We may think Asia is “slow”—in many ways Asia can out-think us. The land that had Confucius, the land of soul-searching which is India, the land of the Grand Lamas which is Thibet, the land which produced Buddha—they cannot be fooled.
We had better take care that we do not legislate ourselves into a feeling of security, till we have educated Asia as to our aims and purposes and feel that Asia feels as we do about the things we prize the most. Not till that time is it possible to federate the world, though we must attempt such a federation. Though the League of Nations may fail as a preventive of wars, it will serve humanity by revealing secret enmities and anti-American ideas, it will make for discussion of world interests, it will clarify our purposes, it will serve to educate nations about other nations. Though it never gets beyond anything but an international debating society (assuming that fact for the sake of argument) it gives the nations of the world a chance to go somewhere with their grievances. It will do much for the United States in making us internationally minded, though nationally conscious. No doubt President Wilson is actuated by some such idea in his willingness to forego many things he would like to have gained at the Peace Conference, if only the League of Nations is saved as an idea.
The nations need a safety valve. The old diplomacy served to conceal national aims and aspirations, either good or bad. The consequence was that one-half the world found the other half arrayed against it, and did not suspect it, till the war broke.
Asia must not be allowed to misunderstand us, and we must not misunderstand Asia. Europe, with the same civilization, got into conflict, by diplomatic concealment of opposing ideas. Frank discussions under the old-style diplomacy was something in the nature of an affront—we could not be frank with each other till we were at war. We need to look facts in the face, to argue a little more and fight less. We cannot assert that a condition exists merely because we wish it existed, we must tell the truth to Asia about ourselves and we must not be afraid to tell Asia what we want Asia to know, even though Asia may resent it. We must educate Asia to our ideas, or she will educate us to hers—which is subjection.
Asia’s history is a history of great conquests with intervening periods of degeneration. She rises and falls like tides between cycles of time. We have known her during a period in which she has bent the neck to the white man in various ways.
We have been teaching her to build modern machinery for construction and destruction. The old jig-saw geography of Asia is being juggled into a new pattern, and seems ready for a new era and a new master. She may develop another Ghengis Khan, another Tartar horde, (civilized in modern warfare this time) and our Chinese wall which we call the Pacific may not protect us.
This is not “Yellow Perilism” as we have understood it heretofore, but a consideration of the possibilities in all Asia during the next hundred years, under the ægis of a sort of Prussianism in a new form, welding China, India, Persia, Asiatic Russia and all the East to an idea which combats the American ideal of government.
As I have said, Asia can think. She almost has a league of nations in her religion (the various sects agree among themselves better than they all do with Christianity) and religion offers a splendid means of communicating an idea to numberless people who are otherwise illiterate. The Buddhist Mongol from Manchuria can carry a message to the far-off temples of the Himalayas, without cable tolls or cable censors.
Russia aflame with Bolshevism startled us. The propaganda had been going on a long time before we considered it a serious menace, because we did not believe that so many people could be trained to such absurd ideas by absurd promises. We did not understand the possibilities for united destruction in a vast, ignorant and subject people. We must understand Asia—or our children’s children will wash the pots in Asiatic sculleries.
THE END