Here was the Far Eastern situation at the outbreak of the Great War—a thoroughly modernized, powerful Japan, and a thoroughly aroused, but still disorganized, China. The Great War automatically made Japan supreme in the Far East by temporarily reducing all the European Powers to ciphers in Oriental affairs. How Japan proceeded to buttress this supremacy by getting a strangle-hold on China, every one knows. Japan’s methods were brutal and cynical, though not a whit more so than the methods employed by white nations seeking to attain vital ends. And “vital” is precisely how Japan regards her hold over China. An essentially poor country with a teeming population, Japan feels that the exploitation of China’s incalculable natural resources, a privileged position in the Chinese market, and guidance of Chinese national evolution in ways not inimical to Japan, can alone assure her future.
Japan’s attitude toward her huge neighbor is one of mingled superiority and apprehension. She banks on China’s traditional pacifism, yet she is too shrewd not to realize the explosive possibilities latent in the modern nationalist idea. As a Japanese publicist, Adachi Kinnosuke, remarks: “The Twentieth Century Jenghiz Khan threatening the Sun-Flag with a Mongol horde armed with Krupp guns may possibly strike the Western sense of humor. But it is not altogether pleasing to contemplate a neighbor of 400,000,000 population with modern armament and soldiers trained on the modern plan. The awakening of China means all this and a little more which we of the present are not sure of. Japan cannot forget that between this nightmare of armed China and herself there is only a very narrow sea.”[15] Certainly, “Young China” has already displayed much of that unpleasant ebullience which usually accompanies nationalist awakenings. A French observer, Jean Rodes, writes on this point: “One of the things that most disquiet thinking men is that this new generation, completely neglecting Chinese studies while knowing nothing of Western science, yet convinced that it knows everything, will no longer possess any standard of values, national culture, or foreign culture. We can only await with apprehension the results of such ignorance united with unbounded pride as characterize the Chinese youth of to-day.”[16] And another French observer, René Pinon, as far back as 1905, found the primary school children of Kiang-Su province chanting the following lines: “I pray that the frontiers of my country become hard as bronze; that it surpass Europe and America; that it subjugate Japan; that its land and sea armies cover themselves with resplendent glory; that over the whole earth float the Dragon Standard; that the universal mastery of the empire extend and progress. May our empire, like a sleeping tiger suddenly awakened, spring roaring into the arena of combats.”[17]
Japan’s masterful policy in China is thus unquestionably hazardous. Chinese national feeling is to-day genuinely aroused against Japan, and resentment over Japanese encroachments is bitter and wide-spread. Nevertheless, Japan feels that the game is worth the risk and believes that both Chinese race-psychology and the general drift of world affairs combine to favor her ultimate success. She knows that China has in the past always acquiesced in foreign domination when resistance has proved patently impossible. She also feels that her aspirations for white expulsion from the Far East and for the winning of wider spheres for racial expansion should appeal strongly to yellow peoples generally and to the Chinese in particular. To turn China’s nascent nationalism into purely anti-white channels and to transmute Chinese patriotism into a wider “Pan-Mongolism” would constitute a Japanese triumph of incalculable splendor. It would increase her effective force manyfold and would open up almost limitless vistas of power and glory.
Nor are the Chinese themselves blind to the advantages of Chino-Japanese co-operation. They have an instinctive assurance in their own capacities, they know how they have ultimately digested all their conquerors, and many Chinese to-day think that from a Chino-Japanese partnership, no matter how framed, the inscrutable “Sons of Han” would eventually get the lion’s share. Certainly no one has ever denied the Chinaman’s extraordinary economic efficiency. Winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, the Chinese race is selected as no other for survival under the fiercest conditions of economic stress. At home the average Chinese lives his whole life literally within a hand’s breadth of starvation. Accordingly, when removed to the easier environment of other lands, the Chinaman brings with him a working capacity which simply appalls his competitors. That urbane Celestial, Doctor Wu-Ting-Fang, well says of his own people: “Experience proves that the Chinese as all-round laborers can easily outdistance all competitors. They are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. They can work under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race; in heat that would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear, sustaining their energies through long hours of unremitting toil with only a few bowls of rice.”[18] This Chinese estimate is echoed by the most competent foreign observers. The Australian thinker, Charles H. Pearson, wrote of the Chinese a generation ago in his epoch-making book, “National Life and Character”: “Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of Thibet and under the sun of Singapore; more versatile even than Jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future.”[19] And Lafcadio Hearn says: “A people of hundreds of millions disciplined for thousands of years to the most untiring industry and the most self-denying thrift, under conditions which would mean worse than death for our working masses—a people, in short, quite content to strive to the uttermost in exchange for the simple privilege of life.”[20]
This economic superiority of the Chinaman shows not only with other races, but with his yellow kindred as well. As regards the Japanese, John Chinaman has proved it to the hilt. Wherever the two have met in economic competition, John has won hands down. Even in Japanese colonies like Korea and Formosa, the Japanese, with all the backing of their government behind them, have been worsted. In fact, Japan itself, so bitter at white refusals to receive her emigrants, has been obliged to enact drastic exclusion laws to protect her working classes from the influx of “Chinese cheap labor.” It seems, therefore, a just calculation when Chinese estimate that Japanese triumphs against white adversaries would inure largely to China’s benefit. After all, Chinese and Japanese are fundamentally of the same race and culture. They may have their very bitter family quarrels, but in the last analysis they understand each other and may arrive at surprisingly sudden agreements. One thing is certain: both these over-populated lands will feel increasingly the imperious need of racial expansion. For all these reasons, then, the present political tension between China and Japan cannot be reckoned as permanent, and we would do well to envisage the possibility of close Chinese co-operation in the ambitious programme of Japanese foreign policy.
This Japanese programme looks first to the prevention of all further white encroachment in the Far East by the establishment of a Far Eastern Monroe Doctrine based on Japanese predominance and backed if possible by the moral support of the other Far Eastern peoples. The next stage in Japanese foreign policy seems to be the systematic elimination of all existing white holdings in the Far East. Thus far practically all Japanese appear to be in substantial agreement. Beyond this point lies a wide realm of aspiration ranging from determination to secure complete racial equality and freedom of immigration into white lands to imperialistic dreams of wholesale conquests and “world-dominion.” These last items do not represent the united aspiration of the Japanese nation, but they are cherished by powerful circles which, owing to Japan’s oligarchical system of government, possess an influence over governmental action quite disproportionate to their numbers.
Although Japanese plans and aspirations have broadened notably since 1914, their outlines were well defined a decade earlier. Immediately after her victory over Russia, Japan set herself to strengthen her influence all over eastern Asia. Special efforts were made to establish intimate relations with the other Asiatic peoples. Asiatic students were invited to attend Japanese universities and as a matter of fact did attend by the thousand, while a whole series of societies was formed having for their object the knitting of