racial problem. They have seen Japanese emigrants settle in Queen Charlotte Islands off Vancouver and rapidly take possession not only of those islands, but of the fisheries on the coast of British Columbia; they have witnessed the settlement of 40,000 Japanese, and nearly as many Chinese, in California, where whole districts have become orientalized; they have heard of the rapid increase of the Japanese population in the Island of Hawaii; they know that the Japanese are swarming over the Loyalty Islands under the eyes of the Commonwealth, and they believe that they covet the vast unoccupied territories under the British flag in Australia. Wherever the Japanese emigrant settles he underbids the white man in the labor market, his family follows him to his new place of settlement, his customs and habits become predominant, and, with persistent pressure, he and his kin enlarge their boundaries, driving the white man before them.

We who live far removed from this racial problem cannot afford to ignore it, unless we are content to witness the growth of a movement which may dismember the Empire. The people in other parts of the King's dominions can hardly realize the intensity of the anti-Japanese feeling which dominates all the peoples of the white race who live on the slopes of the Pacific Ocean. Mr. F. B. Vrooman, in a lecture which he delivered before the Royal Colonial Institute in March of last year, conveyed some impression of this racial sentiment. Speaking as a native of British Columbia, Mr. Vrooman said:

"So long as Asiatic immigration was confined to a few individuals who scattered themselves over a large area, offering competition to very little labor, except the hand-laundry, there was no particular problem. But when these people settled down in solid phalanxes of 10,000 or more at a time and place, and became undigested and

indigestible lumps in the political ventricle, the case called for scientific diagnosis. This thing is happening. and in the language of periods and nations, all at once, in many quarters of the Empire. Suddenly the results of Asiatic immigration into different parts of the white world are presenting new problems to be solved.

"It is plain, too, that one of the numbers in the new Japanese worldprogramme is the occupation of British Columbia. Our Province is becoming Orientalized, and one of our important questions is whether it is to remain a British province or become an Oriental colony-for we have three races demanding seats in our drawingroom, as well as places at our boardthe Japanese, Chinese, and East Indian.

"According to a report of the Assessment Commissioner several years ago (I have no later figures), nearly an eighth of the population of Vancouver was Oriental, with that of the New Westminster district larger. But the Orientals are practically all male adults. If they had their families with them their numbers would have been about five times as great, and this would represent permanent population; and this would have given over half the population of Vancouver as Oriental, while giving one Oriental male adult to every three-and-a-half whites of the male adult population of the Province."

This is the experience of British Columbia, and we know from recent events what Americans who live on the Pacific coast think of this "yellow peril," and we have lately read of the determination exhibited by the Californian legislators to stem the Japanese movement, now that Japanese brides are arriving to make homes in their midst.

Europeans may form some conception of the basis upon which the antiJapanese feeling in the Dominions rests if they keep in view the facts as stated by Mr. Vrooman:

"Japan will not allow a foreigner to

own or even work a mine in Japan, but she unreasonably demands for the Japanese the right to work in the mines and to own and exploit the mines of Canada and the United States-one small syndicate of coolies having now possession of a copper mine in British Columbia worth nearly a million pounds. She allows no foreigner to engage in fisheries in Japanese waters, but she demands the right of the Japanese to fish American and Canadian waters; and, as a consequence, all the fisheries of British Columbia, which are 30 per cent. of the fisheries of Canada, which are the largest and most profitable in the world, are now wholly in Japanese hands, yielding 10,500 Japanese laborers from £100 to £600 a year apiece, the most of which is sent in cash to Japan, and alienated from the British Empire for ever. It is a well-known fact that Japan will not tolerate our workmen on her soil, except those skilled laborers we have been simple enough to send over to teach the Japanese how to make goods cheaper than we can make them.

"Japan is gradually taxing, or legislating, or expropriating every Western interest out of Japan, Korea, and Manchuria, and as far as possible out of China, but she demands equal rights and opportunities for the Japanese workman, merchant, financier, farmer, in the business opportunities and potential wealth of the New World, and more those safeguards and protections which the Japanese themselves cannot grant to their own people on their own soil-equal rights in the privileges of an Anglo-Saxon democracy.

"If Japan wants something on the American Continent, Canada and the United States must give it. If Canada and the United States want something in Japan, Korea, or Manchuria, it is inimical to the interests of Japan, and they cannot have it. Whatever is prejudicial to the interests or the pride of Japan must be yielded by Canadians and Americans. Whatever is prejudicial to the interests of Americans and Canadians must be accepted

because of the imperious demands of Japanese pride and national interest, and the power of the Japanese warships."

The belief which dominates the minds of all these white people is that they are in greater peril from Japan than from Germany. As Mr. Vrooman has declared in summing up the position, in words, which are echoed by the majority of the inhabitants of Australia, New Zealand, and British Columbia: "The vital world-issue of today, now especially on the Pacific, is the Japanese programme of Asiatic Imperialism."

The racial problem is not merely the antagonism of the white man to the Japanese, but his rooted objection to the settlement in his midst of any Asiatic community, whether it come from Japan, China, India, or Singapore. It is this terror which is moulding the policy of the Dominions, and the time has come for the Imperial Government to consider what its attitude should be in face of the grave situation which is rapidly developing.

Sir George Reid, the High Commissioner in London for the Commonwealth of Australia, recently recalled that as there is a mountain range known as the Great Dividing Range in the continent to which he belongs, there is also a Great Dividing Range in the British Empire: "Under the same flag that waves over the fifteen million white subjects in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, there are in Asia and Africa three hundred and sixty millions of people who are not of our color, who do not

Japan possesses a navy less than onefourth the size of the British Fleet, and its relative strength is declining.

5 The Canadian Government has put into operation a Privy Council order providing that no immigrant can land unless he come direct from his native country, and there being no direct steamship service between India and Canada the effect of this order is to prohibit further immigration of Indians. This exclusion policy directed against all Asiatics, whether from India or elsewhere, is supported in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

belong to our race, and who know nothing of our religion." The great balance of the population of the British Empire is on the Asiatic side of the Great Dividing Range. If the Imperial Government were willing to sacrifice all the fruits of the alliance with Japan, it could not forget India. "We

do not always remember what a tremendous fact India is to us and to the world. In the last thirty years the people of India have increased by 61,000,000, against an increase of 5,000,000 in the self-governing Dominions and 12,500,000 in the British Isles. There are 250,000,000 acres under crop in India to-day, while Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, all told, have less than 50,000,000 of acres. In one crop-wheat-India produces 64,000,000 bushels more than the whole of the rest of the British Empire put together; that is to say, 426,000,000 bushels of wheat are produced in India every year, to say nothing of rice and the rest. The sea-borne trade of India has increased in ten years by far more than one-half, and now amounts to £260,000,000, or £60,000,000 more than the trade of Russia. India does not come begging to the rest of the Empire to buy her exports. In Great Britain she buys, I think, something like 70 per cent. of all she buys abroad, but she sells about 70 per cent. of what she produces to other nations outside the British Empire."

This statement represents only one facet of the truth. India is not only prospering commercially, but she is awakening to a sense of her importance and her rights, as the recent discussion on fiscal matters in the Legislative Council, and the speeches alike of the native members and of Sir Fleetwood Wilson revealed. If Japan is to be shut out of the white man's lands, what is to be the Imperial attitude towards India?

It must be evident to all who study

the course of Dominion policy that matters have reached a critical condition. The inhabitants of those sections of the British Empire which are washed by the Pacific Ocean, have been watching with close and interested attention recent events in California. Many of them have come to believe that they have more to hope from the United States-which is on the scene and looks at the problem more or less as they do than from any influence which may be exerted by the Imperial Government. Under this impression, vastly strengthened by the cruise of the powerful Atlantic Fleet of the United States Navy, and its visit to Australian and New Zealand ports, a community of sentiment is growing between the white peoples in the Pacific under the American and British flags. In some minds in the Dominions there is already developing the idea, still it may be dim and shadowy, that the road to safety lies rather in close co-operation with the United States than in reliance upon the vague and undefined, if benevolent, intentions of the Imperial Government, worried by many little things-not forgetting the Suffragettes. While these white peoples are facing the problem which they regard as vital to their future, the Imperial Government appears to them to be absorbed in a hundred and one more or less trifling problems appertaining to the affairs of the British Isles and in the clash of policies in Europe, to the exclusion of all thought upon the major problems of the Empire which to the Dominions are very near and very real.

The possibility of war in the near future between Japan and the United States is admitted. During a recent discussion of the Japanese naval programme in Tokio, Admiral Takarabe, the vice-Minister of the Navy, justified his proposals by claiming that it was necessary "to form a fleet strong

enough to beat the fleet of a certain foreign Power which the Government had principally in view in drawing up its naval programme." And he dealt

specifically with the naval force which Japan could concentrate "in certain waters which would form the scene of the next possible encounter in war." The reference was, of course, to the United States, the only considerable naval Power in the Pacific. On the other side of this ocean naval officers of authority, and a large section of the Press, discuss not infrequently the strength of the American Navy in contrast to that of Japan, and the probable course which hostilities with that country would take.

Has the British Government, which is responsible for India, is in alliance with Japan, and occupies the position of the only exponent of the foreign policy of the Empire, no advice or guidance to give in face of the new situation? It is confronted with a cleavage in the Empire. Barriers are being erected not only against Japan, but against all the Asiatic subjects of the King, and active, but quite ineffectual, measures are being taken to defend the racial frontier. This is the explanation of the defence policy which has been adopted by Australia and New Zealand, of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's bid for the votes of the electors of British Columbia, and of the anxiety with which Americans have watched the completion of the Panama Canal, which will enable the American Fleet to be concentrated more rapidly in the Pacific.

This growing anxiety of the white peoples of the Pacific is undermining every sound principle of naval strategy by which British maritime interests have hitherto been effectively defended, and yet no action is being taken. Fearing that sooner or later Japan

6 Owing to financial stringency this programme has been greatly reduced.

may strike in defence of the free emigration of her subjects, Australians and New Zealanders are adopting a policy of local defence, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier has become the advocate of the same policy in Canada. These white peoples are obsessed with the thought of a local peril, and they are also impressed by the balance of population which is overwhelmingly against them. Therefore they are adopting a "hedgerow" policy of defence, and are looking to the United States in increasing friendship. They have not the resources to provide a navy which could adopt the bold defensive and take station on the sea frontier of the country which they regard as their potential enemy, and their faith in the ubiquity of British sea-power to hold the lines of sea communication is waning. They are unfamiliar with those broad principles of naval policy which to the people of the British Isles are now the commonplaces of everyday thought. There is not an effective warship at any point on the western coast of the British Isles, and yet every town and village is defended. Years ago, in our innocence of the truth, we used to have coast and port guardships dotted round the British Isles. They have long since been banished in recognition of the fundamental principle that navies do not directly defend territory; their aim is to prevent the enemy securing the sea highways-that is the real invasion to be feared.

The seas are all one, and it is on this principle, and on this principle only, that a full assurance of safety can be given to every section of the British Empire. Half a century ago the movement of ships was slow and uncertain, because reliance had to be placed upon wind and sea, and the passage of information was uncertain; to-day the movement of ships and intelligence. owing to the development of steam and