faith. Extirpated they may have been, like the Moors of Spain, but
extirpation is not apostasy. This extreme tenacity of Islam, this ability
to keep its hold, once it has got a footing, under all circumstances short
of downright extirpation, must be borne in mind when considering the
future of regions where Islam is to-day advancing.

And, save in eastern Europe, it is to-day advancing along all its
far-flung frontiers. Its most signal victories are being won among the
negro races of central Africa, and this phase will be discussed in the
next chapter, but elsewhere the same conditions, in lesser degree,
prevail. Every Moslem is a born missionary and instinctively propagates
his faith among his non-Moslem neighbors. The quality of this missionary
temper has been well analyzed by Meredith Townsend. "All the emotions
which impel a Christian to proselytize," he writes, "are in a Mussulman
strengthened by all the motives which impel a political leader and all the
motives which sway a recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become a
passion, which, whenever success seems practicable, and especially success
on a large scale, develops in the quietest Mussulman a fury of ardor which
induces him to break down every obstacle, his own strongest prejudices
included, rather than stand for an instant in the neophyte's way. He
welcomes him as a son, and whatever his own lineage, and whether the
convert be negro, or Chinaman, or Indian, or even European, he will
without hesitation or scruple give him his own child in marriage, and
admit him fully, frankly, and finally into the most exclusive circle in
the world."[41]

Such is the vast and growing body of Islam, to-day seeking to weld its
forces into a higher unity for the combined objectives of spiritual
revival and political emancipation. This unitary movement is known as
"Pan-Islamism." Most Western observers seem to think that Pan-Islamism
centres in the "Caliphate," and European writers to-day hopefully discuss
whether the Caliphate's retention by the discredited Turkish Sultans, its
transferrence to the rulers of the new Arab Hedjaz Kingdom, or its total
suppression, will best clip Islam's wings.

This, however, is a very short-sighted and partial view. The Khalifa or
"Caliph" (to use the Europeanized form), the Prophet's representative on
earth, has played an important historic rôle, and the institution is still
venerated in Islam. But the Pan-Islamic leaders have long been working on
a much broader basis. Pan-Islamism's real driving power lies, not in the
Caliphate, but in institutions like the "Hajj" or pilgrimage to Mecca, the
propaganda of the "Habl-ul-Matin" or "Tie of True Believers," and the
great religious fraternities. The Meccan Hajj, where tens of thousands of
picked zealots gather every year from every quarter of the Moslem world,
is really an annual Pan-Islamic congress, where all the interests of the
faith are discussed at length, and where plans are elaborated for its
defense and propagation. Similarly ubiquitous is the Pan-Islamic
propaganda of the Habl-ul-Matin, which works tirelessly to compose
sectarian differences and traditional feuds. Lastly, the religious
brotherhoods cover the Islamic world with a network of far-flung
associations, quickening the zeal of their myriad members and
co-ordinating their energies for potential action.

The greatest of these brotherhoods (though there are others of importance)
is the famous Senussiyah, and its history well illustrates Islam's
evolution during the past hundred years. Its founder, Seyyid Mahommed ben
Senussi, was born in Algeria about the beginning of the nineteenth
century. He was of high Arab lineage, tracing his descent from Fatima, the
daughter of the Prophet. In early youth he went to Arabia and there came
under the influence of the Wahabee movement. In middle life he returned to
Africa, settling in the Sahara Desert, and there built up the fraternity
which bears his name. Before his death the order had spread to all parts
of the Mohammedan world, but it is in northern Africa that it has attained
its peculiar pre-eminence. The Senussi Order is divided into local
"Zawias" or lodges, all absolutely dependent upon the Grand Lodge, headed
by The Master, El Senussi. The Grand Mastership still remains in the
family, a grandson of the founder being the order's present head. The
Senussi stronghold is an oasis in the very heart of the Sahara. Only one
European eye has ever seen this mysterious spot. Surrounded by absolute
desert, with wells many leagues apart and the routes of approach known
only to experienced Senussi guides, every one of whom would suffer a
thousand deaths rather than betray him, El Senussi, The Master, sits
serenely apart, sending his orders throughout North Africa.

The Sahara itself is absolutely under Senussi control, while "Zawias"
abound in distant regions like Morocco, Lake Chad, and Somaliland. These
local Zawias are more than mere "lodges." Their spiritual and secular
heads, the "Mokaddem" or priest and the "Wekil" or civil governor, have
discretionary authority not merely over the Zawia members, but also over
the community at large--at least, so great is the awe inspired by the
Senussi throughout North Africa that a word from Wekil or Mokaddem is
always listened to and obeyed. Thus, beside the various European
authorities, British, French, or Italian as the case may be, there exists
an occult government with which the colonial authorities are careful not
to come into conflict.

On their part, the Senussi are equally careful to avoid a downright breach
with the European Powers. Their long-headed, cautious policy is truly
astonishing. For more than half a century the order has been a great
force, yet it has never risked the supreme adventure. In all the numerous
fanatic risings against Europeans which have occurred in various parts of
Africa, local Senussi have undoubtedly taken part, but the order has never
officially entered the lists.

These Fabian tactics as regards open warfare do not mean that the Senussi
are idle. Far from it. On the contrary, they are ceaselessly at work with
the spiritual arms of teaching, discipline, and conversion. The Senussi
programme is the welding, first of Moslem Africa, and later of the whole
Moslem world, into the revived "Imamat" of Islam's early days; into a
great theocracy, embracing all true believers--in other words,
Pan-Islamism. But they believe that the political liberation of Islam from
Christian domination must be preceded by a profound spiritual
regeneration, thereby engendering the moral forces necessary both for the
war of liberation and for the fruitful reconstruction which should follow
thereafter. This is the secret of the order's extraordinary
self-restraint. This is the reason why, year after year, and decade after
decade, the Senussi advance slowly, calmly, coldly, gathering great latent
power but avoiding the temptation to expend it one instant before the
proper time. Meanwhile they are covering Africa with their lodges and
schools, disciplining the people to the voice of their Mokaddems and
Wekils--and converting millions of pagan negroes to the faith of Islam.

And what is true of the Senussi holds equally for the other wise leaders
who guide the Pan-Islamic movement. They know both Europe's strength and
their own weakness. They know the peril of premature action. Feeling that
time is on their side, they are content to await the hour when internal
regeneration and external pressure shall have filled to overflowing the
cup of wrath. This is why Islam has offered only local resistance to the
unparalleled white aggressions of the last twenty years. This is the main
reason why there was no real "Holy War" in 1914. But the materials for a
Holy War have long been piling high, as a retrospective glance will show.

Europe's conquests of Africa and Central Asia toward the close of the last
century, and the subsequent Anglo-French agreement mutually appropriating
Egypt and Morocco, evoked murmurs of impotent fury from the Moslem world.
Under such circumstances the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 sent a feverish
tremor throughout Islam. The Japanese might be idolaters, but the
traditional Moslem loathing of idolaters as beings much lower than
Christians and Jews (recognized by Mohammed as "Peoples of The Book") was
quite effaced by the burning sense of subjugation to the Christian yoke.
Accordingly, the Japanese were hailed as heroes throughout Islam. Here we
see again that tendency toward an understanding between Asiatic and
African races and creeds (in other words, a "Pan-Colored" alliance against
white domination) which has been so patent in recent years. The way in
which Islamic peoples began looking to Japan is revealed by this editorial
in a Persian newspaper, written in the year 1906: "Desirous of becoming as
powerful as Japan and of safeguarding its national independence, Persia
should make common cause with it. An alliance becomes necessary. There
should be a Japanese ambassador at Teheran. Japanese instructors should be
chosen to reorganize the army. Commercial relations should also be
developed."[42] Indeed, some pious Moslems hoped to bring this heroic
people within the Islamic fold. Shortly after the Russo-Japanese War a
Chinese Mohammedan sheikh wrote: "If Japan thinks of becoming some day a
very great power and making Asia the dominator of the other continents, it
will be only by adopting the blessed religion of Islam."[43] And _Al
Mowwayad_, an Egyptian Nationalist journal, remarked: "England, with her
60,000,000 Indian Moslems, dreads this conversion. With a Mohammedan
Japan, Mussulman policy would change entirely."[44] As a matter of fact,
Mohammedan missionaries actually went to Japan, where they were smilingly
received. Of course the Japanese had not the faintest intention of turning
Moslems, but these spontaneous approaches from the brown world were quite
in line with their ambitious plans, which, as the reader will remember,
were just then taking concrete shape.

However, it soon became plain that Japan had no present intention of going
so far afield as Western Asia, and Islam presently had to mourn fresh
losses at Christian hands. In 1911 came Italy's barefaced raid on Turkey's
African dependency of Tripoli. So bitter was the anger in all Mohammedan
lands at this unprovoked aggression that many European observers became
seriously alarmed. "Why has Italy found 'defenseless' Tripoli such a
hornet's nest?" queried Gabriel Hanotaux, a former French minister of
foreign affairs. "It is because she has to do, not merely with Turkey, but
with Islam as well. Italy has set the ball rolling--so much the worse for
her--and for us all."[45] But the Tripoli expedition was only the
beginning of the Christian assault, for next year came the Balkan War,
which sheared away Turkey's European holdings to the walls of
Constantinople and left her crippled and discredited. At these disasters a
cry of wrathful anguish swept the world of Islam from end to end. Here is
how a leading Indian Moslem interpreted the Balkan conflict:

"The King of Greece orders a new crusade. From the London Chancelleries
rise calls to Christian fanaticism, and Saint Petersburg already speaks of
the planting of the cross on the dome of Sant' Sophia. To-day they speak
thus; to-morrow they will thus speak of Jerusalem and the Mosque of Omar.
Brothers! Be ye of one mind, that it is the duty of every true believer to
hasten beneath the Khalifa's banner and to sacrifice his life for the
safety of the faith."[46] And another Indian Moslem leader thus adjured
the British authorities: "I appeal to the present government to change its
anti-Turkish attitude before the fury of millions of Moslem fellow
subjects is kindled to a blaze and brings disaster."[47]

Still more significant were the appeals made by the Indian Moslems to
their Brahman fellow countrymen, the traditionally despised "Idolaters."
These appeals betokened a veritable revolution in outlook, as can be
gauged from the text of one of them, significantly entitled "The Message
of the East." "Spirit of the East," reads this noteworthy document, "arise
and repel the swelling flood of Western aggression! Children of Hindustan,
aid us with your wisdom, culture, and wealth; lend us your power, the
birthright and heritage of the Hindu! Let the Spirit Powers hidden in the
Himalayan mountain-peaks arise. Let prayers to the god of battles float
upward; prayers that right may triumph over might; and call to your myriad
gods to annihilate the armies of the foe!"[48] In China also the same
fraternizing spirit was visible. During the Republican Revolution the
Chinese Mohammedans, instead of holding jealously aloof, co-operated
whole-heartedly with their Buddhist and Confucian fellow citizens, and
Doctor Sun-Yat-Sen, the Republican leader, announced gratefully: "The
Chinese will never forget the assistance which their Moslem compatriots
have rendered in the interest of order and liberty."[49] The Great War
thus found Islam deeply stirred against European aggression, keenly
conscious of its own solidarity, and frankly reaching out for colored
allies in the projected struggle against white domination.

Under these circumstances it may at first sight appear strange that no
general Islamic explosion occurred when Turkey entered the lists at the
close of 1914 and the Sultan-Khalifa issued a formal summons to the Holy
War. Of course this summons was not the flat failure which Allied reports
led the West to believe at the time. As a matter of fact there was trouble
in practically every Mohammedan land under Allied control. To name only a
few of many instances: Egypt broke into a tumult smothered only by
overwhelming British reinforcements, Tripoli burst into a flame of
insurrection that drove the Italians headlong to the coast, Persia was
prevented from joining Turkey only by prompt Russian intervention, and the
Indian Northwest Frontier was the scene of fighting that required the
presence of a quarter of a million Anglo-Indian troops. The British
Government has officially admitted that during 1915 the Allies' Asiatic
and African possessions stood within a hand's breadth of a cataclysmic
insurrection.

That insurrection would certainly have taken place if Islam's leaders had
everywhere spoken the fateful word. But the word was not spoken. Instead,
influential Moslems outside of Turkey generally condemned the latter's
action and did all in their power to calm the passions of the fanatic
multitude. The attitude of these leaders does credit to their
discernment. They recognized that this was neither the time nor the
occasion for a decisive struggle with the West. They were not yet
materially prepared, and they had not perfected their understandings
either among themselves or with their prospective non-Moslem allies. Above
all, the moral urge was lacking. They knew that athwart the Khalifa's writ
was stencilled "Made in Germany." They knew that the "Young Turk" clique
which had engineered the coup was made up of Europeanized renegades, many
of them not even nominal Moslems, but atheistic Jews. Far-sighted Moslems
had no intention of pulling Germany's chestnuts out of the fire, nor did
they wish to further Prussian schemes of world-dominion which for
themselves would have meant a mere change of masters. Far better to let
the white world fight out its desperate feud, weaken itself, and reveal
fully its future intentions. Meanwhile Islam could bide its time, grow in
strength, and await the morrow.

The Versailles Peace Conference was just such a revelation of European
intentions as the Pan-Islamic leaders had been awaiting in order to
perfect their programmes and enlist the moral solidarity of their peoples.
At Versailles the European Powers showed unequivocally that they had no
intention of relaxing their hold upon the Near and Middle East. By a
number of secret treaties negotiated during the war the Ottoman Empire had
been virtually partitioned between the victorious Allies, and these secret
treaties formed the basis of the Versailles settlement. Furthermore,
Egypt had been declared a British protectorate at the very beginning of
the European struggle, while the Versailles Conference had scarcely
adjourned before England announced an "agreement" with Persia which made
that country another British protectorate, in fact, if not in name. The
upshot was, as already stated, that the Near and Middle East were
subjected to European political domination as never before.

But there was another side to the shield. During the war years the Allied
statesmen had officially proclaimed times without number that the war was
being fought to establish a new world-order based on such principles as
the rights of small nations and the liberty of all peoples. These
pronouncements had been treasured and memorized throughout the East. When,
therefore, the East saw a peace settlement based, not upon these high
professions, but upon the imperialistic secret treaties, it was fired with
a moral indignation and sense of outraged justice never known before. A
tide of impassioned determination began rising which has already set the
entire East in tumultuous ferment, and which seems merely the premonitory
ground-swell of a greater storm. Many European students of Eastern affairs
are gravely alarmed at the prospect. Here, for example, is the judgment of
Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, an Italian authority on Oriental and
Mohammedan questions. Speaking in the spring of 1919 on the war's effect
on the East, he said: "The convulsion has shaken Islamitic and Oriental
civilization to its foundations. The entire Oriental world, from China to
the Mediterranean, is in ferment. Everywhere the hidden fire of
anti-European hatred is burning. Riots in Morocco, risings in Algiers,
discontent in Tripoli, so-called Nationalist attempts in Egypt, Arabia,
and Lybia, are all different manifestations of the same deep sentiment,
and have as their object the rebellion of the Oriental world against
European civilization."[50]

The state of affairs in Egypt is a typical illustration of what has been
going on in the East ever since the close of the late war. Egypt was
occupied by England in 1882, and British rule has conferred immense
material benefits, raising the country from anarchic bankruptcy to ordered
prosperity. Yet British rule was never really popular, and as the years
passed a "Nationalist" movement steadily grew in strength, having for its
slogan the phrase "Egypt for the Egyptians," and demanding Britain's
complete evacuation of the country. This demand Great Britain refused even
to consider. Practically all Englishmen are agreed that Egypt with the
Suez Canal is the vital link between the eastern and western halves of the
British Empire, and they therefore consider the permanent occupation of
Egypt an absolute necessity. There is thus a clear deadlock between
British imperial and Egyptian national convictions.

Some years before the war Egypt became so unruly that England was obliged
to abandon all thoughts of conciliation and initiated a régime of frank
repression enforced by Lord Kitchener's heavy hand. The European War and
Turkey's adhesion to the Teutonic Powers caused fresh outbreaks in Egypt,
but these were quickly repressed and England took advantage of Ottoman
belligerency to abolish the fiction of Turkish overlordship and declare
Egypt a protectorate of the British Empire.

During the war Egypt, flooded with British troops, remained quiet, but the
end of the war gave the signal for an unparalleled outburst of Nationalist
activity. Basing their claims on such doctrines as the "rights of small
nations" and the "self-determination of peoples," the Nationalists
demanded immediate independence and attempted to get Egypt's case before
the Versailles Peace Conference. In defiance of English prohibitions, they
even held a popular plebiscite which upheld their claims. When the British
authorities answered this defiance by arresting Nationalist leaders, Egypt
flamed into rebellion from end to end. Everywhere it was the same story.
Railways and telegraph lines were systematically cut. Trains were stalled
and looted. Isolated British officers and soldiers were murdered. In Cairo
alone, thousands of houses were sacked by the mob. Soon the danger was
rendered more acute by the irruption out of the desert of swarms of
Bedouin Arabs bent on plunder. For a few days Egypt trembled on the verge
of anarchy, and the British Government admitted in Parliament that all
Egypt was in a state of insurrection.

The British authorities, however, met the crisis with vigor and
determination. The number of British troops in Egypt was very large,
trusty black regiments were hurried up from the Sudan, and the
well-disciplined Egyptian native police generally obeyed orders. The
result was that after several weeks of sharp fighting, lasting through the
spring of 1919, Egypt was again gotten under control. The outlook for the
future is, however, ominous in the extreme. Order is indeed restored, but
only the presence of massed British and Sudanese black troops guarantees
that order will be maintained. Even under the present régime of stern
martial law hardly a month passes without fresh rioting and heavy loss of
life. Egypt appears Nationalist to the core, its spokesmen swear they will
accept nothing short of independence, and in the long run Britain will
realize the truth of that pithy saying: "You can do everything with
bayonets except sit on them."

India is likewise in a state of profound unrest. The vast peninsula has
been controlled by England for almost two centuries, yet here again the
last two decades have witnessed a rapidly increasing movement against
British rule. This movement was at first confined to the upper-class
Hindus, the great Mohammedan element preserving its traditional loyalty to
the British "Raj," which it considered a protection against the
Brahmanistic Hindu majority. But, as already seen, the Pan-Islamic leaven
presently reached the Indian Moslems, European aggressions on Islam
stirred their resentment, and at length Moslem and Hindu adjourned their
ancient feud in their new solidarity against European tutelage.

The Great War provoked relatively little sedition in India. Groups of
Hindu extremists, to be sure, hatched terroristic plots and welcomed
German aid, but India as a whole backed England and helped win the war
with both money and men. At the same time, Indians gave notice that they
expected their loyalty to be rewarded, and at the close of the war various
memorials were drawn up calling for drastic modifications of the existing
governmental régime.

India is to-day governed by an English Civil Service whose fairness,
honesty, and general efficiency no informed person can seriously impugn.
But this no longer contents Indian aspirations. India desires not merely
good government but self-government. The ultimate goal of all Indian
reformers is emancipation from European tutelage, though they differ among
themselves as to how and when this emancipation is to be attained. The
most conservative would be content with self-government under British
guidance, the middle group asks for the full status of a Dominion of the
British Empire like Canada and Australia, while the radicals demand
complete independence. Even the most conservative of these demands would,
however, involve great changes of system and a diminution of British
control. Such demands arouse in England mistrust and apprehension.
Englishmen point out that India is not a nation but a congeries of
diverse peoples spiritually sundered by barriers of blood, language,
culture, and religion, and they conclude that, if England's control were
really relaxed, India would get out of hand and drift toward anarchy. As
for Indian independence, the average Englishman cannot abide the thought,
holding it fatal both for the British Empire and for India itself. The
result has been that England has failed to meet Indian demands, and this,
in turn, has roused an acute recrudescence of dissatisfaction and unrest.
The British Government has countered with coercive legislation like the
Rowlatt Acts and has sternly repressed rioting and terrorism. British
authority is still supreme in India. But it is an authority resting more
and more upon force. In fact, some Englishmen have long considered British
rule in India, despite its imposing appearance, a decidedly fragile
affair. Many years ago Meredith Townsend, who certainly knew India well,
wrote:

"The English think they will rule India for many centuries or forever. I
do not think so, holding rather the older belief that the empire which
came in a day will disappear in a night.... Above all this inconceivable
mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we
call here 'the Empire,' a corporation of less than 1,500 men, partly
chosen by examination, partly by co-optation, who are set to govern, and
who protect themselves in governing by finding pay for a minute white
garrison of 65,000 men, one-fifth of the Roman legions--though the masses
to be controlled are double the subjects of Rome. That corporation and
that garrison constitute the 'Indian Empire.' There is nothing else.
Banish those 1,500 men in black, defeat that slender garrison in red, and
the empire has ended, the structure disappears, and brown India emerges,
unchanged and unchangeable. To support the official world and its
garrison--both, recollect, smaller than those of Belgium--there is, except
Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. Not only is there no white race in
India, not only is there no white colony, but there is no white man who
purposes to remain.... There are no white servants, not even grooms, no
white policemen, no white postmen, no white anything. If the brown men
struck for a week, the 'Empire' would collapse like a house of cards, and
every ruling man would be a starving prisoner in his own house. He could
not move or feed himself or get water."[51]

These words aptly illustrate the truth stated at the beginning of this
book that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics but race, and
that the most imposing political phenomena, of themselves, mean nothing.
And that is just the fatal weakness underlying the white man's present
political domination over the brown world. Throughout that entire world
there is no settled white population save in the French colonies of
Algeria and Tunis along the Mediterranean seaboard, where whites form
perhaps one-sixth of the total. Elsewhere, from Morocco to the Dutch
Indies, there is in the racial sense, as Townsend well says, "no white
anything," and if white rule vanished to-morrow it would not leave a human
trace behind. White rule is therefore purely political, based on
prescription, prestige, and lack of effective opposition. These are indeed
fragile foundations. Let the brown world once make up its mind that the
white man _must_ go, and he _will_ go, for his position will have become
simply impossible. It is not solely a question of a "Holy War"; mere
passive resistance, if genuine and general, would shake white rule to its
foundations. And it is precisely the determination to get rid of white
rule which seems to be spreading like wild-fire over the brown world
to-day. The unrest which I have described in Egypt and India merely typify
what is going on in Morocco, Central Asia, the Dutch Indies, the
Philippines, and every other portion of the brown world whose inhabitants
are above the grade of savages.

Another factor favoring the prospects of brown emancipation is the lack of
sustained resistance which the white world would probably offer. For the
white world's interests in these regions, though great, are not
fundamental; that is to say, racial. However grievously they might suffer
politically and economically, racially the white peoples would lose almost
nothing. Here again we see the basic importance of race in human affairs.
Contrast, for example, England's attitude toward an insurgent India with
France's attitude toward an insurgent North Africa. England, with nothing
racial at stake, would hesitate before a reconquest of India involving
millions of soldiers and billions of treasure. France, on the other hand,
with nearly a million Europeans in her North African possessions, half of
these full-blooded Frenchmen, might risk her last franc and her last
_poilu_ rather than see these blood-brothers slaughtered and enslaved.

Assuming, then, what to-day seems probable, that white political control
over the brown world is destined to be sensibly curtailed if not generally
eliminated, what are the larger racial implications? Above all: will the
browns tend to impinge on white race-areas as the yellows show signs of
doing? Probably, no; at least, not to any great extent. In the first
place, the brown world has within its present confines plenty of room for
potential race-expansion. Outside India, Egypt, Java, and a few lesser
spots, there is scarcely a brown land where natural improvements such as
irrigation would not open up extensive settlement areas. Mesopotamia
alone, now almost uninhabited, might support a vast population, while
Persia could nourish several times its present inhabitants.

India, to be sure, is almost as congested as China, and the spectre of the
Indian coolie has lately alarmed white lands like Canada and South Africa
almost as much as the Chinese coolie has done. But an independent India
would fall under the same political blight as the rest of the brown
world--the blight of internecine dissensions and wars. The brown world's
present growing solidarity is not a positive but a negative phenomenon. It
is an alliance, against a common foe, of traditional enemies who, once the
bond was loosed in victory, would inevitably quarrel among themselves.
Turk would fly at Arab and Turkoman at Persian, as of yore, while India
would become a welter of contending Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Gurkhas, and
heaven knows what, until perchance disciplined anew by the pressure of a
Yellow Peril. In Western Asia it is possible that the spiritual and
cultural bonds of Islam might temper these struggles, but Western Asia is
precisely that part of the brown world where population-pressure is
absent. India, the overpeopled brown land, would undergo such a cycle of
strife as would devour its human surplus and render distant aggressions
impossible.

A potential brown menace to white race-areas would, indeed, arise in case
of a brown-yellow alliance against the white peoples. But such an alliance
could occur only in the first stages of a pan-colored war of liberation
while the pressure of white world-predominance was still keenly felt and
before the divisive tendencies within the brown world had begun to take
effect.

Short of such an alliance (wherein the browns would abet the yellows'
aggressive, racial objectives in return for yellow support of their own
essentially defensive, political ends), the brown world's emancipation
from white domination would apparently not result in more than local
pressures on white race-areas. It would, however, affect another sphere of
white political control--black Africa. The emancipation of brown, Islamic
North Africa would inevitably send a sympathetic thrill through every
portion of the Dark Continent and would stir both Mohammedan and pagan
negroes against white rule. Islam is, in fact, the intimate link between
the brown and black worlds. But this subject, with its momentous
implications, will be discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

BLACK MAN'S LAND

Black Man's Land is primarily Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Here
dwell the bulk of all the 150,000,000 black men on earth. The negro and
negroid population of Africa is estimated at about
120,000,000--four-fifths of the black race-total. Besides its African
nucleus the black race has two distant outposts: the one in Australasia,
the other in the Americas. The Eastern blacks are found mainly in the
archipelagoes lying between the Asiatic land-mass and Australia. They are
the Oriental survivors of the black belt which in very ancient times
stretched uninterruptedly from Africa across southern Asia to the Pacific
Ocean. The Asiatic blacks were overwhelmed by other races ages ago, and
only a few wild tribes like the "Negritos" of the Philippines and the
jungle-dwellers of Indo-China and southern India survive as genuine
negroid stocks. All the peoples of southern Asia, however, are darkened by
this ancient negroid strain. The peoples of south India are notably tinged
with black blood. As for the pure blacks of the Australasian
archipelagoes, they are so few in numbers (about 3,000,000) and so low in
type that they are of negligible importance. Quite otherwise are the
blacks of the Far West. In the western hemisphere there are some
25,000,000 persons of more or less mixed black blood, brought thither in
modern times as slaves by the white conquerors of the New World. Still,
whatever may be the destiny of these transplanted black folk, the black
man's chief significance, from the world aspect, must remain bound up with
the great nucleus of negro population in the African homeland.

Black Africa, as I have said, lies south of the Sahara Desert. Here the
negro has dwelt for unnumbered ages. The key-note of black history, like
yellow history, has been isolation. Cut off from the Mediterranean by the
desert which he had no means of crossing, and bounded elsewhere by oceans
which he had no skill in navigating, the black man vegetated in savage
obscurity, his habitat being well named the "Dark Continent."

Until the white tide began breaking on its sea-fronts four centuries ago,
the black world's only external stimuli had come from brown men landing on
its eastern coasts or ascending the valley of the Nile. As time passed,
both brown and white pressures became more intense, albeit the browns long
led in the process of penetration. Advancing from the east and trickling
across the desert from the north, Arab or Arabized adventurers conquered
black Africa to the equator; and this political subjugation had also a
racial side, for the conquerors sowed their blood freely and set a
brownish stamp on many regions. As for the whites, they long remained mere
birds of passage. Half a century ago they possessed little more than
trading-posts along the littorals, their only real settlement lying in the
extreme south.

Then, suddenly, all was changed. In the closing decades of the nineteenth
century, Europe turned its gaze full upon the Dark Continent, and within a
generation Africa was partitioned between the European Powers. Negro and
Arab alike fell under European domination. Only minute Liberia and remote
Abyssinia retained a qualified independence. Furthermore, white settlement
also made distinct progress. The tropical bulk of Africa defied white
colonization, but the continent's northern and southern extremities were
climatically "white man's country." Accordingly, there are to-day nearly a
million whites settled along the Algerian and Tunisian seaboard, while in
South Africa, Dutch and British blood has built up a powerful commonwealth
containing fully one and one-half million white souls. In Africa, unlike
Asia, the European has taken root, and has thus gained at least local
tenures of a fundamental nature.

The crux of the African problem therefore resolves itself into the
question whether the white man, through consolidated racial holds north
and south, will be able to perpetuate his present political control over
the intermediate continental mass which climate debars him from
populating. This is a matter of great importance, for Africa is a land of
enormous potential wealth, the natural source of Europe's tropical raw
materials and foodstuffs. Whether Europe is to retain possession depends,
in the last analysis, on the character of the inhabitants. It is, then,
to the nature of the black man and his connection with the brown world
that we must direct our attention.

From the first glance we see that, in the negro, we are in the presence of
a being differing profoundly not merely from the white man but also from
those human types which we discovered in our surveys of the brown and
yellow worlds. The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the
other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal
vitality. In this he easily surpasses all other races. To it he owes his
intense emotionalism. To it, again, is due his extreme fecundity, the
negro being the quickest of breeders. This abounding vitality shows in
many other ways, such as the negro's ability to survive harsh conditions
of slavery under which other races have soon succumbed. Lastly, in ethnic
crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood,
once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again.

Negro fecundity is a prime factor in Africa's future. In the savage state
which until recently prevailed, black multiplication was kept down by a
wide variety of checks. Both natural and social causes combined to
maintain an extremely high death-rate. The negro's political ineptitude,
never rising above the tribal concept, kept black Africa a mosaic of
peoples, warring savagely among themselves and widely addicted to
cannibalism. Then, too, the native religions were usually sanguinary,
demanding a prodigality of human sacrifices. The killings ordained by
negro wizards and witch-doctors sometimes attained unbelievable
proportions. The combined result of all this was a wastage of life which
in other races would have spelled a declining population. Since the
establishment of white political control, however, these checks on black
fecundity are no longer operative. The white rulers fight filth and
disease, stop tribal wars, and stamp out superstitious abominations. In
consequence, population increases by leaps and bounds, the latent
possibilities being shown in the native reservations in South Africa,
where tribes have increased as much as tenfold in fifty or sixty years. It
is therefore practically certain that the African negroes will multiply
prodigiously in the next few decades.

Now, what will be the attitude of these augmenting black masses toward
white political dominion? To that momentous query no certain answer can be
made. One thing, however, seems clear: the black world's reaction to white
ascendancy will be markedly different from those of the brown and yellow
worlds, because of the profound dissimilarities between negroes and men of
other stocks. To begin with, the black peoples have no historic pasts.
Never having evolved civilizations of their own, they are practically
devoid of that accumulated mass of beliefs, thoughts, and experiences
which render Asiatics so, impenetrable and so hostile to white influences.
Although the white race displays sustained constructive power to an
unrivalled degree, particularly in its Nordic branches, the brown and
yellow peoples have contributed greatly to the civilization of the world
and have profoundly influenced human progress. The negro, on the contrary,
has contributed virtually nothing. Left to himself, he remained a savage,
and in the past his only quickening has been where brown men have imposed
their ideas and altered his blood. The originating powers of the European
and the Asiatic are not in him.

This lack of constructive originality, however, renders the negro
extremely susceptible to external influences. The Asiatic, conscious of
his past and his potentialities, is chary of foreign innovations and
refuses to recognize alien superiority. The negro, having no past,
welcomes novelty and tacitly admits that others are his masters. Both
brown and white men have been so accepted in Africa. The relatively faint
resistance offered by the naturally brave blacks to white and brown
conquest, the ready reception of Christianity and Islam, and the
extraordinary personal ascendancy acquired by individual Arabs and
Europeans, all indicate a willingness to accept foreign tutelage which in
the Asiatic is wholly absent.

The Arab and the European are, in fact, rivals for the mastership of black
Africa. The Arab had a long start, but the European suddenly overtook him
and brought not only the blacks but the African Arabs themselves under his
sway. It remains to be seen whether the Arab, allying himself with the
blacks, can oust his white rival. That some such move will be attempted,
in view of the brown world's renaissance in general and the extraordinary
activity of the Arab peoples in particular, seems a foregone conclusion.
How the matter will work out depends on three things: (1) the brown man's
inherent strength in Africa; (2) the possibilities of black disaffection
against white tutelage; (3) the white man's strength and power of
resistance.

The seat of brown power in Africa is of course the great belt of territory
north of the Sahara. From Egypt to Morocco the inhabitants are Arabized in
culture and Mohammedan in faith, while Arab blood has percolated ever
since the Moslem conquest twelve centuries ago. In the eastern half of
this zone Arabization has been complete, and Egypt, Tripoli, and the Sudan
can be considered as unalterably wedded to the brown Islamic world. The
zone's western half, however, is in different case. The majority of its
inhabitants are Berbers, an ancient stock generally considered white, with
close affinities to the Latin peoples across the Mediterranean. As usual,
blood tells. The Berbers have been under Arab tutelage for over a thousand
years, yet their whole manner of life remains distinct, they have largely
kept their language, and there has been comparatively little
intermarriage. Pure-blooded Arabs abound, but they are still, in a way,
foreigners. To-day the entire region is under white, French, rule.
Algeria, in particular, has been politically French for almost a hundred
years. Europeans have come in and number nearly a million souls. The Arab
element shows itself sullen and refractory, but the Berbers display much
less aversion to French rule, which, as usual, is considerate of native
susceptibilities. The French colonial authorities are alive to the
Berber's ethnic affinities and tactfully seek to stimulate his dormant
white consciousness. In Algeria intermarriage between Europeans and
Berbers has actually begun. Of course the process is merely in its first
stages. Still, the blood is there, the leaven is working, and in time
Northwest Africa may return to the white world, where it was in Roman days
and where it racially belongs. In the anti-European disturbances now
taking place in Algeria and Tunis it is safe to say that the Arab element
is making most of the trouble.

It is Northeast Africa, then, which is the real nucleus of Arabism. Here
Arabism and Islam rule unchecked, and in the preceding chapter we saw how
the Senussi Order was marshalling the fierce nomads of the desert. These
tribesmen are relatively few in numbers, but more splendid fighting
material does not exist in the wide world. Furthermore, the Arab-negroid
peoples which have developed along the southern edge of the desert so
blend the martial qualities of both strains that they frequently display
an almost demoniacal fighting-power. It is Pan-Islamism's hope to use
these Arab or Arabized fanatics as an officers' corps for the black
millions whom it is converting to the faith.

Concerning Islam's steady progress in black Africa there can be no shadow
of a doubt. Every candid European observer tells the same story.
"Mohammedanism," says Sir Charles Elliott, "can still give the natives a
motive for animosity against Europeans and a unity of which they are
otherwise incapable."[52] Twenty years ago another English observer, T. R.
Threlfall, wrote: "Mohammedanism is making marvellous progress in the
interior of Africa. It is crushing paganism out. Against it the Christian
propaganda is a myth.... The rapid spread of militant Mohammedanism among
the savage tribes to the north of the equator is a serious factor in the
fight for racial supremacy in Africa. With very few exceptions the colored
races of Africa are pre-eminently fighters. To them the law of the
stronger is supreme; they have been conquered, and in turn they conquered.
To them the fierce, warlike spirit inherent in Mohammedanism is infinitely
more attractive than is the gentle, peace-loving, high moral standard of
Christianity: hence, the rapid headway the former is making in central
Africa, and the certainty that it will soon spread to the south of the
Zambezi."[53]

The way in which Islam is marching southward is dramatically shown by a
recent incident. A few years ago the British authorities suddenly
discovered that Mohammedanism was pervading Nyassaland. An investigation
brought out the fact that it was the work of Zanzibar Arabs. They began
their propaganda about 1900. Ten years later almost every village in
southern Nyassaland had its Moslem teacher and its mosque-hut. Although
the movement was frankly anti-European, the British authorities did not
dare to check it for fear of repercussions elsewhere. Another interesting
fact, probably not unconnected, is that Nyassaland has lately been the
theatre of an anti-white "Christian" propaganda--the so-called "Ethiopian
Church," of which I shall presently speak.

Islam has thus two avenues of approach to the African negro--his natural
preference for a militant faith and his resentment at white tutelage. It
is the disinclination of the more martial African peoples for a pacific
creed which perhaps accounts for Christianity's slow progress among the
very warlike tribes of South Africa, such as the Zulus and the Matabele.
Islam is as yet unknown south of the Zambezi, but white men universally
dread the possibility of its appearance, fearing its effect upon the
natives. Of course Christianity has made distinct progress in the Dark
Continent. The natives of the South African Union are predominantly
Christianized. In east-central Africa Christianity has also gained many
converts, particularly in Uganda, while on the West African Guinea coast
Christian missions have long been established and have generally succeeded
in keeping Islam away from the seaboard. Certainly, all white men, whether
professing Christians or not, should welcome the success of missionary
efforts in Africa. The degrading fetishism and demonology which sum up the
native pagan cults cannot stand, and all negroes will some day be either
Christians or Moslems. In so far as he is Christianized, the negro's
savage instincts will be restrained and he will be disposed to acquiesce
in white tutelage. In so far as he is Islamized, the negro's warlike
propensities will be inflamed, and he will be used as the tool of Arab
Pan-Islamism seeking to drive the white man from Africa and make the
continent its very own.

As to specific anti-white sentiments among negroes untouched by Moslem
propaganda, such sentiments undoubtedly exist in many quarters. The
strongest manifestations are in South Africa, where interracial relations
are bad and becoming worse, but there is much diffused, half-articulate
dislike of white men throughout central Africa as well. Devoid though the
African savage is of either national or cultural consciousness, he could
not be expected to welcome a tutelage which imposed many irksome
restrictions upon him. Furthermore, the African negro does seem to possess
a certain rudimentary sense of race-solidarity. The existence of both
these sentiments is proved by the way in which the news of white military
reverses have at once been known and rejoiced in all over black Africa;
spread, it would seem, by those mysterious methods of communication
employed by negroes everywhere and called in our Southern States
"grape-vine telegraph." The Russo-Japanese War, for example, produced all
over the Dark Continent intensely exciting effects.

This generalized anti-white feeling has, during the past decade, taken
tangible form in South Africa. The white population of the Union, though
numbering 1,500,000, is surrounded by a black population four times as
great and increasing more rapidly, while in many sections the whites are
outnumbered ten to one. The result is a state of affairs exactly
paralleling conditions in our own South, the South African whites feeling
obliged to protect their ascendancy by elaborate legal regulations and
social taboos. The negroes have been rapidly growing more restive under
these discriminations, and unpleasant episodes like race-riots, rapings,
and lynchings are increasing in South Africa from year to year.

One of the most significant, not to say ominous, signs of the times is the
"Ethiopian Church" movement. The movement began about fifteen years ago,
some of its founders being Afro-American Methodist preachers--a fact which
throws a curious light on possible American negro reflexes upon their
ancestral homeland. The movement spread rapidly, many native mission
congregations cutting loose from white ecclesiastical control and joining
the negro organization. It also soon displayed frankly anti-white
tendencies, and the government became seriously alarmed at its unsettling
influence upon the native mind. It was suspected of having had a hand in
the Zulu rising which broke out in Natal in 1907 and which was put down
only after many whites and thousands of natives had lost their lives.
Shortly afterward the authorities outlawed the Ethiopian Church and
forbade Afro-American preachers to enter South Africa, but the movement,
though legally suppressed, lived surreptitiously on and appeared in new
quarters.

In 1915 a peculiarly fanatical form of Ethiopianism broke out in
Nyassaland. Its leader was a certain John Chilembwe, an Ethiopian preacher
who had been educated in the United States. His propaganda was bitterly
anti-white, asserting that Africa belonged to the black man, that the
white man was an intruder, and that he ought to be killed off until he
grew discouraged and abandoned the country. Chilembwe plotted a rising all
over Nyassaland, the killing of the white men, and the carrying off of the
white women. In January, 1915, the rising took place. Some plantations
were sacked and several whites killed, their heads being carried to
Chilembwe's "church," where a thanksgiving service for victory was held.
The whites, however, acted with great vigor, the poorly armed insurgents
were quickly scattered, and John Chilembwe himself was soon hunted down
and killed. In itself, the incident was of slight importance, but, taken
in connection with much else, it does not augur well for the future.[54]

An interesting indication of the growing sense of negro race-solidarity
was the "Pan-African Congress" held at Paris early in 1919. Here delegates
from black communities throughout the world gathered to discuss matters of
common interest. Most of the delegates were from Africa and the Americas,
but one delegate from New Guinea was also present, thus representing the
Australasian branch of the black race. The Congress was not largely
attended and was of a somewhat provisional character, but arrangements for
the holding of subsequent congresses were made.

Here, then, is the African problem's present status: To begin with, we
have a rapidly growing black population, increasingly restive under white
tutelage and continually excited by Pan-Islamic propaganda with the
further complication of another anti-white propaganda spread by negro
radicals from America.

The African situation is thus somewhat analogous to conditions in Asia.
But the analogy must not be pressed too far. In Asia white hegemony rests
solely on political bases, while the Asiatics themselves, browns and
yellows alike, display constructive power and possess civilizations built
up by their own efforts from the remote past. The Asiatics are to-day once
more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but
adapting, white ideas and methods. We behold an Asiatic _renaissance_,
whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that there have been
similar movements in past times.

None of this applies to Africa. The black race has never shown real
constructive power. It has never built up a native civilization. Such
progress as certain negro groups have made has been due to external
pressure and has never long outlived that pressure's removal, for the
negro, when left to himself, as in Haiti and Liberia, rapidly reverts to
his ancestral ways. The negro is a facile, even eager, imitator; but
there he stops. He adopts; but he does not adapt, assimilate, and give
forth creatively again.

The whole of history testifies to this truth. As the Englishman Meredith
Townsend says: "None of the black races, whether negro or Australian, have
shown within the historic time the capacity to develop civilization. They
have never passed the boundaries of their own habitats as conquerors, and
never exercised the smallest influence over peoples not black. They have
never founded a stone city, have never built a ship, have never produced a
literature, have never suggested a creed.... There seems to be no reason
for this except race. It is said that the negro has been buried in the
most 'massive' of the four continents, and has been, so to speak, lost to
humanity; but he was always on the Nile, the immediate road to the
Mediterranean, and in West and East Africa he was on the sea. Africa is
probably more fertile, and almost certainly richer than Asia, and is
pierced by rivers as mighty, and some of them at least as navigable. What
could a singularly healthy race, armed with a constitution which resists
the sun and defies malaria, wish for better than to be seated on the Nile,
or the Congo, or the Niger, in numbers amply sufficient to execute any
needed work, from the cutting of forests and the making of roads up to the
building of cities? How was the negro more secluded than the Peruvian; or
why was he 'shut up' worse than the Tartar of Samarcand, who one day shook
himself, gave up all tribal feuds, and, from the Sea of Okhotsk to the
Baltic and southward to the Nerbudda, mastered the world?... The negro
went by himself far beyond the Australian savage. He learned the use of
fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the value of shelter, the use of
the bow and the canoe, and the good of clothes; but there to all
appearances he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race like the
Arab, to advance another step."[55]

Unless, then, every lesson of history is to be disregarded, we must
conclude that black Africa is unable to stand alone. The black man's
numbers may increase prodigiously and acquire alien veneers, but the black
man's nature will not change. Black unrest may grow and cause much
trouble. Nevertheless, the white man must stand fast in Africa. No black
"renaissance" impends, and Africa, if abandoned by the whites, would
merely fall beneath the onset of the browns. And that would be a great
calamity. As stated in the preceding chapter, the brown peoples, of
themselves, do not directly menace white race-areas, while Pan-Islamism is
at present an essentially defensive movement. But Islam is militant by
nature, and the Arab is a restless and warlike breed. Pan-Islamism once
possessed of the Dark Continent and fired by militant zealots, might forge
black Africa into a sword of wrath, the executor of sinister adventures.

Fortunately the white man has every reason for keeping a firm hold on
Africa. Not only are its central tropics prime sources of raw materials
and foodstuffs which white direction can alone develop, but to north and
south the white man has struck deep roots into the soil. Both extremities
of the continent are "white man's country," where strong white peoples
should ultimately arise. Two of the chief white Powers, Britain and
France, are pledged to the hilt in this racial task and will spare no
effort to safeguard the heritage of their pioneering children. Brown
influence in Africa is strong, but it is supreme only in the northeast and
its line of communication with the Asiatic homeland runs over the narrow
neck of Suez. Should stern necessity arise, the white world could hold
Suez against Asiatic assault and crush brown resistance in Africa.

In short, the real danger to white control of Africa lies, not in brown
attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness through chronic
discord within the white world itself. And that subject must be reserved
for later chapters.

CHAPTER V

RED MAN'S LAND

Red Man's Land is the Americas between the Rio Grande and the tropic of
Capricorn. Here dwells the "Amerindian" race. At the time of Columbus the
whole western hemisphere was theirs, but the white man has extirpated or
absorbed them to north and south, so that to-day the United States and
Canada in North America and the southern portions of South America are
genuine "white man's country." In the intermediate zone above mentioned,
however, the Amerindian has survived and forms the majority of the
population, albeit considerably mixed with white and to a lesser degree
with negro blood. The total number of "Indians," including both
full-bloods and mixed types, is about 40,000,000--more than two-thirds of
the whole population. In addition, there are several million negroes and
mulattoes, mostly in Brazil. The white population of the intermediate
zone, even if we include "near-whites," does not average more than 10 per
cent, though it varies greatly with different regions. The reader should
remember that neither the West India Islands nor the southern portion of
the South American continent are included in this generalization. In the
West Indies the Amerindian has completely died out and has been replaced
by the negro, while southern South America, especially Argentina and
Uruguay, are genuine white man's country in which there is little Indian
and no negro blood. Despite these exceptions, however, the fact remains
that, taken as a whole, "Latin America," the vast land-block from the Rio
Grande to Cape Horn, is racially not "Latin" but Amerindian or negroid,
with a thin Spanish or Portuguese veneer. In other words, though commonly
considered part of the white world, most of Latin America is ethnically
colored man's land, which has been growing more colored for the past
hundred years.

Latin America's evolution was predetermined by the Spanish Conquest. That
very word "conquest" tells the story. The United States was _settled_ by
colonists planning homes and bringing their women. It was thus a genuine
migration, and resulted in a full transplanting of white stock to new
soil. The Indians encountered were wild nomads, fierce of temper and few
in number. After sharp conflicts they were extirpated, leaving virtually
no ethnic traces behind. The colonization of Latin America was the exact
antithesis. The Spanish _Conquistadores_ were bold warriors descending
upon vast regions inhabited by relatively dense populations, some of
which, as in Mexico and Peru, had attained a certain degree of
civilization. The Spaniards, invincible in their shining armor, paralyzed
with terror these people still dwelling in the age of bronze and polished
stone. With ridiculous ease mere handfuls of whites overthrew empires and
lorded it like gods over servile and adoring multitudes. Cortez marched
on Mexico with less than 600 followers, while Pizarro had but 310
companions when he started his conquest of Peru. Of course the fabulous
treasures amassed in these exploits drew swarms of bold adventurers from
Spain. Nevertheless, their numbers were always infinitesimal compared with
the vastness of the quarry, while the proportion of women immigrants
continued to lag far behind that of the men. The breeding of pure whites
in Latin America was thus both scanty and slow.

On the other hand, the breeding of mixed-bloods began at once and attained
notable proportions. Having slaughtered the Indian males or brigaded them
in slave-gangs, the Conquistadores took the Indian women to themselves.
The humblest man-at-arms had several female attendants, while the leaders
became veritable pashas with great harems of concubines. The result was a
prodigious output of half-breed children, known as "mestizos" or "cholos."

And soon a new ethnic complication was added. The Indians having developed
a melancholy trick of dying off under slavery, the Spaniards imported
African negroes to fill the servile ranks, and since they took negresses
as well as Indian women for concubines, other
half-breeds--mulattoes--appeared. Here and there Indians and negroes mated
on their own account, the offspring being known as "zambos." In time these
various hybrids bred among themselves, producing the most extraordinary
ethnic combinations. As Garcia-Calderon well puts it: "Grotesque
generations with every shade of complexion and every conformation of
skull were born in America--a crucible continually agitated by unheard-of
fusions of races.... But there was little Latin blood to be found in the
homes formed by the sensuality of the first conquerors of a desolated
America."[56]

To be sure, this mongrel population long remained politically negligible.
The Spaniards regarded themselves as a master-caste, and excluded all save
pure whites from civic rights and social privileges. In fact, the
European-born Spaniards refused to recognize even their colonial-born
kinsmen as their equals, and "Creoles"[57] could not aspire to the higher
distinctions or offices. This attitude was largely inspired by the desire
to maintain a lucrative monopoly. Yet the European's sense of superiority
had some valid grounds. There can be no doubt that the Creole whites, as a
class, showed increasing signs of degeneracy. Climate was a prime cause in
the hotter regions, but there were many plateau areas, as in Colombia,
Mexico, and Peru, which though geographically in the tropics had a
temperate climate from their elevation.

Even more than by climate the Creole was injured by contact with the
colored races. Pampered and corrupted from birth by obsequious slaves, the
Creole usually led an idle and vapid existence, disdaining work as
servile and debarred from higher callings by his European-born superiors.
As time passed, the degeneracy due to climate and custom was intensified
by degeneracy of blood. Despite legal enactment and social taboo, colored
strains percolated insidiously into the creole stock. The leading
families, by elaborate precautions, might succeed in keeping their
escutcheons clean, but humbler circles darkened significantly despite
fervid protestations of "pure-white" blood. Still, so long as Spain kept
her hold on Latin America, the process of miscegenation, socially
considered, was a slow one. The whole social system was based on the idea
of white superiority, and the colors were carefully graded. "In America,"
wrote Humboldt toward the close of Spanish rule, "the more or less white
skin determines the position which a man holds in society."[58]

The revolution against Spain had momentous consequences for the racial
future of Latin America. In the beginning, to be sure, it was a white
civil war--a revolt of the Creoles against European oppression and
discrimination. The heroes of the revolution--Bolívar, Miranda, San
Martín, and the rest--were aristocrats of pure-white blood. But the
revolution presently developed new features. To begin with, the struggle
was very long. Commencing in 1809, it lasted almost twenty years. The
whites were decimated by fratricidal fury, and when the Spanish cause was
finally lost, multitudes of loyalists mainly of the superior social
classes left the country. Meanwhile, the half-castes, who had rallied
wholesale to the revolutionary banner, were demanding their reward. The
Creoles wished to close the revolutionary cycle and establish a new
society based, like the old, upon white supremacy, with themselves
substituted for the Spaniards. Bolívar planned a limited monarchy and a
white electoral oligarchy. But this was far from suiting the half-castes.
For them the revolution had just begun. Raising the cry of "democracy,"
then become fashionable through the North American and French revolutions,
they proclaimed the doctrine of "equality" regardless of skin.
Disillusioned and full of foreboding, Bolívar, the master-spirit of the
revolution, disappeared from the scene, and his lieutenants, like the
generals of Alexander, quarrelled among themselves, split Latin America
into jarring fragments, and waged a long series of internecine wars. The
flood-gates of anarchy were opened, the result being a steady weakening of
the whites and a corresponding rise of the half-castes in the political
and social scale. Everywhere ambitious soldiers led the mongrel mob
against the white aristocracy, breaking its power and making themselves
dictators. These "caudillos" were apostles of equality and miscegenation.
Says Garcia-Calderon: "Tyrants found democracies; they lean on the support
of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the oligarchies; they
dominate the colonial nobility, favor the crossing of races, and free the
slaves."[59]

The consequences of all this were lamentable in the extreme. Latin
America's level of civilization fell far below that of colonial days.
Spanish rule, though narrow and tyrannical, had maintained peace and
social stability. Now all was a hideous chaos wherein frenzied castes and
colors grappled to the death. Ignorant mestizos and brutal negroes
trampled the fine flowers of culture under foot, while as by a malignant
inverse selection the most intelligent and the most cultivated perished.

These deplorable conditions prevailed in Latin America until well past the
middle of the nineteenth century. Of course, here as elsewhere, anarchy
engendered tyranny, and strong caudillos sometimes perpetuated their
dictatorship for decades, as in Paraguay under Doctor Francia and in
Mexico under Porfirio Diaz. However, these were mere interludes, of no
constructive import. Always the aging lion lost his grip, the lurking
hyenas of anarchy downed him at last, and the land sank once more into
revolutionary chaos. Some parts of Latin America did, indeed, definitely
emerge into the light of stable progress. But those favored regions owed
their deliverance, not to dictatorship, but to race. One of two factors
always operated: either (1) an efficient white oligarchy; or (2)
Aryanization through wholesale European immigration.

Stabilization through oligarchy is best illustrated by Chile. Chilean
history differs widely from that of the rest of Latin America. A land of
cool climate, no gold, and warlike Araucanian Indians, Chile attracted
the pioneering settler rather than the swashbuckling seeker of
treasure-trove. Now the pioneering types in Spain come mainly from those
northern provinces which have retained considerable Nordic blood. The
Chilean colonists were thus largely blond Asturians or austere, reasonable
Basques, seeking homes and bringing their women. Of course there was
crossing with the natives, but the fierce Araucanian aborigines clung to
their wild freedom and kept up an interminable frontier warfare in which
the occasions for race-mixture were relatively few. The country was thus
settled by a resident squirearchy of an almost English type. This ruling
gentry jealously guarded its racial integrity. In fact, it possessed not
merely a white but a Nordic race-consciousness. The Chilean gentry called
themselves sons of the Visigoths, scions of Euric and Pelayo, who had
found in remote Araucania a chance to slake their racial thirst for
fighting and freedom.

In Chile, as elsewhere, the revolution provoked a cycle of disorder. But
the cycle was short, and was more a political struggle between white
factions than a social welter of caste and race. Furthermore, Chile was
receiving fresh accessions of Nordic blood. Many English, Scotch, and
Irish gentleman-adventurers, taking part in the War of Independence,
settled down in a land so reminiscent of their own. Germans also came in
considerable numbers, settling especially in the colder south. Thus the
Chilean upper classes, always pure white, became steadily more Nordic in
ethnic character. The political and social results were unmistakable.
Chile rapidly evolved a stable society, essentially oligarchic and
consciously patterned on aristocratic England. Efficient, practical, and
extremely patriotic, the Chilean oligarchs made their country at once the
most stable and the most dynamic factor in Latin America.

The distinctly "Northern" character of Chile and the Chileans strike
foreign observers. Here, for example, are the impressions of a recent
visitor, the North American sociologist, Professor E. A. Ross. Landing at
the port of Valparaiso, he is "struck by signs of English influence. On
the commercial streets every third man suggests the Briton, while a large
proportion of the business people look as if they have their daily tub.
The cleanliness of the streets, the freshness of the parks and squares,
the dressing of the shop-windows, and the style of the mounted police
remind one of England."[60] As to the Nordic affinities of the upper
classes: "One sees it in stature, eye color, and ruddy complexion....
Among the pupils of Santiago College there are as many blonds as
brunets."[61] Even among the peon or "roto" class, despite considerable
Indian crossing, Professor Ross noted the strong Nordic strain, for he met
Chilean peasants "whose stature, broad shoulders, big faces, and tawny
mustaches proclaimed them as genuine Norsemen as the Icelanders in our
Red River Valley."[62]

Chile is thus the prime example of social stability and progress attained
through white oligarchic rule. Other, though less successful, instances
are to be noted in Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Peru and Colombia,
though geographically within the tropics, have extensive temperate
plateaux. Here numerous whites settled during the colonial period, forming
an upper caste over a large Indian population. Unlike Chile, few Nordics
came to leaven society with those qualities of constructive genius and
racial self-respect which are the special birthright of Nordic man. Unlike
Chile again, not only were there dense Indian masses, but there was also
an appreciable negro element. Lastly, the number of mixed-bloods was very
large. It is thus not surprising that for both Peru and Colombia the
revolution ushered in a period of turmoil from which neither have even yet
emerged. The whites have consistently fought among themselves, invoking
the half-castes as auxiliaries and using Indians and negroes as their
pawns. The whites are still the dominant element, but only the first
families retain their pure blood, and miscegenation creeps upward with
every successive generation. As for Costa Rica, it is a tiny bit of cool
hill-country, settled by whites in colonial times, and to-day rises an
oasis of civilization, above the tropic jungle of degenerate, mongrel
Central America.

The second method of social stabilization in Latin America--Aryanization
through wholesale European immigration--is exemplified by Argentina and
Uruguay. Neither of these lands had very promising beginnings. Their
populations, at the revolution, contained strong Indian infusions and
traces of negro blood, while after the revolution both fell under the sway
of tyrannical dictators who persecuted the white aristocrats and favored
miscegenation. However, Argentina and Uruguay possessed two notable
advantages: they were climatically white man's country, and they at first
contained a very small population. Since they produced neither gold nor
tropical luxuries, Spain had neglected them, so that at the revolution
they consisted of little more than the port-towns of Buenos Aires and
Montevideo with a few dependent river-settlements. Their vast hinterlands
of fertile prairie then harbored only wandering tribes of nomad savages.

During the last half of the nineteenth century, however, the development
of ocean transport gave these antipodean prairies value as stock-raising
and grain-growing sources for congested Europe, and Europe promptly sent
immigrants to supply her needs. This immigrant stream gradually swelled to
a veritable deluge. The human tide was, on the whole, of sound stock,
mostly Spaniards and north Italians, with some Nordic elements from
northern Europe in the upper strata. Thus Europe locked antipodean America
securely to the white world. As for the colonial stock, it merged easily
into the newer, kindred flood. Here and there signs of former
miscegenation still show, the Argentino being sometimes, as Madison Grant
well puts it, "suspiciously swarthy."[63] Nevertheless, these are but
vestigial traces which the ceaseless European inflow will ultimately
eradicate. The large impending German immigration to Argentina and Uruguay
should bring valuable Nordic elements.

This same tide of European immigration has likewise pretty well Aryanized
the southern provinces of Brazil, adjacent to the Uruguayan border. Those
provinces were neglected by Portugal as Argentina and Uruguay were by
Spain, and half a century ago they had a very sparse population. To-day
they support millions of European immigrants, mostly Italians and European
Portuguese, but with the further addition of nearly half a million
Germans. Brazil is, in fact, evolving into two racially distinct
communities. The southern provinces are white man's country, with little
Indian or negro blood, and with a distinct "color line." The tropical
north is saturated with Indian and negro strains, and the whites are
rapidly disappearing in a universal mongrelization. Ultimately this must
produce momentous political consequences.

Bearing in mind the exceptions above noted, let us now observe the vast
tropical and semi-tropical bulk of Latin America. Here we find notable
changes since colonial days. White predominance is substantially a thing
of the past. Persons of unmixed Spanish or Portuguese descent are
relatively few, most of the so-called "whites" being really _near_-whites,
more or less deeply tinged with colored bloods. It is a striking token of
white race-prestige that these near-whites, despite their degeneracy and
inefficiency, are yet the dominant element; occupying, in fact, much the
same status as the aristocratic Creoles immediately after the War of
Independence. Nevertheless, the near-whites' supremacy is now threatened.
Every decade of chronic anarchy favors the darker half-breeds, while below
these, in turn, the Indian and negro full-bloods are beginning to stir, as
in Mexico to-day.

Most informed observers agree that the mixed-bloods of Latin America are
distinctly inferior to the whites. This applies to both mestizos and
mulattoes, albeit the mestizo (the cross between white and Indian) seems
less inferior than the mulatto--the cross between white and black. As for
the zambo, the Indian-negro cross, everybody is agreed that it is a very
bad one. Analyses of these hybrid stocks show remarkable similarities to
the mongrel chaos of the declining Roman Empire. Here is the judgment of
Garcia-Calderon, a Peruvian scholar and generally considered the most
authoritative writer on Latin America. "The racial question," he writes,
"is a very serious problem in American history. It explains the progress
of certain peoples and the decadence of others, and it is the key to the
incurable disorder which divides America. Upon it depend a great number
of secondary phenomena; the public wealth, the industrial system, the
stability of governments, the solidity of patriotism.... This complication
of castes, this admixture of diverse bloods, has created many problems.
For example, is the formation of a national consciousness possible with
such disparate elements? Would such heterogeneous democracies be able to
resist the invasion of superior races? Finally, is the South American
half-caste absolutely incapable of organization and culture?"[64] While
qualifying his answers to these queries, Garcia-Calderon yet deplores the
half-caste's "decadence."[65] "In the Iberian democracies," he says, "an
inferior Latinity, a Latinity of the decadence, prevails; verbal
abundance, inflated rhetoric, oratorical exaggeration, just as in Roman
Spain.... The half-caste loves grace, verbal elegance, quibbles even, and
artistic form; great passions and desires do not move him. In religion he
is sceptical, indifferent, and in politics he disputes in the Byzantine
manner. No one could discover in him a trace of his Spanish forefather,
stoical and adventurous."[66] Garcia-Calderon therefore concludes: "The
mixture of rival castes, Iberians, Indians, and negroes, has generally had
disastrous consequences.... None of the conditions established by the
French psychologists are realized by the Latin American democracies, and
their populations are therefore degenerate. The lower castes struggle
successfully against the traditional rules: the order which formerly
existed is followed by moral anarchy; solid conviction by a superficial
scepticism; and the Castilian tenacity by indecision. The black race is
doing its work, and the continent is returning to its primitive
barbarism."[67] This melancholy fate can, according to Garcia-Calderon, be
averted only by wholesale white immigration: "In South America
civilization is dependent upon the numerical predominance of the
victorious Spaniard, on the triumph of the white man over the mulatto, the
negro, and the Indian. Only a plentiful European immigration can
re-establish the shattered equilibrium of the American races."[68]

Garcia-Calderon's pronouncements are echoed by foreign observers. During
his South American travels Professor Ross noted the same melancholy
symptoms and pointed out the same unique remedy. Speaking of Ecuador, he
says: "I found no foreigners who have faith in the future of this people.
They point out that while this was a Spanish colony there was a continual
flow of immigrants from Spain, many of whom, no doubt, were men of force.
Political separation interrupted this current, and since then the country
has really gone back. Spain had provided a ruling, organizing element,
and, with the cessation of the flow of Spaniards, the mixed-bloods took
charge of things, for the pure-white element is so small as to be
negligible. No one suggests that the mestizos equal the white stock either
in intellect or in character.... Among the rougher foreigners and
Peruvians the pet name for these people is 'monkeys.' The thoughtful often
liken them to Eurasians, clever enough, but lacking in solidity of
character. Natives and foreigners alike declare that a large white
immigration is the only hope for Ecuador."[69]

Concerning Bolivia, Professor Ross writes: "The wisest sociologist in
Bolivia told me that the zambo, resulting from the union of Indian with
negro, is inferior to both the parent races, and that likewise the mestizo
is inferior to both white and Indian in physical strength, resistance to
disease, longevity, and brains. The failure of the South American
republics has been due, he declares, to mestizo domination. Through the
colonial period there was a flow of Spaniards to the colonies, and all the
offices down to _corregidor_ and _cura_ were filled by white men. With
independence, the whites ceased coming, and the lower offices of state and
church were filled with mestizos. Then, too, the first crossing of white
with Indian gave a better result than the union between mestizos, so that
the stock has undergone progressive degeneration. The only thing, then,
that can make these countries progress is a large white immigration,
something much talked about by statesmen in all these countries, but which
has never materialized."[70]

These judgments refer particularly to Spanish America. Regarding
Portuguese Brazil, however, the verdict seems to be the same. Many years
ago Professor Agassiz wrote: "Let any one who doubts the evil of this
mixture of races, and is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down
all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the
deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more wide-spread
here than in any country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the
best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a
mongrel, nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy."[71]

The mongrel's political ascendancy produces precisely the results which
might have been expected. These unhappy beings, every cell of whose bodies
is a battle-ground of jarring heredities, express their souls in acts of
hectic violence and aimless instability. The normal state of tropical
America is anarchy, restrained only by domestic tyrants or foreign
masters. Garcia-Calderon exactly describes its psychology when he writes:
"Precocious, sensual, impressionable, the Americans of these vast
territories devote their energies to local politics. Industry, commerce,
and agriculture are in a state of decay, and the unruly imagination of the
Creole expends itself in constitutions, programmes, and lyrical
discourses; in these regions anarchy is sovereign mistress."[72] The
tropical republics display, indeed, a tendency toward "atomic
disintegration.... Given to dreaming, they are led by presidents suffering
from neurosis."[73]

The stock feature of the mongrel tropics is, of course, the "revolution."
These senseless and perennial outbursts are often ridiculed in the United
States as comic opera, but the grim truth of the matter is that few Latin
American revolutions are laughing matters. The numbers of men engaged may
not be very large according to our standards, but measured by the scanty
populations of the countries concerned, they lay a heavy blood-tax on the
suffering peoples. The tatterdemalion "armies" may excite our mirth, but
the battles are real enough, often fought out to the death with
razor-edged machetes and rusty bayonets, and there is no more ghastly
sight than a Latin American battle-field. The commandeerings, burnings,
rapings, and assassinations inflicted upon the hapless civilian population
cry to heaven. There is always wholesale destruction of property,
frequently appalling loss of life, and a general paralysis of economic and
social activity. These wretched lands have now been scourged by the
revolutionary plague for a hundred years, and W. B. Hale does not
overstate the consequences when he says: "Most of the countries clustering
about the Caribbean have sunk into deeper and deeper mires of misrule,
unmatched for profligacy and violence anywhere on earth. Revolution
follows revolution; one band of brigands succeeds another; atrocities
revenge atrocities; the plundered people grow more and more abject in
poverty and slavishness; vast natural resources lie neglected, while
populations decrease, civilization recedes, and the jungle advances."[74]
Of course, under these frightful circumstances, the national character,
weak enough at best, degenerates at an ever-quickening pace. Peaceful
effort of any sort appears vain and ridiculous, and men are taught that
wealth is procurable only by violence and extortion.

Another important point should be noted. I have said that Latin American
anarchy was restrained by dictatorship. But the reader must not infer that
dictatorships are halcyon times--for the dictated. On the contrary, they
are usually only a trifle less wretched and demoralizing than times of
revolution. The "caudillos" are nearly always very sinister figures. Often
they are ignorant brutes; oftener they are blood-thirsty, lecherous
monsters; oftenest they are human spiders who suck the land dry of all
fluid wealth, banking it abroad against the day when they shall fly before
the revolutionary blast to the safe haven of Paris and the congenial
debaucheries of Montmartre. The millions amassed by tyrants like Castro of
Venezuela and Zelaya of Nicaragua are almost beyond belief, considering
the backward, bankrupt lands they have "administered."

Yet how can it be otherwise? Consider Critchfield's incisive account of a
caudillo's accession to power: "When an ignorant and brutal man, whose
entire knowledge of the world is confined to a few Indian villages, and
whose total experience has been gained in the raising of cattle, doffs his
_alpagartes_, and, machete in hand, cuts his way to power in a few weeks,
with a savage horde at his back who know nothing of the amenities of
civilization and care less than they know--when such a man comes to
power, evil and evil only can result. Even if the new dictator were
well-intentioned, his entire ignorance of law and constitutional forms, of
commercial processes and manufacturing arts, and of the fundamental and
necessary principles underlying all stable and free governments, would
render a successful administration by him extremely difficult, if not
impossible. But he is surrounded by all the elements of vice and flattery,
and he is imbued with that vain and absurd egotism which makes men of
small caliber imagine themselves to be Napoleons or Cæsars. Thus do petty
despotisms, unrestrained by constitutional provisions or by anything like
a virile public opinion, lead from absurdity to outrage and crime."[75]

Such is the situation in mongrel-ruled America: revolution breeding
revolution, tyranny breeding tyranny, and the twain combining to ruin
their victims and force them ever deeper into the slough of degenerate
barbarism. The whites have lost their grip and are rapidly disappearing.
The mixed-breeds have had their chance and have grotesquely failed. The
oft-quoted panacea--white immigration--is under present conditions a vain
dream, for white immigrants will not expose themselves (and still less
their women) to the horrors of mongrel rule. So far, their, as internal
factors are concerned, anarchy seems destined to continue unchecked.

In fact, new conflicts loom on the horizon. The Indian masses, so docile
to the genuine white man, begin to stir. The aureole of white prestige has
been besmirched by the near-whites and half-castes who have traded so
recklessly upon its sanctions. Strong in the poise of normal heredity, the
Indian full-blood commences to despise these chaotic masters who turn his
homelands into bear-gardens and witches' sabbaths. An "Indianista"
movement is to-day on foot throughout mongrel-ruled America. It is most
pronounced in Mexico, whose interminable agony becomes more and more a war
of Indian resurgence, but it is also starting along the west coast of
South America. Long ago, wise old Professor Pearson saw how the wind was
blowing. Noting how whites and near-whites were "everywhere fighting and
intriguing for the spoils of office," he also noted that the Indian
masses, though relatively passive and "seemingly unobservant," were yet
"conquering a place for themselves in other ways than by increasing and
multiplying," and he concluded: "the general level of the autochthonous
race is being raised; it is acquiring riches and self-respect, and must
sooner or later get the country back into its hands."[76] Recent visitors
to the South American west coast note the signs of Indian unrest. Some
years ago Lord Bryce remarked of Bolivia: "There have been Indian risings,
and firearms are more largely in their hands than formerly. They so
preponderate in numbers that any movement which united them against the
upper class might, could they find a leader, have serious
consequences."[77] Still more recently Professor Ross wrote concerning
Peru: "In Cuzco I met a gentleman of education and travel who is said to
be the only living lineal descendant of the Incas. He has great influence
with the native element and voices their bitterness and their aspirations.
He declares that the politics of Peru is a struggle between the Spanish
mestizos of Lima and the coast and the natives of Cuzco and the interior,
and predicts an uprising unless Cuzco is made the capital of the nation.
He even dreams of a Kechua republic, with Cuzco as its capital and the
United States its guarantor, as she is guarantor of the Cuban
republic."[78] And of Bolivia, Professor Ross writes: "Lately there has
been a general movement of the Bolivian Indians for the recovery of the
lands of which they have been robbed piecemeal. Conflicts have broken out
and, although the government has punished the ringleaders, there is a
feeling that, so long as the exploiting of the Indian goes on, Bolivians
are living 'in the crater of a slumbering volcano.'"[79]

Since the white man has gone and the Indian is preparing to wrest the
sceptre of authority from the mongrel's worthless hands, let us examine
this Indian race, to see what potentiality it possesses of restoring order
and initiating progress.

To begin with, there can be no doubt that the Indian is superior to the
negro. The negro, even when quickened by foreign influences, never built
up anything approaching a real civilization; whereas the Indian, though
entirely sundered from the rest of mankind, evolved genuine polities and
cultures like the Aztec of Mexico, the Inca of Peru, and the Maya of
Yucatan. The Indian thus possesses creative capacity to an appreciable
degree. However, that degree seems strictly limited. The researches of
archæologists have sadly discounted the glowing tales of the
Conquistadores, and the "Empires" of Mexico and Peru, though far from
contemptible, certainly rank well below the achievements of European and
Asiatic races in mediæval and even in classic times.

The Indian possesses notable stability and poise, but the very intensity
of these qualities fetters his progress and renders questionable his
ability to rise to the modern plane. His conservatism is immense. With
incredible tenacity he clings to his ancestral ways and exhibits a dull
indifference to alien innovation. Of course the Indian sub-races differ
considerably among themselves, but the same fundamental tendencies are
visible in all of them. Says Professor Ellsworth Huntington: "The Indians
are very backward. They are dull of mind and slow to adopt new ideas.
Perhaps in the future they will change, but the fact that they have been
influenced so little by four hundred years of contact with the white man
does not afford much ground for hope. Judging from the past, there is no
reason to think that their character is likely to change for many
generations.... Those who dwell permanently in the white man's cities are
influenced somewhat, but here as in other cases the general tendency seems
to be to revert to the original condition as soon as the special impetus
of immediate contact with the white man is removed."[80] And Lord Bryce
writes in similar vein: "With plenty of stability, they lack initiative.
They make steady soldiers, and fight well under white or mestizo leaders,
but one seldom hears of a pure Indian accomplishing anything or rising
either through war or politics, or in any profession, above the level of
his class...."[81]

The truth about the Indian seems to be substantially this: Left alone, he
would probably have continued to progress, albeit much more slowly than
either white or Asiatic peoples. But the Indian was not left alone. On the
contrary, he was suddenly felled by brutal and fanatical conquerors, who
uprooted his native culture and plunged him into abject servitude. The
Indian's spiritual past was shorn away and his evolution was perverted.
Prevented from developing along his own lines, and constitutionally
incapable of adapting himself to the ways of his Spanish conquerors, the
Indian vegetated, learning nothing and forgetting much that he knew. This
has continued for four hundred years. Is it not likely that his ancestral
aptitudes have atrophied or decayed? Slavery and mental sloth have indeed
scarred him with their fell stigmata. Says Garcia-Calderon: "Without
sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted and laborious beast, he
decays and perishes; to forget the misery of his daily lot he drinks,
becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous progeny present the characteristics
of degeneracy."[82]

Furthermore, the Indian degenerates from another cause--mongrelization.
Miscegenation is a dual process. It works upward and downward at one and
the same time. In Latin America hybridization has been prodigious, the
hybrids to-day numbering millions. In some regions, as in Venezuela and
parts of Central America, there are very few full-blooded Indians left,
hybrids forming practically the entire population. Now, on the whole, the
white or "mestizo" crossing seems hurtful to the Indian, for what he gains
in intelligence he more than loses in character. But the mestizo crossing
is not the worst. There is another, much graver, racial danger. The hot
coastlands swarm with negroes, and the zambo or negro-Indian is
universally adjudged the worst of matings. Thus, for the Indian, white
blood appears harmful, while black blood is absolutely fatal. Yet the
mongrelizing tide sweeps steadily on. The Indian draws no "color line,"
and continually impairs the purity of his blood and the poise of his
heredity.

Bearing all the above facts in mind, can we believe the Indian capable of
drawing mongrel-ruled America from its slough of despond? Can he set it on
the path of orderly progress? It does not seem possible. Assuming for the
sake of argument complete freedom from foreign intervention, the Indian
might in time displace his mongrel rulers--provided he himself were not
also mongrelized. But the present "Indianista" movement is not a sign of
Indian political efficiency; not the harbinger of an Indian "renaissance."
It is the instinctive turning of the harried beast on his tormentor.
Maddened by the cruel vagaries of mongrel rule and increasingly conscious
of the mongrel's innate worthlessness, the Indian at last bares his teeth.
Under civilized white tutelage the "Indianista" movement would have been
practically inconceivable.

However, guesses as to the final outcome of an Indian-mongrel conflict are
academic speculation, because mongrel America will not be left to itself.
Mongrel America cannot stand alone. Indeed, it never has stood alone, for
it has always been bolstered up by the Monroe Doctrine. But for our
protection, outside forces would have long since rushed into this
political and economic vacuum, and every omen to-day denotes that this
vacuum, like all others, will presently be filled. A world close packed as
never before will not tolerate countries that are a torment to themselves
and a dangerous nuisance to their neighbors. A world half bankrupt will
not allow vast sources of potential wealth to lie in hands which idle or
misuse. Thus it is practically certain that mongrel America will presently
pass under foreign tutelage. Exactly how, is not yet clear. It may be done
by the United States alone, or, what is more probable, in "Pan-American"
co-operation with the lusty young white nations of the antipodean south.
It may be done by an even larger combination, including some European
states. After all, the details of such action do not lie within the scope
of this book, since they fall exclusively within the white man's sphere of
activity.

There is, however, another dynamic which might transform mongrel America.
This dynamic is yellow Asia. The Far East teems with virile and laborious
life. It thrills to novel ambitions and desires. Avid with the urge of
swarming myriads, it hungrily seeks outlets for its superabundant
vitality. We have already seen how the Mongolian has earmarked the whole
Far East for his own, and in subsequent pages we shall see how he also
beats restlessly against the white world's race-frontiers. But mongrel
America! What other field offers such tempting possibilities for Mongolian
race-expansion? Vast regions of incalculable, unexploited wealth, sparsely
inhabited by stagnant populations cursed with anarchy and feeble from
miscegenation--how could such lands resist the onslaught of tenacious and
indomitable millions? The answer is self-evident. They could not resist;
and such an invasion, once begun, would be consummated with a celerity and
thoroughness perhaps unexampled in human history.

Now the yellow world is alive to this momentous possibility. Japan, in
particular, has glimpsed in Latin America precious avenues to that racial
expansion which is the key-note of Japanese foreign policy. For years
Japanese statesmen and publicists have busied themselves with the problem.
The Chinese had, in fact, already pointed the way, for during the later
decades of the nineteenth century Chinamen frequented Latin America's
Pacific coast, economically vanquishing the natives with ease, and
settling in Peru in such numbers that the alarmed Peruvians hastily
stopped the inflow by drastic exclusion acts. The successes of these
Chinese pioneers, humble coolies entirely without official backing, have
fired the Japanese imagination. The Japanese press has long discussed
Latin America in optimistic vein. Count Okuma is a good exemplar of these
Japanese aspirations. Some years ago he told the American sociologist
Professor Ross: "South America, especially the northern part, will furnish
ample room for our surplus."[83] To his fellow countrymen Count Okuma was
still more specific. In 1907 he stated in the Tokio _Economist_ that the
Japanese were to overspread the earth like a cloud of locusts, alighting
on the North American coasts, and swarming into Central and South America.
Count Okuma expressed a strong preference for Latin American countries as
fields for Japanese immigration, because most of them were "much easier to
include within the sphere of influence of Japan in the future."[84]

And the Japanese have supplemented words with deeds. Especially since
1914, Japanese activity in Latin America has been ubiquitous and
striking. The west coast of South America, in particular, is to-day
flooded with Japanese goods, merchants, commercial missions, and financial
agents seeking concessions of every kind. Our State Department has had to
exercise special vigilance concerning Japanese concession-hunting in
Mexico.

Japan's present activity is of course mere reconnoitring--testings and
mappings of terrain for possible later action on a more extensive scale.
One thing alone gives Japan pause--our veto. Japan knows that real
aggression against our southern neighbors would spell war with the United
States. Japan does not contemplate war with us at present. She has many
fish to fry in the Far East. So in Latin America she plays safe. But she
bides her time. In Latin America itself she has friends--even partisans.
Japan seeks to mobilize to her profit that distrust of the "Yanqui" which
permeates Latin America. The half-castes, in particular, rage at our
"color line" and see in the United States the Nemesis of their anarchic
misrule. They flout the Monroe Doctrine, caress dreams of Japanese aid,
and welcome Nippon's pose as the champion of color throughout the world.

Japanese activities in Mexico are of especial interest. Here Japan has
three strong strings to her bow: (1) patriotic dislike of the United
States; (2) mestizo hatred of the white "gringo"; (3) the Indianista
movement. In Mexico the past decade of revolutionary turmoil has developed
into a complicated race-war of the mestizos against the white or
near-white upper class and of the Indian full-bloods against both whites
and mestizos. The one bond of union is dislike of the gringo, which often
rises to fanatical hatred. Our war against Mexico in 1847 has never been
forgotten, and many Mexicans cherish hopes of revenge and even aspire to
recover the territories then ceded to us. During the early stages of the
European War our military unpreparedness and apparent pacifism actually
emboldened some Mexican hotheads to concoct the notorious "Plan of San
Diego." The conspirators plotted to rouse the Mexican population of our
southern border, sow disaffection among our Southern negroes, and explode
the mine at the psychological moment by means of a "Reconquering Equitable
Army" invading Texas. Our whole Southwest was to be rejoined to Mexico,
while our Southern States were to form a black republic. The projected war
was conceived strictly in terms of race, the reconquering equitable army
to be composed solely of "Latins," negroes, and Japanese. The racial
results were to be decisive, for the entire white population of both our
South and Southwest was to be pitilessly massacred. Of course the plot
completely miscarried, and sporadic attempts to invade Texas during 1915
were easily repulsed.

Nevertheless, this incident reveals the trend of many Mexican minds. The
framers of the "Plan of San Diego" were not ignorant peons, but persons of
some standing. The outrages and tortures inflicted upon numerous Americans
in Mexico during recent years are further indications of that wide-spread
hatred which expresses itself in vitriolic outbursts like the following
editorial of a Mexican provincial paper, written during our chase after
the bandit Villa in 1916: "Above all, do not forget that at a time of
national need, humanity is a crime and frightfulness is a virtue. Pull out
eyes, snatch out hearts, tear open breasts, drink--if you can--the blood
in the skulls of the invaders from the cities of Yankeeland. In defense of
liberty be a Nero, be a Caligula--that is to be a good patriot. Peace
between Mexico and the United States will be closed in throes of terror
and barbarism."[85]

All this is naturally grist for the Japanese mill. Especially interesting
are Japanese attempts to play upon Mexican Indianista sentiment. Japanese
writers point out physical and cultural similarities between the Mexican
native races and themselves, deducing therefrom innate racial affinities
springing from the remote and forgotten past. All possible sympathetic
changes were rung during the diplomatic mission of Señor de la Barra to
Japan at the beginning of 1914. His reception in Tokio was a memorable
event. Señor de la Barra was greeted by cheering multitudes, and on every
occasion the manifold bonds between the two peoples were emphasized. This
of course occurred before the European War. During the war
Japanese-Mexican relations remained amicable. So far as official evidence
goes, the Japanese Government has never entered into any understandings
with the Mexican Government, though some Mexicans have hinted at a secret
agreement, and one Mexican writer, Gutierrez de Lara, asserts that in 1912
Francisco Madero, then President, "threw himself into the arms of Japan,"
and goes on: "We are well aware of the importance of this statement and of
its tremendous international significance, but we make it deliberately
with full confidence in our authority. Not only did Madero enlist the
ardent support of the South American republics in the cause of Mexico's
inviolability, but he entered into negotiations with the Japanese minister
in Mexico City for a close offensive and defensive alliance with Japan to
checkmate United States aggression. When during the fateful twelve days'
battle in Mexico City a rumor of American intervention, more alarming than
usual, was communicated to Madero, he remarked coldly that he was
thoroughly anxious for that intervention, for he was confident of the
surprise the American Government would receive in discovering that they
had to deal with Japan."[86]

But, after all, an official Japanese-Mexican understanding is not the
fundamental issue. The really significant thing is Mexican popular
antagonism to the United States, which is so wide-spread that Japan could
in a crisis probably count on Mexican benevolent neutrality if not on
Mexican support. The present Carranza government of Mexico is of course
notoriously anti-American. Its consistent policy, notably revealed in its
complaisance toward Germany and its intrigues with other anti-American
régimes like those of Colombia and Venezuela, makes Mexico the centre of
anti-Americanism in Latin America. As for the numerous Japanese residents
in Mexico, they have lost no opportunity to abet this attitude. Here, for
instance, is the text of a manifesto signed by prominent members of the
Japanese colony during the American-Mexican crisis of 1916: "Japanese:
Mexico is a friendly nation. Our commercial bonds with her are great. She
is, like us, a nation of heroes who will never consent to the
world-domination of a hard and brutal race, as are the Yankees. We cannot
abandon Mexico in her struggle against a nation supposedly stronger. The
Mexicans know how to defend themselves, but there is lacking aid which we
can furnish. If the Yankees invade Mexico, if they seize the California
coasts, Japanese commerce and the Japanese navy will face a grave peril.
The Yankees believe us impotent because of the European War, and we will
be expelled from American soil and our children from American schools. We
will aid the Mexicans. We will aid Mexico against Yankee rapacity. This
great and beautiful country is a victim of Yankee hatred toward Japan. Our
indifference would be a lack of patriotism, since the Yankees already are
against us and our divine Emperor. They have seized Hawaii, they have
seized the Philippine Islands, near our coasts, and are now about to
crush under foot our friend and possible ally, and injure our commerce and
imperil our naval power."[87]

The fact is that Latin America's attitude toward the yellow world tends
everywhere to crystallize along race lines. The half-castes, naturally
hostile to the United States, see in Japan a welcome offset to the
"Colossus of the North." The self-conscious Indianista elements likewise
heed Japanese suggestions of ethnic affinity. On the other hand, the
whites and near-whites instinctively react against Japanese advances. Even
those who have no love for the Yankee see in the Mongolian the greatest of
perils. Garcia-Calderon typifies this point of view. He dreads our
imperialistic tendencies, yet he reproves those Latin Americans who, in a
Japanese-American clash, would favor Japan. "Victorious," he writes, "the
Japanese would invade Western America and convert the Pacific into a vast
closed sea, closed to foreign ambitions, _mare nostrum_, peopled with
Japanese colonies. The Japanese hegemony would not be a mere change of
tutelage for the nations of America. In spite of essential differences,
the Latins oversea have certain common ties with the people of the
(United) States: a long-established religion, Christianity, and a
coherent, European, Occidental civilization. Perhaps there is some obscure
fraternity between the Japanese and the American Indians, between the
yellow men of Nippon and the copper-colored Quechuas, a disciplined and
sober people. But the ruling race, the dominant type of Spanish origin,
which imposes the civilization of the white man upon America, is hostile
to the entire invading East."[88]

White men throughout Latin America generally echo these sentiments. Chile
and Argentina repulse Oriental immigration, and the white oligarchs of
Peru dread keenly Japanese designs directed so specifically against their
country. Very recently a Peruvian, Doctor Jorge M. Corbacho,[89] wrote
most bitterly about the Japanese infiltration into Peru and adjacent
Bolivia, while some years ago Señor Augustin Edwards, owner of the leading
Chilean periodical, _El Mercurio_, denounced Count Okuma's menaces and
called for a Pan-American rampart against Asia from Behring Strait to Cape
Horn. "Japanese immigration," asserted Señor Edwards, "must be firmly
opposed, not only in South America, but in the whole American continent.
The same remark applies to Chinese immigration.... In short, these threats
of Okuma should induce the nations of South America to adopt the Monroe
Doctrine--an invincible weapon against the plans and intentions of that
'Empire of the Orient,' which has so lately risen up to new life, and
already manifests so dire a greed of conquest."[90] From Central America
similar voices arise. A Salvadorean writer urges political federation
with the United States as the sole refuge against the "Yellow Peril," to
avoid becoming "slaves and utterly insignificant";[91] and a well-known
Nicaraguan politician, Señor Moncada,[92] writes in similar vein.

The momentous implications of Mongolian pressure upon Latin America are
admirably described by Professor Ross. "Provided that no barrier be
interposed to the inflow from man-stifled Asia," he says, "it is well
within the bounds of probability that by the close of this century South
America will be the home of twenty or thirty millions of Orientals and
descendants of Orientals.... But Asiatic immigration of such volume would
change profoundly the destiny of South America. For one thing, it would
forestall and frustrate that great immigration of Europeans which South
American statesmen are counting on to relieve their countries from mestizo
unprogressiveness and misgovernment. The white race would withhold its
increase or look elsewhere for outlets; for those with the higher standard
of comfort always shun competition with those of a lower standard. Again,
large areas of South America might cease to be parts of Christendom. Some
of the republics there might come to be as dependent upon Asiatic Powers
as the Cuban republic is dependent upon the United States."[93]

Very pertinent is Professor Ross's warning as to the fate of the Indian
population--a warning which Indianista believers in Japanese "affinity"
should seriously take to heart. Whatever might be the lot of the Latin
American whites, Professor Ross points out that "an Asiatic influx would
seal the doom of the Indian element in these countries.... The Indians
could make no effective economic stand against the wide-awake,
resourceful, and aggressive Japanese or Chinese. The Oriental immigrants
could beat the Indians at every point, block every path upward, and even
turn them out of most of their present employments. In great part the
Indians would become a cringing _sudra_ caste, tilling the poorer lands
and confined to the menial or repulsive occupations. Filled with despair,
and abandoning themselves even more than they do now to pisco and coca,
they would shrivel into a numerically negligible element in the
population."[94]

Such are the underlying factors in the Latin American situation. Once more
we see the essential instability of mere political phenomena. Once more we
see the supreme importance of race. No conquest could have been completer
than that of the Spaniards four centuries ago. The Indians were helpless
as sheep before the mail-clad Conquistadores. And military conquest was
succeeded by complete political domination. The Indian even lost his
cultural heritage, and became a passive tool in the hands of his white
masters. But the Spaniard did not seal his title-deed with the indelible
signet of race. Indian blood remained numerically predominant, and the
conqueror further weakened his tenure by bringing in black blood--the most
irreducible of ethnic factors. The inflow of white blood was small, and
much of what did come lost itself in the dismal swamp of miscegenation.
Lastly, the whites quarrelled among themselves.

The result was inevitable. The colonial whites triumphed only by aid of
the half-castes, who promptly claimed their reward. A fresh struggle
ensued, ending (save in the antipodean regions) in the triumph of the
half-castes. But these, in turn, had called in the Indians and negroes.
Furthermore, the half-castes recklessly squandered the white political
heritage. So the colored full-bloods stirred in their turn, and a new
movement began which, if allowed to run its natural course, might result
in complete de-Aryanization. In other words, the white race has been going
back, and Latin America has been getting more Indian and negro for the
past hundred years.

This cycle, however, now nears its end. Latin America will be neither red
nor black. It will ultimately be either white or yellow. The Indian is
patently unable to construct a progressive civilization. As for the negro,
he has proved as incapable in the New World as in the Old. Everywhere his
presence has spelled regression, and his one New World field of
triumph--Haiti--has resulted in an abysmal plunge to the jungle-level of
Guinea and the Congo. Thus is created a political vacuum. And this vacuum
unerring nature makes ready to fill.

The Latin American situation is, indeed, akin to that of Africa. Latin
America, like Africa, cannot stand alone. An inexorable dilemma impends:
white or yellow. The white man has been first in the field and holds the
central colored zone between two strong bases, north and south, where his
tenure is the unimpeachable title of race. The yellow man has to conquer
every step, though he has already acquired footholds and has behind him
the welling reservoirs of Asia. Nevertheless, white victory in Latin
America is sure--if internecine discord does not rob the white world of
its strength. In Latin America, as in Africa, therefore, the whites must
stand fast--and stand together.

_PART II_

THE EBBING TIDE OF WHITE

CHAPTER VI

THE WHITE FLOOD

The world-wide expansion of the white race during the four centuries
between 1500 and 1900 is the most prodigious phenomenon in all recorded
history. In my opening pages I sketched both the magnitude of this
expansion and its ethnic and political implications. I there showed that
the white stocks together constitute the most numerous single branch of
the human species, nearly one-third of all the human souls on earth to-day
being whites. I also showed that white men racially occupy four-tenths of
the entire habitable land-area of the globe, while nearly nine-tenths of
this area is under white political control. Such a situation is
unprecedented. Never before has a race acquired such combined
preponderance of numbers and dominion.

This white expansion becomes doubly interesting when we realize how sudden
was its inception and how rapid its evolution. A single decade before the
voyage of Columbus, he would have been a bold prophet who should have
predicted this high destiny. At the close of the fifteenth century the
white race was confined to western and central Europe, together with
Scandinavia and the northwestern parts of European Russia. The total white
race-area was then not much over 2,000,000 square miles--barely one-tenth
its area to-day. And in numbers the proportion was almost as unfavorable.
At that moment (say, A. D. 1480) England could muster only about 2,000,000
inhabitants, the entire population of the British Isles not much exceeding
3,000,000 souls. To be sure, the continent was relatively better peopled.
Still, the population of Europe in 1480 was probably not one-sixth that of
1914.

Furthermore, population had dwindled notably in the preceding one hundred
and fifty years. During the fourteenth century Europe had been hideously
scourged by the "Black Death" (bubonic plague), which carried off fully
one-half of its inhabitants, while thereafter a series of great wars had
destroyed immense numbers of people. These losses had not been repaired.
Mediæval society was a static, equilibrated affair, which did not favor
rapid human multiplication. In fact, European life had been intensive and
recessive ever since the fall of the Roman Empire a thousand years before.
Europe's one mediæval attempt at expansion (the Crusades) had utterly
failed. In fact, far from expanding, white Europe had been continuously
assailed by brown and yellow Asia. Beginning with the Huns in the last
days of Rome, continuing with the Arabs, and ending with the Mongols and
Ottoman Turks, Europe had undergone a millennium of Asiatic aggression;
and though Europe had substantially maintained its freedom, many of its
outlying marches had fallen under Asiatic domination. In 1480, for
example, the Turk was marching triumphantly across southeastern Europe,
embryonic Russia was a Tartar dependency, while the Moor still clung to
southern Spain.

The outlook for the white race at the close of the fifteenth century thus
seemed gloomy rather than bright. With a stationary or declining
population, exposed to the assaults of powerful external foes, and racked
by internal pains betokening the demise of the mediæval order, white
Europe's future appeared a far from happy one.

Suddenly, in two short years, all was changed. In 1492 Columbus discovered
America, and in 1494 Vasco da Gama, doubling Africa, found the way to
India. The effect of these discoveries cannot be overestimated. We can
hardly conceive how our mediæval forefathers viewed the ocean. To them the
ocean was a numbing, constricting presence; the abode of darkness and
horror. No wonder mediæval Europe was static, since it faced on ruthless,
aggressive Asia, and backed on nowhere. Then, in the twinkling of an eye,
dead-end Europe became mistress of the ocean--and thereby mistress of the
world.

No such strategical opportunity had, in fact, ever been vouchsafed. From
classic times down to the end of the fifteenth century, white Europe had
confronted only the most martial and enterprising of Asiatics. With such
peoples war and trade had alike to be conducted on practically equal
terms, and by frontal assault no decisive victory could be won. But, after
the great discoveries, the white man could flank his old opponents. Whole
new worlds peopled by primitive races were unmasked, where the white man's
weapons made victory certain, and whence he could draw stores of wealth to
quicken his home life and initiate a progress that would soon place him
immeasurably above his once-dreaded assailants.

And the white man proved worthy of his opportunity. His inherent racial
aptitudes had been stimulated by his past. The hard conditions of mediæval
life had disciplined him to adversity and had weeded him by natural
selection. The hammer of Asiatic invasion, clanging for a thousand years
on the brown-yellow anvil, had tempered the iron of Europe into the finest
steel. The white man could think, could create, could fight superlatively
well. No wonder that redskins and negroes feared and adored him as a god,
while the somnolent races of the Farther East, stunned by this strange
apparition rising from the pathless ocean, offered no effective
opposition.

Thus began the swarming of the whites, like bees from the hive, to the
uttermost ends of the earth. And, in return, Europe was quickened to
intenser vitality. Goods, tools, ideas, men: all were produced at an
unprecedented rate. So, by action and reaction, white progress grew by
leaps and bounds. The Spanish and Portuguese pioneers presently showed
signs of lassitude, but the northern nations--even more vigorous and
audacious--instantly sprang to the front and carried forward the proud
oriflamme of white expansion and world-dominion. For four hundred years
the pace never slackened, and at the close of the nineteenth century the
white man stood the indubitable master of the world.

Now four hundred years of unbroken triumph naturally bred in the white
race an instinctive belief that its expansion would continue indefinitely,
leading automatically to ever higher and more splendid destinies. Before
the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 the thought that white expansion could be
stayed, much less reversed, never entered the head of one white man in a
thousand. Why should it, since centuries of experience had taught the
exact contrary? The settlement of America, Australasia, and Siberia, where
the few colored aborigines vanished like smoke before the white advance;
the conquest of brown Asia and the partition of Africa, where colored
millions bowed with only sporadic resistance to mere handfuls of whites;
both sets of phenomena combined to persuade the white man that he was
invincible, and that the colored types would everywhere give way before
him and his civilization. The continued existence of dense colored
populations in the tropics was ascribed to climate; and even in the
tropics it was assumed that whites would universally form a governing
caste, directing by virtue of higher intelligence and more resolute will,
and exploiting natural resources to the incalculable profit of the whole
white race. Indeed, some persons believed that the tropics would become
available for white settlement as soon as science had mastered tropical
diseases and had prescribed an adequate hygiene.

This uncritical optimism, suggested by experience, was fortified by
ill-assimilated knowledge. During the closing decades of the past century,
not only were biology and economics less advanced than to-day, but they
were also infinitely less widely understood, exact knowledge being
confined to academic circles. The general public had only a vulgarized
smattering, mostly crystallizing about catchwords into which men read
their prepossessions and their prejudices. For instance: biologists had
recently formulated the law of the "Survival of the Fittest." This sounded
very well. Accordingly, the public, in conformity with the prevailing
optimism, promptly interpreted "fittest" as synonymous with "best," in
utter disregard of the grim truth that by "fittest" nature denotes only
the type best adapted to existing conditions of environment, and that if
the environment favors a low type, this low type (unless humanly
prevented) will win, regardless of all other considerations. So again with
economics. A generation ago relatively few persons realized that
low-standard men would drive out high-standard men as inevitably as bad
money drives out good, no matter what the results to society and the
future of mankind. These are but two instances of that shallow, cock-sure
nineteenth-century optimism, based upon ignorance and destined to be so
swiftly and tragically disillusioned.

However, for the moment, ignorance was bliss. Accordingly, the _fin de
siècle_ white world, having partitioned Africa and fairly well dominated
brown Asia, prepared to extend its sway over the one portion of the
colored world which had hitherto escaped subjection--the yellow Far East.
Men began speaking glibly of "manifest destiny" or piously of "the white
man's burden." European publicists wrote didactically on "the break-up of
China," while Russia, bestriding Siberia, dipped behemoth paws in Pacific
waters and eyed Japan.

[Illustration: CATEGORIES OF WHITE WORLD-SUPREMACY]

Such was the white world's confident, aggressive temper at the close of
the last century. To be sure, voices were occasionally raised warning that
all was not well. Such were the writings of Professor Pearson and Meredith
Townsend. But the white world gave these Cassandras the reception always
accorded prophets of evil in joyous times--it ignored them or laughed them
to scorn. In fact, few of the prophets displayed Pearson's immediate
certainty. Most of them qualified their prophecies with the comforting
assurance that the ills predicted were relatively remote.

Meredith Townsend is a good case in point. The reader may recall his
prophecy of white expulsion from Asia, quoted in my second chapter.[95]
That prophecy occurs in the preface to the fourth edition, published in
1911, and written in the light of the Russo-Japanese War. Now, of course,
Mr. Townsend's main thesis--Europe's inability permanently to master and
assimilate Asia--had been elaborated by him long before the close of the
nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the preface to the fourth edition speaks
of Europe's failure to conquer Asia as absolute and eviction from present
holdings as probable within a relatively short time; whereas, in his
original introduction, written in 1899, he foresaw a great European
assault upon Asia, which would probably succeed and from which Asia would
shake itself free only after the lapse of more than a century.

In fact, Mr. Townsend's words of 1899 so exactly portray white confidence
at that moment that I cannot do better than quote him. His object in
publishing his book is, he says, "to make Asia stand out clearer in
English eyes, because it is evident to me that the white races under the
pressure of an entirely new impulse are about to renew their periodic
attempt to conquer or at least to dominate that vast continent.... So
grand is the prize that failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less
alter their conviction. If these movements follow historic lines they will
recur for a time upon a constantly ascending scale, each repulse eliciting
a greater effort, until at last Asia like Africa is 'partitioned,' that
is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. If Europe
can avoid internal war, or war with a much-aggrandized America, she will
by A. D. 2000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to
enjoy."[96] If the reader will compare these lines with Mr. Townsend's
1911 judgment, he will get a good idea of the momentous change wrought in
white minds by Asia's awakening during the first decade of the twentieth
century as typified by the Russo-Japanese War.

1900 was, indeed, the high-water mark of the white tide which had been
flooding for four hundred years. At that moment the white man stood on the
pinnacle of his prestige and power. Pass four short years, and the flash
of the Japanese guns across the murky waters of Port Arthur harbor
revealed to a startled world--the beginning of the ebb.

CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB

The Russo-Japanese War is one of those landmarks in human history whose
significance increases with the lapse of time. That war was momentous, not
only for what it did, but even more for what it revealed. The legend of
white invincibility was shattered, the veil of prestige that draped white
civilization was torn aside, and the white world's manifold ills were laid
bare for candid examination.

Of course previous blindness to the trend of things had not been
universal. The white world had had its Cassandras, while keen-sighted
Asiatics had discerned symptoms of white weakness. Nevertheless, so
imposing was the white world's aspect and so unbroken its triumphant
progress that these seers had been a small and discredited minority. The
mass of mankind, white and non-white alike, remained oblivious to signs of
change.

This, after all, was but natural. Not only had the white advance been
continuous, but its tempo had been ever increasing. The nineteenth
century, in particular, witnessed an unprecedented outburst of white
activity. We have already surveyed white territorial gains, both as to
area of settlement and sphere of political control. But along many other
lines white expansion was equally remarkable. White race-increase--the
basis of all else--was truly phenomenal. In the year 1500 the white race
(then confined to Europe) could not have numbered more than 70,000,000. In
1800 the population of Europe was 150,000,000, while the whites living
outside Europe numbered over 10,000,000. The white race had thus a trifle
more than doubled its numbers in three centuries. But in the year 1900 the
population of Europe was nearly 450,000,000, while the extra-European
whites numbered fully 100,000,000. Thus the whites had increased threefold
in the European homeland, while in the new areas of settlement outside
Europe they had increased tenfold. The total number of whites at the end
of the nineteenth century was thus nearly 550,000,000--a gain in numbers
of almost 400,000,000, or over 400 per cent. This spelled an increase six
times as great as that of the preceding three centuries.

White race-growth is most strikingly exemplified by the increase of its
most expansive and successful branch--the Anglo-Saxons. In 1480, as
already seen, the population of England proper was not much over
2,000,000. Of course this figure was abnormally low even for mediæval