TREMENDOUS WORLD PROBLEM

 WHY WHITE RACES FEAR JAPANESE IMMIGRATION

A tremendous world problem has begun, and is continuing, of which none can foresee the end (observes a London authority). This problem is being played out in the United States, in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in South Africa. At first sight it seems merely a question of colour and of racial prejudice. But at bottom it is more than that — it is an economic question of the first order.
Ultimately this may prove to be the most tremendous question upon which great masses of mankind have ever been divided," says the London "Daily Telegraph," "but any attempt to settle it by arms, whatever the immediate issue, would mean sooner or later a hundred years' conflict; and not for this generation only, but for many, the world's hopes for peace would be sunk deeper than Prospero dropped his book."

ECONOMIC COMPETITION OF TWO RACES.

"The real root of the trouble," thinks the "Times," "is not in any issue of general policy, but is to be sought in the friction arising from the economic competition in the same area of races differing wholly in habits and standards of living, and disinclined to amalgamate— a competition of whose difficulties we have already seen something within the British Empire, and with which we shall inevitably have to deal in the future. Of the difficulty created by this problem some permanent solution based on equitable compromise will yet have to be found. Failing it, the trouble that is now creating such anxiety to all lovers of peace and civilisation will inevitably recur at a later period; and recur in a far more serious form."

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"The standard of life among the Australian and American democracies," adds the "Telegraph," "would be utterly undermined by unrestricted Asiatic competition — nay, would be swamped if the vast floods of Chinese humanity, for instance, were to burst through the frail legislative dikes now holding them back from empty or half-peopled regions under white control; and the unrestricted ingress of labour from the Far East would be more insidiously and totally destructive of white welfare than war itself. In one word, this is not a colour question; it is fundamentally an economic question. We trust, our allies will take it at that, and will realise that the point of national honour has been accidentally caught up with the problem, but is not permanently involved in it.  It would be as illogical to make war upon it as to make war against the M'Kinley tariff. Goods, and men alike are discriminated against for economic reasons."

A SERIOUS SITUATION.

"Those who look forward to a conflict at some time or other caused by the determination of the Japanese to press, and the determination of the Anglo-Saxon oversea, both in America and in Australia and New Zealand, to resist, the claim of the Japanese to enter and to help to develop territories bordering on the Pacific which the white man considers reserved for his special occupation, can, unfortunately, not be described as mere visionaries or dreamers," says the "Spectator." "The hard, practical facts of the case are with the pessimists. We may sum up the situation, indeed, by saying that though things at present are not nearly as bad as 'the man in the street' supposes, the future outlook, though not necessarily a near future, is probably good deal worse than he imagines."

THE CALIFORNIAN TROUBLE.

So much for the general statement of the issues which hang on this tremendous problem. The whole matter is forced on public attention just now by the conflict in California between Americans and Japanese. "The international standing of Japan among the nations seemed to have been established by sacrifices and achievements as heroic, whether in peace or war, as ever were credited, to any country," says the "Telegraph." "She took her place" as a Great Power, a nation among her equals. Yet in California her subjects admitted under treaty are misused as though they were helots or pariahs. The United States Government acknowledges that injustice has been committed, but is almost absolutely prevented, by the limitations of the American Constitution, from giving effectual redress. That is the deadlock which, has been created, and the situation is as difficult for statesmanship at Washington as it is trying to the Government of Tokio and exasperating to the national sentiment of its subjects.

QUESTION OF STATE RIGHTS.

"A solution can only be reached by placing a very loose interpretation upon the letter of the law, and allowing unconventional and uncompromising common sense to form a substitute for pedantry and parchment. The American case, and we shall endeavour to put it as fairly as the Japanese, is much better in reason than in logic. Whether from the social or the political point of view, the problem for the United States is real, and it is grave. It is raised by the procedure of the Californian authorities, whether municipal bodies or State legislature. At their instigation or through their supineness, the subjects of a great and friendly Power, in peaceful exercise of their treaty rights, have been harassed and humiliated. There has been an endeavour to exclude them from American soil and to boycott them when they are settled upon it. They have been ejected from the public schools and obstructed in the pursuit of their business. There has been an attempt to place a stigma of racial inferiority upon them.
"These things have not only been done; they have been done brutally, cynically, and with every wanton slight calculated to poison the wound in the minds of a people more sensitive than any other upon the point of honour. And upon this subject the local legislation of California has consistently defied and set at naught the treaty law of the United States. It is not possible to doubt that Japanese subjects now in the United States are entitled to protection. It is not possible to doubt either that upon this point at least an overwhelming majority of American citizens will grapple sooner or later with the most flagrant abuse of State rights since the secession of the Slave States, and will insist that justice shall be done. California is contumacious; but the United States as a whole is pledged by international engagements freely entered into."

PEACE BY CIVIL WAR?

"It is the honour of the Republic itself that is at stake, much more than Japan's," continues the "Telegraph." "In this sense President Roosevelt himself has pleaded again and again, and we do not doubt that his voice will again be heard in unchanged and powerful accents. In this sense Mr. Root, who is one of the ablest, most attractive, most courageous figures in the public life of any country, has dared to urge, and undoubtedly with his President's approval, that even the American Constitution should to amended when the letter of its provisions is used in purely local interests by a minority reckless of the reputation and interests of the State itself. Yet the American Constitution is almost unchangeable, though it is proving more and more imperfectly adapted to modern needs. It is like a suit of cast-iron clothes made to the measure of a growing boy. The President, has no power to control California by anything short of armed occupation, and our allies will hardly desire that he should attempt the paradox of forcibly, preserving international Peace by risking civil war. Never was it truer than in this particular case that force is no remedy. Neither war nor civil war would win the right of peaceful settlement for the Japanese. Either would make their presence as immigrants upon American soil for ever impossible."

THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEAL.

The "Spectator," commenting on this article, says: — "We find ourselves in agreement with the leading article in the 'Daily-Telegraph,' which dwells upon the indisputable fact that the people of Australia and New Zealand are determined, to 'keep their several countries to themselves, and to receive only the immigrants they can assimilate,' and 'are prepared to make any sacrifice' to maintain this principle. As the 'Daily Telegraph' goes on, 'they have been infinitely wiser, calmer, and more decent in their procedure than California has been, but to their determination; as we have described it, it is well known that there are no limits whatever.' . . . . . We may wish that it were possible that the Britons oversea would be willing to count the Japanese as white men, and to consider them as fit to be assimilated into their communities. Whether we like it or not, however, we have got to admit the fact that the opinion is not held, and in all human probability never will be held, by the inhabitants of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or the Pacific provinces of Canada. The inhabitants of these communities realise, in view of the immense capacities of the Japanese for emigration, that if they were once to allow the Japanese full and free rights of access and occupation, they would be obliged to look forward in the future to a mixed European and Japanese polity, and to abandon their ideal of a white Anglo-Saxon self-governing State. Much as we respect the Japanese, much as we detest the usual phenomena of racial and colour prejudice, strongly as we condemn and sternly as we would punish the monstrous outrages which have occasionally been committed by the white man on the yellow man, we are bound to say that in the last resort we cannot wonder that the self-governing English-speaking communities of the Empire are determined to remain white men's countries, with all that that involves, and will not run the risk of letting the land they live in and the land they love be made the ground for an experiment which has never before been tried in history — the experiment of a community of mixed European and Asiatic blood, founded on a mixture of the social, religious, and moral ideals of the two continents.

CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION TO BE MAINTAINED.

"People sometimes talk as if it were possible to segregate the Asiatic and the European and to let each live his own life side by side without jealousy or interference, Those who argue thus do not realise the conditions of colonial life. 'It is, no doubt, quite possible in Egypt or in India' for a small number of highly-paid officials to segregate themselves, and to produce a European community governed by European ideals within the Asiatic polity. When, however, working men of the yellow race live side by side with working men of the white races no such life in water-tight compartments is possible. The races must either mix, or one must go. Let our readers who are made indignant by the logic of these facts place themselves for a moment in the position of a working man in Australia or New Zealand. "Can they honestly say that they would like to live as poor men in a close community side by side, and on an absolute equality, with men and women of the yellow race, with their children, in hourly intercourse with the children of that race, and with those children and themselves called upon almost daily to choose whether they would conform to the moral, intellectual and social standards set by Asia upon  all sorts of questions, including matters of religion and sex, or those set by Europe ? We do not wish to argue here, whether the European standards are necessarily better, and we are fully aware that a Japanese may often put to shame a European in matters of morality, temperance, and self-restraint. The fact remains, however, that the moral and social and political ideals are different, and we, at any rate, have no hesitation whatever in declaring that for our people the Christian civilisation is infinitely the better, and that every effort and sacrifice must be made to maintain it, and to reject its dilution with that which we think is lower, and which, at any rate, all must admit is conflicting in essentials."

Australian Star (Sydney, NSW : 1887 - 1909), Friday 30 August 1907, page 7