And further, no small part of the solution consists in raising the ideals and scale of life among Asia's millions. By raising their manhood and their entire mode of life-the economic competition will be diminished. This is visibly beginning to take place in Japan. The cost of living has doubled during the past decade. Moreover in proportion as the higher standard and scale of life rises will Asia's purchasing power from us advance, with all that that signifies.

Let

Now it is not hard to see that the best conditions under which to elevate the masses of Asia and bring them up to our level is on a basis of friendliness. Help them to learn. them come and live among us and go back, carrying with them their new ideas and ideals. Set the best possible conditions for the promotion of the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God, and of man's own divine nature. Help them to accept the universal brotherhood of man, regardless of race. These are the great creative ideas which lift individuals and peoples to higher levels of life and to nobler manhood. Even though our wish to lift Asia were wholly selfish, these are the means by which to do it. In imparting these ideas, would it not be of incalculable value if missionaries in China could point to America and say, "There is the land where those ideas are being carried out, not only in the relations of private life, but in business and industry and also in international relations."

Inability to make this statement to-day, except in a limited way, is probably the most serious obstacle to the propagation of the Gospel in non-Christian lands. Increasingly difficult will the missionary work become if there is rising racial animosity and injustice. For the very substance of the Gospel is denied by the conduct of these peoples who know the Gospel ideal most completely.

A fundamental solution of the Oriental problem, however, is not so difficult as many suppose. The alternative to Asiatic exclusion is not of necessity a free open door to all Asiatic immigrants. That would indeed soon beget an intolerable condition.

The true solution is the enactment of an immigration law which treats all races exactly alike-this, and this alone, is friendly. A law, moreover, which admits only so many annually as we can reasonably expect to assimilate-this preserves our institutions and provides that the white man's land shall remain white in civilization and control.

And these two provisions lead on to a third provision that those who are admitted to our country shall be aided in the process of assimilation. In other words, we need to provide for the rapid and certain assimilation of those who enter. For our own sake, as well as for those who come to us, we cannot afford to have any considerable population residing here and taking no essential part in our national life. The full statement of this solution, however, must be deferred to a later chapter.

If my argument has been correct, the new world-situation and especially the New Asia requires of America changes in her international policies, especially as they concern the Orient. The continuance of flat Asiatic exclusion promises to bring serious disaster. A policy of restricted immigration, of general application, looking to the welfare of Asia no less than of our own, together with adequate provision for the assimilation to our ideals and life of all who come to our shores, will alone secure those right and helpful relations which will promote the permanent peace and prosperity of both East and West.

To America is offered the opportunity of mediating thus between the East and the West. Our conduct during the next few decades seems likely to settle for centuries to come the character of our mutual relations. This question may possibly be hanging in the balance for a half century. The longer we delay starting upon the friendly and helpful course, the greater will be our difficulty both in entering upon it and in overcoming the anti-white suspicion and enmity already existing in the Orient and bound to grow with every decade of delayed justice.

ΧΙ

PRINCIPLES OF RACE ASSIMILATION AS BEARING UPON ASIATIC IMMIGRATION

I

F we admit Asiatics to our land, can and will they become truly American? If it indeed be true that the Japanese and Asiatics generally are not assimilable to our Ameri

can civilization, then, of course, any plan for their admission to permanent residence in America and to naturalization is out of the question.

The nature of the Asiatic policy, therefore, which American citizens should adopt depends on the degree and rapidity of their assimilability. This problem is confessedly difficult. In the "American-Japanese Problem" I have discussed the question in three long chapters. Here I must content myself with a mere outline of the considerations there presented.

Assimilation has two aspects-biological and social to be sharply distinguished. In the one, through race intermarriage inherited race nature is combined and amalgamation takes place. The laws of the amalgamation are biological, operate spontaneously, and are wholly subconscious; the process is completed before the birth of the offspring. What occurs in those mysterious processes of generation and growth, our best science only dimly surmises. Their regulation is beyond human control.

In social assimilation, however, inherited race culture is transmitted both consciously and unconsciously, not only from parent to offspring, but from every influence that moulds thought, feeling and conduct. Social inheritance, given to the offspring only after birth, is a factor of superlative force in creating the personality of the individual. This inheritance is

given, not by biological processes, but by education, by language, by every influence that moulds the heart and mind and will. Moreover, wholesome nurture, transmitting wholesome social inheritance, can alone provide the right environment in which human biological heredity can produce its best results.

This distinction between social and biological heredity and inheritance is of the highest importance in considering the problem of race assimilation. Civilization, mental habits of every kind, moral and religious ideas and ideals, with all the practices to which they lead, are matters of social, not of biological heredity and processes. These are the factors which make a man to be the man he is. They form his mind, furnish the categories of his thinking, provide the motives and standards of his conduct, and, in a word, determine a man's race, sociologically speaking.

Now man's marvelous psychic nature provides that these things can be imparted to individuals of any race when they are young and plastic. Under ten or twelve, any child can completely learn any language, enter into any civilization, and become fully possessed of its social inheritance. Advancing years with loss of plasticity deprives one of this capacity. A full-grown adult has diminished capacity for acquisition of new languages and civilizations. A man's personality is formed by

the civilization in which he is reared.

The social assimilation of races, then, can proceed independently of their intermarriage. The Jews are a case in point. Sociologically speaking, Jews born and bred in America are Americans-biologically speaking, they are Hebrews.

Now from the standpoint of capacity to learn our language, acquire our ideas, and enter into our corporate democratic life, young Japanese and Chinese are just as assimilable as are Italians or Russians, if we give them the same opportunity, the same welcome. Indeed Asiatic children, reared in America, are more completely cut off from their social inheritance than are the children of any European people, because of the extraordinary difficulty of learning to read and speak Chinese and

Japanese. Japanese children born in America can speak English freely, even though both parents are pure Japanese and are quite ignorant of English. In Hawaii, in spite of the large Japanese population and thousands of Japanese children for playmates, English is the language with which they play and quarrel. For all children in Hawaii are required to attend the public schools where English is the one language used.

The degree to which Japanese in California have already become Americanized, especially American-born children, is amazing to those who know them in Japan. The complete social assimilability of the Japanese is beyond question for any one who will investigate the facts scientifically.

In regard to the question of the intermarriage of whites and Asiatics ignorant dogmatism prevails. Race antipathy and prejudice play a large rôle here. It is a question which has not been carefully studied by experts. Intermarriage under wholesome and right relations is still limited. The disastrous results of the immoral sexual relations of the races should not be regarded as throwing light of any value on this problem.

We need, accordingly, a commission of expert biologists, sociologists and psychologists to collect and collate the facts already available that we may know what are the biological consequences of race intermarriage. Personally I deprecate strongly the marriage of whites with Japanese. The differences of ideals as to the respective rights and duties of husband and wife are so great that the intermarriage of Americans and Japanese is a hazardous venture. Moreover, the biological results of such intermarriage are by no means clear. Many hold them to be as a rule bad. President Eliot contends that " pure races are far superior. He asserts, moreover, that as a rule Japanese "do not intermarry with women of foreign races, affording thus a strong contrast to the white race in foreign parts. The question of immigration, therefore," he argues, "need not be complicated by any racial problem, provided that each of several races abiding in the same territory keeps itself pure, as the Japanese do, wherever they live."