BOOKS.

THE RISING TIDE OF COLOUR.* [CONOLIIDING nonce.]

MR. STODDARD'S remedy—or shall we say the practical methods which he recommends ?—f or meeting and preventing the rising of the tide of colour is the building of dykes. At the same time he realizes that the coloured races must have room for expansion. Therefore he desires to dedicate large portions of the world to them—for example, the whole of Asia. To put his case in rough outline, be would leave all Asia to the Asiatics, while barring Asiatic infiltration into America, Canada or Australia. It is possible that Mr. Stoddard may here be on the right track. We are not for the moment going to argue that point in the abstract, but we must certainly put in a caveat, and a very strong caveat, against doing anything prematurely or without ample consideration. At the moment the white race is obviously in a condition of weakness and per- plexity, but a very few years may bring a very great change. Therefore we very strongly deprecate an abandonment of all white influence and control in Asia. We must never forget the important part which Asia plays in the commerce of the world. Have we any right to assume that if we leave Asia to the Asiatics that the Asiatioa would be able to make the best use from the world point of view of their uncontrolled heritage ? In our opinion, except in the case of Japan, and possibly China under that nightmare of statesmen, Japanese dominion, Asia, wholly self-determined, would be very soon a seething pot of anarchy. It is our firm belief that if in the course of the next twenty years we, the British people, cease to maintain the Pax Britannica in India, the huge Peninsula and its three hundred million inhabitants will be torn, not merely by internal contentions, but by hungry and predatory invaders from the borders of China, from Tibet, and most of all from the North-West Frontier. We should not be sur- prised to see Europe's present huge trade with India reduced to below what it was when Clive laid the foundations of the Empire. It would not take many years for the jungle to re- assume its sway in India and for Calcutta and Bombay, let alone Delhi and Simla, to stand vacant and dead like those stately though prostrate ruins which now amaze the traveller in Ceylon and Indo-China. We have already virtually handed Egypt to the Egyptians. We shall see how long it will take to destroy the civilization we secured between 1880 and 1920. In our opinion, it will not be very long.

Here we must say in parenthesis that we think Mr. Stoddard makes a great error in thinking the Mohammedan peoples capable of advancement. We believe, on the contrary, that they long ago reached the highest point to which they are capable of advancing if they remain Mohammedans, and there is no evidence that they will ever abandon their religion. It is to most of them a living creed. Indeed, the only efficient Mohammedans are those who honestly believe in the Koran. Lord Cromer was wont to point out the cardinal fact in regard to the Mohammedans. The Mohammedan faith directly and consciously prevents anything in the shape of social or political progress. Remember that Mahomet did not show the wisdom and God-given inspiration of the founder of Chris- tianity in ordering his followers to " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Our Lord not only did not create, but in express terms forbade the foundation of theocracy upon earth. He dealt with the spiritual side of man and left the political side alone. The Kingdom of God is within us and therefore not in the statutes made by man. Mahomet made no distinction between the laws of God and the laws of num. Every limita- tion, every rule which he laid down for the control of human conduct was asserted to be as much the will of God as the declaration that there was but one God, that Mahomet was His prophet and that the people of the Faith were never to indulge in the worship of images. The practical result of this combination of politics and religion has been to sterilize the social and political action of the Mohammedan peoples. They cannot found a joint stook company, they cannot insure their lives or their crops or their houses. They cannot give up polygamy or slavery or develop upon new lines without becoming bad Mohammedans. A modern Mohammedan will

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The Rising Tide of Color astinet Whilo World-Supremacy. By Lathrop Stoddard. London: Obapmaa and Hall. Ms. ed. Intl often declare his preference for European rule because it enables the Moslems under the supreme law of necessity to assent to what they know to be contrary to the code of the Koran. He can use and enjoy a good water supply or a tramway,

though his religion forbids him to take shares in the supply- ing companies. Mehemet, in fine, put his Polity into a straight-waistcoat and made rules which denied all progress.

Christ did exactly the opposite; and though Christian Scribes and Pharisees and lawyers have ever since tried their hardest to put their seals and bonds on Him and bring down their risen Lord to earth, they have never wholly succeeded. Christianity is the one religion that can hold its own in every climate, every age, and in every race. It is essentially the religion of humanity and love, and offers no barrier to social and political progress and development.

We have marked so many passages in Mr. Stoddard'e book for quotation that the present reviewer feels inclined to behave like the famous lawyer who neglected all his clients lest ho should seem unfair to those whose briefs he had for physics! reasons to throw over. Our readers, however, will, we feel sure. expect us to say something about the very interesting quota tions from Mr. Meredith Townsend's articles in the Spectator.

Upon these Mr. Stoddard greatly relies. Here is one of the most important of these passages :—

A generation ago relatively few persons realized that low- standard men would drive out high-standard men as inevitably as bad money drives out good, no matter what the results to society and the future of mankind. These are but two instances of that shallow, cock-sure nineteenth-century optimism, based upon ignorance and destined to be so swiftly and tragically disillusioned. However, for the moment, ignorance was bliss. Accordingly, the fin de aidele white world, having partitioned Africa and fairly well dominated brown Asia, prepared to extend its sway over the one portion of the colored world which had hitherto escaped subjection—the yellow Far East. Men began speaking glibly of ' manifest destiny ' or piously of ' the whits man's burden.' European publicists wrote didactically on the break-up of China,' while Russia, bestriding Siberia, dipped behemoth paws in Pacific waters and eyed Japan. Such was the white world's confident, aggressive temper at the close of tit last century. To be sure, voices were occasionally raise() warning that all was not welt. Such were the writings of Pro. lessor Pearson and Meredith Townsend. But the white world gave these Cassandras the reception always accorded prophets of evil in joyous times—it ignored them or laughed them to scorn. In fact, few of the prophets displayed Pearson's imme- diate certainty. Most of them qualified their prophesies with the comforting assurance that the ills predicted were relatively remote. Meredith Townsend is a good case in point. The reader may recall his prophecy of white expulsion from Asia, quoted in my second chapter. That prophesy occurs in the preface to the fourth edition, published in 1911, and written in the light of the Russo-Japanese War. Now, of course, Mr. Townsend's main thesis—Europe's inability permanently to master and assimilate Asia—had been elaborated by him long before the close of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the preface to the fourth edition speaks of Europe's failure to conquer Asia as absolute and eviction from present holdings as probable within a relatively short time ; whereas, in his original introduction, written in 1899, he foresaw a great European assault upon Asia, which would probably succeed and from which Asia would shake itself free only after the lapse of more than a century. In fact, Mr. Townsend's words of 1899 so exactly portray white confidence at that moment that I cannot do better than quote him. His object in publishing his hook is, he says, to make Asia stand out clearer in English eyes, because it is evident to me that the white races under the pressure of an entirely new impulse are about to renew their periodic attempt to conquer or at least to dominate that vast continent. . . . So grand is the prize that failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less alter their conviction. If these movements follow historic lines they will recur for a time upon a eouatantly ascend- ing scale, each repulse eliciting a greater effort, until at last Asia like Africa is " partitioned," that is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. If Europe can avoid internal war, or war with a much-aggrandized America, she will by a-n. 2000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to enjoy.' If the reader will compare these lines with Mr. Townsend s 1911 judgment, he will get a good idea of the momentous change wrought in white minds by Asia's awakening during the first decade of the twentieth century as typified by the Russo-Japanese War. 1900 was, indeed, the high-water mark of the white tide which had been flooding for four hundred years. At that moment the white man stood on the pinnacle of hie prestige and power. Pass four short years, and the flash of the Japanese guns across the murky waters of Port Arthur harbor revealed to a startled world—the beginning of the ebb."

To this passage we must add a footnote. No doubt on one side of his head or imagination Mr. Townsend would have agreed with the use made of his writing. Yet if one had taxed him, as the present writer often did, half in humour, with pessimism, it was curious to note that he invariably ended upon a note

of optimism. There was never a man who believed more

sincerely than he in the future of the British Empire and the British race. In spite of the anxious note, he always held at the back of his mind that in the end we should come triumph- antly through any and every trial. Again and again he used the formula that " Everyone who crosses the path of the British Empire is in the end swept away." Of course the two views were not really inconsistent, as he would himself have said. It was quite possible that Asia would spew us out from her mouth as she has always spewed out the white man—a favourite apophthegm of his. The insubstantial nature of our incursion into India might, however, he urged, prove in the end a blessing and not a disaster. • But, after all, this is speculation. At any rate, we are wholly

convinced on one practical point. We are sure that Mr. Meredith Townsend, like the present directors of the Spectator, would have condemned the criminal folly of placing our Indian Empire at the crisis of its fate in the hands of a defeatist Jew. What he would have said of the madness of establishing so ridiculous a form of Government as that to be established this autumn by the Dyarchy of the India Act can be better imagined than described.

If we determine that the burden of India is too great for us, let us resign that burden with wisdom, dignity, and sincerity. What right have we to enmesh the people of Britain and the people of India with the nets of verbal tri±ery—nets destined to bring more hatred on our heads than the sharpest swords or the most death-dealing of guns ?

But Mr. Stoddard, not we, shall have the last word. Hero is the governing passage in his last chapter, " The Crisis of the Ages " :— " When peoples come to realize that the quality of the popula- tion is the source of all their prosperity, progress, security, and even existence ; when they realize that a single genius may be worth more in actual dollars than a dozen gold-mines, while, conversely, racial decline spells material impoverishment and decay ; when such things are really believed, we shall see much- abused 'eugenics' actually moulding social programmes and political policies. Wero the white world to-day really con- vinced of the supreme importance of race-values, how long would it take to stop debasing immigration, reform social abuses that are killing out the fittest strains, and put an end to the feuds which have just sent us through hell and threaten to send us promptly back again ? Well, perhaps our change of heart may come sooner than now appears. The horrors of the war, the disappointment of the peace, the terror of Bolshevism, and the rising tide of color have ;mocked a good deal of the nonsense out of us, and have given multitudes a hunger for realities who were before content with a diet of phrases. Said wise old Benjamin Franklin : ' Dame Experience sets a dear school, but fools will have no other.' Our course at the dame's school is already well under way and promises to be exceeding dear. Only, it is to be hoped our education will be rapid, for time presses and the hour is grave. If certain lessons are not learned and acted upon shortly, we may be overwhelmed by irreparable disasters and all our dear schooling will go for naught. What are the things we must do promptly if we would avert the worst ? This irreducible minimum' runs about as follows : First and foremost, the wretched Versailles business will have to be thoroughly revised. As it stands, dragon's teeth have been sown over both Europe and Asia, and unless they he plucked up they will presently grow a crop of cataclysms which will seal the white world's doom. Secondly, some sort of provisional understanding must be arrived at between the white world and renascent Asia. We whites will have to abandon our tacit assumption of perma- nent domination over Asia, while Asiatics will have to forego their dreams of migration to white lands and penetration of Africa and Latin America. Unless some such understanding is arrived at, the world will drift into a gigantic race-war- and genuine race-war means war to the knife. Such a hideous catastrophe should be abhorrent to both sides. Nevertheless, Asia should be given clearly to understand that we cannot permit either migration to white lands or penetration of the non-Asiatic tropics, and that for these matters we prefer to fight to a finish rather than yield to a finish—because our ' finish ' is precisely what surrender on these points would Mean. Thirdly, even within the white world, migrations of lower human typos like those which have worked such havoc in the United States must be rigorously curtailed. Such migrations upset standards, sterilize better stocks, increase low types, and compromise national futures more than war, revolu- tions, or native deterioration. Such are the things which limply must be done if we are to get. through the next few decades without convulsions which may render impossible the white world's ro'overy."