Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

The danger could be removed entirely if the American people would substitute intelligent study of the problem for bumptious 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 Japan and the United States if the people of this country will do unto the Japanese in all things as we would desire the Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japan 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 Japan 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 Japanese body politic, but before it seriously degenerates their racial strength the Japanese 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 class 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 Japan it will grow out of racial controversies resulting from an effort to exploit the Japanese 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 Japanese problem arises from the fact that we can neither exploit, nor exclude, nor assimilate the Japanese, nor can we, under present conditions, survive their economic competition 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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.