VII
THE EUROPEAN RACES IN COLONIES
For reasons already set forth there are few communities outside of Europe of pure European blood. The racial destiny of Mexico and of the islands and coasts of the Spanish Main is clear. The white man is being rapidly bred out by Negroes on the islands and by Indians on the mainland. It is quite evident that the West Indies, the coast region of our Gulf States, perhaps, also the black belt of the lower Mississippi Valley must be abandoned to Negroes. This transformation is already complete in Haiti and is going rapidly forward in Cuba and Jamaica. Mexico and the northern part of South America must also be given over to native Indians with an ever thinning veneer of white culture of the “Latin” type.
In Venezuela the pure whites number about one per cent of the whole population, the balance being Indians and various crosses between Indians, Negroes and whites. In Jamaica the whites number not more than two per cent, while the remainder are Negroes or mulattoes. In Mexico the proportion is larger, but the unmixed whites number less than twenty per cent of the whole, the others being Indians pure or mixed. These latter are the “greasers” of the American frontiersman.
Whenever the incentive to imitate the dominant race is removed the Negro or, for that matter, the Indian, reverts shortly to his ancestral grade of culture. In other words, it is the individual and not the race that is affected by religion, education and example. Negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they are a stationary species and that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within. Progress from self-impulse must not be confounded with mimicry or with progress imposed from without by social pressure or by the slaver’s lash.
When the impulse of an inferior race to imitate or mimic the dress, manners or morals of the dominant race is destroyed by the acquisition of political or social independence, the servient race tends to revert to its original status as in Haiti.
Where two distinct species are located side by side history and biology teach that but one of two things can happen; either one race drives the other out, as the Americans exterminated the Indians and as the Negroes are now replacing the whites in various parts of the South; or else they amalgamate and form a population of race bastards in which the lower type ultimately preponderates. This is a disagreeable alternative with which to confront sentimentalists but nature is only concerned with results and neither makes nor takes excuses. The chief failing of the day with some of our well meaning philanthropists is their absolute refusal to face inevitable facts, if such facts appear cruel.
In the Argentine white blood of the various European races is pouring in so rapidly that a community preponderantly white, but of the Mediterranean race, may develop, but the type is suspiciously swarthy.
In Brazil, Negro blood together with that of the native inhabitants is rapidly overwhelming the white Europeans, although in the southern provinces German immigration has played an important rôle and the influx of Italians has also been considerable.
In Asia, with the sole exception of the Russian settlements in Siberia, there can be and will be no ethnic conquest and all the white men in India, the East Indies, the Philippines and China will leave not the slightest trace behind them in the blood of the native population. After several centuries of contact and settlement the pure Spanish in the Philippines are about half of one per cent. The Dutch in their East Indian islands are even less, while the resident whites in Hindustan amount to about one-tenth of one per cent. Such numbers are infinitesimal and of no force in a democracy, but in a monarchy, if kept free from contamination, they suffice for a ruling caste or a military aristocracy. Throughout history it is only the race of the leaders that has counted and the most vigorous have been in control and will remain in mastery in one form or another until such time as democracy and its illegitimate offspring, socialism, definitely establish cacocracy and the rule of the worst and put an end to progress. The salvation of humanity will then lie in the chance survival of some sane barbarians who may retain the basic truth that inequality and not equality is the law of nature.
Australia and New Zealand, where the natives have been virtually exterminated by the whites, are developing into communities of pure Nordic blood and will for that reason play a large part in the future history of the Pacific. The bitter opposition of the Australians and Californians to the admission of Chinese coolies and Japanese farmers is due primarily to a blind but absolutely justified determination to keep those lands as white man’s countries.