Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace Part 11

Since this was written the events of the present war have still further strengthened the j.a.panese power in the Pacific. First China, then Russia, and now Germany have been eliminated. To complacently a.s.sume that j.a.pan will never have occasion to cross swords with the United States, is surely a most mistaken att.i.tude for the people of this country to delude themselves with. It is contrary to every dictate of common sense and reason, when the people of the Pacific Coast are forced for their own protection to enact legislation which j.a.pan interprets as a violation of her treaty rights. The average run of people in other States give no thought to the matter. They say, "Yes, California has her problem with the j.a.ps." It is not California's problem. It is the problem of the United States.

And in calling attention to the practical impossibility of defending the Pacific Coast against j.a.panese invasion and occupation in the event of war, the author heretofore quoted from calls attention to the following facts, among others, showing our unpreparedness and the complete inadequacy of our defenses:

"The short period of time within which j.a.pan is able to transport her armies to this continent--200,000 men in four weeks, a half million in four months, and more than a million in ten months--necessitates in this Republic a corresponding degree of preparedness and rapidity of mobilization.

"Within one month after the declaration of war this Republic must place, in each of the three defensive spheres of the Pacific Coast, armies that are capable of giving battle to the maximum number of troops that j.a.pan can transport in a single voyage. This is known to be in excess of 200,000 men.... We have called attention to the brevity of modern wars in general and naval movements in particular; how within a few weeks after war is declared, concurrent with the seizure of the Philippines, Hawaii, and Alaska, will the conquest of Was.h.i.+ngton and Oregon be consummated. In the same manner within three months after hostilities have been begun there, armies will land upon the seaboard of Southern California.... No force can be placed on the seaboard of Southern California either within three months or nine months that would delay the advance of the j.a.panese armies a single day.

"The maximum force that can be mobilized in the Republic immediately following a declaration of war is less than 100,000 men, of whom two-thirds are militia.

This force, made up of more than forty miniature armies, is scattered, each under separate military and civil jurisdiction, over the entire nation. By the time these heterogeneous elements are gathered together, organized into proper military units, and made ready for transportation to the front, the States of Was.h.i.+ngton and Oregon will have been invaded and their conquest made complete by a vastly superior force....

So long as the existent military system continues in the Republic there can be no adequate defense of any single portion of the Pacific Coast within a year after a declaration of war, nor the three spheres within as many years."

Apparently neither the Militarists, nor the Pa.s.sivists, nor the Pacificists, nor the Pacificators, ever give any thought or heed to the fact of danger from within as the result of a steadily growing alien population, permanently settled in the United States, and which would in the event of war const.i.tute a force larger than any army we would have available for defense.

The chief danger of an armed conflict with j.a.pan arises from the existence in our midst of this alien population, and the danger that the pressure of their compet.i.tion may breed strife similar to that which preceded the Chinese Exclusion Act, a situation which can never be applied to j.a.pan without creating a certainty of war immediately or in the future.

In this respect we are like a people living on the slopes below the crater of a volcano. We can never know when an eruption may take place or what its extent or consequences may be. All we do know is that the danger exists; and it is folly beyond the possibility of expression or description to ignore that fact, and perpetuate our national indifference and unpreparedness. It is this situation on the Pacific Coast, more than any other one thing, which makes the advocacy of disarmament for this nation so inconceivably dangerous unless j.a.pan and China should also disarm, which we may rest a.s.sured they will never do. China is just entering upon a new era of militarism under a Military Dictator whose policy will be for arms and armament.

If the disarmament of the United States were to be agreed to and carried out because other nations agreed to disarm, and j.a.pan and China were willing to disarm, then the disarmament of Asiatic nations would have to be coupled with the further safeguard of an agreement stopping emigration from Asia to America--not only to North America, but to South America as well. It is not proposed by any of the advocates of disarmament to stop such immigration, nor will it be stopped. The fact that it will continue indefinitely through the years of the future is a fact which must be recognized as fundamental in dealing with the question of national defense for the United States of America.

The economic conditions created by the Asiatic in America are more dangerous and difficult of adjustment than any problem resulting from the military or naval strength of any Asiatic nation so long as their people in times of peace will stay in Asia. But they will not stay in Asia of their own accord, and they will not be forced to do so. We must face not only the problems that will arise from a large Asiatic population on the Pacific Coast of the United States, but in South America, Central America, and Mexico.

In a few generations the j.a.panese will control the northern Pacific sh.o.r.es of South America. Peru will come to be in reality a j.a.panese country. The j.a.panese will control because they will be in a majority, just as they now const.i.tute a majority of the population of Hawaii. They will dominate the Indian population and will absorb or supplant the Spanish just as we have done in California. In the course of time the j.a.panese will control Mexico in the same way, unless we control it ourselves.

It does not follow that we could not live at peace with the j.a.panese, if they controlled South America and Mexico, as we now live at peace with them when they only control j.a.pan, Formosa, Sakhalin, Korea, and their sphere of influence in Manchuria, as well as Tsing Tau and their Pacific Islands.

But if we are to do so, it can only be done by meeting their economic compet.i.tion and establis.h.i.+ng within our own territory a system of physical and mental development, a social and economic system, and a system of military defense, that will not only be equal but superior to theirs.

The conflict between the races of Asia and the races of America is the age-old compet.i.tion to test which is the stronger race. The fittest will survive. We cannot defend ourselves by temporary exclusion, as we have tried to do with the Chinese. It is only a question of time when China will emerge from the slumber of the centuries and provide herself with all the implements of modern warfare necessary to insist upon the same treatment for her people that we accord to other nations.

It may be a long time before an armed conflict between the United States and j.a.pan is precipitated, but it is inevitable, unless the national policy advocated in this book is adopted. War between this country and j.a.pan within the next forty years, unless the present trend is checked, is as inevitable as it has been at all times during the last forty years between France and Germany, with this difference:

The present European war is the result of primary causes that were so deeply rooted in wrong and injustice, that no human power could eradicate them. It is different with j.a.pan. We have no long standing or deeply rooted controversy with j.a.pan and we need never have if we meet the economic problem involved in this great racial compet.i.tion between Asia and America.

It is coming upon us, however, with the slow moving certainty of a glacier, and meet it we must. We must prevail or be overwhelmed, and unless we can face the economic conflicts involved and triumph in them, it is useless for us to undertake to hold our ground by militarism alone.

The fact undoubtedly is that of all three of the plans now before the people of the United States for national defense or for preserving peace, the most dangerous and deceptive is that of the militarists, for a bigger standing army and a bigger navy. It would create a false and misleading feeling of security from danger which would becloud the real problems involved and make their solution more difficult, if not impossible.

j.a.pan to-day has the most efficient military system of any nation of the world. This statement refers to the _system_. Other nations may have larger armies, but j.a.pan's military system, like that of Switzerland, is fitted into and matches with her whole social, commercial, and economic system. It is a part of the very fiber of her national being, and not an excrescence, as is our standing army.

And behind this she has the most adaptable, industrious, and physically and mentally efficient and vigorous people of the world. The danger of war between the United States and j.a.pan is not so much a present as a future danger. Whether it is in the near future or the far future depends largely on accident.

The danger could be removed entirely if the American people would subst.i.tute intelligent study of the problem for b.u.mptious conceit, and concerted action on right lines for aimless talk. Unless we do that our ultimate fate is as inevitable as that of Rome when she vainly strove by militarism alone to protect a decadent nation against the onslaughts of virile races. Our fate will not be so long delayed because we are now crowding into a decade the events that once evolved slowly through a century. We may reach in forty years a condition of relative weakness as against opposing forces which Rome reached only after four hundred years.

There will never be a war between j.a.pan and the United States if the people of this country will do unto the j.a.panese in all things as we would desire the j.a.panese to do unto us, if our situations were reversed, and they occupied this country and we theirs, _provided always_, that we at the same time recognize that the j.a.panese are the stronger rather than the weaker race, and cannot be exploited or their labor permanently appropriated for our profit rather than theirs; and _provided further_, that we recognize that j.a.pan is enormously overpopulated; that her population, which has grown from only four or five million in the tenth century to over fifty million in the twentieth, is increasing at the rate of over 1,000,000 a year, and that _the hive must swarm_.

This necessity sets forces in motion that are as irresistible in their workings as the laws that control the universe and direct the stars in their courses. Whenever race meets race in such a fundamental struggle for existence, the law of the survival of the fittest is inexorable. As j.a.pan increases her population, she becomes stronger, because wherever her people go they root themselves to the soil. As we increase our population, we become weaker, because we steadily enlarge the proportion of our population that we crowd into congested cities where it _rots_.

The poison of an Industrial System resting upon a system of life that destroys Humanity is filtering into the j.a.panese body politic, but before it seriously degenerates their racial strength the j.a.panese will see its evil effects on the State, and remove the cause.

We see its evil effects on the State, but seem unable to shake off the grip of Commercialism which is responsible for it. We will never shake off that grip until we can rise to the higher level of patriotism which will subordinate Commerce and Industry to the welfare of Humanity.

Unless we are willing to accept, as the inevitable end of our civilization, the fate of all the Ancient Civilizations, we must remember that no nation can endure in which one cla.s.s is exploited for the benefit of another. The same rule applies inexorably to any attempt by the people of one country to exploit the people of another and live on their labor.

If an armed conflict should be precipitated in the near future between this country and j.a.pan it will grow out of racial controversies resulting from an effort to exploit the j.a.panese in the United States in the same way that we are exploiting the immigrants from European countries. The difficulty that now faces the people of the United States with reference to the j.a.panese problem arises from the fact that we can neither exploit, nor exclude, nor a.s.similate the j.a.panese, nor can we, under present conditions, survive their economic compet.i.tion within our own territory.

Let the question of exploitation be first considered. There is a strong contingent of Americans on the Pacific Coast who openly advocate j.a.panese immigration. They argue that our proud and superior race will not condescend to do the "_squat labor_," as they term it, that is necessary to get the gold from the gardens of California--and from her vast plantations of potatoes, vegetables, and other food products that are grown on the marvelously fertile soil of that State. So they want the j.a.panese to come and do the "squat labor" while the Aristocratic Anglo-Saxon reaps the lion's share of the profits as the owner of the land.

_They tried that once with the Chinese, with what result?_

That the docile and subservient Chinese were the best field laborers that were ever found by any body of plantation-owners, and for a time the Caucasian owners of the orchards and vineyards and lordly demesnes of California prospered mightily from the profits earned for them by the labor of the lowly Chinese.

_But what happened?_

The Chinese were not only faithful and industrious, they were frugal as well. They saved their money. Soon they were not only laborers, but also capitalists, in a small way. Then they began to buy land and work in their own fields, gardens, and orchards. The industries that produced food from land as the result of intensive cultivation with human labor were rapidly pa.s.sing into the hands of the Chinese. They were rapidly buying the lands which were the basis of those industries. They were ceasing to work for the benefit of another race. They worked for themselves and their own benefit.

And that was not all. One after another every manufacturing industry in California in which human labor was a large element of production was being absorbed by the Chinese. First they worked for American Manufacturers. Then they became their own employers and the American Manufacturer was forced out of business by the economic compet.i.tion of a stronger race. In the end, it came to be seen of all men that the Caucasian Manufacturer, the Caucasian Wageworker, and the Caucasian Landowner, and food producer, were gradually surrendering to and being eliminated by the economic compet.i.tion of the Chinese.

So we excluded the Chinese.

If we had not done so, in less than a generation the Pacific Coast would have been a Chinese Country, and no oppression or mistreatment to which they could have been subjected would have prevented it, if they had been allowed to continue the process of commercial and agricultural absorption that had progressed so far before we finally excluded them.

Now the j.a.panese are repeating the same process of absorption. We cannot exclude them, and if we undertook to do so, it would only be postponing the evil day, when such a policy would breed an armed conflict. The j.a.panese regard the law that prohibits their acquisition of land as a violation of our treaty with them. They look to our own Courts to finally decide it to be unconst.i.tutional. It may be a long time coming, but the final result of the law preventing them from acquiring land in California will be war with j.a.pan _unless other measures are adopted to supplement one that will ultimately prove so futile_.

The exclusion of the j.a.panese from the right to acquire land, but still permitting them to lease land, makes the situation more dangerous than it was before. It adds to all the dangers of the purely economic struggle which resulted from Chinese Compet.i.tion, the additional danger of all the bad blood that a tenantry system inevitably develops. Every lease-hold will develop into a breeding place for friction and conflict between individual landlords and tenants, as well as conflicts between them as opposing cla.s.ses, and will result finally in the same racial controversies that led up to the pa.s.sage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Already the j.a.panese tenantry in the Delta of the San Joaquin River have formed a protective a.s.sociation to enable them to oppose the organized power of the ma.s.s against any objectionable conditions imposed by their landlords, as well as to fix the rental they are willing to pay. Does anyone doubt that such a tenantry system will in time breed as much controversy as the Nonresident Landlord System has caused in Ireland?

The j.a.panese Tenantry System in California must in the very nature of things be a Nonresident Landlord System. It can be nothing else. The community will be j.a.panese. The landlord will seek a home elsewhere, in a Caucasian community. His only thought will be to get all he can from those whose labor produces his income. Their only thought will be to make that amount as small as possible. We have created another "Irrepressible Conflict." Whether we will adjust it without a resort to arms is a very grave question.

One of the most dangerous elements in this complicated problem is the self-complacent ignorance and refusal to face facts which characterizes the att.i.tude of the people not only of the western half, but more particularly those of the eastern half of the United States. Not long ago a paroxysm of protest resulted from a rumor that a few hundred j.a.panese were about to settle in Michigan. But not the slightest heed is paid to the fact that a sister State has this problem already within her body politic eating like a cancer at her very vitals; that she is powerless to effectively settle the question by herself alone; and that no national disposition exists to settle it in the only way it can possibly be settled. The way to settle it is not by building more battles.h.i.+ps, or enlarging our standing army, or in any way increasing our naval or military burdens, or doing anything that will now or hereafter tend to put the neck of the American people under the heel of militarism. There can be no settlement of this question other than the one urged in this book. The question is economic, and the settlement must be economic.

j.a.pan wants no war with us now. Of that we may rest a.s.sured. But any such treatment of the j.a.panese as we extended to the Chinese would bring war instantly. Whether the racial animosity that j.a.panese compet.i.tion within our own territory will inevitably create can be controlled, and conflict caused by it averted, may well be doubted, unless the people of the entire United States will recognize the problem as vital and national, and forthwith apply the only possible practicable solution.

We must recognize both the necessity and the right of j.a.panese expansion into new territories. That expansion means the upbuilding of enormous populations of j.a.panese in those countries. If ten millions of the most vigorous of j.a.pan's teeming population could be transplanted from their native country to garden homes in other countries bordering the Pacific, where their allegiance to j.a.pan would be unaffected, and colonies developed that would bear the same relation to the mother country that Canada bears to Great Britain, it would vastly benefit those who remained in j.a.pan as well as those who emigrated. There must be such an emigration. It cannot be prevented. The United States should not oppose it.

But where shall they go?

_To the Philippines?_

There you project a controversy even by discussion. Of course j.a.pan will not colonize the Philippines while we control them. Aside from that, the climate is undesirable. The j.a.panese want to colonize where they can reproduce their racial strength. The climate of the Philippines would destroy it. Generations will elapse before the j.a.panese will covet the Philippines in order to colonize them, though she might want them for other reasons.

_Shall they go to Manchuria?_

Yes, to some extent, but the great body of the overflowing population of j.a.pan will not go to Manchuria.

It is a bleak, cold, dreary, and inhospitable country, already to a large extent cultivated and populated.

The j.a.panese will not go to Manchuria for another reason.