The Pride of Palomar

by Peter B. Kyne

"Nevertheless, despite your prejudice against the race, you are bound to admire the Japanese—their manners, thrift, industry, and cleanliness." Parker was employing one of the old stock protests, and Don Miguel knew it.

"I do not admire their manners, but I do admire their thrift, industry, and cleanliness. Their manners are abominable. Their excessive courtesy is neither instinctive nor genuine; it is camouflage for a ruthless, greedy, selfish, calculating nature. I have met many Japanese, but never one with nobility or generosity of soul. They are disciples of the principles of expediency. If a mutual agreement works out to their satisfaction, well and good. If it does not, they present a humble and saddened mien. 'So sorry. I zink you no understand me. I don't mean zat.' And their peculiar Oriental psychology leads them to believe they can get away with that sort of thing with the straight-thinking Anglo-Saxon. They have no code of sportsmanship; they are irritable and quarrelsome, and their contractual relations are incompatible with those of the Anglo-Saxon. They are not truthful. Individually and collectively, they are past masters of evasion and deceit, and therefore they are the greatest diplomatists in the world, I verily believe. They are wonderfully shrewd, and they have sense enough to keep their heads when other men are losing theirs. They are patient; they plan craftily and execute carefully and ruthlessly. Would you care to graft their idea of industry on the white race, Mr. Parker?"

"I would," Parker declared, firmly. "It is getting to be the fashion nowadays for white men to do as little work as possible, and half do that."

"I would not care to see my wife or my mother or my sister laboring twelve to sixteen hours a day as Japanese force their women to labor. I would not care to contemplate the future mothers of our race drawn from the ranks of twisted, stunted, broken-down, and prematurely aged women. Did you ever see a bent Japanese girl of twenty waddling in from a day of labor in a field? To emulate Japanese industry, with its peonage, its horrible, unsanitary factory conditions, its hopelessness, would be to thrust woman's hard-won sphere in modern civilization back to where it stood at the dawn of the Christian era. Do you know, Miss Parker, that love never enters into consideration when a Japanese contemplates marriage? His sole purpose in acquiring a mate is to beget children, to scatter the seed of Yamato over the world, for that is a religious duty. A Jap never kisses his wife or shows her any evidences of affection. She is a chattel, and if anybody should, by chance, discover him kissing his wife, he would be frightfully mortified."

"What of their religious views, Don Mike?"

"If Japan can be said to have an official religion, it is Shintoism, not Buddhism, as so many Occidental people believe. Shintoism is ancestor-worship, and ascribes divinity to the emperor. They believe he is a direct descendant of the sun-god, Yamato."

"Why, they're a heathen nation!" Kay's tones were indicative of amazement.

Farrel smiled his tolerant smile.

"I believe, Miss Parker, that any people who will get down on all fours to worship the picture of their emperor and, at this period of the world's progress, ascribe to a mere human being the attributes of divinity, are certainly deficient in common sense, if not in civilization. However, for the purpose of insuring the realization of the Japanese national aspirations, Shintoism is a need vital to the race. Without it, they could never agree among themselves for they are naturally quarrelsome, suspicious and irritable. However, by subordinating everything to the state via this religious channel, there has been developed a national unity that has never existed with any other race. The power of cohesion of this people is marvelous, and will enable it, in days to come, to accomplish much for the race. For that reason alone, our very lack of cohesion renders the aspirations of Japan comparatively easy of fulfilment unless we wake up and attend to business."

"How do you know all this, Mr. Farrel?" Parker demanded incredulously.