Now the yellow world is alive to this momentous possibility. Japan, in particular, has glimpsed in Latin America precious avenues to that racial expansion which is the key-note of Japanese foreign policy. For years Japanese statesmen and publicists have busied themselves with the problem. The Chinese had, in fact, already pointed the way, for during the later decades of the nineteenth century Chinamen frequented Latin America's Pacific coast, economically vanquishing the natives with ease, and settling in Peru in such numbers that the alarmed Peruvians hastily stopped the inflow by drastic exclusion acts. The successes of these Chinese pioneers, humble coolies entirely without official backing, have fired the Japanese imagination. The Japanese press has long discussed Latin America in optimistic vein. Count Okuma is a good exemplar of these Japanese aspirations. Some years ago he told the American sociologist Professor Ross: "South America, especially the northern part, will furnish ample room for our surplus."[83] To his fellow countrymen Count Okuma was still more specific. In 1907 he stated in the Tokio _Economist_ that the Japanese were to overspread the earth like a cloud of locusts, alighting on the North American coasts, and swarming into Central and South America. Count Okuma expressed a strong preference for Latin American countries as fields for Japanese immigration, because most of them were "much easier to include within the sphere of influence of Japan in the future."[84] And the Japanese have supplemented words with deeds. Especially since 1914, Japanese activity in Latin America has been ubiquitous and striking. The west coast of South America, in particular, is to-day flooded with Japanese goods, merchants, commercial missions, and financial agents seeking concessions of every kind. Our State Department has had to exercise special vigilance concerning Japanese concession-hunting in Mexico. Japan's present activity is of course mere reconnoitring--testings and mappings of terrain for possible later action on a more extensive scale. One thing alone gives Japan pause--our veto. Japan knows that real aggression against our southern neighbors would spell war with the United States. Japan does not contemplate war with us at present. She has many fish to fry in the Far East. So in Latin America she plays safe. But she bides her time. In Latin America itself she has friends--even partisans. Japan seeks to mobilize to her profit that distrust of the "Yanqui" which permeates Latin America. The half-castes, in particular, rage at our "color line" and see in the United States the Nemesis of their anarchic misrule. They flout the Monroe Doctrine, caress dreams of Japanese aid, and welcome Nippon's pose as the champion of color throughout the world.