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DISTRIBUTION OF THE WHITE RACES

The effective centres of colored unrest are the brown and yellow worlds of Asia. Both those worlds are not merely in negative opposition to white hegemony, but are experiencing a real renaissance whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that it is a faithful replica of similar movements in past times. White men must get out of their heads the idea that Asiatics are necessarily “inferior.” As a matter of fact, while Asiatics do not seem to possess that sustained constructive power with which the whites, particularly the Nordics, are endowed, the browns and yellows are yet gifted peoples who have profoundly influenced human progress in the past and who undoubtedly will contribute much to world-civilization. The Asiatics have by their own efforts built up admirable cultures rooted in remote antiquity and worthy of all respect. They are to-day once more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but adapting, white ideas and methods. That this profound Asiatic renaissance will eventually result in the substantial elimination of white political control from Anatolia to the Philippines is as natural as it is inevitable.

This does not mean a precipitate white “scuttle” from Asia. Far from it. It does mean, however, a candid facing of realities and a basing of policy on realities rather than on prepossessions or prejudices. Unless the white man does this, he will injure himself more than any one else. If Asia is to-day really renascent, Asia will ultimately reap the political fruits. Men worthy of independence will sooner or later get independence. This is as certain as is the converse truth that men unworthy of independence, though they cry for it never so loudly, will either remain subject or will quickly relapse into subjection should they by some lucky circumstance obtain what they could only misuse.

If, then, Asia deserves to be free, she will be free. The only question is, how she will attain her freedom. Shall it be an evolutionary process, in the main peaceful, based upon mutual respect, with mutual recognition of both increasing Asiatic fitness and white vested interests? Or shall it come through cataclysmic revolution? This is the dilemma which those imperialists should ponder who object to any relaxation of white political control over Asia because of the “value” of the subject regions. That white control over Asiatic lands has been, and still is, immensely profitable, cannot be denied. But what basis for this value is there except lack of effective opposition? If real, sustained opposition now develops, if subject Asia becomes chronically rebellious, if its peoples resolutely boycott white goods—as China and India have shown Asiatics capable of doing, will not white control be transformed from an asset into a liability? Above all, let us remember that no race-values are involved. No white race-areas would have to be abandoned to non-white domination. White control over Asia is political, and can thus be judged by the criteria of material interest undisturbed by the categorical imperative of race-duty.

The need for sympathetic open-mindedness toward awakening Asia if cataclysmic disasters are to be averted becomes all the clearer when we realize that on important issues lying outside Asia the white world must resolutely oppose Asiatic desires. We whites should be the more generous in our attitude toward Asia because imperative reasons of self-protection require us to deny to Asiatics some of their best opportunities in the outer world.

In my opening chapters I discussed the rapid growth of Asiatic populations and the resultant steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus Asiatics (principally yellow men, but also in lesser degree brown men) from overcrowded homelands toward the less-crowded regions of the earth. It is, in fact, Asiatics, and above all Mongolian Asiatics, who form the first waves of the rising tide of color. Unfortunately, the white world cannot permit this rising tide free scope. White men cannot, under peril of their very race-existence, allow wholesale Asiatic immigration into white race-areas. This prohibition, which will be discussed in the next chapter, is already a serious blow to Asiatic aspirations.

But the matter does not end there. The white world also cannot permit with safety to itself wholesale Asiatic penetration of non-Asiatic colored regions like black Africa and tropical Latin America. To permit Asiatic colonization and ultimate control of these vast territories with their incalculable resources would be to overturn in favor of Asia the political, the economic, and eventually the racial balance of power in the world. At present the white man controls these regions. And he must stand fast. No other course is possible. Neither black Africa nor mongrel-ruled tropical America can stand alone. If the white man goes, the Asiatic comes—browns to Africa, yellows to Latin America. And there is no reason under heaven why we whites should deliberately present Asia with the richest regions of the tropics, to our own impoverishment and probable undoing.

Our race-duty is therefore clear. We must resolutely oppose both Asiatic permeation of white race-areas and Asiatic inundation of those non-white, but equally non-Asiatic, regions inhabited by the really inferior races. But we should also recognize that by taking this attitude we debar Asiatics from golden opportunities and render impossible the realization of aspirations intrinsically just as normal and laudable as our own. And, having closed in their faces so many doors of hope, can we refuse to discuss with gifted and capable Asiatics the problem of turning over to them the keys of their own house without causing festering hatreds whose poison may spread far beyond Asia into other colored lands and possibly into white lands as well? Neither a Pan-Colored nor a Colored-Bolshevist alliance are impossibilities, far-fetched though these terms may sound.

The fact is, we whites are in no position to indulge in the luxury of Bourbonism. Weakened by Armageddon, hampered by Versailles, and harassed by Bolshevism, the white world can ill afford to flout legitimate Asiatic aspirations to independence. Our imperialists may argue that this means abandoning “outer dikes,” but I contend that white positions in Asia are not protective dikes but strategic blockhouses, built upon the sands during the long Asiatic ebb-tide, and which the now rising Asiatic waves must ultimately engulf. Is it not the part of wisdom to quit these outposts before they collapse into the swirling waters? Our true “outer dikes” stand, not in Asia, but in Africa and Latin America. Let us not exhaust ourselves by stubborn resistance in Asia which in the end must prove futile. Let us conserve our strength, remembering that by the time Asia has been submerged the flood should have lost much of its pent-up power.