BY
REV. SIDNEY L. GULICK
The human race is entering upon a new era of development. Space has
practically collapsed bringing into immediate relations races and
civilizations that have come into being through milleniums of divergent
evolution. The impact of Christendom on Asia has at last started into
new activity those long torpid peoples comprising more than one-half of
the human race. Asia is awaking, is learning: she is acquiring our modes
of thought and life and organization.
These two facts, the collapse of space and the awakening of Asia are
creating a new world-situation. To adapt herself to the conditions
created for her by the West, the East has found herself forced to
abandon her isolation and to reorganize the entire scheme of life and
thought which she has been developing for not less than four thousand
years.
But Asia’s awakening and acquisition of Western modes of political,
industrial, commercial and intellectual life, and particularly her
development of military power, and national ambitions, and her
insistence on national rights, are creating a new world-situation for
Western lands.
Twenty-six years of life in Japan have colored my brain with the Orient.
It is widely assumed that the white race is, and is to remain dominant,
the supreme factor in the world’s history; and that our primary problem
is concerned with the establishment of such arrangements between the
white nations as will produce peace here. We little realize, however,
the mighty significance of the new factors that are coming into our
lives because of the rise of other parts of the human race.
The white man little appreciates the Asiatic. He suspects, dislikes,
scorns, despises him, and is not willing to treat him on the basis of
equality, justice and courtesy. To this day even in this Christian land,
we are not dealing justly with the alien, especially the alien from
Asia. And this is creating a serious situation.
Now the Church has been an important factor in creating the new
world-situation. Through its missionary activity, entirely devoid of
desires for territorial aggression, the Church has sent into every
nation men without a particle of racial ambition. They have become
friends of individuals of other races; they have come to understand
those lands and their peoples and these in turn have come to understand,
trust, and love the missionaries. In these ways there have been imparted
to Japan and China ideals, conceptions, and ambitions which are proving
to be mighty forces in those lands. Japan would not be what she is
to-day had it not been for those early missionaries who went to that
land in the sixties and seventies. The few young men who were taught by
them in Western ways became the leaders of Japan; they saw and helped
their fellow-countrymen to see that Japan must learn what the West had
to teach her. Japan humbled her proud head. In the last forty years she
has employed more than five thousand white men to come to her land to
teach, and no one can tell how many thousand of her young men have
traveled and studied in foreign lands, and returned with treasures
inestimable. In a single generation Japan has taken her place as one of
the leading nations.
One thing I would like to impress upon peace workers, is this: Japan is
tired of having peace lecturers come to tell her about the horrors of
war and the importance of peace. What Japan asks is justice. If we do
not give her justice she cares nothing for peace. Peace lecturers, as a
rule, little realize that Japan is no longer a child. She is pretty well
grown up, and is better acquainted as a whole with the political
conditions of the world than any other nation. She has sent her young
men into every nation and they have returned speaking the languages of
all the civilized peoples of the world. They can read the newspapers of
every land and know what is going on. The news of the world is better
presented in the newspapers of Japan than it is in the majority of our
papers in this country. Japan is no longer a child. She understands the
world situation and realizes it.
But because Japan is Asiatic, we suspect and fear her; we even get
hysterical about her. Once when the anti-alien legislation of California
was the cause of international tension one of our Generals is reported
to have asked for four hundred and fifty thousand troops with which to
patrol the Pacific coast, fearing an attack from Japan. This reveals an
extraordinary misunderstanding. Japan desires friendship with America
and will do anything consistent with national dignity and honor to
maintain friendship. During the last five years she has consistently
carried out the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement because of which there
are some seven thousand less Japanese in America to-day than there were
when the arrangement went into operation. California, however, ignoring
that fact, went ahead with invidious race-discriminating legislation.
Japan does not want any more preachers of peace. She wants preachers of
justice.
For sixty years now we have had relations with Japan and they have been
remarkably friendly. To-day we have China’s unqualified friendship. We
returned a few years ago to China the Boxer indemnity; in the seventies,
we returned the Shimonoseki indemnity to Japan. These splendid acts have
been highly appreciated. But do you realize that we are losing Japan’s
friendship and in turn will surely lose that of China, because we are
not keeping our treaty pledges? Do you realize that we are continuously
subjecting the Chinese in our land to indignities that deeply wound
their feelings? We are confronting a serious situation, serious because
we are so ignorant and so indifferent.
So much in regard to the problems. Turning now to the solution. Ought
not the Church to be a main factor in solving the problems of the new
era in race relations? It should teach us with new insistence that God
is no respecter of races; all alike are His children and beloved by Him.
It is so easy for a people to think of themselves as God’s pet child,
even as the Jews thought of themselves as the elect race. We white
people regard ourselves as inherently superior to all others. We are,
however, profoundly ignorant of the Asiatic and therefore we scorn and
despise him. We easily fancy that a gulf divides us.
There is indeed a difference between us, but it is not such a difference
as is generally assumed, nor is it insuperable. My life in Japan has
brought me into such relationship with Japanese that I am perfectly
clear on this point. To talk about an insuperable obstacle, a profound
gulf that separates the East from the West is the result of insufficient
experience. One of the important things, therefore, which the Church can
do and is doing through its thousands of foreign missionaries is to gain
wide and real knowledge of the East as it has been and as it now is, and
then to impart that knowledge to the nations of the West.
The second great thing which the Church can and should do is to insist
that our laws shall be so framed and administered as to do justice to
Asiatics in this land. Until we do that, can we claim that ours is a
Christian land? As a matter of fact, we do not grant the Asiatic a
square deal in this country nor give them an open door; yet we demand
them for ourselves over there. We do not even give them the courtesy
which we secure. The Asiatic is more sensitive to slight or insult than
we are. We are thick-skinned. In their civilization courtesy is a highly
important element. But we go on in our blunt ways wounding their
feelings, and even disregarding their rights. Is it not time for our
churches to insist that our laws shall be so modified, framed, and
administered as to do them justice and to deal with them courteously?
The Church is facing a new testing time and a new time of opportunity
with regard to the relation of the races. The first great testing time
of the churches occurred immediately after Pentecost when Jewish
Christians thought that Gentiles had to become Jews before they could be
Christians and brothers. But the Holy Spirit led them to see that all
men are brothers, without becoming Jews, and those early Christians
learned even to eat with Samaritans and with Gentiles; they welcomed
them into their brotherhood. _Now_ it is the white man who feels that he
is the elect race and has special hold upon the grace of God; he looks
down upon other races as inferior. But God is teaching us our error. The
Asiatic is indeed our equal. I would just as soon sit at the feet of
competent Japanese professors as I would at the feet of professors of
German or American extraction. We are discovering that Asiatics are as
brainy as we are; and that they produce men of splendid character. But
it is a question to-day whether and how far our churches are willing to
accept the fact that men of other races and colors and even with almond
eyes, are our equals. This is a new testing time for the churches and
also a time of rare opportunity.