size up the situation, and above all in self-control and ability to dissemble and bide their time they have few equals. It was therefore perfectly possible to construe this message in an innocent sense. Secretary Hughes, the equal perhaps of Heflin and Caraway, evidently so construed it. Possibly contact with Secretary Hughes misled the Ambassador into thinking that he represented the temper of the American people. He did not. The American people has drifted into an attitude of antipathy toward the Japanese and the Congressional sounding boards at Washington reverberate the antipathy. The call was for drastic action, however unnecessary and however unwise. The problem was to find the pretexts. The message could be made to serve the purpose and it was so used. We threw away, deliberately and consciously, the results of our finest diplomatic achieve ment since Roosevelt kept the Kaiser out of Venezuela; and we reopened the sorest international wound in our recent history. All for nothing.

It is claimed, of course, that the Gentleman's Agreement had been evaded. Does anybody think the exclusion law will not be evaded? that our Canadian and Mexican borders will be effectively policed? Does anybody think that a million Japanese settled across the Mexican border would be restrained by that international chalk-mark? Was Japanese official honor, probably the highest in the world, worth nothing as enlisted for our protection in the Gentleman's Agreement? One of the finest achievements of statesmanship is to lay the onus of action upon the other party, to enlist his sense of honor and moral responsibility on your side.

This achievement of Roosevelt we have wantonly sacrificed. Congress has failed disastrously to consider the 'imponderables.'

II

Thus far we have considered only the question of method. We now come to a far more vital question, race discrimination. This takes two forms absolute exclusion of the non-white races, and unequal restriction as applied to the white race. Of the nonwhite we shall consider only the Japanese who alone have the organization and the alertness to make serious protest. We shall not quite forget, however, that back of Japan are other races, many fold more numerous and potentially more powerful, for whom the logic of events makes Japan, in a sense, the spokesman. What differences, relevant to our inquiry, exist between these races and the white races in whose favor we discriminate?

The assumption on both sides is that the difference is one of quality or capacity. The whites constantly imply if they do not assert their superiority, and the non-whites as constantly resent it. Passionate arguments against this assumption only bear witness to its reality and establish a presumption in its favor. Whoever heard of Englishmen arguing that they were the equal of Hindus, or resenting Tagore's claims in behalf of his race? While no measurement is possible and no criteria can be agreed upon or defined, we only make ourselves foolish by arguing for the equality of the races of men. Equal in God's sight if you will, but if this is so, then frankly that is one of the last points on which we are likely to come into sympathetic understanding with the Almighty.

But while we must recognize immense differences of attainment and presumably of potential capacity as between different races, it is by no means clear that the line is to be drawn between white and non-white. Not all the white races are of high capacity

nor all the non-whites feeble. The history of China and Japan, already a very long one, does not stamp them as inferior. England boasts that for over eight hundred years her island home has been inviolate. Japan, similarly situated and confronted by a far more powerful enemy, can boast an immunity three times as long. The Mongolian East was civilized and had its inimitable art and its aristocracy of letters when the Saxons were tending swine in sheepskin clothing. When we opened the door of Japan with complacent condescension, the interchange of amenities brought to our President beautiful specimens of gold lacquer, bronze, silver, porcelain, rolls of silk brocade and pongee, coral and silver ornaments and other articles innumerable, in return for our own gracious gifts to his Imperial Majesty, which included among other things a diminutive locomotive, a telegraph key and wire, a natural history of the State of New York, sixteen volumes of the Annals of Congress, Journal of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York, two volumes of Lighthouse Reports, a barrel of whiskey with an assortment of other liquors, and three ten cent boxes of tea. A dozen other notables received more modest gifts in all of which whiskey figured largely. Speaking of national affronts, it must not be forgotten that Japan has had something to put up with.

If the relative showing at that time was not wholly flattering to us, I doubt if the subsequent period has redressed the balance. It is a period in which we have little occasion to be ashamed of our achievements, but even less has Japan. Very wonderful has been the Anglo-Saxon's progress and his peaceable adaptation to modern conditions during the last seventy years; but the record of the Japanese during the same period is one for which the Anglo

Saxon can offer no counterpart at any period of his history.

We would better go slow, then, in provoking comparisons of capacity between ourselves and the Japanese. The facts cited are typical and relevant, nor do I know any counter facts to offset them. It is a matter both of fairness and of good policy to withdraw all insinuations or implications of Japanese inferiority. Judged by any common-sense standard, the white races as a whole are superior to the non-white, but there are whites who are less fit for American citizenship than the Japanese, and we have received such and are still receiving them into our fellowship.

The test is not capacity or superiority but assimilability. By this I do not mean ability to learn our ways, our habits of thought, and our ideals. There is no reason to doubt that the Japanese can become as good an American as the best in these respects. But can he cease to become Japanese and become one of us so that we shall not think of him as anything different or remember his origin any more than we remember our own ancestry of a few generations back? This is primarily a question of intermarriage. If he will marry us and we him, we shall forget. If not, not. This the white races do, though with unequal facility. The German or the Norwegian released from Ellis Island may not seem an eligible party, but no one draws the line at his son or daughter. In two or three generations at most the separate strain is lost and we are all Americans together.

But we do not wish to marry the Japanese and the Japanese are as little disposed to marry us. Procreation therefore perpetuates the race distinction instead of obliterating it. With extensive contact there would no doubt be some crossing of the line; but

most of it at the bottom of the social scale and thus of a nature to discredit the union. The lot of the Eurasians in the East or of the mulattoes with us is not one to commend their origin to right-thinking persons.

But why this necessity of assimilation if the Japanese can acquire our ideals and become loyal supporters of our institutions? Why can we not live in harmony side by side-distinct, yet united by a common loyalty to a common government? This question is very honestly asked by a certain number of the benevolently minded to whom the policy of exclusion is inherently distasteful. It is perhaps sufficient to reply that we are not very harmonious at best, that differences of opinion and clashes of interest are at all times threatening our peace and limiting our power of action, and that differences of any sort are constantly exploited by the spirit of faction. Even the temporary race-consciousness of our immigrant population, obliterated in a generation or two, is a grave political and social danger. What would it be if it were perpetual?

But in the case of the Japanese there is a far graver danger. The white races, broadly speaking, have reached a common solution of the problem of civilization. They differ widely in their standard of living and in innumerable details, but they seek well-being in fairly uniform ways and under similar conditions they work by similar methods toward similar ends.

Not so the Japanese. They have reached a very different solution of the great problem-a solution which is quite as satisfactory to them as ours to us and which may well be our envy and our despair. They have made far better terms with nature than we seem able to make, terms which permit them not only to live but to provide themselves with the elegances and refinements of a

very high civilization at a fraction of the cost which our method imposes upon us. If their standard of living were inferior to ours, they would quickly learn to prefer ours when brought in contact with it. But it is not inferior. It lacks much that we care for, but it has much that they care for and that ours lacks. In a word, they have hit upon a marvelously efficient and cheap way of getting highgrade results. This gives to their way of life a tenacity which a life of squalor and deprivation does not possess.

No doubt with prolonged contact even this difference would disappear. We should adopt their way of living or they ours or there would be a compromise between the two. But the two facts to be remembered are first, that we are dealing with a relatively permanent rather than a temporary raceconsciousness; and second, that theirs is a tenacious rather than a willingly surrendered way of life. For both these reasons the disparity is likely to be long continued. For generations the Japanese would remain among us a peculiar people.

And during all this period, be it remembered, the odds would be overwhelmingly against us. They would make money where we should lose and would flourish where we should starve. The competition might be perfectly honorable, even considerate; but it would be not the less fatal to the dispossessed and disastrous to the social order.

It may be objected that this process of displacement is always going on, that the fit are always displacing the unfit and that philosophically considered it has its justification. This is true; but few realize how delicate is the adjustment required to permit the continuance of this wholesome process without disrupting society. Every society has its submerged tenth, its

margin of the inefficient that it is concerned to eliminate, but with the least possible disturbance to the social structure. Let the number become too great or the process too harsh, and society is at once confronted with a revolt which may prove its undoing. The rejected must be too few and too weak to be dangerous, too obviously unfit to inspire dangerous sympathies or futile efforts at rehabilitation. Exceed those limits in whatever manner, and you raise up against society an enemy against which the organism is incapable of protecting itself.

What may be expected to happen when the line is drawn between two races consciously distinct, and the losing race is in the majority? What prospect is there that a race as virile as our own, and perfectly capable of annihilating its rival by weapons ready to its hand, would submit to be peaceably dispossessed by economic forces so favorable to its opponent? The question has already been answered by the revolt of the Pacific Coast. It is well that the decision has come thus early when the result is assured without a struggle and with a minimum of cost. With a larger Japanese population on the Pacific Coast, race rivalry would have become race conflict with an inevitable appeal of the Japanese to the mother country for aid that could not and would not have been refused. If we want war with Japan, the sure way to get it is to open our doors to Japanese immigration.

Most of the foregoing holds with equal or greater force of other Asiatic peoples. Chinese and Hindus are even less assimilable than Japanese. They have less powerful backing and this makes their exclusion easier- but not less imperative. Our door is and must be closed to Asiatic immigration, to the immigration of the non-white, id est, the non-marriageable races.

VOL. 134- NO. 1

ity has long been demonstrated. There can be no question that the Mediterranean peoples become less quickly and less completely American than the Nordics, due in part to their different temperament but more to their different inheritance of political and social ideas. In marked contrast with these easily assimilable races stand the Jews, not because of inferiority or inherent defects but because they have managed, through all the vicissitudes of twenty troubled centuries, to obey too strictly the injunction: 'Come ye out from among them and be ye separate.' Something of race solidarity which is in part their choice and in part imposed upon them remains as an uneliminable obstacle to their assimilation.

Our policy of discrimination as applied to the white races is a pretty delicate matter. Our preference for the Nordics is undoubtedly justified, but among peoples as among individuals, the expression of these preferences needs to be tempered by discretion. The choice of the census of 1890 as the basis of our quota is probably less offensive than calling names; but it is entirely arbitrary and a very bold expression of Nordic preference. Perhaps no better method could have been devised, but it has glaring defects. It favors the English, but also the Irisha matter for finite congratulation. If it excludes the Russian Jew, there is nothing to prevent the large German quota being entirely Jewish.

But this question of discrimination as between whites loses significance in the face of clear indications that it is a stepping-stone to complete exclusion. It is not so much the fact of restriction as its progressive character, not so much the decision as the increasing unanimity with which we have reached it, that counts. The previous quota of three per cent is reduced to two per cent, and this is reinforced by an absolute numerical limit. Exceptions have been abolished. It is amazing with what rapidity this new policy has developed. For years no restrictive measure could secure a majority in Congress. When finally voted it was vetoed; then vetoed again and passed over the veto; and now in this most drastic form it is voted with approximate unanimity. No one doubts the country's consent. What next? The tide may turn, but there is no sign of its turning. The prospect is for complete exclusion at an early date.

This is the momentous issue already referred to as more important than slavery or national union. Slavery was a domestic issue. It aroused the opposition of philanthropists, but it affected the life of the outside world but little. National union was perhaps of more interest, for upon it depended our weight in the council of nations. But neither of them approximated in international interest to this problem of immigration which our senators affirm to be 'a purely domestic question.' It is, on the contrary, the most obviously international of all our modern questions. The transfer of citizens from one allegiance to another is clearly a matter of joint concern.

For let us not forget, this policy is absolutely without precedent in the history of the world. There have been plenty of exclusions but not of this kind. There have been hermit nations like Japan and Korea that forbade all

Men everywhere tend to multiply to the limit of sustenance, and since that limit is a fluctuating one, a season of crop failure exposes them to famine. Increase, crop failure, and famine, this is the normal cycle of life for an incontinent people. The majority of mankind has always been and still is in that class. The constant background of history is a succession of these cycles. Where relations between nations are complex and confused as in Europe, the sequence is obscured, and famine and pestilence are more or less systematically commuted for their more merciful alternate-war. But in the record of a hermit country, such as was Japan for two centuries and a half, where war was excluded by organization and isolation, the cycle was repeated with monotonous regularity. Men thought of famine as we do of death, as a thing sure to come though you could not tell just when.

This equilibrium which we may fairly characterize as the normal lot of mankind has long been the condition in India and China where the efforts of philanthropy and science advance the fighting line but gain no permanent advantage. advantage. It was the condition in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, though here famine was more often commuted to war than in the East. It is true in Russia to-day.

But for the last two or three centuries a favored portion of humanity has been granted a suspension of sen