“What does the European War mean to us Orientals?” queried the Japanese writer, Yone Noguchi. “It means the saddest downfall of the so-called western civilization; our belief that it was builded upon a higher and sounder footing than ours was at once knocked down and killed; we are sorry that we somehow overestimated its happy possibility and were deceived and cheated by its superficial glory. My recent western journey confirmed me that the so-called dynamic western civilization was all against the Asiatic belief. And when one does not respect the others, there will be only one thing to come, that is, fight, in action or silence.”[6]
![[Larger Image]](#4308154651292581672_map1.jpg.id-7257027478074648373.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRIMARY RACES
Such was the colored world’s reaction to the white death-grapple, and as the long struggle dragged on both Asia and Africa stirred to their very depths. To be sure, no great explosions occurred during the war years, albeit lifting veils of censorship reveal how narrowly such explosions were averted. Nevertheless, Asia and Africa are to-day in acute ferment, and we must not forget that this ferment is not primarily due to the war. The war merely accelerated a movement already existent long before 1914. Even if the Great War had been averted, the twentieth century must have been a time of wide-spread racial readjustments in which the white man’s present position of political world-domination would have been sensibly modified, especially in Asia. However, had the white race and white civilization been spared the terrific material and moral losses involved in the Great War and its still unliquidated aftermath, the process of racial readjustment would have been far more gradual and would have been fraught with far fewer cataclysmic possibilities. Had white strength remained intact it would have acted as a powerful shock-absorber, taking up and distributing the various colored impacts. As a result, the coming modification of the world’s racial equilibrium, though inevitable, would have been so graduated that it would have seemed more an evolution than a revolution. Such violent breaches as did occur might have been localized, and anything like a general race-cataclysm would probably have been impossible.
But it was not to be. The heart of the white world was divided against itself, and on the fateful 1st of August, 1914, the white race, forgetting ties of blood and culture, heedless of the growing pressure of the colored world without, locked in a battle to the death. An ominous cycle opened whose end no man can foresee. Armageddon engendered Versailles; earth’s worst war closed with an unconstructive peace which left old sores unhealed and even dealt fresh wounds. The white world to-day lies debilitated and uncured; the colored world views conditions which are a standing incitement to rash dreams and violent action.
Such is the present status of the world’s race-problem, expressed in general terms. The analysis of the specific elements in that complex problem will form the subject of the succeeding chapters.