There are, of course, certain basic and fundamental reasons for white leadership that I need not elaborate. For one thing, there is the tonic air of democratic ideals in which long generations of white men have lived and developed as contrasted with the stifling absolutism of the East. There is also our emphasis upon the worth of the Individual, our conception of the sacredness of personality, as compared with the Oriental lack of concern for the individual in its supreme regard for the family and the State. And even more important perhaps is the fact that the white man has had a religion that has taught--even if somewhat confusedly at times--that "man is man and master of his fate," that he is not a plaything of destiny, but a responsible son of God with enormous possibilities for good or evil, whereas the Oriental has been the victim of benumbing fatalism that has made him indifferent in industry and achievement, though it has given him a greater recklessness in war. It would also be difficult to exaggerate the influence which our radically different estimate of woman has had upon Western civilization. And here we have to consider not only woman's own direct contributions to progress, but also the indirect influence of our regard for woman, not as an inferior and a plaything, but as a comrade and helpmeet. How frequently the ideal of English chivalry--
"To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
To worship her by years of noble deeds"--
has been the inspiration of the best that men of our race have wrought, it needs only a glance at our literature to {272} suggest. These things are indeed basic and fundamental and the question of their conservation, the preservation of the ideals of the Occident as compared with those of the Orient, is supremely important not only to us as a nation but to all our human race. But when one comes to consider only the sheer economic causes of the difference between Oriental poverty and Occidental plenty, it seems to me impossible to escape the conviction, already expressed and elaborated that it is mainly a matter of tools and knowledge, education and machinery.
In the Orient every man is producing as little as possible; in the Occident he is producing as much as possible. That is the case in a nutshell.
With better knowledge and better tools, half the people now engaged in food-production in Asia could produce all the food that the entire rural population now produces, and the other half could be released for manufacturing--thereby doubling the earning power and the spending power of the whole population.
It is universal education and modern machinery, far more than virgin resources, that have made America rich and powerful. Let her make haste then to learn this final lesson that the Orient teaches--the necessity of conserving in the fullest degree all the powers that have given us industrial supremacy: the power of the trained brain and the cunning hand reinforced by all the magic strength that we may get from our Briarean "Slave of the Lamp," modern machinery. We must thoroughly educate all our people. Was it not an Oriental prophet who wrote: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge?" In China only 1 per cent, of the people can now read and write, and the highest hope of the government is that 5 per cent, may be literate by 1917. In India only 5 per cent, can read and write. In Japan for centuries past, the education of the common man has also been neglected, but she is now compelling every child to go into the schools, {273} and her industrial system will doubtless be revolutionized at a result.
In no case must we forget that education, if it is to be effective, must train for efficiency, must link itself with life and work, must be practical. I had thought of the movement for relating the school to industry as being confined to America and Europe. But when I landed in Japan I found the educational authorities there as keenly alive to the importance of the movement as ours in America; in China I found that the old classical system of education has been utterly abandoned within a decade; in the Philippines it was the boast of the Commissioner of Education that the elementary schools in the islands give better training for agriculture and industry than those in the United States; and in India the school authorities are earnestly at work upon the same problem.
Knowledge and tools must go hand in hand. If this has been important heretofore it is doubly important now that we must face in an ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and racial readjustment.
THE END
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