The Gilded Chair: A Novel

by Melville Davisson Post

"Do you always quite understand England?" said the Duke. "Here, for instance, is a new and enlightened nation, arising in the East. We do not set ourselves to beat it down and possess its islands. We welcome it; we open the door to it."

"And it will enter and possess the house," said the Marchesa. "What the white man is now doing with his hand open, he must, later on, undo with his hand closed. Look already how arrogant this oriental nation has become since she has got England at her back. It was a master play, this alliance. The white man had all but possessed the world when this wily Oriental slipped in and divided the two great English-speaking people. He was not misled by any such sophistry as a brotherhood of nations. He knew that one or the other of the two races must dominate, must exterminate the other. He could not attack the white man's camp unless he could first divide it. Now, he has got it divided, and he is getting ready to attack. Can one doubt the menace to the United States?"

Cyrus Childers laughed. "Oh," he said, "the United States is in no danger. Japan is not going to try a war with us. It is all oriental bravado."

"But he is creeping in on the Pacific Coast already," said the Marchesa. "He is getting a footing; he is establishing a base; he is planting a colony to rise when he requires it; so that when he makes his great move to thrust the white man's frontier from the coast back into the desert, there will already be Japanese colonies planted on the soil. You have, yourself, told me that they are always arriving and spreading themselves imperceptibly along the coast."

"My dear Marchesa," said Mr. Childers, "the little Japanese is only looking for employment. He has none of your big designs. His instincts are all those of the servant." He looked at the Duke of Dorset. "If Japan," he continued, "wishes to extend her territory, she will wish to extend it in that part of the world which the Oriental now inhabits. If there is really any menace, my dear Marchesa, it is a menace to England, and not to us. If Japan had a great design to dominate the world, would she not undertake to weld all the oriental races into a nation of which she would be the head? Would she not go about it as Bismarck went about the creation of Germany? That, it seems to me, would be the only feasible plan for such an enterprise."

"And do you think for a moment," said the Marchesa, "that she has not this very plan?"

"I do not believe that Japan has any such plan," replied the Duke of Dorset.

"And you," said the Marchesa, "who have lived in the East, who have assisted England to make this alliance, do you, who know the Oriental, believe that he does not dream of overrunning the world?"

"Dream!" replied the Duke of Dorset. "Perhaps he dreams. I was speaking of a plan, and a plan means a policy that one may carry out. Japan cannot move in India because there is England in India."

"Not yet," said the Marchesa, "but when she shall have made the white men enemies; when she shall have grown stronger under English friendship. She cannot yet depend on these oriental states. They are still afraid of the white man. She has encouraged them by her victory over Russia, but not enough. She must give them another proof that the yellow race is not the inferior of the white one. If she can crush the white man in North America, the yellow man will rise in Asia. Then the dream becomes a plan; then the plan becomes a reality."