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century. It is, of course, a relatively new
fact. Until less than a generation ago
the right of the white man to inherit the
earth belonged to the catagory of indisput-
albe axioms. His adventrous spirit had
carried him far and wide and he had
raised his flag. [?]
brushing the little people aside [?]
path in his masterful stride. The
red man melted before him in
America, the black man before him in
Australasia. He laid Indian under tribute
and cut up Africa as if he were cutting up
a cake, alotting this section to the Ger-
man, that to the French, another to the
Portuguese, a fourth to the Belgian, the
largest share to the Englishman.

There was no question in all of this of ask-
ing leave of the natives. The white man
would have as little thought of asking the
natives whether they wanted him to take
possession of ther land as of asking the
kangaroos or the buffaloes. He had the
argument of force and he easily construed
that into a Divine authority for his domi-
nion over palm and pine. His attitude to
the subject peoples was in keeping with
this view. Here he enslaved them, there
he tortured and slew them, elsewhere he
sought to govern them justly and civilise
them. He gave them sometimes the Bible
and sometimes rum, his tastes and not
seldom his diseases. He carried them in
thousands from Africa to till the Virginian
fields and incidentally to sow the seed of
a great colour problem for himself in
modern America. He brought them from
India in the thousands to enrich himself by
their labour in Natal and incidentally
sowed the seed of a great problem for him-
self in the South Africa of to-day. But
behind all his varying methods there was
one dominant unquestioned idea. Every-
where he proceeded upon the assumption
that the white man was born to possess
the earth and that the coloured man
was born to be his hewer of wood and
drawer of water, used if he needed him
and thrown aside if he did not need him.

The Challenge of Asia.

This simple creed is by no means so clear
and indisputable to-day. We talk less
unctously about the "white man's bur-
den" and are concerned much more about
the white man's fear. For we know that
something is happening that may change
the balance of the earth. Asia is turning
in her sleep. She no longer conforms to
Arnold's vision of her:

She head the legions thunder past,
Then turned in thought again.

She has discovered that she can raise
legions of her own, and has caught some-
thing of our Western modernism and un-
rest. Her deity still sits with his eyes
turned inward, in eternal contemplation
and her most distinguished poet chants
the ancient reverie of self-absorption. But
the peoples have passed the deity and the
poet by. They have beome self-con-
scious. They are asking questions, culti-
vating political ideas, looking out on the
world with wide, adventurous eyes. When
Okura, after the Russo-Japanese war, said
"We have destroyed the hypnotism of
colour" he put in a phrase not only the
deepest lesson of the war, but the chal-
lenge of Asia to the white man's world.
He announced henceforth the Asiatic
had to be reckoned with, and that the
heritage of the earth was to be decided
by other considerations than the colour
of the skin.

Barring the Door.

It is possible that he was thinking of the
white man's argument of force. And no
doubt it is the thought of Mukden and
the Sea of Japan that keeps the New
Zealander awake at night. But the chal-
lenge of force, if ever it come, must be
remote. Japan won its war, it is true; but
it discovered as so many others have dis-
covered, that a victory may be as disas-
trous as defeat, and its imporverishment
will make it think long before it openly
assails the white man's hegemony of the
Pacific. It is not force, but peaceful pene-

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British Columbia in 1911, 7,146 in 1912 and
over 6,000 in 1913. The Japanese immigra-
tion is always somehow higher than the
maximum allowed. They are smuggled in
by all sorts of ingenious tricks. Not long
ago a Japanese steamer was seized at Port
Simpson. When she left Japan she had
100 Japanese on board. When she was
?
?
?

The effect is visible in many industries.
The sawmills of British Columbia, which
used to be worked by white labour, are
now almost wholly worked by Chincee,
Japanese, and Hindus. A score of years
ago the Pacific Coast fisheries used to em-
ploy thousands of white men. Now they
are controlled by the Japanese. For, while
the Chinese are content to do the drudgery
of life, the Japanese in America, like the
Indian in South Africa, is a man, who
not only lives cheaply but has that com-
mercial genius which makes him a rival
of the employer as much as of the em-
ploved. Restrictions, in short, no matter
how severe, have failed to keep out the
Asiatic and the demand from British
Columbia to the Dominion Parliament for
total exclusion grows daily more insistent.
"Give us a 'white British Columbia' " is
the cry.

"Making Hay" of the Empire.

It will be seen incidentally how this
grave question "makes hay" of the
British Empire. The Imperialists of
South Africa shut the door against the
Hindus and vote to tax out those who are
already in, and the British citizen of
Canada builds his wall high against all
Asiatics, but most high against the Hindu.
And yet the Hindu is a British citizen—
witness the Proclamation of Queen Vic-
toria—whose claims, since he is not self-
governing are peculiarly entitled to pro-
tection. The Imperial Government are, of
course, in a hopeless position. They can
not on the one hand ignore the grievances
of the Indians; on the other they cannot
interfere with the self-governing colonies.
If they did they would, as British
Columbia has indicated, soon cease to be
colonies. All this, of course, has its reac-
tions in India. I shall not soon forget the
scene at a luncheon of distingaished In-
dians on the day that the famous Har-
dinge message on the South African ques-
tion was published. That message had
been assailed in the Press as a grave indis-
cretion. As a matter of fact it carried off
the electricity at a dangerous moment. I
doubt whether any Indian Viceroy was
ever, even momentarily, so popular.

I must leave other aspects of the Im-
perial question, such as that of the atti-
tude of Australia and New Zealand to-
ards the ally of Britain in the Far East.
Let us turn back to the Komagata Maru.
It will return to Asia with its load of
Hindus, but the questions it has raised
will remain to trouble the future. The
Asiatic challenge to the white world will
become more insistent and more formid-
able as the economic pressure of the
massed millions of the continent increases
and as the demand of the coloured man
for a place in the sun takes [?]
impetus. In the face of that [?]
white man will have two tasks which are
not easily reconcilable. He will have
to protect his [?], not merely
because it is [?] but because, with all
its faults it is the most humane instru-
ment of men. And at the same time
he will have to drop that spirit of arro-
gant contempt towards the coloured races
which leads him, for example, to cut up
Africa as if it were his own background,
take way the rights of the natives in the
soil, and then tax them into the mines
or exploit them in the rubber forests.

Queen Wilhelmina has conferred the
decoration of Chevalier of the Order of
Orange Nassau on Dr. Doggeet, President
of the course of physical training at the
Springfeld (Mass.) section of the Y.M.C.A.
for his services in connection with the
instruction of Dutch officers.—Reuter