Mr. von Schierbrand contributes to the solution of this question a very entertaining and instructive volume. From his standpoint, which is a most interesting one, the importance of the trade of the Far East to ourselves is not to be overestimated. The wonderful productive energy of the United States makes the need of new markets imperative. Four hundred millions of Chinese can furnish us such markets. Basing our figures on the precedent of Japan, China, if she would, could buy of the world $35,000,000,000 more. Her mineral wealth, still undeveloped, is greater than that of North America.
The author’s masterly marshaling of the means and the methods necessary to increase our commercial opportunities is the feature of his book. The political school to which he belongs and to which an immense majority of Americans belong, if the recent election meant anything, studies, at the same moment, the tonnage of the battleships and the quality of the cotton blouse on the Chinese coolie’s back. It carries us around the immense circle of the Pacific and calls the roll of the powers and principalities of the future—Canada, America, Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Borneo, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Siberia,—and asks which of the nations shall share with us these riches. England’s claim the writer dismisses with few words. England is conservative and decadent. Russia is more dangerous. She aims to absorb all Asia and close the door in the face of the world. The writer has an interesting discussion of the Russo-Japanese war in the course of which he prods the English again for not choking the Russians while they can.
Germany he pronounces our most formidable rival. German industry, frugality, patience and skill have brought her up since 1870, when she was purely an agricultural state, to the front rank in manufactures and in foreign trade. It may be added, parenthetically, that she is making persistent efforts to free herself from the American cotton monopoly.
Turning to the Japanese, the writer mentions a fact whose significance is little appreciated in America. Japan practically monopolizes now the trade in manufactured cotton with China, and, what is still more significant, she gets nearly all her raw cotton from India.
What is the secret purpose of Japan? Nobody knows. Does she see herself supplanting the wornout Manchu dynasty and leading the millions of the East to the mastery of Asia by the strength of her military genius? Will she then shut the doors to the outside world, as, in the sixteenth century, she shut her own? The writer makes light of the so-called Yellow Peril, arguing that Japan does not wish to exploit the latent military strength of China, but aspires to lead her in the path of industrial progress after the Western models upon which Japan has fashioned herself.
Mr von Schierbrand ignores the underlying spiritual differences that separate the Oriental from the European, differences that will always be the cause of hostility, open or veiled, between them. After all it is not so important who is to get the trade of the East but what are the ideals that are finally to prevail there—the Christian ideals or Oriental fatalism. It could be wished that the author felt more interest in such discussions. One is tempted to quote against him his own words in another connection: “Beside the mad passion for gain there is no charm in rest, lettered ease, travel, still less in labor for the general good—charity, education, the state; the ruling passion must rage on, business must be expanded regardless of profit and with eyes closed to impending loss. Instead of making ourselves more homes and more beautiful things and cultured people in them, we cherish the tenement house and the narrow life, and go on piling up and shoving out what we are pleased to call goods, goods, goods.” It is well enough to chasten ourselves with such reflections as we go on with the author to weigh the claim of the United States to the lion’s share in the trade of the Pacific.
The author bases our claim on the strategic advantage which the Panama Canal is to give us, and this part of the book is unquestionably most interesting to the South. The relation of the richest granary in the world, the Mississippi Valley, to the Canal will rid it of the need of railways. The canal will bring New York closer to the west coast of South America than San Francisco, and New Orleans will be seven hundred miles nearer still. The commercial availability of Southern coal and iron will be immensely increased and the harbors of the South will assume an importance long withheld from them as ports of call.
The book as a whole is well written, and the last chapters, which summarize the author’s conclusions, especially so. What he has to say about public opinion and of the force, more universal still, the primary need of the human race of food, which together share the sovereignty of the modern world, is well said and more philosophical by far than is usual with the books of the imperialists.
L.
The Color Line. By William Benjamin Smith. McClure, Phillips and Co., New York.