To the claim that the Sikhs are loyal, Canada answers—­“for their own sake.”  If British protection were withdrawn from India to-morrow, a thousand petty chiefs would fly at one another’s throats.  The idea that expropriation is behind exclusion could be entertained only by an Oriental mind.  Expropriation is possible under Canadian law only for treason.  Imperial unity is no more threatened in Canada by exclusion than it was threatened in South Africa and Australia.  The Hindus are adapted to the cultivation of the soil, but if they come in millions, will any white race sit down beside them?  Why does immigration persistently refuse to go to the southern states?  Because of a black shadow over the land.  Does Canada want such a shadow?

The missionary argument can hardly be taken seriously.  Missionaries do not go to India to colonize.  They do not introduce white vices.  They go at Canada’s expense to give free medical and social service to India.

“Why should a Sikh not marry a white woman?” There, again, you are up against a side of the subject that is neither violet water nor pink tea; but—­it is a vital side of the subject.  For the same reason that the South objects to and passes laws against mixed unions of the races.  These laws are not the registration of prejudice.  They are the registration of terrible lessons in experience.  It is not a matter of opinion.  It is a matter of fact.  What is feared is not the marriage of a Sikh who is refined to a white woman who knows what she is doing.  What is feared is the effect of that union on the lewd Hindu; the effect on the safety of the uncultured white woman and white girl.  Any one on the Coast who has lived next to Asiatics, any one in India or the Philippines knows what this means in terms of hideous terrible fact that can not be set down here.  Vancouver knows.  “I’ll see,” said an officer in the Philippines of his native valet, “that the—­dog turns up missing;” and every man present knew why; and when the officer set out on an unnamed expedition with his valet, the valet did “turn up missing.”  There are vices for which a white man kills.  “Have not the English carried vices to India?” a Hindu protagonist asked me.  Yes, answered British Columbia, but we do not purpose poisoning the new young life of Canada to compensate the vices of English soldiers who have gone to pieces morally in India.

As to shutting Canadians out of India, Canada would accept that challenge gladly.  When Canadians carry vices to India—­says Canada—­shut them out.

These are the reasons given for the Pacific Coast’s aversion to the Hindu, and even with the arguments stated explicitly, there is a great deal untold and untellable.

For instance, some of the leaders talking loudest in Eastern Canada in the name of the Sikh are not Sikhs at all, and one at least has a criminal record in San Francisco.

For instance again, when the coronation festivities were on in England, there was a very peculiar guard kept round the Hindu quarters.  It would be well for some of the eastern women’s clubs to inquire why that was; also why the fact was hushed up that two white women of bad character were carried out of that compound dead.