The Chinese are gentle, urbane, seeking only justice and freedom.  They have a civilization superior to ours in all that makes for human happiness.  They have a vigorous movement of young reformers, who, if they are allowed a little time, will revivify China and produce something immeasurably better than the worn-out grinding mechanism that we call civilization.  When Young China has done its work, Americans will be able to make money by trading with China, without destroying the soul of the country.  China needs a period of anarchy in order to work out her salvation; all great nations need such a period, from time to time.  When America went through such a period, in 1861-5, England thought of intervening to insist on “good government,” but fortunately abstained.  Now-a-days, in China, all the Powers want to intervene.  Americans recognize this in the case of the wicked Old World, but are smitten with blindness when it comes to their own consortium.  All I ask of them is that they should admit that they are as other men, and cease to thank God that they are not as this publican.

So much by way of criticism by America; we come now to the defence of Japan.

Japan’s relations with the Powers are not of her own seeking; all that Japan asked of the world was to be let alone.  This, however, did not suit the white nations, among whom America led the way.  It was a United States squadron under Commodore Perry that first made Japan aware of Western aggressiveness.  Very soon it became evident that there were only two ways of dealing with the white man, either to submit to him, or to fight him with his own weapons.  Japan adopted the latter course, and developed a modern army trained by the Germans, a modern navy modelled on the British, modern machinery derived from America, and modern morals copied from the whole lot.  Everybody except the British was horrified, and called the Japanese “yellow monkeys.”  However, they began to be respected when they defeated Russia, and after they had captured Tsing-tao and half-enslaved China they were admitted to equality with the other Great Powers at Versailles.  The consideration shown to them by the West is due to their armaments alone; none of their other good qualities would have saved them from being regarded as “niggers.”

People who have never been outside Europe can hardly imagine the intensity of the colour prejudice that white men develop when brought into contact with any different pigmentation.  I have seen Chinese of the highest education, men as cultured as (say) Dean Inge, treated by greasy white men as if they were dirt, in a way in which, at home, no Duke would venture to treat a crossing-sweeper.  The Japanese are not treated in this way, because they have a powerful army and navy.  The fact that white men, as individuals, no longer dare to bully individual Japanese, is important as a beginning of better relations towards the coloured races in general.  If the Japanese, by defeat in war, are prevented from retaining the status of a Great Power, the coloured races in general will suffer, and the tottering insolence of the white man will be re-established.  Also the world will have lost the last chance of the survival of civilizations of a different type from that of the industrial West.