The White Man's Burden
As Americans we are faced with the necessity of assuming our share of a burden which has been carried by Great Britain for the last three centuries—that is "the White Man's Burden,"—the duty of policing the world and maintaining the prestige of the white man throughout the Seven Seas. Due to the change in the industrial situation all over the world and to the spread of the fatal sentimentalism of the Anglo-Saxon, the lower races in Europe and elsewhere are beginning to assert themselves. Everywhere from one end of the world to the other is heard the cry of self-determination.
Americans already have much the same problem in the Philippines.
The attitude of the Imperial Government in London toward the native races in its various Dominions has been in the past and still is not unlike that of the Federal Government in Washington toward the Negroes in our Southern States.
Americans must sympathize with the firm resolve of the handful of white men in South Africa (less than a million and a half) to control and regulate the Negro population there—numbering some seven millions and in the midst of which they live. The same problem arises in Australia and New Zealand where the Whites are determined that their civilization shall not be swamped by Orientals.
We must also sympathize with the Whites in Kenya Colony in their opposition to a filling of their country with cheap Hindu labor. As Americans we can understand the Negro and recognize his cheerful qualities, but we can have little sympathy with the Hindu whom we have expressly barred from our Pacific Coast. These Hindus, with the Chinese, have ruined the native races of many of the Polynesian Islands. They have been for ages in contact with the highest civilizations, but have failed to benefit by such contact, either physically, intellectually, or morally.
Similar dangers exist on the Pacific Coast of Canada. The struggle for the maintenance of the supremacy of the white man over the native, or for that matter over the non-European, until now has been maintained by Great Britain alone. Her ruling class has given the world the greatest example since the days of Rome, of a just, fearless, and unselfish government, but apparently the native does not desire such a government.
The old imperial instinct that enabled Great Britain to retain control of the white man's world appears to be coming to an end. The weary Titan seems willing to turn over the burden of government to the Dominions as fast as the latter demand it. This is evidenced also by the proposal to give up the naval base at Singapore. If this base is ever actually abandoned, it means England's withdrawal from the supremacy of the Pacific. In such event, whether we Americans like it or not—whether we intend it or not—the burden of the control of the Pacific will pass in great measure to America. The future lies in the Pacific rather than in the Atlantic, and with the completion of the Panama Canal, America is brought face to face with Oriental problems.
Australia and New Zealand, still more British Columbia, look for co-operation and leadership to the United States as well as to Great Britain, and we must be prepared to accept this responsibility.