perhaps this test may be rejected. Morals, it may be urged, is the
touchstone of civilisation, not art. Well, take morals. The question is
a large one; but, summarily, where do the Japanese fail, as compared
with the Western nations? Is patriotism the standard? In this respect
what nation can compete with them? Is it courage? What people are
braver? Is it industry? Who is more industrious? It is their very
industry that has aroused the jealous fears of the Californians. Is it
family life? Where, outside the East, is found such solidarity as in
Japan? Is it sexual purity? On that point, what Western nation can hold
up its head? Is it honesty? What of the honesty of the West? No; no
Westerner, knowing the facts, could for a moment maintain that, all
round and on the whole, the morals of the Japanese are inferior to those
of Europe or America. It would probably be easier to maintain the
opposite. Judged by every real test the Japanese civilisation is not
lower, it is higher than that of any of the new countries who refuse to
permit the Japanese to live among them.

That, I admit, does not settle the question. Competent and impartial men
like Admiral Mahan, who would admit all that I have urged, still
maintain that the Japanese ought not to be allowed to settle in the
West. This conclusion I do not now discuss. The point I wish to make is
that the question can never be fairly faced, in a dry light, and with
reference only to the simple facts, until the prejudice is broken up and
destroyed that the Japanese, and all other Orientals, are "inferior"
races. It is this prejudice which distorts all the facts and all the
values, which makes Californians and British Columbians and Australians
sheerly unreasonable, and causes them to jump at one argument after
another, each more fallacious than the last, to defend an attitude which
at bottom is nothing but the childish and ignorant hatred of the
uncultivated man for everything strange. If the Japanese had had white
skins, should we ever have heard of the economic argument? And should we
ever have been presented with that new shibboleth "unassimilable"?

VII

HOME

Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London! What a crescendo of life! What a
quickening of the flow! What a gathering intensity! "Whatever else we
may think of the West," I said to the young French artist, "it is, at
any rate, the centre of life." "Yes," he replied, "but the curious thing
is that that Life produces only Dea