
Japanese possession of, 30, 43;
Colonization in, 45;
Hawaii settled by, 279;
Japanese exclusion policy against, 302
Lake Baikal, 40
Lake Chad, 68
League of Nations, 218
Lenine, 219 _ff._
Levantines in U. S., 165;
in Rome, 253
Liberia, 4, 89, 100
Lima, 125
Limehouse, 296
London, 72, 296
London _Nation_, 207
London _Saturday Review_, 186
Los Angeles Times, 287
Lybia, Nationalist movement in, 77
Madero, Francisco, 135
Malaysia, 250
Manchuria, Japanese threat against, 40, 43;
colonization in, 45
Manchus, 17, 24
Marianne Islands, 36
Marshall Islands, 36
Matabele, 96
Mauritius, French in, 280;
importation of blacks into, 280;
importation of Asiatics into, 280;
present conditions in, 280
Maya civilization, 126
Mecca, 66
Mediterranean race, 162 _ff._, 165;
in U. S., 165;
in England, 166 _ff._;
in war, 183, 261
Mediterranean Sea, 57, 77, 82, 88, 93, 101
Melbourne _Argus_, 21
Mesopotamia, 57, 84, 211
Mexican War, 133
Mexico, conquest of, 104 _ff._, 107;
dictatorship in, 110;
unrest in, 116;
Indian rising in, 124;
Aztec civilization in, 126;
Japanese relations with, 132, 134 _ff._;
anti-American feeling in, 132 _ff._, 136;
"Plan of San Diego" plotted in, 133;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220;
cross-breeding in, 259
Mexico City, 135
"Middle Kingdom," 17
Miranda, 108
Mohammedan Revival, 56, 58 _ff._
Mohammedanism. _See_ Islam
Mohammerah, 61
Mongolia, Russia in, 38;
colonization of, 45
Mongolians, 17, 23, 130, 137, 139, 146, 285
Monroe Doctrine, 129, 132, 138
"Monroe Doctrine for Far East," 23, 30
Montevideo, 114
Moors, 65, 147
Morocco, Senussi order in, 68;
French possession of, 76;
riots in, 77, 82 _ff._, 93
Moslem. _See_ Islam
Napoleonic Wars, 58
Natal, revolt in, 98;
Asian immigration into, 272 _ff._, 278;
South African exclusion act in, 280 _ff._
Near and Middle East, brown man's land, 54 _ff._;
European domination of, 75 _ff._
"Negritos," 87
Negro. _See_ Black Race
Netherlands, a Nordic country, 202
New England, 256, 258, 294
New Guinea, 99
New Zealand, 278;
exclusion policy of, 281
Nicaragua, 122
Niger, 101
Nigeria, 210
Nile, 88, 101
Nordic race, 111 _ff._, 162;
decreasing birth-rate of, 163;
character of, 163;
effect of industrial revolution on, 164;
in U. S., 165, 258, 261, 266;
in England, 166 _ff._;
cost of war to, 183;
worth of, 199 _ff._;
in Germany, 201 _ff._;
constructive power of, 229
North Borneo, 46
Nyassaland, Mohammedanism in, 95 _ff._;
rebellion in, 99
Okuma, Count, 31 _ff._, 50, 131, 138
Ottoman Empire, partition of, 75;
cost of war to, 177 _ff._
Ottoman Turk, 55, 57, 146
Pacific Ocean Society, 32
Pan-African Congress, 99 _ff._
Pan-America, 130, 138
Pan-Asia Alliance, 234
Pan-Asia Holy War, 11
Pan-Asian Railroad, 212
Pan-Asiatic Association, 31
"Pan-Colored" alliance, 70, 229, 233 _ff._
Pan-Germanism, 169, 201 _ff._
Pan-Islam Holy War, 11, 70
Pan-Islamism, driving power of, 66 _ff._;
progress toward, 69;
result of Peace Conference on, 75, 79, 94;
the negro the tool of, 97, 100, 102, 237;
in the European War, 205 _ff._, 234 _ff._;
Asia affected by, 237;
military potency of, 238, 240
Pan-Mongolism, 28
Pan-Nordic union, 200
Pan-Slavism, 169, 201, 203
Paraguay, 110
Paris, 99, 122, 216
_Pax Americana_, 4
_Pax Romana_, 170
Peace Conference. _See_ Versailles Conference
Pechili Strait, 43
Peking, 43, 212
Pelew Islands, 36
Peloponnesian War, 173 _ff._, 196
Persia, 4;
Russian menace to, 38;
independence of, 56;
Japan's relations with, 70 _ff._;
in war, 74;
England the protector of, 76, 84;
Germany's relations with, 212
Peru, conquest of, 104 _ff._, 107;
settlement of, 113;
revolution in, 113;
politics of, 125;
Incas in, 126;
Chinese in, 131;
Japanese in, 138
Peshawar, 61
Philippines, independence movement in, 34, 43, 46, 83, 87, 137, 229
Pizarro, 105
"Plan of San Diego," 133
Poland, cost of war in, 178
Port Arthur, 153
Port Louis, 280
Port Said, 61
Portugal, 18, 115
Rangoon, 23
Red race, 5;
number of, 7, 104;
home of, 7, 104 _ff._;
cross-breeding with, 106 _ff._, 116 _ff._, 119, 128;
anti-Spain revolution of, 108 _ff._;
in Chile, 111;
in Peru, 113;
in Colombia, 113;
in Argentine, 114;
in Uruguay, 114;
in northern Brazil, 115;
anti-white sentiment of, 124 _ff._;
character of, 126 _ff._;
yellow race's relations with, 131 _ff._, 138, 140;
effect of Spaniards on, 141;
future of, 141 _ff._
Rhodes, Cecil, 200
Rio Grande, 5, 7, 103, 105
Roman Empire, 116;
fall of, 146
Rome, 50, 146, 199, 290
Ross, Professor E. A., 112, 118, 125, 131, 139, 140, 244 _ff._, 260,
264, 267, 269, 273
Russia, Japanese war with, 12, 20 _ff._, 31, 205;
Japan's relations with, 35 _ff._, 38, 151;
revolution in, 39, 214;
Bolshevism in, 40, 50 _ff._, 219;
Persia's relations with, 74;
white race in, 145;
and European War, 176;
cost of war in, 177 _ff._;
Germany's relations with, 187, 189, 194;
Nordics in, 202;
as part of Asia, 203 _ff._, 270
Russo-Japanese War, 12;
Japan's strength revealed by, 21 _ff._, 171;
23;
effect on Islam, 70;
African results of, 97, 149, 153;
effect on white race, 203, 205, 237
Saar, 215
Saghalien, Island of, 247
Sahara Desert, 7, 57, 67;
Senussi control of, 68, 87 _ff._, 93
Sailors' and Firemen's Union, 296
San Martín, 108
Santiago College, 112
Scandinavia, 145, 202
Senegalese, 209 _ff._
Senussiyah, history of, 67;
organization of, 67;
stronghold of, 67 _ff._;
European relations with, 68;
programme of, 69, 94
Serbia, cost of war in, 178
Seyyid, Mohammed ben Senussi, 67 _ff._
Shanghai, 244
Shansi, 245
Shantung, Germany in, 36;
Japan in, 43, 215, 297
Siam, 4, 17, 23;
Japan's relation with, 31, 45, 247
Sianfu, 245
Siberia, 6, 15, 18, 34;
danger of Bolshevism to, 40;
Japanese army in, 40;
colonized by Chinese, 48;
colonized by Japanese, 48;
settlement of, 149;
Russia in, 151
Siddyk, Yahya, 62
Singapore, 29
Somaliland, 68
South African Union, 96;
white population of, 98
Spain, the Moors in, 65, 147;
in Latin America, 106, 108, 111, 114, 118;
Argentina settled by, 114;
Uruguay settled by, 114
Spanish Conquest, 105
Steppes, 238
Sudan, 79, 93
Sudanese, in war, 210
Suez, 77, 103
"Survival of Fittest," 23, 150, 273
Syria, 57
Szechuan, 245
Tartars, 17, 57
Teheran, 61, 71
Teutonic Powers, 78
Texas, 133
Thibet, 29;
as Chinese colony, 45
Thirty Years' War, 202
Tokio, 22, 39 _ff._, 134
Tokio _Economist_, 131
Tokio _Hochi_, 50
Tokio _Mainichi Deupo_, 291
Tokio _Universe_, 37
Tokio _Yamato_, 38
Tokio _Yorodzu_, 292 _ff._
Trades Union Congress, 296
Transcaucasia, 57
Trinidad, 278
Tripoli, seized by Italy, 71 _ff._;
in revolt, 74, 77, 204
Tunis, 82, 94
"Turanians," 57
Turkestan, 38;
Chinese section of, 48;
colonization possibilities in, 45
Turkestan, composition of, 57;
population of, 57
Turkey, 4;
independence of, 56;
Tripoli taken from, 71;
Balkan War losses to, 72;
in European War, 74, 78, 209;
war losses of, 178;
German alliance with, 211 _ff._
Turkomans, 57
Uganda, Christianity in, 96
United States, 4, 10, 37;
in war, 39, 46;
Japanese relations with, 48, 99, 103, 132;
settlement of, 104, 121, 125, 129, 132;
Mexican relations with, 132 _ff._;
Mexican plot against, 133;
Mexican-Japanese alliance against, 132, 135;
Latin American hostility toward, 135 _ff._;
Latin American ties with, 137, 139;
Nordic race in, 165;
Bolshevik propaganda in, 220;
effect of immigration in, 256;
Hawaiian relations with, 279 _ff._, 282;
immigration menace to, 286, 289;
Chinese in, 286, 293 _ff._;
Japanese in, 286 _ff._;
Japanese excluded from, 292 _ff._;
immigration laws in, 308
Uruguay, 105;
population of, 114;
agricultural development of, 114;
European immigration into, 114 _ff._
Valparaiso, 112;
English character of, 112
Venezuela, 122;
Indians in, 128;
anti-American sentiment in, 136
Versailles Peace Conference, 42, 50;
Islam and, 75 _ff._, 187;
failure of, 215 _ff._, 233, 235, 307
Wahabees, 58, 67
Wars of Roses, 155
West African Guinea, Christian missions in, 96
West Indian Islands, 103, 253
White race, 3, 4, 5, 8 _ff._;
21, 34, 151;
numbers of, 6, 155;
8 _ff._, 21;
expulsion from Far East, 28, 31, 44;
Asia controlled by, 46, 47 _ff._, 53;
brown race's relation with, 55 _ff._, 146, 148;
62 _ff._, 70;
India's relation with, 82 _ff._, 124 _ff._;
brown-yellow alliance against, 85;
black race ruled by, 89, 91 _ff._, 102 _ff._;
in Northeast Africa, 93 _ff._;
African hostility toward, 97 _ff._;
in Africa, 98, 249;
in North America, 104 _ff._;
in Latin America, 104 _ff._, 110 _ff._, 118 _ff._, 123, 141 _ff._,
249, 302;
Indian race-mixture with, 106 _ff._, 116 _ff._;
Mexican hostility toward, 132 _ff._;
yellow race's relations with, 137 _ff._, 141, 146, 148, 151 _ff._;
expansion of, 145;
original location of, 145;
original area of, 145 _ff._;
original number of, 146;
effect of fifteenth-century discoveries on, 147;
progress of, 148 _ff._, 153;
effect of Russo-Japanese War on, 154, 171 _ff._, 203;
effect of industrial revolution on, 156 _ff._;
birth-rate of, 162;
division of, 162;
solidarity of, 169 _ff._, 199 _ff._, 204 _ff._, 306 _ff._;
in European War, 175 _ff._, 196, 199;
Bolshevik menace to, 219 _ff._;
danger to, 228 _ff._, 289 _ff._, 297 _ff._, 301, 303;
effect of immigration on, 251 _ff._, 278 _ff._;
exclusion policy of, 269 _ff._, 281 _ff._;
rise of, 299 _ff._
Yangtse River, 43, 244
Yellow Peril, 85, 139, 172, 213, 237
Yellow race, 5;
numbers of, 7;
home of, 7, 10, 12, 17 _ff._;
Russo-Japanese War triumph of, 21, 22;
expansion of, 28, 46 _ff._, 55;
white aggression resisted by, 56;
brown race's relations with, 85, 91, 100;
Americas penetrated by, 130 _ff._, 232;
Latin American attitude toward, 137, 139, 141 _ff._;
white race's relations with, 146, 148, 151 _ff._, 234 _ff._, 269,
272 _ff._;
in France, 204;
in war, 207 _ff._, 296;
Germany's relations with, 213;
military potency of, 238 _ff._;
industrial conditions in, 241, 272 _ff._;
in Hawaii, 279;
in Australia, 281;
in British Columbia 283;
in Central Asia, 303
Yemenite Arabs, 55
Yucatan, ancient civilization in, 126
Zambezi, 95 _ff._
Zanzibar Arabs, 95
Zawias. _See_ Senussi
Zelaya of Nicaragua, 122
Zulus, 96, 190;
revolt of, 98
FOOTNOTES:
[1] E. J. Dillon, "The Asiatic Problem," _Contemporary Review_, February,
1908.
[2] Ryutaro Nagai in _The Japan Magazine_. Quoted from _The American
Review of Reviews_, July, 1913, p. 107.
[3] Achmet Abdullah, "Seen Through Mohammedan Spectacles," _Forum_,
October, 1914.
[4] Quoted from _The Literary Digest_, October 24, 1914, p. 784.
[5] W. E. Burghardt Dubois, "The African Roots of War," _Atlantic
Monthly_, May, 1915.
[6] Yone Noguchi, "The Downfall of Western Civilization," _The Nation_
(New York), October 8, 1914.
[7] J. Liddell Kelly, "What is the Matter with the Asiatic?" _Westminster
Review_, September, 1910.
[8] Professor Schlegel in the Hague _Dagblad_. Quoted from _The Literary
Digest_, November 7, 1896, p. 24.
[9] Audley Coote in the Melbourne _Argus_. Quoted from _The Literary
Digest_, November 7, 1896, p. 24.
[10] Meredith Townsend, "Asia and Europe" (fourth edition, 1911). From the
preface to the fourth edition, pages xvii-xix.
[11] Quoted from _The American Review of Reviews_, February, 1905, p. 219.
[12] W. R. Manning, "China and the Powers Since the Boxer Movement,"
_American Journal of International Law_, October, 1910.
[13] Quoted by Manning, _supra_.
[14] E. J. Dillon, "The Most Momentous Event in a Thousand Years,"
_Contemporary Review_, December, 1911.
[15] Adachi Kinnosuke, "Does Japanese Trade Endanger the Peace of Asia?"
_World's Work_, April, 1909.
[16] Jean Rodes in _L'Asie Française_, June, 1911.
[17] René Pinon, "La Lutte pour le Pacifique," p. 152 (Paris, 1906).
[18] Quoted by Alleyne Ireland, "Commercial Aspects of the Yellow Peril,"
_North American Review_, September, 1900.
[19] Charles H. Pearson, "National Life and Character," p. 118 (2d
edition).
[20] Quoted by Ireland, _supra_.
[21] Quoted by Scie-Ton-Fa, "La Chine et le Japon," _Revue Politique
Internationale_, September, 1915.
[22] _The Literary Digest_, March 5, 1910, p. 429.
[23] _The Literary Digest_, January 18, 1908, p. 81.
[24] B. L. Putnam Weale, "The Conflict of Color," pp. 145-6 (New York,
1910).
[25] J. D. Whelpley, "East and West: A New line of Cleavage," _Fortnightly
Review_, May, 1915.
[26] _The Literary Digest_, July 6, 1912, p. 9.
[27] Quoted by Scie-Ton-Fa, _supra_.
[28] Quoted by Scie-Ton-Fa, _supra_.
[29] _The Literary Digest_, February 12, 1916, pp. 369-70.
[30] Alleyne Ireland, "Commercial Aspects of the Yellow Peril," _North
American Review_, September, 1900.
[31] _The Literary Digest_, November 13, 1909.
[32] _The Literary Digest_, July 5, 1919, p. 31.
[33] _The Military Historian and Economist_, January, 1917, pp. 43-46.
[34] W. G. Palgrave, "Essays on Eastern Questions," pp. 127-131 (London,
1872).
[35] Theodore Morison, "Can Islam Be Reformed?" _Nineteenth Century_,
October, 1908.
[36] Marmaduke Pickthall, "L'Angleterre et la Turquie," _Revue Politique
Internationale_, January, 1914.
[37] Bernard Temple, "The Place of Persia in World-Politics," _Proceedings
of the Central Asian Society_, May, 1910.
[38] Ameen Rihani, "The Crisis of Islam," _Forum_, May, 1912.
[39] _I. e._, the twentieth century of the Christian era.
[40] Yahya Siddyk, "Le Réveil des Peuples Islamiques au Quatorzième Siècle
de l'Hégire" (Cairo, 1907).
[41] Meredith Townsend, "Asia and Europe," pp. 46-47.
[42] F. Farjanel, "Le Japon et l'Islam," _Revue du Monde Musulman_,
November, 1906.
[43] Farjanel, _supra_.
[44] _Ibid._
[45] Gabriel Hanotaux, "La Crise méditerranéenne et l'Islam," _Revue
Hebdomadaire_, April 13, 1912.
[46] Arminius Vambèry, "Die türkische Katastrophe und die Islamwelt,"
_Deutsche Revue_, July, 1913.
[47] Shah Mohammed Naimatullah, "Recent Turkish Events and Moslem India,"
_Asiatic Review_, October, 1913.
[48] Vambèry, _supra_.
[49] Arminius Vambèry, "An Approach Between Moslems and Buddhists,"
_Nineteenth Century_, April, 1912.
[50] Special cable to the New York _Times_, dated Rome, May 28, 1919.
[51] Townsend, _op. cit._, pp. 82-87.
[52] A. R. Colquhoun, "Pan-Islam," _North American Review_, June, 1906.
[53] T. R. Threlfall, "Senussi and His Threatened Holy War," _Nineteenth
Century_, March, 1900.
[54] For details, see _The Annual Register_ for 1915 and 1916.
[55] Townsend, _op. cit._, pp. 92, 356-8.
[56] F. Garcia-Calderon, "Latin America: Its Rise and Progress," p. 49
(English translation, London, 1913).
[57] Although loose usage has since obscured its true meaning, the term
"Creole" has to do, not with race, but with birthplace. "Creole"
originally meant "one born in the colonies." Down to the nineteenth
century, this was perfectly clear. Whites were "Creole" or "European";
negroes were "Creole" or "African."
[58] Garcia-Calderon, p. 50.
[59] Garcia-Calderon, p. 89.
[60] Edward Alsworth Ross, "South of Panama," pp. 97-98 (New York, 1914).
[61] Ross, p. 109.
[62] Ross, p. 109.
[63] Madison Grant, "The Passing of the Great Race," p. 78. (2d edition,
New York, 1918.)
[64] Garcia-Calderon, pp. 351-2.
[65] _Ibid._, p. 287.
[66] _Ibid._, p. 360.
[67] Garcia-Calderon, pp. 361-2.
[68] _Ibid._, p. 362.
[69] Ross, "South of Panama," pp. 29-30.
[70] Ross, p. 41.
[71] A. P. Schultz, "Race or Mongrel," p. 155 (Boston, 1908).
[72] Garcia-Calderon, p. 222.
[73] _Ibid._, p. 336.
[74] W. B. Hale, "Our Danger in Central America," _World's Work_, August,
1912.
[75] G. W. Critchfield, "American Supremacy," vol. I, p. 277 (New York,
1908).
[76] Pearson, _op. cit._, p. 60.
[77] James Bryce, "South America," p. 181 (London, 1912).
[78] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 74.
[79] Ross, p. 89.
[80] Ellsworth Huntington, "The Adaptability of the White Man to Tropical
America," _Journal of Race Development_, October, 1914.
[81] Bryce, _op. cit._, p. 184.
[82] Garcia-Calderon, p. 354.
[83] Ross, p. 90.
[84] _The American Review of Reviews_, November, 1907, p. 622.
[85] The newspaper was _La Reforma_ of Saltillo. The editorial was quoted
in an Associated Press despatch dated El Paso, Texas, June 26, 1916. The
despatch mentions _La Reforma_ as "a semi-official paper."
[86] Gutierrez de Lara, "The Mexican People: Their Struggle for Freedom"
(New York, 1914).
[87] _The Literary Digest_, September 16, 1916, p. 662.
[88] Garcia-Calderon, pp. 329-330.
[89] Despatch to _La Prensa_ (New York), December 13, 1919.
[90] _The American Review of Reviews_, November, 1907, p. 623.
[91] _The Literary Digest_, December 30, 1911, p. 1222.
[92] J. M. Moncada, "Social and Political Influences of the United States
in Central America" (New York, 1911).
[93] Ross, pp. 91-92.
[94] Ross, pp. 92-93.
[95] P. 22.
[96] Townsend ("Asia and Europe"), pp. 1-4.
[97] Havelock Ellis, "Essays in War-Time," p. 198 (American Edition,
Boston, 1917).
[98] Réné Gérard, "Civilization in Danger," _The Hibbert Journal_,
January, 1912.
[99] Grant, _op. cit._, p. 100.
[100] Réné Pinon, "La Lutte pour le Pacifique," pp. 184-185.
[101] _New York Times Current History_, December, 1919, p. 438.
[102] _The Literary Digest_, August 29, 1914, p. 346.
[103] _The Literary Digest_, August 7, 1915.
[104] _Ibid._, August 11, 1917.
[105] S. K. Humphrey, "Mankind: Racial Values and the Racial Prospect," p.
132 (New York, 1917).
[106] Grant, p. 74.
[107] Ellis, p. 32.
[108] _New York Times Current History_, vol. IX, p. 272; October-December,
1916.
[109] _Current Opinion_, April, 1919, p. 237.
[110] _Saturday Review_, November 1, 1919, p. 407.
[111] J. L. Garvin, "The Economic Foundations of Peace," page xiv (London,
1919).
[112] Frank A. Vanderlip, "Political and Economic Conditions in Europe,"
_The American Review of Reviews_, July, 1919, p. 42.
[113] Herbert Hoover, "The Economic Situation in Europe," _World's Work_,
November, 1919, pp. 98-99.
[114] _The Literary Digest_, May 3, 1919, pp. 39-40.
[115] _Current Opinion_, April, 1919, p. 248.
[116] Quoted from _The Living Age_, June 21, 1919, pp. 722-4.
[117] Quoted from _The Living Age_, May 10, 1919, pp. 365-368.
[118] Pearson, pp. 14-15.
[119] His book "De l'Inégalité des Races Humaines" first appeared at that
date.
[120] Especially as expounded in Chamberlain's chief work, "Die Grundlagen
des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" ("The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century").
[121] Pinon, "La Lutte pour le Pacifique," p. 165.
[122] _The Nation_ (London), April 8, 1916, pp. 32-33.
[123] Eduard Meyer, "England: Its Political Organization and Development
and the War against Germany" (English translation, Boston, 1916).
[124] Captain Rheinhold Eichacker, "The Blacks Attack!" _New York Times
Current History_, vol. XI, pp. 110-112, April-June, 1917.
[125] Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens, "Our Million Black Army," _English
Review_, October, 1916.
[126] Ernst Jaeckh, "Die deutsch-türkische Waffenbruderschaft," p. 30
(Berlin, 1915).
[127] Bernhardt Molden, "Die Bedeutung Asiens im Kampf für unsere
Zukunft," _Preussische Jahrbücher_, December, 1914. See also his article
"Europa und Asien," _Preussische Jahrbücher_, October, 1915.
[128] Friedrich Delitzsch, "Deutschland und Asien" (pamphlet) (Berlin,
1914).
[129] Lic. Missionsinspektor J. Witte, "Deutschland und die Völker
Ostasiens in Vergangenheit und Zukunft," _Preussische Jahrbücher_, May,
1915.
[130] _The Economist_ (London), June 17, 1916, p. 1134.
[131] _The Literary Digest_, December 15, 1917, p. 14.
[132] _The Literary Digest_, December 15, 1914, p. 14.
[133] Official document.
[134] J. L. Garvin, "The Heritage of Armageddon," _The Observer_ (London).
Reprinted in _The Living Age_, September 6, 1919.
[135] In _The Daily Telegraph_ (London). Quoted in _The Nation_ (New
York), June 14, 1919, p. 960.
[136] Despite the legends which have grown up about the gaining of Haitian
independence, such is the fact. Despite the handicap of yellow fever, the
French were on the point of stamping out the negro insurgents when the
renewal of war with England, in 1803, cut off the French
sea-communications. The story of Haiti offers many interesting and
instructive points to the student of race-questions. It was the first real
shock between the ideals of white supremacy and race-equality; a prologue
to the mighty drama of our own day. It also shows what real race-war
means. To the historical student I cite my "French Revolution in San
Domingo" (Boston, 1914), wherein the entire revolutionary cycle between
1789 and 1804 is described, based largely upon hitherto unexploited
archival material.
[137] H. M. Hyndman, "The Awakening of Asia," pp. 267-8. (New York, 1919).
[138] Pearson, pp. 140-1.
[139] Edward Alsworth Ross, "The Changing Chinese," pp. 46-47 (New York,
1911).
[140] _The Literary Digest_, November 5, 1910, p. 786 (from _The Indian
Review_, Madras).
[141] Clarence Poe, "What the Orient Can Teach Us," _World's Work_, July,
1911.
[142] Clayton S. Cooper, "The Modernizing of the Orient," p. 5 (New York,
1914).
[143] Pearson, p. 133.
[144] Ross, pp. 117-118.
[145] Ross, p. 119.
[146] B. L. Putnam Weale, "The Conflict of Color," pp. 179-181.
[147] Pearson, pp. 138, 139.
[148] Prescott F. Hall, "Immigration," p. 99 (New York, 1907).
[149] See especially his "Psychology of Peoples" (London, 1898, English
translation).
[150] Eliot Norton, in _Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science_, vol. XXIV, p. 163, July, 1904. Of course, since Mr.
Norton wrote, millions more aliens have entered the United States, and the
situation is much worse.
[151] _I. e._, a person believing in the preponderance of environment
rather than heredity.
[152] Prescott F. Hall, "Immigration Restriction and World Eugenics," _The
Journal of Heredity_, March, 1919.
[153] Edward Alsworth Ross, "Changing America," pp. 45-46 (New York,
1912).
[154] Madison Grant, "The Passing of the Great Race," p. 90.
[155] Edward Alsworth Ross, "The Old World in the New," Preface, p. 2 (New
York, 1914).
[156] S. K. Humphrey, "Mankind: Racial Values add the Racial Prospect," p.
155.
[157] Grant, p. 263.
[158] Ross, "The Old World in the New," p. 304.
[159] Putnam Weale, "The Conflict of Color," pp. 98-99.
[160] Ross, "Changing America," pp. 46-48.
[161] Hyndman, "The Awakening of Asia," p. 180.
[162] Pearson, p. 132.
[163] L. E. Neame, "Oriental Labor in South Africa," _Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science_, vol. XXXIV, pp.
179-180, September, 1909.
[164] Ross, "The Changing Chinese," pp. 47-48.
[165] J. Liddell Kelly, "What Is the Matter with the Asiatic?"
_Westminster Review_, September, 1910.
[166] From an article in _The Pall-Mall Gazette_ (London). Quoted in _The
Literary Digest_, May 31, 1913, pp. 1215-16.
[167] Chester H. Rowell, "Chinese and Japanese Immigrants," _Annals of the
American Academy_, vol. XXXIV, p. 4, September, 1909.
[168] Neame, "Oriental Labor in South Africa," _Annals of the American
Academy_, vol. XXXIV, p. 181.
[169] Viator, "Asia contra Mundum," _Fortnightly Review_, February, 1908.
[170] Quoted by J. F. Abbott, "Japanese Expansion and American Policies,"
p. 154 (New York, 1916).
[171] H. C. Douglas, "What May Happen in the Pacific," _American Review of
Reviews_, April, 1917.
[172] Pearson, p. 17.
[173] Neame, _op. cit._, _Annals of the American Academy_, vol. XXXIV, pp.
181-2.
[174] Quoted by Archibald Hurd, "The Racial War in the Pacific,"
_Fortnightly Review_, June, 1913.
[175] Agnes C. Laut, "The Canadian Commonwealth," p. 146 (Indianapolis,
1915).
[176] Rowell, _op. cit._, _Annals of the American Academy_, vol. XXXIV, p.
10.
[177] Honorable A. G. Burnett, "Misunderstanding of Eastern and Western
States Regarding Oriental Immigration," _Annals of the American Academy_,
vol. XXXIV, p. 41.
[178] A. E. Yoell, "Oriental versus American Labor," _Annals of the
American Academy_, vol. XXXIV, p. 36.
[179] S. G. P. Coryn, "The Japanese Problem in California," _Annals of the
American Academy_, vol. XXXIV, pp. 43-44.
[180] Quoted by J. D. Whelpley, "Japan and the United States,"
_Fortnightly Review_, May, 1914.
[181] Quoted by Montaville Flowers, "The Japanese Conquest of American
Opinion," p. 23 (New York, 1917).
[182] _The Literary Digest_, August 9, 1919, p. 53.
[183] J. S. Little, "The Doom of Western Civilization," pp. 56 and 63
(London, 1907).
[184] _The Literary Digest_, August 29, 1914, p. 337.
[185] _The Literary Digest_, August 29, 1914, pp. 337-8.
[186] _Ibid._, April 22, 1916, p. 1138.
[187] Quoted in _The Review of Reviews_ (London), February, 1917, p. 174.
[188] _The Literary Digest_, July 5, 1919, p. 31.
[189] _Leslie's Weekly_, May 4, 1918.
[190] G. C. Hodges in _The Sunset Magazine_. Quoted by _The Literary
Digest_, September 14, 1918, pp. 40-42.
[191] Rudyard Kipling, "The Heritage." Dedicatory poem to the volume
entitled "The Empire and the Century" (London, 1905), the volume being a
collaboration by prominent British writers.
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