Admiral Mahan thus arrives at his main conclusions. It is
not with him a question of racial superiority. Personally he entirely rejects any assumption or belief that his race is superior to the Chinese or to the Japanese. "My own suite me better, probably because I am used to it, but I wholly disdain as unworthy of myself and of them any thought of superiority."
It is not a question of colour—though that may emphasize the difficulty—but of assimilation as involved in race character, and he holds it reasonable that a great number of his fellow citizens, knowing the problem they have in the coloured race among them, should dread the introduction of another, a more difficult, and a formidable race problem. He concludes :—
" Despite gigantic success up to the present in assimilative processes—due to English institutions inherited and Americanized, and to the prevalence among the children of our community of the common English tongue over all other idioms—America doubts her power to digest and assimilate the strong national and racial characteristics which distinguish the Japanese, which are the secret of much of their success, and which, if I am not mistaken, would constitute them continually a solid homogeneous body, essentially and unchangingly foreign."
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