Brown Brother:  “We don’t care any more for our coolies than you do.  We don’t in fact, care a hoot what becomes of the spawn and dregs of no-goods in our population.  We are not individualists, as you white men are!  We don’t aim to keep the unfit cumbering the earth!  We don’t care a hoot for these coolies; but what we do care for is this—­we Orientals refuse to be branded any longer as an inferior race.  We’ll restrain the emigration of these coolies by a passport system; but don’t you forget it, just as soon as we are strong enough, in the friendliest, kindest, suavest, politest, most diplomatic way in the world, we intend not to be branded any longer as an inferior race.  We intend to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the management of the world’s affairs.  If we don’t stand up to the job, throw us down!  If we stand up to the job—­and we stood up moderately in China and Russia and Belgium—­we don’t intend to ask you for the sop of that Christian brotherhood preached by white men.  We intend to force recognition of what we are by what we do.  We ask no favors, but we now serve you notice we are in to play the game.”

Neither is this conversation a free translation.  Shorn of diplomatic kotowing and compliments and circumlocutions, it is exactly what the Mikado’s representative served to the representatives of three great governments—­Uncle Sam’s, John Bull’s, Miss Canada’s.  If you ask how I know, I answer—­direct from one of the three men sent to Japan.

Can you see the white men’s eyes pop out of their heads with astonishment?  They thought they were up against a case of labor union jealousy, and they found themselves involved in a complex race problem, dealing with three aggressive applicants for places at the councils of rulers governing the world.  California was ordered to turn on the soft pedal and do it quick, and officially, at least, she did for a time.  Canada was ordered to lay both hands across her mouth and never to speak above a whisper of the whole Brown Brother problem; and England—­well—­England openly took the Jappy-Chappy at his word—­recognized him as a world brother and entered into the famous alliance.  And the coming of coolies suddenly stopped to the United States and Canada.  It didn’t stop to South America and Mexico, but that is another play of the game with facts for chessmen.

Chinese exclusion, Japanese exclusion, Hindu exclusion suddenly became party shibboleths—­always for the party out of power, never for the party in power.  The party in power kept a special Maxim silencer on the subject of Oriental immigration.  The politician in office kept one finger on his lip and wore rubber-soled shoes whenever an almond-eyed was mentioned.  With that beautiful consistency which only a politician has, a good British Columbia member, who rode Oriental exclusion as his special hobbyhorse, employed a Jap cook.  In the midst of his stump campaign against Orientals he found in the room of his cook original drawings of Fort Esquimalt, of Vancouver Harbor and of Victoria back country.  I was in British Columbia at the time.  The funny thing to me was—­all British Columbia was so deadly in earnest it didn’t see the funny side of the inconsistency.