The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-SupremacyStoddard, Lothrop
History
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
Stoddard, Lothrop
Caucasian race; Race relations
The above outline of Japanese foreign policy reveals beneath all its
surface mutations a fundamental continuity. Whatever may be its ultimate
goals, Japanese foreign policy has one minimum objective: Japan as hegemon
of a Far East in which white influence shall have been reduced to a
vanishing quantity. That is the bald truth of the matter--and no white man
has any reason for getting indignant about it. Granted that Japanese aims
endanger white vested interests in the Far East. Granted that this
involves rivalry and perhaps war. That is no reason for striking a moral
attitude and inveighing against Japanese "wickedness," as many people are
to-day doing. These mighty racial tides flow from the most elemental of
vital urges: self-expansion and self-preservation. Both outward thrust of
expanding life and counter-thrust of threatened life are equally normal
phenomena. To condemn the former as "criminal" and the latter as "selfish"
is either silly or hypocritical and tends to envenom with unnecessary
rancor what objective fairness might keep a candid struggle, inevitable
yet alleviated by mutual comprehension and respect. This is no mere plea
for "sportsmanship"; it is a very practical matter. There are critical
times ahead; times in which intense race-pressures will engender high
tensions and perhaps wars. If men will keep open minds and will eschew the
temptation to regard those opposing their desires to defend or possess
respectively as impious fiends, the struggles will lose half their
bitterness, and the wars (if wars there must be) will be shorn of half
their ferocity.
The unexpected ending of the European War was, as we have seen, a blow to
Japanese calculations. Nevertheless, the skill of her diplomats at the
ensuing Versailles Conference enabled Japan to harvest most of her war
gains. Japan's territorial acquisitions in China were definitely written
into the peace treaty, despite China's sullen veto, and Japan's
preponderance in Chinese affairs was tacitly acknowledged. Japan also took
advantage of the occasion to pose as the champion of the colored races by
urging the formal promulgation of "racial equality" as part of the peace
settlement, especially as regards immigration. Of course the Japanese
diplomats had no serious expectation of their demands being acceded to; in
fact, they might have been rather embarrassed if they had succeeded, in
view of Japan's own stringent laws against immigration and alien
landholding. Nevertheless, it was a politic move, useful for future
propagandist purposes, and it advertised Japan broadcast as the
standard-bearer of the colored cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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