But against these race-frontiers—these “inner dikes”—the rising tide of color has for decades been beating, and will beat yet more fiercely as congesting population, quickened self-consciousness, and heightened sense of power impel the colored world to expansion and dominion. Above the eastern horizon the dark storm-clouds lower, and the weakened, distracted white world must soon face a colored peril threatening its integrity and perhaps its existence. This colored peril has three facets: the peril of arms, the peril of markets, and the peril of migration. All three contain ominous potentialities, both singly and in combination. Let us review them in turn, to appraise their dynamic possibilities.
First, the peril of arms. The military potencies of the colored races have been the subject of earnest, and frequently alarmist, speculation for the past twenty years, particularly since the Russo-Japanese War. The exciting effects of Pan-Islamism upon the warlike peoples of Asia and Africa have been frequently discussed, while the “Yellow Peril” has long been a journalistic commonplace.
How shall we appraise the colored peril of arms? On the whole, it would appear as though the colored military danger, in its isolated, purely aggressive aspect, had been exaggerated. Visions of a united Asia, rising suddenly in fanatic frenzy and hurling brown and yellow myriads upon the white West seem to be the products of superheated imaginations. I say “seem,” because there are unquestionably mysterious emotional depths in the Asiatic soul which may yet justify the prophets of cataclysmic war. As Hyndman says: “With all the facts before us, and with prejudice thrown aside, we are still unable to lay bare the causes of the gigantic Asian movements of the past. They were certainly not all economic in their origin, unless we stretch the boundaries of theory so far as to include the massacre of whole populations and the destruction of their wealth within the limits of the invaders’ desire for material gain. And, whether these movements arose from material or emotional causes, they have been before, and they may occur again. Forecast here is impossible. A new Mohammed is quite as likely to make his appearance as a new Buddha, a reborn Confucius, or a modern Christ.... Asia raided and scourged Europe for more than a thousand years. Now, for five hundred years, the counter-attack of Europe upon Asia has been steadily going on, and it may be that the land of long memories will cherish some desire to avenge this period of wrong and rapine in turn. The seed of hatred has already been but too well sown.”[137]
Of course, on this particular point, forecast is, indeed, impossible. Nevertheless, the point should be noted, for Asiatic war-fever may appear, if not in isolation, then in conjunction with other stimuli to warlike action, like population-pressure or imperialistic ambition, which to-day exist and whose amplitude can be approximately gauged. We have already analyzed the military potencies of Pan-Islamism and Japan, and China also should not be forgotten. Pacifist though China has long been, she has had her bellicose moments in the past and may have them in the future. Should this occur, China, as the world’s greatest reservoir of intelligent man-power, would be immensely formidable. Pearson visualizes a China “become an aggressive military power, sending out her armies in millions to cross the Himalayas and traverse the Steppes, or occupying the islands and the northern parts of Australia, by pouring in immigrants protected by fleets. Luther’s old name for the Turks, that they were ‘the people of the wrath of God,’ may receive a new and terrible application.”[138]
Granted that the Chinese will never become the fighting equals of the world’s warrior races, their incredible numbers combined with their tenacious vitality might overcome opponents individually their superiors. Says Professor Ross: “To the West the toughness of the Chinese physique may have a sinister military significance. Nobody fears lest in a stand-up fight Chinese troops could whip an equal number of well-conditioned white troops. But few battles are fought by men fresh from tent and mess. In the course of a prolonged campaign involving irregular provisioning, bad drinking-water, lying out, loss of sleep, exhausting marches, exposure, excitement, and anxiety, it may be that the white soldiers would be worn down worse than the yellow soldiers. In that case the hardier men with less of the martial spirit might in the closing grapple beat the better fighters with the less endurance.”[139]
The potentialities of the Chinese soldier would acquire vastly greater significance if China should be thoroughly subjugated by, or solidly leagued to, ambitious and militaristic Japan. The combined military energies of the Far East, welded into an aggressive unity, would be a weapon of tremendous striking-power.
The colored peril of arms may thus be summarized: The brown and yellow races possess great military potentialities. These (barring the action of certain ill-understood emotional stimuli) are unlikely to flame out in spontaneous fanaticism; but, on the other hand, they are very likely to be mobilized for political reasons like revolt against white dominion or for social reasons like over-population. The black race offers no real danger except as the tool of Pan-Islamism. As for the red men of the Americas, they are of merely local significance.
We are now ready to examine the economic facet of the colored peril: the industrial-mercantile phase. In the second part of this volume I showed the profound effect of the “industrial revolution” in furthering white world-supremacy, and I pointed out the tremendous advantages accruing to the white world from exploitation of undeveloped colored lands and from exports of manufactured goods to colored markets. The prodigious wealth thereby amassed has been a prime cause of white prosperity, has buttressed the maintenance of white world-hegemony, and has made possible much of the prodigious increase of white population.
We little realize what the loss of these advantages would mean. As a matter of fact, it would mean throughout the white world diminished prosperity, lessened political and military strength, and such relative economic and social stagnation as would depress national vigor and check population. It is even possible to visualize a white world reverting to the condition of Europe in the fifteenth century—thrown back upon itself, on the defensive, and with a static rather than a progressive civilization. Such conditions could of course occur only as the result of colored military and industrial triumphs of the most sweeping character. But the possibility exists, nevertheless, as I shall endeavor to show.
Down to the close of the nineteenth century white supremacy was as absolute in industry as it was in politics and war. Even the civilized brown and yellow peoples were negligible from the industrial point of view. Asia was economically on an agricultural basis. Such industries as she possessed were still in the “house-industry” stage, and her products, while often exquisite in quality, were produced by such slow, antiquated methods that their quantity was limited and their market-price relatively high. Despite very low wages, Asiatic products not only could not compete in the world-market with European and American machine-made, mass-produced articles, but were hard hit in their home-markets as well. The way in which an ancient Asiatic handicraft like the Indian textiles was literally annihilated by the destructive competition of Lancashire cottons is only one of many similar instances.