“We are now well astride of our steed, China; but the steed has long roamed wild and is run down: it needs grooming, more grain, more training. Further, our saddle and bridle are as yet mere makeshifts: would steed and trappings stand the strain of war? And what would that strain be?
“As for America—that fatuous booby with much money and much sentiment, but no cohesion, no brains of government; stood she alone we should not need our China steed. Well did my friend speak the other day when he called her people a race of thieves with the hearts of rabbits. America, to any warrior race, is not as a foe, but as an immense melon, ripe for the cutting. But there are other warrior races—England, Germany—would they look on and let us slice and eat our fill? Would they?
“But, using China as our steed, should our first goal be the land? India? Or the Pacific, the sea that must be our very own, even as the Atlantic is now England’s? The land is tempting and easy, but withal dangerous. Did we begin there, the coarse white races would too soon awaken, and combine, and forever immure us within our long since grown intolerable bounds. It must, therefore, be the sea; but the sea means the Western Americas and all the islands between; and with those must soon come Australia, India. And then the battling for the balance of world-power, for the rest of North America. Once that is ours, we own and control the whole—a dominion worthy of our race!
“North America alone will support a billion people; that billion shall be Japanese with their slaves. Not arid Asia, nor worn-out Europe (which, with its peculiar and quaint relics and customs should in the interests of history and culture, be in any case preserved), nor yet tropical Africa, is fit for our people. But North America, that continent so succulently green, fresh, and unsullied—except for the few chattering, mongrel Yankees—should have been ours by right of discovery: it shall be ours by the higher, nobler right of conquest.”[33]
This apostle of Japanese world-dominion then goes on to discuss in detail how his programme can best be attained. It should be remembered that at the time he wrote America was still an unarmed nation, apparently ridden by pacifism. Such imperialist extravagances as the above do not represent the whole of Japan. But they do represent a powerful element in Japan, against which the white world should be forewarned.
CHAPTER III
BROWN MAN’S LAND
Brown Man’s Land is the Near and Middle East. The brown world stretches in an immense belt clear across southern Asia and northern Africa, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans. The numbers of brown and yellow men are not markedly unequal (450,000,000 browns as against 500,000,000 yellows), but in most other respects the two worlds are sharply contrasted. In the first place, while the yellow world is a fairly compact geographical block, the brown world sprawls half-way round the globe, and is not only much greater in size, but also infinitely more varied in natural features.