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.