Shorter Notices
America in the New Pacific. By George E. Taylor. (Macmillan. 8s. 6d.)
THIS is a very useful, realist and objective little book. It will not please either the old-fashioned British imperialist or .the old- fashioned American anti-imperialist. Mr. Taylor does not think that the Imperial Powers, Britain and the Netherlands (France is neglected), had all the answers, and he does not Mink that the ending of their empires is an answer in itself. He makes plain to the American reader, uncritically pro-Chinese, that that admirable, thrifty, successful, highly self-regarding people is not necessarily admired or liked by Malays or Siamese. He gives some place to the satisfaction felt by some Asiatics at the triumphs of Japan over the once omnipotent and arrogant whites. He makes plain the reasons why Japan has not had more success with her propaganda, why her self-assigned' rOle of the liberator of Asia has taken few people in who have not been blinded by nationalist passion (as were the Siamese oligarchy and such Indian nationalists as Mr. Subhas Bose.) He also stresses, as is right, the advantages America has gained by her Philippine policy, by her long tradition of friendliness to China, by her freedom from the damnosa hereditas of old imperial sins of omission and commission. It is very pardonable that he occasionally overstates his case—his reference on page 147 to " a country which has admitted men of all races to citizenship, in spite of race prejudices which disfigure the social landscape, can conceive of a world in which race equality would be a political ideal." Mr. Taylor's home town, we learn from the blurb, is Seattle. Would
he like to defend this view of the United States before an audience composed of Chinese settled in the United States and conscious
that they are by law debarred from American citizenship purely on the grounds of birth, or before an audience of Nisei (second- generation Japanese-Americans), American citizens by birth but a special category of American subjects in cold fact?
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