Must we fight Japan?

Foreword

The Japanese crisis in California is no local issue. It is one minor phase of a world problem that is already immense, intricate, and certain to grow steadily worse unless the most drastic steps are taken in the near future to solve it.

The diplomatic complications it raises are mere surface ripples. Underneath them are stirring, fierce, human forces — hunger, overcrowding, suspicions as old as Asia, racial habits of life, and the fierce pressure of unheard-of new wealth seeking unheard-of profits on the last frontier of finance, which is China and Siberia.

No ordinarj^ office-holder, no bureaucrat, no diplomat trained in the conventions of his craft, can alone cope with a problem which these factors dominate. The real Japanese crisis is properly a task to which the united intelligence of the best-informed people in America and Japan must devote itself for a long time to come. No new ''Gentlemen's Agreement" will settle anything. Neither will the new California land law nor the League of Nations nor the China Consortium. Still less will either the propaganda of the Japanese or of the American exclusionists or of the "White Australians."

And the reason for all this is quite plain. Beneath the diplomatic controversies, beneath the pulling and hauling of financial and commercial interests, the roots of the trouble lie in the elemental struggle for existvi FOREWORD

ence, which, since the World War, has become everywhere hideously evident to a degree which not even the most ardent Darwinian could hope for. The world is short of food and clothes. Too many babies are being bom in the wrong places, and too few in the right places. The rich lands of the earth have all been occupied, and the poorer acres are now being pressed into service. And to aggravate the whole situation, millions of men everywhere are honestly trying to solve their problems of living by the use of political notions and political machinery that are grotesquely inadequate or even false.

So far as American opinion is concerned, it has been perverted and tainted by the ignorance of its chief informants, the newspapers, by the misrepresentations of men personally interested in some exploitation, and by the honest enthusiasms and exaggerations of patriots on both sides of the Pacific. And this poisoning has proved unusually dangerous because the American public, lacking first-hand information about Japan and having no direct interest in that country, has been unable to appraise the flood of fact and fiction about the crisis.

The following study deals with the five major aspects of the situation. It surveys the events up to the closing weeks of 1920 ; it analyzes the sources of misunderstanding between the Japanese and Americans; it inquires into the genuine conflicts of interest and policy; it considers the various possibilities of future conflicts on a larger scale; and, finally, it presents suggestions for a fundamental solution based upon what seems to me to be a scientific national policy. At every point an effort has been made to avoid technicalities of law, diplo-

FOREWORD vii

macy, and scientific theory, in order to bring out in simple form the basic truths of the whole affair. This has compelled me to take an unduly brief and somewhat dogmatic stand with regard to a number of matters that are still decidedly controversial. In no case, however, has this course been pursued without a careful weighing of available evidence.

Virtually all accessible sources of information and opinion have been inspected and in some measure utilized. Particular attention has been given to the statements issued by pro-Japanese and anti-Japanese propagandists. Many American, British, Philippine, and Japanese officials have given me valuable facts difficult of access; and business men, banking experts, economists, and export and import houses in New York and San Francisco have most courteously supplied me with significant data. More than two thousand newspaper reports have been clipped, and in some cases checked by a visit to the scene of the real or alleged news. During the summer and autumn of 1920 I journeyed about three thousand miles in California and the adjoining districts of Mexico, interviewing employers of Japanese, a few Japanese farmers, many American ranchmen, realestate operators, social workers, and various state and local officials whose work brought them into contact with some part of the Japanese problem. Of the several hundred Californians whom I had the good fortune to quiz, only one impressed me as seeing the issue in all its immense intricacy and at the same time having a statesmanlike solution ready. That man was Elwood Mead, chairman of the California Land Settlement Board, who has made his State famous by creating farms viii FOREWORD

and farm villages at Durham and Delhi which promise to solve one of the hardest and most distressing problems of American life ; namely, the upbuilding of healthyrural communities and sound agriculture. Mr. Mead^s intimate knowledge of California farm life, and his wide experience in Australia and our own Pacific coast with the broader agrarian problems, enabled him to give me minute information that aided me greatly in finding facts and in interpreting them.

Next to Mr. Mead, my most fruitful source of facts and opinion in California was the series of technical conferences held at the Scripps Institution of Biological Research at La Jolla during the first two weeks of August, 1920, when the San Diego Conference on the Problems of the Pacific was being held near by. These meetings were planned, organized, and conducted by Dr. "William E. Ritter, director of the Scripps Institution, whose breadth of view is attested to by the variety of witnesses he saw fit to summon for discussion. Virtually every scientific and practical aspect of the Japanese problem was represented at the conferences by one or more specialists or men of affairs.

In the prolonged interchange of views by these many gentlemen, considerable information came out which has materially aided me. In the main this information was more or less scattered and incidental, though there were two outstanding exceptions to this rule ; namely, the statistical material about tendencies in world population, which was brought forward by Warren S. Thompson of Cornell, and a comprehensive study of the world food suppty, present and future, presented by E. ]\I. East of the Bussey Institution of Harvard. Mr. Thompson's

FOREWORD ix

facts were in the main new to me and more than ordinarily enlightening. So much so, indeed, that I have asked him to permit me to publish here most of his original presentation. Nearly all of the statistical material, as well as the inferences drawn therefrom, in the chapter entitled "Who Shall Inherit the Earth?" is Mr. Thompson's. Mr. East's general conclusions were all nearly identical with the substance of my own, independently reached through other channels ; but both his particular facts and his keen statistical analysis gave me new and much desired insight into one of the fundamental phases of the Oriental problem. Finally, the constructive program of reciprocity advanced by Mr. E. T. W^illiams of the University of California, formerly of the Bureau of Oriental Affairs in the United States State Department and technical delegate on the same subject at the Paris Peace Conference, impressed me as both just and ingenious.

The final editorial revision and the handling of lastminute news could not have succeeded without the prompt and efficient assistance of Mrs. Emaine Sachs and Mr. ]\Iax Watson, both of whom have not only contributed material of value, but have rewritten entire chapters for me. Mr. Watson's first-hand knowledge of Japanese affairs in California, coupled with his close studies of rural problems on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, has proved particularly useful.

I suspect that not a few readers will pick up this volume with a suspicious squint and say to themselves, "Well, I wonder who hired this press agent to tackle this subject?" This is the natural and correct attitude to take toward any book or article or even newspaper story

X FOREWORD

dealing with an important international problem in these days. The intelligent American has been stuffed with propaganda about Russia, propaganda about France, propaganda about Japan, propaganda about almost everj-thing except the multiplication table, until he has come to believe nobody and nothing. By way of startling him, then, and of protecting myself, let me state that I have not written this book on behalf of any governmental, political, commercial, financial, religious, or other organization; that I belong to no such organization; and that no such organization nor any person has ever suggested my writing on the subject.

I became interested in the Japanese crisis late in 1919, when I read the current news items, articles, and books about Japan and California in a casual attempt to get my bearings. Being somewhat familiar with the ways and the agents of propaganda, I found in short order that nearly all of the information and opinion being doled out to the reading public came from people who had personal, political, commercial, or social connections with one or another of the many groups in the two countries whose interests were at stake. Knowing that the more intelligent classes of Americans were already nauseated with propaganda, it struck me that perhaps they would like to read a book on the subject written by somebody who had none of those particular prejudices and passions which invalidate the assertions of the pro- Japanese and the anti-Japanese.

I should esteem it a favor if those persons who may criticize my findings, other than in technical details, would kindly make a similar statement as to their interests and motives. It would be a waste of my time to

FOREWORD xi

carry on a debate with a propagandist whose connections were not made known, and it would be unfair to the readers of such a discussion.

Walter B. Pitkin.

New York, December 20, 1920.

Book I The Crisis And Its Complications Chapter Page

5 Illusions About Japan 46

BOOK II THE SITUATION IN JAPAN 6 Form of Government 55

7 Control of Army and Public Opinion .... 62

8 0\^rpopulation 72

10 Raw Materials, Russia, and "A Place in the Sun" 101

11 Class Ethics and the Scientific Bureaucracy . Ill

13 Military Advantage op Low Standard op Living . 130

14 What Would War Between Japan and the United

States Involve? 137

16 How Long Can the Deadlock Continue? . . . 167

17 What Should We Do About It? 178

BOOK III THE CRISIS IN HAWAII AND CALIFORNIA 20 The Psychology op the Crisis 235

CONTENTS

Book IV How To Deal With The Crisis Chapter Page

21 Our National Policy. On What Must It Be

Built? 269

22 The World's Food To-day and To-morrow . . . 289

26 The Greater Crisis Beneath the Japanese Issue 392

BOOK V EXPERT OPINIONS ON SOME PROBLEMS OF POLICY 27 Conflicting National Policies of Japan and

United States (By E. T. Williams) . . . .423

28 Cheap Labor and Standards of Living (By Warren

S. Thompson) 463

29 New Agrarian Policies in Australia and Cali-

fornia (By Elwood Mead) 474

30 Shall East Wed West? Racial Intermarriage

(By S. J. Holmes) 481

Index 529

CHAPTER 1 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? MUST we fight Japan?

Many Americans will laugh at this question. The world has had enough of war, they say. After having watched Europe go down into ruin, most of us are now vividly aware of the folly of trying to settle any national quarrels by the caveman method, so they tell us. Furthermore, Japan and the United States are too far apart ever to be drawn into battle.

But there are other Americans, and not a few of them, who insist that our query is ridiculous for the opposite reason. There is only one real problem, they tell us, and that is: How soon shall we be fighting Japan, and how shall we manage it so as to win? These people, mostly living on our Pacific Coast, argue that war has already become inevitable. And they are not at a loss when asked to advance their reasons for their belief. They point to half a hundred momentous political and commercial events, here and abroad, concerning all of which we shall have much to say later ; and, on the whole, their evidence is much more circumstantial and smacks less of theories and wishes than does the evidence of those who take the view that war is impossible.

The very existence of two such sharply opposed views suggests that both are wrong and that our question is an open one. And a careful examination of the facts fully confirms this supposition. War with Japan is a possibility, not a certainty to-day. Peace with Japan is a possibility, not a certainty to-day. It is a demonstrable fact that

There are many more powerful forces making for war between Japan and the United States to-daif than there were for making war between Germany and the United States only ten years ago.

And it is no less demonstrable that

There are some powerful forces working to prevent such a war which were not working to prevent the war between Germany and the United States.

The chances of grave trouble with Japan in the near future are immensely greater than our chances of trouble with Germany were ten years ago. This is a most conservative statement that could, if we had time for such a task, be proved in detail. Whoever doubts it is asked to contemplate the following facts :

In 1910, Germany was expanding into southeastern Europe politically and economically, and this expansion was not coming into conflict with a single visible interest of the United States.

In 1920, Japan is expanding in eastern Asia, Hawaii, and our own Pacific Coast. Her interests in Siberia conflict sharply with American international policies.

Her demand for control of the German cable station on the island of Yap and the granting of her wish by the League of Nations have disturbed our State Department so deeply that the delicate controversy has been laid before the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate ; and it is not unlikely that grave complications may ensue. Her aggression in China conflicts with American shipping, commercial, and diplomatic interests, with American moral sentiment, and with the American policy of "The Open Door." The enormous influx of Japanese into Hawaii has already made those islands oriental in every sense save the political one, and within another decade they will be politically dominated by the Japanese vote. The lesser immigration into California has brought about a grave crisis, the latest development of which is the overwhelming referendum vote of that State in favor of a land law that must result, if consistently carried out, in driving thousands of Japanese farmers out of the Pacific Coast region. For rather obvious reasons this same discriminatory legislation has produced immense irritation in Japan.

In 1910, thousands of Americans admired all things German, save the kaiser, whom few took half seriously enough. The meaning of what had happened in Bosnia in 1908 had not dawned upon us and did not influence our national policies visibly. Our newspapers were full of stories about German skill in industry and social work. We were still welcoming German dignitaries to our shores. There were even intelligent men who pointed to the state socialism of Germany with admiration and envy.

In 1920, all Americans who have given the matter much thought, look with forebodings upon the Government and the ruling classes of Japan. The World War has opened our e3^es to the evils of feudalism, no matter how good the motives of its managers may be. The conviction is deepening that the world cannot exist half feudal and half free. Wherever this thought sinks in, there it creates profound distrust of the Japanese Government and all its policies. Americans do not like to associate with Japanese in the same community; and they are coming to fear the militaristic aristocracy of that race, even though it be on the other side of the earth.

In 1910, the Government and the people of Germany cherished no special grudge against America. While they despised us as a nation of hucksters and mollycoddles, it was a faint prejudice that seldom developed power enough to influence their acts. And there were thousands of Germans having business and personal connections in the United States who emphatically liked us and our ways.

In 1920, the Government and the people of Japan dislike us. And not all the smooth evasions of professional diplomats can conceal this feeling. Too few Americana appreciate its power and extent. It has four sources:

1. The impression about Americans and their morals which is systematically created by newspapers and motion pictures ;

2. The part America has played, together with the powers of Europe, in forcing itself, its business men, and its trade upon Japan.

3. The cunning and hypocritical efforts of our Government in thwarting Japan in her natural expansion on the mainland of Asia, whither her immense surplus population must overflow or perish.

4. The insulting attitude of Americans on the Pacific coast in treating Japanese as an inferior race and passing harsh laws that discriminate against them.

We cannot see the Japanese crisis in its true perspective until we have inspected the belief and prejudices that have been steadily flowing from these four sources.

Chapter 2 As Japan Sees Us

EVERY American, before he can appraise the present crisis, must put himself in the place of a Japanese and see the situation through his eyes as far as possible.

Let us inquire first of all as to the sources of the ordinary Japanese citizen's information and impressions about us. You will doubtless think at once of the news despatches published in the Yokohama and Tokio dailies, the other news in the English-language sheets of Japan, and the letters from Japanese colonist in Hawaii and the Pacific coast. All these are important factors in determining Japanese opinion. But, in truth, to-day they are little more than confirmatory of hypotheses which the Japanese derive from another source so much more widely known in the islands, so vivid, and so copious, that every other channel of knowledge has become petty in comparison. This source is the American motion-picture.

The motion-picture has, from all that I can gather from both natives and Americans who have been studying it in Japan, China, and India, done more to blacken the reputation of the white race in general and the United States in particular than all the malice and libel of the most savage anti-American propagandists. The *' rising tide of color," which Lothrop Stoddard has recently described so picturesquely, but inaccurately, does not flow from native irritation over politics or secret diplomacy or the aggressions of economic imperialism in any greater volume than it flows from the inevitable reactions which the ordinary run of screen-picture produces upon the ordinary Asiatic, as he sits in the shabby theaters of the great ports and contemplates the world of the white man as reported to him by the white man himself.

The pictures he sees are, as a rule, not those recently produced by our best companies. The films that are exported to Asia and South America are largely of two classes. Ma,ny of them are inferior works of art which have not succeeded in our o^vn country, and have therefore been dumped on the helpless heathen, who can pay only the lowest rentals and hence ought not to expect much. These are, on the whole, merely the cheap, silly stuff that you may see any evening when you can endure sitting for an hour in almost any fifteen or twenty cent movie-dive. The Japanese sees exactly what you see — murders, robberies, prostitutes exhibiting themselves as heroines, and supposedly sane characters saying and doing things which only morons or drug fiends could say or do. As all of the pictures of this class are exactly alike in their essential plots, stage settings, characters, and general imbecilities, and as the Japanese observer sees them month in and month out, he is forced into the habit of believing that all this is American realism. In this he does exactly what you do when you see a motion-picture with scenes laid in India or Japan.

The second class of pictures he sees is quite different. You have never seen them, and probably you never will unless you happen to sit on a board of censors. They are the films which the censors bar from the American screen. Most of them are old, for not many producers are to-day attempting such filth. They have learned that it pays to show a chemical trace of decency even in the movies. But they cannot refrain from cashing in on past mistakes. So they keep on circuit in Asia and South America (and, so I am told, Mexico) the hundreds of thousands of feet of tainted celluloid that five, ten, or even more years ago was adjudged too nasty for even a Barbary Coast audience in San Francisco. The mildest description of these films is unfit to print. Yet missionaries and business men both testify that they are being shown regularly in all the larger cities of Asia, and a high official of the Government of India personally told me that the effect of these loathsome displays on the natives of that country was so evil that plans for a severe censorship were being considered, especially against what Asia knows as the American film.

Now, here is no place to discuss what America ought to do by way of protecting our already tarnished name against the degenerates who write, act, and finance such pictures. Enough to know that for every one Asiatic who learns something about the United States from newspapers or letters a thousand learn everything about us from these movies. It matters little that there is a sprinkling of decent and even solidly informative pictures in the stream of exhibits. The significant fact is that the "run of the mill" is as above described, and it is just this that shapes men 's ideas.

An American, beholding the lurid lunacy of a cheap movie, is seldom disturbed by it. He knows that there aren 't any such animals as the screen depicts in the guise of Yankee heroes and villains. He simply doesn't meet them on the street. But the Japanes is less fortunate. He hasn't been around America, and he has no friends here. The only way he can check up on the motion-picture is by reading about America. The two most accessible sources of printed information are the Japanese newspapers and the few English-language publications in Japan. The well-to-do and highly educated Japanese is likel}^ to read more or less regularly some American newspaper also.

Now, it is a well-known fact among newspaper men that only the most sensational news is cabled from any one country to any other. This is an evil state of affairs, and one of the most potent causes of international misunderstandings. Some day it will be remedied, but now it is still unaltered so far as America and Asia are concerned. And the result is that the run of news from America about America confirms the motion-picture impressions of America upon the Japanese mind. And so too, in great measure, do the head-lines of even our own more respectable newspapers. Let us glance briefly at these last. Let us see just what the Japanese are hearing about us now through our own best periodicals. Let us observe, in the middle of December, 1920, "all the news that 's fit to print."

The New York building investigation is featured on the front page, abounding in murky revelations of graft — money taken from contractors by labor bosses, who in turn squeeze a toll from the workmen. Organized espionage carried on by the steel interest is mentioned, with the suggestion of spies and counterspies. At the very trial itself, men are removed from the court-room, accused of coaching witnesses. All this leaves a general impression of moral depravity.

A police lieutenant, also on the same day, was shot by burglars when he attempted to interfere with their plans. In the ball-room of the Hotel Astor on this same day a dinner of the Japan Society was taking place, with its protestations of friendship between two friendly nations. At that very hour a daring robbery was taking place only several floors above the festivities. Three bandits, with disconcerting boldness, walked into one of the rooms and attempted a hold-up. Two of the men escaped.

Further reading in our press does not tend to prove our right to send missionaries into the East to bring civilization to barbarism. Detroit has a toll of twenty-four murders in one year. Gunmen in speeding automobiles slay and steal there, for vengeance and profit, and go unpunished. Chicago confesses to sixty-eight unsolved homicides in this same year. A normal day in that progressive city has to its credit thirty-two robberies and burglaries by violence. Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, has to its credit one hundred murders in eleven months. Fifty holdups occurred in one day. Cleveland has seventy murders on its records in one year.

In the New York papers for December 17, 1920, we find accounts of a bandit killing a jeweler on Fifth Avenue. The robber easily escaped with the jewels, and this happened at twenty minutes after two in the afternoon. All of which prompts an editor to remark soberly :

"Readers of yesterday's 'Times' had the happiness of knowing that Tuesday was a perfectly normal day, with the normal amount of energy on the part of the violent annexers of

AS JAPAN SEES US IS

other people's property. Only five daylight robberies were reported. The returns were only normally satisfactory, something more than $50,000. The normal citizen must have felt satisfied that the average of crime was not rising."

But the worst is still to come. Our Japanese observer, if extremely charitable, might explain and excuse this national viciousness in a number of way^. But he would probably stop his apology when he discovered that we not only fail to suppress crimes, but, when crimes are committed, almost never run down the criminals and bring them to justice. The official figures on crimes, arrests, and convictions have been minutely studied by many experts, and they all demonstrate that in the United States murder has always been one of the safest of professions. A murderer runs much less risk of landing in the electric chair than a glass-blower runs of landing in a sanatorium or a leather-worker of dying of anthrax. Pleasured alongside the police systems of Europe and Japan, ours is a ghasth^ jest. We simply do not know what scientific and efficient policing is. In this we stand imperceptibly above the Balkan States, as Raymond Fosdick's recent studies show.

Our burglars loot eight times as many homes and shops as backward Great Britain's burglars do. Our murderers slay twice as many victims as Great Britain's manage to slay. Our robbers and highwa^Tnen are from three to five times as skilful and as busy. Our insurance statisticians, analyzing the cold facts revealed on our police blotters, declare, as the "Spectator" has of late: *' Human life was never so insecure in the United States as it is today, and our national apathy toward this insecurity is an indictment of our alleged civilization." To which we may add the all too true words of the Chicago ' ' Tribune, ' ' which remarks, ' ' There is probably more undisciplined, egotistic, mischievous force in the United States to-day than in any other country of first rank in the world. ' '

Our general disregard for the law is nowhere shown more clearly than in the attitude of our foremost citizens toward prohibition. It must impress a foreigner that our main topic of conversation turns on ways to procure or manufacture liquor illegally. The boast of a New York clubman that he knows fifty places in New York where he can get anything from a cocktail to a gin-fizz is only too often heard. The most charming of welldressed society women will give an excellent recipe for apple-jack, that most potent of intoxicants, for the asking. Unscrupulous dealers have taken dire advantage of this eagerness for forbidden fruits, and again the papers come in beating the drums of tragedy: two men killed from drinking wood alcohol illegally sold in a New York hotel, a woman dying from drinking wood alcohol. The death-toll lengthens to weariness.

A paper with a weakness for statistics announces an average of seven decrees of divorce daily in Seattle. We read of suits for alienation of affections. A common-law

wife sues the second Mrs. S. for a considerable sum

of money, showing her willingness to parade her moral status in return for gain. We notice that a woman has been indicted by a grand jury for procuring and selling two girls for immoral purposes, and the testimony reveals a shocking recital of the traffic in women. A man of sixty, respected in his community, married for many years, advertises for a typist; but the advertisement proves to be a trap.

Every day adds to the long roll of deaths from motor accidents, most of them due to carelessness and indifference to human life. In one day five such tragedies occurred. An aged couple was run down by a limousine, but the automobile continued on its way. The driver did not even look back to see how badly his victims were injured. The old couple died, but the driver has not been apprehended.

In this year of business uncertainties the charities are the first expenditures to be curtailed. Our love for our fellow-man is amply measured by the failure of hospital drives for funds, and collections for Christmas distributions to the suffering poor are pitifully meager. All this is reported in the press, and one paper comments on this selfishness, in the light of the receipts of $137,000 taken from the public in one evening for admission to a prize-fight in New York City. Those who could not get into the building because of lack of space hung about the Dutside, breathless, waiting. An outsider, seeing that eager, excited crowd, could not fail but comment on our adoration of the thug.