CHAPTER XXIV
UNCHARTED SEAS
We have taken a long journey together. The main routes along the Pacific which are the highways of our past and future intercourse have been inspected. But the great Pacific basin is not yet everywhere safe for navigation. There is, I understand, a scientific expedition now at work thoroughly charting every inch of that wonderful watery waste. There is, I know, a scientific body under the directorship of Professor Gregory of Yale for the thorough research of ethnological materials among the races of the Pacific. But aside from the efforts of individuals, politically and socially and hygienically, there is nothing going on to bind the peoples together. I had nearly forgotten that a year ago we did send out a political expedition to the Far East, a Congressional expedition which spent four days in Japan and, I daresay, a week in China. Otherwise, we are still at the mercy of individual scribes, who, like myself, have their own points of view, their own motives, and their own reactions.
For years I have read religiously every interview reported in the press, with spokesmen for one country or the other on the Pacific. The mass of clippings I have accumulated I have time and again sifted carefully for some word or sign that might indicate the real problem. But I have failed to find any. I cannot lay the responsibility on the press. It rests with the individuals who have been asked to give their opinions. But as far as substance goes, they may all best be illustrated by a sentence from the speech of Viscount Uchida, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, delivered before the Imperial Diet. I have the speech as it came to me from the East and West News Bureau. The sentence I have selected, for the translation of which the Viscount is of course not responsible, is this: "It is true that this friendly relationship is not without an occasional mingling of incidents; that is almost inevitable in any international relations." All speeches such as these are remarkably free from definition. Speech after speech is reported, all plead for understanding, but in none of these is any basis for understanding given. Sentiment will not dissolve international suspicion.
Right here I should like to make it clear that Japan is not the only nation that is being maligned, as some would have us believe. Exclusion is practised not against Japan alone, though in other cases it is practised in a different manner. The Honolulu Chamber of Commerce excludes white men from entering its sacred sanctums nearly as much. Unless you are approved by the chamber, you will find it very difficult to take up a profession. As I look back over my years of wandering in the farthermost reaches of the Pacific I recall incident after incident that is indicative of what is toward.
Wherever competition is rife, the competitors lay themselves out to be courteous and friendly, but in the long runs that dissect the waters of that ocean, so secure have many of the steamship companies felt that decency has frequently been forgotten. The carelessness of the rights of the unhappy voyager who merely pays for a privilege on the Union Steamship Company is not conducive to international good feeling. The lack of common courtesy on the part of many of the employees of this company is proverbial even among the Britons in Australasia. Peoples in the goings and comings gain their impressions of countries very often from such samples as are forced upon their attention en route. And over the bars in the distant lands compatriots give vent to recriminations of the compatriots of other nations in a manner not flattering to either.
One of the most unfortunate features of the whole problem of the Pacific is that only too often the men who are accountable for the most serious sources of dislike are men who at home would be kept in check by a healthy fear of social ostracism. But once a white man enters trade in an Oriental port as a clerk or salesman, he seems to consider it his bounden duty as a representative of his country to run down the natives as viciously as he dare. I have seen white men who at home would hold their tongues lest they offend some decent woman's ears with their vile language assume an air of superiority toward the men amongst whom they are living that is certainly not conducive to international amity. I have heard them express a longing for a chance some day to come back and "lick" these natives that, considering the human sufferings involved, is at the very depths of unrighteousness.
Nor is this feeling directed against Orientals only. I have heard serious statements from Americans against the British that are not only unjustifiable but astounding. And the British themselves maintain a lordly superiority to all others. The boast that "the sun never sets on English soil" is illustrative of a certain provincialism among Britons that is not healthful from an international outlook. Britons generally take such routes hither and thither as leave them always within the British Empire, and the result is a dull point of view with regard to foreign lands. To be regarded as a foreigner is a source of great irritation to a Briton; he cannot stand this "slur" when passing through America. Even within the British dominions themselves there are childish prides that make understanding impossible,—the New Zealander being against the Australian and both against everybody else.
These antagonisms more than all else are at the bottom of the confusion obtaining to-day in the Pacific. Their utter folly and futility are simply suicidal. Were it not better that we study carefully the social and political ideals of every race on the Pacific and see in what manner such changes may be effected as will preclude conflict? Is not America's preëminence in the Pacific to-day due to her return of the Boxer indemnity, to her attempt at winning the sympathy of the Filipino, to her friendship for China? Cannot the sympathy and the emulation of races supplant their enmity and jealousy? In the manner in which the various peoples of the Pacific turn to their problems lies permanent peace. There is already a considerable veering round of national conceptions toward the recognition of our common welfare being dependent on mutual development, as in the case of the consortium.
One gets tired of the perennial expressions of felicitation of the "leaders" of states, of the sentimental balderdash which emanates from international "functions" of the world's "best" people, who don one another's garments and pledge one another eternal affection, of those who assure us that the fact that one nation has placed with "us" an order for the latest type of electrically driven super-dreadnaught indicates the love and fellowship obtaining between us. Only four years ago, Viscount Bryce admitted that "Most of us, however, know so little about the island groups of the Pacific, except from missionary narratives and from romances, like those of Robert Louis Stevenson, that the recent action of the white peoples in the islands is practically a new subject, and one which well deserves to be dealt with." And despite all those speeches, despite all the international societies—that exist, it seems, only to entertain celebrities, not to uncover misunderstandings that they may truly be corrected—real irritation comes from the average man's notions, and to him should attention be directed.
Those vast spaces to which Viscount Bryce referred, once regarded with such awe, are now criss-crossed with a veritable network of steamers. They have made short shrift of the distances between the East and the West. We may invite one another across for week-ends, but not necessarily for life, and the impressions each brings away with him will go toward making up the sum total of what is going to be the thought of the Pacific. Are we to navalize the Pacific or to civilize it? Are we to convert every projecting rock into a menace, or are we to be honest navigators exposing every treacherous island for the safety of all races? Are we to scramble for interests in the Pacific, or are we to help races there to rise to strength and independence, so that each will be a healthy buffer against aggression? The "Valor of Ignorance" is not to be met with the blindness of force.