MR. CARNEGIE AND THE LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS.
rTo THY EDITOR. Or TES "SrliCTATOR."1 Siu,—You need not entertain a particle of doubt as to whether the people of the United States "would allow Japan to take the State of California before the Hague Tribunal" (Spectator, July 10th). This is an impossible proposition. Every nation is sovereign over immigration and residence of aliens. America excludes by the hundred people of all nations, Britons included. Australia does not even permit any of the yellow races to disembark. Britain excludes certain classes. The issue you suggest, therefore, can never arise. Besides this, the Hague Conference has jurisdiction only over international questions. "Alien legislation" is a purely national question.
[The question is not what America or Britain has a right to do without any one having a just claim to interfere, but whether the Japanese might not some day so greatly dislike the way in which the State of California exercised her rights as to make them protest very vehemently, and finally say to the United States: "Let us arbitrate; let us ask the Hague Tribunal to decide whether California is exercising her rights as regards alien legislation in a just, reasonable, humane, and friendly manner." In that ease, would the United States say: "We must agree to arbitration, whether we like it or not, or whether California likes it or not, because we consider the cause of arbitration as something almost sacred, something to which ordinary considerations must yield " ? We have said, and still say, that America would not adopt this attitude. To borrow General Grant's immortal phrase, we will "fight it out [with Mr. Carnegie] on these lines all summer."—En. Spectator.]
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