“PEACE! PEACE!” WHEN THERE IS NO PEACE
We are farther from peace than we were in 1922. The French occupation of the Ruhr and the passage by Congress of the Japanese Exclusion Act were blows at the very heart of world peace. Hate has been growing in Europe. Militarism has been given a new lease of life in Germany and in Japan. The question of race equality has been made a permanently living issue to be coupled in future years with the problems raised by white domination over peoples that want to be free.
New Alsace Lorraines—such as the Polish Corridor—have been created by the Versailles Treaty. Religious and race antagonisms, kept acute by the economic imperialism of the white race, stir the awakening Mohammedan world.
Militarist and narrow nationalist groups in every country flood the press with propaganda breathing fear or hate. A new race in armaments has started. Our Monroe Doctrine, in view of the growing importance of the immigration question, contains dangerous possibilities insofar as it may be regarded as a commitment to go to war for Latin-American policies. Taken in conjunction with certain acts of aggression on our part and with the utterances of our jingoes, which are reprinted from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, it injects poison constantly into our relations with Latin America, so that our military guarantee of two continents brings us no gratitude but only suspicion from our grown-up and unwilling wards.
The Dawes Plan is a fleeting ray of sunshine in a dark and ominous sky. We are not drifting into permanent peace.