problem, but also an American problem. And this is true even of
the great external enigma of Japan. The Japanese question may be a part
of foreign policy for America, but it is a part of domestic policy for
California. And the same is true of that other intense and intelligent
Eastern people, the genius and limitations of which have troubled the
world so much longer. What the Japs are in California, the Jews are in
America. That is, they are a piece of foreign policy that has become
imbedded in domestic policy; something which is found inside but still
has to be regarded from the outside. On these great international
matters I doubt if Americans got much guidance from their party system;
especially as most of these questions have grown very recently and
rapidly to enormous size. Men are left free to judge of them with fresh
minds. And that is the truth in the statement that the Washington
Conference has opened the gates of a new world.

On the relations to England and Ireland I will not attempt to dwell
adequately here. I have already noted that my first interview was with
an Irishman, and my first impression from that interview a vivid sense
of the importance of Ireland in Anglo-American relations; and I have
said something of the Irish problem, prematurely and out of its proper
order, under the stress of that sense of urgency. Here I will only add
two remarks about the two countries respectively. A great many British
journalists have recently imagined that they were pouring oil upon the
troubled waters, when they were rather pouring out oil to smooth the
downward path; and to turn the broad road to destruction into a
butter-slide. They seem to have no notion of what to do, except to say
what they imagine the very stupidest of their readers would be pleased
to hear, and conceal whatever the most intelligent of their readers
would probably like to know. They therefore informed the public that
'the majority of Americans' had abandoned all sympathy with Ireland,
because of its alleged sympathy with Germany; and that this majority of
Americans was now ardently in sympathy with its English brothers across
the sea. Now to begin with, such critics have no notion of what they are
saying when they talk about the majority of Americans. To anybody who
has happened to look in, let us say, on the city of Omaha, Nebraska, the
remark will have something enormous and overwhelming about it. It is
like saying that the majority of the in