THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
May 23, 1907.
Confidential
My dear Baron Kaneko:I much appreciate your thought of Archie. The little fellow was very sick but is now all right. His mother and I have just had him on a short trip in the country.
I was delighted to meet General Kuroki and Admiral Ijuin with their staffs. General Kuroki is, of course, one of the most illustrious men living. Through his interpreter, a very able young staff officer, I spoke to him a little about our troubles on the Pacific Slope.
Nothing during my Presidency has given me more concern than these troubles. History often teaches by example, and I think we can best understand just what the situation is, and how it ought to be met, by taking into account the change in general international relations during the last two or three centuries.
During this period all the civilized nations have made great progress. During the first part of it Japan did not appear in the general progress, but for the last half century she has gone ahead so much faster than any other nation that I think we can fairly say that, taking the last three centuries together, her advance has been on the whole greater than that of any other nation. But all have advanced, and especially in the way in which the people of each treat people of other nationalities. Two centuries ago there was the greatest suspicion and malevolence exhibited by all the people, high and low, of each European country, for all the people, high and low, of every other European country, with but few exceptions. The cultivated people of the different countries, however, had already begun to treat with one another on good terms. But when, for instance, the Huguenots were exiled from France, and great numbers of Huguenot workmen went to England, their presence excited the most violent hostility, manifesting itself even in mob violence, among the English workmen. The men were closely allied by race and religion, they had practically the same type of ancestral culture, and yet they were unable to get on together. Two centuries have passed, the world has moved forward, and now there could be no repetition of such hostilities. In the same way a marvellous progress has been made in the relations of Japan with the Occidental nations. Fifty years ago you and I and those like us could not have travelled in one another's countries. We should have had very unpleasant and possibly very dangerous experiences. But the same progress that has been going on as between nations in Europe and their descendants in America and Australia, has also been going on as between Japan and the Occidental nations. In these times, then, gentlemen, all educated people, members of professions and the like, get on so well together that they not only travel each in the other's country, but associate on the most intimate terms. Among the friends whom I especially value I include a number of Japanese gentlemen. But the half century has been too short a time for the advance to include the labouring classes of the two countries, as between themselves.
Exactly as the educated classes in Europe, among the several nations, grew to be able to associate together generations before it was possible for such association to take place among the men who had no such advantages of education, so it is evident we must not press too fast in bringing the labouring classes of Japan and America together. Already in these fifty years we have completely attained the goal as between the educated and the intellectual classes of the two countries. We must be content to wait another generation before we shall have made progress enough to permit the same close intimacy between the classes who have had less opportunity for cultivation, and whose lives are less easy, so that each has to feel, in earning its daily bread, the pressure of the competition of the other. I have become convinced that to try to move too far forward all at once is to incur jeopardy of trouble. This is just as true of one nation as of the other. If scores of thousands of American miners went to Saghalin, or of American mechanics to Japan or Formosa, trouble would almost certainly ensue. Just in the same way scores of thousands of Japanese labourers, whether agricultural or industrial, are certain, chiefly because of the pressure caused thereby, to be a sources of trouble if they should come here or to Australia. I mention Australia because it is a part of the British Empire, because the Australians have discriminated against continental immigration in favour of immigration from the British Isles, and have in effect discriminated to a certain degree in favour of immigration from England and Scotland as against immigration from Ireland.
My dear Baron, the business of statesmen is to try constantly to keep international relations better, to do away with causes of friction, and secure as nearly ideal justice as actual conditions will permit. I think that with this object in view and facing conditions not as I would like them to be, but as they are, the best thing to do is to prevent the labouring classes of either country from going in any numbers to the other. In a generation I believe all need of such prevention will have passed away; and at any rate this leaves free the opportunity for all those fit to profit by intercourse, to go each to the other's country. I have just appointed a commission on general immigration which will very possibly urge restrictive measures as regards European immigration, and which I am in hopes will be able to bring about a method by which the result we have in view will be obtained with the minimum friction.
With warm regards to the Baroness, believe me,
Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.Baron Kentaro Kaneko,
Tokyo, Japan.
The foregoing letter may well be studied at this time when, through lack of the kind of statesmanship shown by Roosevelt, the Californian situation has become worse instead of better.
Another letter shown me by Viscount Kaneko was written in pencil on a large sheet of yellow paper torn from a pad. It came from the African jungle, and ran as follows:
Mid-Africa
Sept. 10th, 1909.My dear Baron, [3]
I have no facilities for writing here; but I must just send you a line of thanks for your welcome note. I have had a most interesting trip; my son Kermit has done particularly well. He has the spirit of a samurai! I greatly hope to visit Japan; but when it may be possible I can not say.
With warm regards to the Viscountess, [3] believe me,
Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
3 Despite the fact that Roosevelt knew that Kaneko had been made a Viscount he addressed him in this letter by his old title.
The last letter of the series was written on the stationery of the Kansas City Star, of which Roosevelt was an associate editor with an office in New York. The letter read:
New York, Aug. 21, 1918.
My dear Viscount Kaneko:
I thank you for your letter; and Mrs. Roosevelt was as much touched by it as I was. Remember to give your son a letter to us when he comes here to go to Harvard. One of our newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, when the news was brought that Quentin was dead and two of his brothers wounded, spoke of my four sons as "American samurai." I was proud of the reference! As you say, all of us who are born are doomed to die. No man is fit to live who is afraid to die for a great cause. My sorrow for Quentin is outweighed by my pride in him.
Faithfully your friend,
Theodore Roosevelt.
The foregoing, written less than five months before Colonel Roosevelt's death, was the last letter of the series shown me by Viscount Kaneko.
Reading it I was reminded of what Colonel Roosevelt said to me as he lay on his bed in the hospital the last time I saw him.
Speaking of his four sons in the war he said: