The Northern Advocate TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1913. DEFERENCES OF RACE.

Northern Advocate, 26 August 1913, Page 4

The Northern Advocate TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1913. DEFERENCES OF RACE.

With the rise of the Chinese Republic and all that such a movement implies, and the growing restiveness of Japan under the restrictions imposed upon her people abroad, questions that were at one time treated as .almost -wholly academic are assuming an importance to Eng-lish-speaking countries of which the reality and moment cannot be ignored. The Australian States were the first to impose restriction on the Asiatic races, and now with Canada, the United States and South Africa find themselves confronted by a problem of great and increasing difficulty—a problem not unlike that before Germany in Poland, and Austria in her Slavonic provinces. The problem is entirely one of race. Quite lately the position in respect to Japan and America has been made exceptionally acute by the passage through the Californian Legislature of the Alien Land Bill, a measure of which we have not heard the last by any means. In England the view generally taken of this question of Asiatic restriction, so far as it applies to Japanese, Chinese ?nd Indians, is one of impatience, and from men of the highest eminence there is frequently heard a plea that at least the Japanese and the peoples of British India should be admitted to all English—speaking countries, and there enjoy the full rights of citienship. This view has been lately stated with no little force and apparent cogency by Sir Valentine Chirol, director of the Foreign Department of the London "Times," who in an article published by that paper presses for admission by the Japanese and condemns the attitude of the Californian Legislature. " The ultimate isssue involved," he writes, " is whether Japan, who has made good her title to be treated on a footing of complete equality as one of the great Powers of the world, is not also entitled to rank among the civilised nations whose citizens the American Republic is ready to welcome, subject to a few well-defined exceptions, within its fold, whenever they are prepared to transfer their allegiance to it." In brief, this means that the attainment by Japan of the position of a great Power entitles her to claim for her citizens free immigration into the territories of any other great Power, with accompanying naturalisation. " The colour 5, bar cannot be logically pleaded as prohibitive by the United States," adds the writer, " since within living memory she waged the greatest civil war of modern times in order to establish the claim of American negroes to equal rights to citizenship with the white population." Now as a matter of fact the War of Secession was not waged for the abolition of slavery, still less for equal rights of citizenship. The abolition proclamation came eighteen months after the war began, and the rights of citizenship after the war ended; purely as a party political measure. But in any case the question of regarding the entry of Asiatics is not one of colour, but of assimilation of race character, and it seems at least reasonable that the people of the United States, knowing the problem they already have in the coloured, race amongst them., should dread the'introduction of what they believe will constitute another race problem; and one much more difficult, because the virile qualities of the Japanese would still more successfully withstand assimilation, constituting a homogenous foreign mass, naturally acting together irrespective of the national welfare, and so be a perennial cause of friction with Japan, even more dangerous than at present America, like Australia and Canada, instinctively doubts her ability to digest and assimilate the strong racial and national characteristics due to divergent pasts and origin, of the Asiatic races. When these people migrate to a country other than their own they remain essentially, unchangeably foreign, and in connection with this aspect of the problem Admiral Mahan, in a reply to Sir Valentine Chiral, has drawn attention to some of the primary facts. Among these is the fact that British and American government rests on the popular will. Be the causes what they may —economical, industrial, social, racial, or all four and if there be any other motives —the will of the people is the law of the Government. So far as that will has been express-

Ed in America and in Canada it is distinctly contrary to the concession of such immigration. With the question of immigration that of naturalisation is inextricably involved. There cannot be naturalisation without immigration; while immigration ■without concession of naturalisation, though conceivable and possible, is contrary to the genius of American, institutions, which, as a general proposition, do not favour inhabitancy without right to citizenship. It is, of course, a mere assumption that changes of governmental methods change also natural characteristics to such an extent as to affect radically those qualities which make for beneficial citizenship in a foreign country. Stated concretely, this means that the adoption of Western methods by Japan has in two generations so changed the Japanese racial characteristics as to make them readily assimilable with Europeans, so as to be easily absorbed. This the Japanese in their just pride of race would be the first to deny. It ignores also the whole background of European history, and the fact that European civilisation (which includes America) grew up for centuries under influences of which Asia experienced nothing. The " Foundations of the Twentieth Century " are not only a succession of facts, or combination of factors. They are to be found chiefly in the moulding of character, national and individual, through sixty odd generations.