We are well aware of Japan, not so much through any perceptions of our own as through Japan's insistence upon attention. We can on short notice make out a rather comprehensive list of Japanese characteristics, and, in truth, we find Japan interesting. The marvelous energy of her people, her high ambitions, her Oriental viewpoint, her great commercial and military successes, her artistic setting, her marvelous skill of hand, and, not least, her abundant interest in our own affairs--these and other items make it quite the thing to be interested in Japan. But who cares anything about a lot of dirty peons? They are not in good form. But this interest in the Orient is more curiosity than it is race sympathy. There is a great gulf fixed between the yellow man and the white, and racially that gulf can never be bridged. The occasional marriages between the East and West need no comment; they tell their own story. Neither China nor Japan can ever become American in any racial sense. When Chinese and Japanese come to America for any but educational and temporary purposes, they set up Chinatown and little Japan wherever they go. American character is a most complicated composite of many races, but from Tokyo to Bombay there is no Oriental factor that will blend with the mixture of races that makes up America. Our Oriental interest is confined to the races that have impressed themselves upon our imagination. The Philippines, in spite of our national relation to the islands, do not seem to us very real nor very important. They will soon be keeping house for themselves, and then we shall forget them except as an interesting historical incident. And as for India, that is British, and about all we know is that the Hindu wears a turban, maintains a very undemocratic caste, exists in unaccountable numbers, is subject to annoying and frequent famines, and on the whole is a rather helpless lot, except as some bearded fakir entertains companies of badly balanced American society women with hyperbolated essence of sublimated nonsense. [Illustration: RIVERSIDE PLANTATION] But the Latin-American is blood of our blood, kin of our kind, and lives on the same continental street, which is why we are so little interested in him. He is neither quaint, curious, nor crazy. He is not good for first-page headlines except when he breaks out in revolution or forgets our Monroe Doctrine. There is no fixed gulf of difference between him and us, and in the final fusing of American character he must contribute a large part.