The notorious Clarke lease suit is a case in point. This was a lease for twenty-five years, renewable for a further term of similar duration. A syndicate of Japanese was organized which purchased the land, knowing of the burdens upon it, with the hope of worrying the lease-holder either into paying more rent or into selling the lease for an inadequate sum. Suit after suit was brought in various names, until at last a court was found to give judgment raising the rent on the ground that taxes had increased and the value of surrounding properties had expanded since the lease was made. In justification of a judgment upholding this decision, the Osaka Appeal Court declared that there was a local custom in Kobe which permitted a landlord to raise the rent in certain circumstances. No evidence was produced in support of this contention, which was clearly against all contract law and rendered lease agreements meaningless. The result was that the gang of speculators who had banded themselves together to despoil a foreigner were successful. The holder of the lease was forced to sell and the syndicate profited greatly.
If the argument is raised that you will find bad people everywhere, and that one cannot take the poorest type of person and set him up as the example, let us recall the case of the Doshisha University. There, because of these selfsame land and property laws, The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions placed the million dollars' worth of property in the hands of Christian Japanese directors. Presently the Government brought pressure to bear upon these directors, and they yielded to their Government. In February, 1898, they virtually ousted the foreign owners, turned the institution into a secular college, and saw nothing dishonest nor immoral in the action. Japanese have of course come to a better understanding of the rights in such cases, nor am I trying to impugn the integrity of the "better-class" of Japanese. I am merely bringing evidence to prove that not only are Japanese laws with regard to the ownership of land by foreigners as discriminatory as those of California, but their interpretation is a serious handicap to aliens in Japan.
In America the fight is not to prevent Japanese from taking hold of land for business purposes, but to prevent them from monopolizing farming-lands, which, as Mr. Walter Pitkin has shown so clearly in his book, "Must We Fight Japan?" are rapidly passing out of American hands because of our vicious shallowness in agrarian matters. I am not as yet bringing up the question of fairness, justice, generosity, or the rights of over-crowded Japan. I am merely making parallels which seem to me telling.
3
Does Japan make the naturalization of aliens easy? As far as the letter of the law goes, there appears nothing in the eyes of a layman that might stand in the way of a man, already married and with children, from becoming a Japanese subject. There is no legal discrimination against any race or color. But notwithstanding that there now are 20,000 foreigners in Japan, and that the number throughout the years must have been much greater, there are on record only nine cases of foreigners having been naturalized between 1904 and 1913; two English, two American, five French; and ten cases of adoptions by marriage into Japanese families. These, to my knowledge, do not include men previously married. They are all cases of men who have married Japanese women, or of women who have married Japanese men. There have been 158 Chinese who became naturalized. This does not indicate that naturalization is easy—except by marriage—and the general consensus of opinion is that it would take a man fully fifteen years to become naturalized in the due process of law.
Furthermore, the restrictions attached to the acquisition of Japanese nationality take all the sweetness out of the plum, for even after you have gone through the regular processes and have been permitted to sit "amongst these gods on sainted seats," there are still exalted pedestals beyond your reach. You may not become a Minister of State, President, or Vice-President, or a member of the Privy Council; an official of chokunin (imperial-appointment) rank in the Imperial Household Department; an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary; a general officer in the army and navy; president of the Supreme Court, of the Board of Audit, or of the Court of Administrative Litigation; or member of the Imperial Diet. Nor are the professions in all cases open to you.
However, this is a minor matter compared with that of the inability on the part of any Japanese to accept another nationality without official consent. If he resides abroad after his seventeenth birthday he cannot in any circumstances become a citizen of that other country unless he has completed his military service. Women may freely relinquish their nationality through marriage; not so men. If men are born abroad, they must make a voluntary request for denaturalization between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, but such other factors are involved that only a negligible number of American-born Japanese have ever attempted to rid themselves of their ancestral connections; and there is one case on record in which the Government refused on a technicality, for the child had applied for denationalization according to Western reckoning, whereas Japanese count the child's age as from the day of conception, not birth.
In view of this, then, there seems no point whatever in the fuss made about Japanese being barred from citizenship. Again, I am not discussing the advisability of this restriction, but merely trying to brush aside many of the webs that have been spun for the netting of sympathy. The relations between Japan and America are thus involved in an infinite number of petty political regulations on each side, and nothing but a complete sweeping away of all restrictions on both sides would ever assume even the semblance of justice. But how far is Japan ready and willing to go in this denationalization of herself? The most casual study of her nationalistic aims and aspirations answers that question.
That the problem is essentially a problem for Japan to solve is self-evident. That it is political and not racial, and that this political problem is rooted in Japan's economic condition, is likewise clear. For no nation loses its nationals except when the conditions at home are worse than those abroad, worse than those of the country to which her people wish to emigrate. Australia and New Zealand find it almost impossible to lure out British laborers, while Germany's desire for room was largely for the utilization of her mechanics and scientists and others whom she had trained in such large numbers that she hadn't enough work for them at home. Two changes in the structure of world economics have accentuated a condition of racial conflict which have hitherto been virtually non-existent. Religious and political conflicts have always obtained, but the color line has been drawn only in very recent times. As long as black and yellow people have been of a lower order and have been willing to serve the white, there was never any serious disorder between them. The color line is not marked even in Europe to-day, for the same reason that it is not marked in Japan. Europe is herself too crowded to be a desirable immigration station. Whatever the causes of conflict may have been, to-day it is clear that they lie in the endeavor on the part of white labor to maintain a better standard of living than Oriental labor has yet attained. And in exactly the degree to which certain Oriental labor groups have risen above others, the conflict becomes manifest,—to wit, the objection on the part of Japanese labor to Korean and Chinese coolies. No serious conflicts take place between Fijian laborers and Indian coolies, because the Fijian maintains his standard under competition, that being lower than the Indian's.
We have therefore to study the problem of Japanese in America, the so-called race conflict, not so much as it develops here but at its source, Japan. And there, if I read Japanese conditions aright, the problem is political and psychological in the main. Japan has come very far along material modernization; she has virtually stepped up to the front rank of nations. But the most casual observation reveals that that is only so in part, that the advance is made as a government, not as a people. That government is rooted in antiquated notions, is vicious in many of its aspects, and is opposed to even the most conservative developments of Western countries. That government refuses to recognize the social forces that are at work within Japan for the leveling upward of classes. And there is the rub.
4
Glancing over the history of the nineteenth century, we realize that all nations have passed through a continuous struggle of the masses for betterment of their conditions, political and social as well as economic. During the greater part of that century Japan lay dormant, its masses mentally mesmerized. The sudden impact of the West has stunned the people more than awakened them. Only part of the social body is coming to life,—a limb, an essential organ. To be generous, I might say the brain is working, though from many of the actions of Nippon that would seem doubtful. But certain it is that whether it is the brain or merely the spinal column, instead of limbering up the rest of the body as rapidly as possible, it is trying to retard it. Hence, the feverish condition of the country.
This is not mere speculation. As I have said, only such countries as have an inferior economic condition suffer from the exodus of their laboring people. That exodus takes place for several reasons. From Europe it has come because of the hunger for religious freedom, to escape political oppression, or merely to get a new start in life. And though we have few political or religious exiles in America from the Land of the Rising Sun, they come because of an unconscious desire for relief from Japanese social domination. I am convinced that that which most Japanese so prefer in America is that sense of individual freshness, that desire for individual expression, for freedom from the clutch of family and oligarchy. It is unconscious, and without doubt few Japanese when brought face to face with the issues would admit it, so deeply ingrained is the education and training at the hands of the political administrators. Only here and there is some such statement made, with an eye to the press and the galleries.
Were Japan to extend to the masses greater freedom, there would be plenty of work for them at home. There is scientific advancement to be made. Japanese are frightfully behind in the scientific habit. I have been told by a friend at one of our greatest institutions of medical experimentation that with but one exception the Japanese who come there have to be constantly dismissed for their incompetence. There was no anti-Japanese sentiment in the mind of the person who made this statement. Japanese still need generations of training to acquire the scientific spirit. Their historians prove this. In the business of life Japanese have plenty of work at home which could easily absorb all the man-power, both masculine and feminine, at their command, without the necessity of shipping any of it abroad. But the vulgar acquisition of wealth, the vulgar acquisition of political prestige in the world, the vulgar appeal for equality which no man or nation with true dignity and self-respect would mouth to the extent that Japanese officialdom has mouthed it, the vulgar wearing of its sensitiveness on its sleeve,—it is these with which bureaucratic Japan is preoccupied. While, at home, every effort on the part of Japanese to secure manhood suffrage, to arise to the dignity of true men, of which the masses are as capable as any race on earth, is discouraged. On the one hand pleading, in mendicant fashion, for racial equality abroad; on the other, refusal to give the people at home racial equality. On one hand it is asserted loudly that "The Japanese do not like to be regarded as inferior to any other people. In no country will they be content with discriminatory treatment";[1] on the other, Prime Minister Hara answers the demand for the franchise with the maudlin fear that it would break down "distinction."
[1] From the Kokumin, a leading newspaper.
So that the problem of Japan and the world is largely a political problem which she must face at home. Raising the standard of living; increasing the economic welfare of the masses; extending the rights of the people who are clamoring for it in sections, not only to the intelligent elements but down to the very eta; cleansing the social pores of the empire,—these will in themselves automatically solve the problem for the world. The people don't want conquest. They are not aggressive. But the misguided leaders,—there's the rub.
5
As to Japan in America—or, more specifically, the Japanese in California—the problem is for us to solve. I once heard an American sentimentalist who practises law, and hence assured an audience he ought to know what he was talking about, say that the trouble in California was that the Japanese will work and the American is an idler and won't work. Why he wasn't howled out of the auditorium I don't know. That America has reared this vast continent and made it one of the most productive countries in the world did not seem to enter the head of this lawyer. Yet the Japanese problem will not be solved by exclusion alone.
We hear constantly that the reason for the conflict is that Japanese as groups and as tireless workers are able to outwork Americans; and, in certain special types of industry, that is proved. But were the conditions made more acceptable to Americans in those industries, and were we to devise mechanical means of production suited to them, it would not be long before Japanese labor would find it extremely unprofitable to come here, just as it finds it unprofitable to go to Manchuria and Korea, where it has to compete with the cheaper Chinese and Korean labor. Laws and restrictions can always be evaded, and the price of vigilance is more costly than the gain. But those laws that are basic in the condition of life no man can evade.
The Gentlemen's Agreement has not worked because gentlemen themselves seldom work. It has not worked because it has denied America the right, as all nations claim it, to determine who shall or shall not come in. Gentlemen never exact such agreements from their friends. They realize that a man's home is his domain, to be entered only on invitation. Furthermore, the agreement is not mutually retroactive. It says that Japan has a right to decide the issue, and promises not to permit coolie labor to enter America. I shall not enter the statistical controversy as to whether flocks of Japanese have or have not evaded the agreement. An agreement such as that should be evaded, and was loose enough to make evasion simple. That is enough of an argument.
Japan pleads for room on account of the tremendous increase in her population every year. When a great appeal is made, the number is stated as 700,000 or 800,000, according to the emotional condition of the appellant. Professor Dewey contends that the Japanese Government, in its own records, admits to only some 300,000 or 400,000 a year. Whether the increase in California is or is not as stated, on one side or the other, matters little. Japan's grounds for appealing for room are sufficient. If the increase is so disgustingly large in Japan, it stands to reason that it would be as large, if not larger here, where economic opportunity makes increase possible and desirable. Every child born in America is a handle worth getting hold of. But on the other hand, it is also true that wherever Japanese better their standard of living their birth-rate falls, as with every race. In which case there is only one answer to Japan's appeal for more room: Better your standard of living and you will not need to invade our house. That disgusting process of breeding which aggressive nations indulge in should be decried from the house-tops. It is no great mark of civilization to breed like mosquitos. Mosquitos need to reproduce by the millions because their eggs are consumed by the millions by preying creatures. Civilization makes it possible for those born to survive. (See Appendix D.)
Some students of Far Eastern affairs, like J. O. P. Bland, urge that Japan has a right to the occupation of Siberia; and none will gainsay that. But the fact is that though free to go both to Korea and Manchuria, Japanese have not gone to these regions even to the extent of one year's increase in population during the last ten years. Where, then, is the argument? As has been shown, they do not go as settlers because cheap continental labor makes it unprofitable. They go as business-men, as the advance-guard of the empire, as the rear-guard of the army. No one has ever raised a voice against the migration of Japanese to these unpopulated regions—with the exception, perhaps, of the natives. But ever and always one feels the hand of imperial Japan behind each little man from the empire, and that hold on her nationals is the thing that vigorous nations resent, because it threatens to impair their status.
That is what California and the sixteen other states who share her views feel. They are conscious of some subsidy behind every extensive purchase of land. From somewhere Japanese get enough money to buy anything they want. It is always the paternalistic arm of the Government round every little son of Nippon, or the embrace of his family. That is where the problem begins and that is where it ends. If only some chemical substance could be discovered that, when poured over the Oriental, would separate him from the mass, he would be as good a fellow as can be found anywhere in the world. But that was what always irritated me in my relations with Japanese in Japan. I never met a man I liked but that in order to enjoy association with him I had to tolerate his group. If I started off anywhere with one, I soon had a retinue. That racial clannishness is to be found everywhere, but nowhere is it more sticky than in ancestor-worshiping Japan.
Consequently, in whatever manner the problem is finally solved here in America, one thing is agreed upon by both Japanese and anti-Japanese,—that those here will have to be redistributed over the country, their clannishness broken up. That is a problem which affects not only the Japanese. However, nothing that is now done should in any way be retroactive so as to deprive any single Japanese of the fruits of his labor. Whatever solution is found for the Japanese problem in America, one thing is certain,—that no war will ever be fought because of Japanese immigration to America. Japan, as has been shown, would have to readjust her own political thinking to such an extent as virtually to revolutionize conditions in Japan in order to make an issue of the citizenship problem and the matter of alien landownership here. Such a revolution would considerably reduce the scope of the issues, they would fall apart and virtually cease to exist.
If we are looking for the causes of a possible conflict in the Pacific, they must be sought not in California but in China. The dovetailing of the angle of our triangle in America is contingent upon the dovetailing of the angle of the triangle in Asia. The one in America can be dislodged only by a wrenching apart of the angle in Asia.
Japan's hegemony in Asia is a serious matter. Japan is an industrial nation now. She is entitled to access to unused resources in China. Propinquity accedes this, but propinquity precludes the necessity of submerging China in the process. The Open Door in China means peace in the Pacific. We leave it to time to determine what the walling up of that door would mean.
CHAPTER XXII
AUSTRALIA AND THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE
1
The tempest in the European teapot has become a tornado in the Pacific. Small as the Balkans are, they were the stumbling-block in the way of the downward expansion of the European powers.
The tragedy in Europe has left Europe in the background. Civilization is rapidly veering round in the direction of the Pacific. There are little nations to-day whose possession is as fraught with unhappy consequences as anything in southern Europe ever was. Yet we hear innocent dispensers of information assure us that Yap is only a little speck in the Pacific over which no one would think of going to war. They forget that America nearly went to war with Germany in 1889 over the Samoan Islands, which then meant much less to her. And the settlement in Europe at the Peace Conference has greatly enhanced the position of the present powers in the Pacific.
Until very recently two developments in Pacific affairs had not been given as much prominence in the press as they deserved. One, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and the other the British Imperial Conferences, held every other year since 1907. Just in proportion as the Imperial Conferences have become, as it were, a super-Parliament to Great Britain, so has the Anglo-Japanese Alliance waned. And just as the so-called mandates over the various island groups in the mid-Pacific congeal from lofty aspirations to concrete management there are emerging in the Pacific the identical antagonisms that made of the little group of states in Southern Europe the cause of the conflict.
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was formed in 1902. Its aim was to oust Russia, and to guarantee British interests in China. Later on it was revised to include Japanese protection over India. But consonant with that agreement there blossomed in the British Empire a new thing to be reckoned with,—an independent Australian navy. That navy has by no means matured, it is not and cannot for years to come be a great consideration in the Pacific, but it has been from the start prophetic and explanatory of much that is taking place to-day. It is at the bottom of the problem, because it is the beginning of Australian independence, of her rise to nationhood. Let me rehearse the historical incidents in connection with this development.
Now, until the advent of that navy all the colonies had been paying certain sums yearly toward the maintenance of the British Navy,—Canada, Australia, New Zealand alike. But with the federation of the Commonwealth, Australia began to agitate in no mistaken terms for a navy of her own, to be built and manned by Australians, and kept in Australian waters, rushing only in an emergency to the support of the empire. Canada decided otherwise,—i.e., to build her own ships, but to merge them with the home fleet; New Zealand continued the old scheme. Being twelve hundred miles away from Australia, her isolation and her inadequate resources and population made her more timorous. With Australia the construction of a separate little fleet was the beginning of a straining at the leash. Then came the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which, while it allayed the fears of the Australians somewhat, intensified certain other phases of the problem, such as the White-Australia policy. The Russo-Japanese War did nothing to allay apprehension on the part of the Australasians.
For years both the Dominion and the Commonwealth were absolutely obsessed by the naval question. Sir Joseph Ward, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, championed a single, undivided imperial navy; the late Mr. Alfred Deakin of Australia stood out strongly in favor of an independent navy. Seeing little hope of a very strong concession from England, Deakin extended and urged an invitation, in 1908, to the American fleet to visit Australia. He admitted that his object was to arouse Britain to fear an Australian-American "alliance." The thrust went home. The English "felt that it was using strong measures for an Australian statesman to use a foreign fleet as a means of forwarding a project which was not approved by the Admiralty." But even Sir Joseph Ward let himself go to the extent of declaring that they welcomed America as "natural allies in the coming struggle against Japanese domination."
And when at last the American fleet came to Australia, it received an ovation such as still rings in the conversation of any Australian with an American. For an entire week Sydney celebrated. Melbourne followed suit; New Zealand could not but take up the cue. Every one pointed with pride to the similarity between the Australian and the American. Australian girls virtually threw themselves into the arms of American sailors. It is even said that many a sailor remained behind with an Australian wife. Not even the Prince of Wales (now King George) was given such an ovation.
After that visit, so cordial was the attitude of Australians that everywhere they talked of floating the Stars and Stripes in the event of—what? In the event of pressure from Downing Street or from Tokyo. The Australian temperament is not one which buries its grievances or harbors ill-feeling. The Australian speaks right out that which is on his mind. And though much must be discounted because of this bubbling personality, almost primitive in its extremes, nothing that affects Australia can long be ignored by us.
Frankly, the situation is this: Australia is set on her so-called White-Australia policy. Australia made it clear to England that, alliance or no alliance, she would never swerve from her policy of excluding Japanese and Chinese. When the American fleet appeared, knowing the exclusion of Orientals practised in America, Australia felt that bond of fellowship which comes from common danger. And everything was done to develop friendship; America became the pattern for everything Australian. Never particularly fond of the Englishman, at times discriminating against him as much as against the Oriental, advertising that "No Englishman Need Apply" when looking for labor, afraid of the little yellow man up there,—Australia naturally looked to America as a possible defender.
But along came the European war. Great Britain was in danger. America held aloof. Then everything changed. The wave of anti-American sentiment in Australia was much more pronounced than in New Zealand. This was a strange anomaly, for inherently New Zealand is much more imperialistic. But it was characteristic of the Australian. There was almost a boycott against American goods. One firm published a scurrilous advertisement which the American Consul-General at Melbourne showed me and said he had sent to Washington. For a time it looked rather serious, but in view of the Australian character, its importance was not very great. It was the impetuosity of a little boy, disgruntled because his opinion was not feared. Many said openly: "We were so fond of America and thought you were our friend. From now on we don't want anything from you. We don't want your protection."
Yet, as late as December 8, 1916, the Sydney "Morning Herald" said editorially: "And those of us who think of a possible run under America's wings forget that her strength at present is proportionately no greater than our own [Australia's]. She is not ready for either offence or defence and she knows it. This being so, can we ask Great Britain," etc. The feeling toward America at that time was only commensurate with the petty jealousies that now rankle somewhat because of fear that America has taken to herself too much credit for the accomplishment of victory. But then it gave that stimulus to navalism in the South that the Australians wanted; further, it gave birth to the movement for greater independence in imperial affairs, which for twenty-five years had determined the policies of the several states.
Just recently a New Zealand navalist, writing in the "Auckland Weekly News" (New Zealand), brought up the dread specter "balance of power" again, calling attention to the fact that inasmuch as Japan is a great naval power and America is increasing her naval strength, it is for democratic Australasia to see to it that Great Britain does not lag behind with its fleet in the Pacific,—to maintain the balance of power. And the further sad fact was revealed that Australasia (seen in the expression of this one individual at least) did not care particularly whether, in the event of conflict, they were on the side of America or Japan.
Feeling did not take the same turn in New Zealand. That little country continued in its more imperialistic tendencies, was content to be a finger in the great hand of empire. In 1909, at the Imperial Conference, Mr. Joseph Ward sprung a surprise by offering a battle-cruiser to the Government without consulting his constituents at home. For this he was knighted. But the New Zealanders were in a mood to make him pay for it himself when he returned. Mr. (now Sir Joseph) Ward was severely criticized for what he did. He was ridiculed even by the university lads during their "Capping Carnival." They took him off in effigy and carried a little boat with a sign saying: "This is the toy he bought his crown with." Upon his return from the conference he lost his Prime Ministership and a "conservative" government came into power. Later developments so justified him that he became a sort of political idol for a while. When the cruiser visited New Zealand, in 1913, the excitement knew no bounds.
© Underwood & Underwood
Photo by Brown Bros.
LORD LANSDOWNE AND BARON TADASU HAYASHI
The "Fathers" of the Anglo-Japanese alliance
© Underwood & Underwood
PRINCE ITO
Japan's foremost statesman assassinated in Korea, October 26, 1909
Photo from Adachi
DR. SUN YAT-SEN
President of South China Republic
Germany was always regarded as a potential enemy. The colonies had always arched their backs at the proximity of German possessions in the South Seas. When in 1889 Samoa was the bone of contention, the colonies were rather eager to have America take it, in preference to the Germans. Then, as Japan came to the fore, America as a potential protection became more and more obvious to Australasians. The Panama Canal intensified their conviction. They looked forward to a combination of British and American power for the furtherance of peace as they conceived it should be maintained, and consciousness of their own destiny in the Pacific was stimulated. Suddenly they were brought close to the United States. The anti-Japanese riots in California, the annexation of Hawaii, the protectorate over the Philippines all pointed to the Australasians lessons for their own guidance. They could not expect from England the same keen interest in racial questions which manifested itself in America. America demonstrated the dangers of having two unmixable races like the white and the black together; Hawaii showed them that Asiatic immigration is a breeder of trouble. They do not seem to see that circumstances are not the same, that the pressure of population has become much more keen, that industrial conditions in the world to-day are altogether different from what they were when Great Britain refused to have her American colonies put down the kidnapping of Africans; that America to-day has 110,000,000 people and has encouraged them to come from every country in Europe, as Australia does not.
Australia looks only at the most obvious phase of the problem,—that certain people are not happy together. Whether or not she over-estimates her own strength against the pressure of changed conditions, remains to be seen, but she is pursuing her own course with a certain steadfastness that is at once a pathetic blindness and a courageous self-assertion. In a country whose political outlook is essentially generous, whose labor experiments have been extremely costly to her, it strikes one as a great contradiction of principle. How can a labor government be so utterly opposed to the extension of ideal opportunities to laborers from other lands seeking to enjoy them? How can she be so utterly capitalistic on a national scale when nearly everything within her own ken is laboristic? The explanation of this enigma lies in a certain measure in the manner in which Australia has set about making herself independent of her mother country and, while working indirectly for the break-up of the empire, is becoming imperial in her own small way. All these counter currents must be seen clearly before understanding can follow. They whirl about the pillar of imperialism—England—and have come out clearly since the war. They hinge upon the mandates over the South Sea Islands.
© Underwood & Underwood
THOMAS W. LAMONT
© Underwood & Underwood
WELLINGTON KOO
Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain
Photo from Adachi
YUKIO OZAKI, M.P. AND EX-MINISTER OF JUSTICE
The most prominent Liberal in Japan
2
While, as has been shown, Australia has for twenty years pursued a course that threatens to lead toward separation from England, New Zealand has bound herself closer and closer. Australia, however, has been extremely shy of any semblance of rupture. She does not want to break away. She feels her isolation too much. But what she wants is in a sense the rights that American states have within the Union. She wants to be independent, to be able to develop in her own way, to expand, if necessary, without danger of attack. This spirit is inherent in the Australian temperament. When I told any Australian that I was traveling and tramping on "me own," he could not understand it. He could not go without a mate. He wanted to be sure that if he got into any scrape and was with his back to the wall, his mate was there to help him. Still, he wanted to fight alone. It did not seem to occur to any of these people that a civilized man might go the wild world over and not have occasion to fight. And this trait comes out in Australian international relations. She wants to pursue the White-Australia policy contrary to sentiment in England, to develop her own navy, to hold the whole continent against the time when full nationhood will have become a reality. But for the time at least she will not declare her independence of Great Britain. She will not even give Britain the imperial preference in trade which would compensate her for her trouble. But she did show in the last war that she realized her responsibilities. In the Boer War it was said that her assistance was merely for the sake of giving her men adventure and practice for possible later use in her own defense. And in this war conscription was defeated because, as it was openly declared, it was not certain what the turn of affairs in Europe might be. It was felt imperative that the men be not all gone and the continent left undefended. And that contingency was voiced by the Premier of Queensland as involving—Japan. To the outsider, Australia's attitude seems extremely selfish, but to enthusiastic young Australia, with the wide world before her, with a future that looks as promising as that of America, it seems the only logical one. And as long as her potential enemies do not take the trouble to show by deeds that they are not enemies, her reasoning is not unjustifiable.
But a strange thing has happened to Australia. She has got what she was after, and now she hardly wants it. She fought for the imperial conference method of settling imperial affairs. Australians have time and again declared that though an empire, they are a nation first and foremost. That the empire represented too heterogeneous a list of peoples for them to forget that an Indian, though part of the empire, is still an inferior as far as they are concerned. And Australia realized that the mother country could not see eye to eye with her on that score. Yet she insists on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance remaining in some form acceptable to her and to America. How is that to be? What has happened since peace was declared?
Australia and New Zealand were loudest in the protest against the return of the South Sea Islands to the Germans. New Zealand soldiers had taken Samoa; the Australian navy—what there was of it—had cleared the neighboring seas of German raiders. But though they asked that Germany be deprived of the possessions, and though the leaders thundered for a New Zealand mandate over Samoa and an Australian mandate over New Guinea, the people realized that they did not particularly care for the burden of looking after these lands. Mr. Hughes of Australia urged annexation. The people as a whole preferred that Great Britain should annex them and guarantee the dominions against possible dangers from enemy control. They felt they could not stand the cost of governing them. They were even not averse to their being turned over to America. They have come to realize that they were much better off before the war, when they merely contributed their small quota to the support of the navy; now Great Britain has intimated that she can no longer maintain that navy without their full share in its costs. Besides, the mandate over the islands is not going to be simple.
3
Before giving consideration to the developments which not even the Australasians had anticipated, let us look upon the gains they have made. They have acquired some new possessions which make of them an empire within the empire, as it were. The islands of the south Pacific are to be ruled as though they were an integral part of New Zealand and Australia, yet they have their own facets just as the Dominions had their own problems within the empire. They afford them certain commercial advantages: copra and cocoa from Samoa, phosphate from Nauru, which alone has an estimated deposit amounting to forty-two million tons. Nauru is of utmost importance to them because they are extensive agricultural countries. It has been agreed that Great Britain take 42%, Australia 42%, and New Zealand 16% of the export. The South Seas as a whole supply 14.7% of the world's copra supply, and this may yet be greatly increased. But this is nothing compared with the advantages they afford as ports of call. Further, if the plan of linking the islands together by wireless is effected, they will become an outer frontier for the Antipodes of inestimable value. There is even a faint suggestion of binding them together into one separate governmental entity,—a buffer state, as it were, between the big powers in the Pacific.
But what are these few assets compared with the greatly extended line of defense now left to the Dominion to keep up? What is that to the great problem of how to develop the native races? Australia is interested in developing Queensland, a tropical region, not the distant island beyond. The question of labor is bad enough for themselves, without having added regions to worry about. Throughout the Pacific the problem of where to secure man-power is pressing. Hawaii cries for labor; Samoa is in a similar state; Fiji is troubled with the indentured Indians now there. Go where one will, the islands would yield readily enough if cheap labor were available. But Australia and New Zealand are not willing to exploit these islands at the expense of cheap Asiatic labor which evolves into a racial problem as soon as its returns become adequate. As for the mandates both labor and capital in the South Seas are not keen about these war orphans. A further problem is, what will happen when the policy applied to island possessions conflicts with the course permitted by the law of the mandate? What is worse yet, the mandate over the South Seas has brought Japan closer by hundreds of miles to both New Zealand and Australia, and has thrown open the question of admission of Asiatic people to these islands. The Australasians feel that they are obliged to protect not only themselves from Asiatic competition, but the native races as well. If they are to carry out the provisions of the mandate to rule the islands for the good of the natives, they feel that they cannot introduce Asiatic labor, which undermines the natives economically and morally every time it is attempted. These are some of the problems Australasia inherited from the Peace Conference.
How have they affected the relations of New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia with Great Britain? They have put a new strain upon the empire as such; they have put an added strain upon the relations between Japan and Great Britain; they have driven a wedge into the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
Further, the whole question of mandates as it pertains to the Pacific has completely opened new sores. The island of Yap, which has been in the press so much of late, is an example. A blow at so vital a factor in world relations as cables would be like a blow on the medulla oblongata. Yet under that new and misleading term, "mandate," Yap became Japanese, and the near future is not likely to know just what was done when Germany's colonies were apportioned under its ruling. Yet what is fair for Great Britain and the Dominions should be fair for Japan, and if mandate means possession for one it ought to mean it for the other. But where do we come in and where the peace of the Pacific? Already, as stated elsewhere, Japan has had in mind the fortification of the Marshall Islands. She is proceeding to fortify the Bonin Islands and the Pescadores. She is, according to a very recent rumor,—and rumors are really the only things one can secure in such matters,—establishing an airship station on the southeast coast of Formosa,—not on the west, which would shorten her distance to China, but on the east, cutting down mileage to the Philippines. And we? Well, we know what we are about, too. Hence, the sooner such matters as mandates are defined, the better for the world.
4
How would these things work out with the new British arrangement as to the control of the Dominions? We have seen that behind the whole struggle for the development of an Australian navy was the desire for greater independence. As long as the war lasted, no troublesome topics were broached. Now that the war is over, one may expect the feathers to begin to fly. The Dominions are not stifling their desire for greater and greater freedom. They were involved in a colossal war without ever having been consulted. They feel that now they have earned their right to express judgment on international affairs. They realize that nothing could be done effectively if Downing Street were hampered by several wills at work at the same time. Yet it is obvious that the people of the Dominions are concerned first with their own affairs, as nations, and are devoted to Britain only in a secondary manner. They are now conscious of their power, and are determined to wield it. They have made and are doing everything to continue to make friends on their own, by whom they mean to stand through thick and thin. At the Peace Conference they were not inferior to any of the deliberators, and signed the Peace Treaty as virtual members of the League of Nations.
"But," asks the Wellington "Evening Post," "are the Dominions ever to cast an international vote against the Mother Country on a question relating, say, to the future of the Pacific regarding which their interests and wishes might rather harmonize with those of the United States?"
Mr. Massey, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, on the other hand, held "that the Dominions had signed the Treaty not as independent nations in the ordinary sense, but as nations within the Empire or partners in the Empire."
But to show how complicated the whole position was, a Mr. W. Downie Stewart, M.P., pointed out that
When New Zealand signed the Peace Treaty ... she took upon herself the status of a power involving herself in all the rights and obligations of one of the signatories.... That means that she may have created for herself a new status altogether in the world of foreign affairs, and instead of being an act to bring together more closely the component parts of the Empire, it may be that it was the first and most serious step toward obtaining our independence and treating ourselves as a sovereign power.
And in connection with Samoa he says the time may come when, having been recognized as an independent power, they will be told "we look to you in future, whenever a question of internal affairs arises, to act as an independent power, making peace or war on your own initiative."
Prime Minister Hughes, of Australia, however, has been steering a middle course. He points to the dangers lying ahead, and to the absolute necessity of keeping close to Britain. He urges that the alliance with Japan be renewed, but in such a way as to leave no danger of losing America's friendship. But he shows that the spirit of independence is still uppermost in Australia. Declaring that "The June Conference has not been called to even consider Constitutional changes," he adds: "It it is painfully evident from articles which have appeared in the press and in magazines ... that to a certain type of mind, the Constitution of the British Empire is far from what it should be."
But though Hughes is to-day the leader of Australia, it is not because he has the country back of him. It is rather because there is unfortunately no better man on hand. He has never cared much for consistency, and even in the matter of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance there is a suggestion of yielding that makes one feel uncertain. He has declared that at the present conference the question of a reorganization of the Government so as to give the Dominions a direct share in the control of imperial affairs is not even being thought of, but it is evident in his speech that that question is going to be delayed only because more pressing matters, such as the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and Imperial Naval Defense, must be dealt with first. In other words, as spokesman he realizes that "little" Australia, with its five million people and its vast continent has asked too much of its parent to be allowed to stand alone. So he is pouring oil on the troubled waters by trying to devise an Anglo-Japanese Treaty "in such form, modified, if that should be deemed proper, as will be acceptable to Britain, to America, to Japan, and to ourselves."
But there is a third consideration in this whole question, and that is Japan. What is Japan going to say about it all? For some time Japanese have been rather cool in their enthusiasm over the alliance, because it seems to them to have outlived its usefulness and because Article 4 absolves Great Britain from assisting Japan in the event of war with America. The "Osaka Asahi," one of the most influential of Japanese journals, has boldly advocated its abrogation. The reason for both British and Japanese indifference is obvious. Russia and Germany are out of the way. British mercantile interests are not at all satisfied with Japanese methods in China. The alliance has been disregarded twice,—when the Sino-Japanese Military Agreement was signed, and when the Twenty-one Demands were made. Furthermore, the alliance never protected Japanese interests when they came in conflict with the interests of the colonies, nor has it prevented British interests from suffering in the Far East. As a protective alliance it has little more to do except to guarantee Great Britain against Japan and Japan against Great Britain. China is extremely antagonistic, because she deems herself to be the worst sufferer. She is the main point under consideration, yet she has not been consulted. Hence she has done everything in her power to arouse public opinion against its renewal.
Nevertheless, Japan has been concerned enough for the renewal of the alliance to make a departure from her age-long attitude toward the imperial family that is extremely interesting if not illuminating. The recent visit to England of Prince Hirohito, heir to the throne, while meant to widen his grasp of world affairs, was certainly intended also to arouse public feeling there in favor of Japan and the alliance. This was the first time that any Japanese prince of the blood had left Japan. He hobnobbed with the common people, a thing unheard of in Japan. But if he succeeded in winning popular approval for the alliance, it was doubtless worth while from the Japanese point of view. Otherwise the risk would not have been justified, for such visits are not without their dangers. It is interesting to recall that when Nicholas, Czarevitch of Russia, made a tour of the world upon the completion of the Siberian Railway, in 1891, he passed through Japan. An attack upon his person by a Japanese policeman nearly brought down the wrath of the czar upon Japan, and there was much explanation.
While Japan was anxious to have the alliance renewed, she argued that England was more in need of it than she. America, she said, had somewhat eclipsed England. Japanese feel that England must now lean on Japan as never before. They felt this when the alliance was formed. Count Hayashi, in his "Secret Memoirs," quotes a statement attributed to Marquis Ito, as follows: