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 elite
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, Rene 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
regime. 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.