SPECIAL ARTICLE IS THE WHITE RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18219, 1 November 1924, Page 13

SPECIAL ARTICLE IS THE WHITE RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?

| • /gpXCIilXr WRITTEN JOB "THB PHE33.'T f&t Professor J. Macmillax Brown, 1 . LL.D.) Has America Drunk Too Deep of - Success? ■ Here in America we have symptoms jnd omens of the white race "writ jargo" in letters of flame. For the United States is the largest self-con-tained Caucasoid community, whilst it . js, for the present at least, the most ■ pr(*perous and the most confident in V itself. It' there is decay in the white race, it is here it will be seen eine- ' jnatographed st-ereoseopically. And it ja from hero that books like "file Passing of the Great Race have issued forecasting the doom of the leading section 0 f mankind. As I havo wandered amongst Americans and American things on this trip, I have kept my eyes open to all the phenomena that might justify such gloomy predictions, I yitli the question ever in my mind whether these were superficial and temporary, or deep-seated and essential. No reader of history can avoid seeing that empires and even races are evanescent in their dominance. Is the white race going to avoid this seeming- ' Jy inevitable fate that has overtaken all" ruling sections of mankind? J We are accustomed to predict for 'the individual who has "swelled head" an | e arly decay of his whole constitution and system; it is hut the precursor and symptom of a more deep-seated disease. It is not in our age or our division I of mankind alone, that observers have ' noted how "pride goeth before a fall." i .It is (vanity that lays the nature open to the assaults of fate; it strips it of its defensive armour and attitude and develops its offence alone. When tripped up it will recover its self-control an d self-criticism if it is not too deep- * geated; but if past the power of seeing self as others see it, then the fall is final. It is the same with nations; too frequent or prolonged victory or seeming victory intoxicates them till they lose their eelf-balance and reel at the first blow. It is far more difficult to j recover from prolonged success than from defeat. The nation that has one unalloyed victory after another is ma "parlous state." If fate is kind it will administer a not too severe dose of defeat, so that it may recover its healthy consciousness of its own weaknesses, and lose in good time its belief in its own invincibility. I was astonished to find how widespread amongst the mere newspaper readers of America, who undoubtedly "form the bulk of a nation, ana V lecide its fate, especially in n -• tyisis when it is not wisdom that tells, but numbers and passion, ■was this dangerous mental attic tnde. From the well-watered alcoI fid of the victory over the Spanish it ■ easy to recover the national badmice. But it seems as if the wine they . imbibed sifter coming in towards the doueof the world war was too heady. Ttay Have acquired a scorn of the other Allies and their work that will be Matty difficult to recover from. Nothi inn leea than a defeat or at least a I uvrrhio victory will discipline this out ' of them, and them from that worse deb&cte which Fate has ever m store for the auto-intoxicated.

H«Japan Also Drunk Too Deep of This Heady liquor? Ite worst of it is that Japan, on the other side of the Pacific, is suffering from the same ailment. She defeated China, the greatest and oldest' nation of the Orient. Then she defeated Russia, the largest and most autocratic nation of Europe, thanks to Roosevelt s too early intervention and the corruption in the Russian army. The brew took some years to work, but the attitude of her rulers towards China 111 the Great War, and still more, the attitude of her newspapers, towards , her fllly, Britain, showed tn&t it was busy in her brain, and now she is convinced that she is invincible and counts the Exclusion Act of America as an insult that can only be wiped out in blood. And it is evident that the majority or her people, who, by having becoime a mere newspaper-reading public, are now the deciding factor in a crisis, will bear down tho wiser judgment of her genro and statesmen, who see that without great wealth as she is she will not .be able to outlast a wealthier enemy in a long war. : With such scorn of the. Wet of the world and such sensitiveness to insult in the newspaper-reading public of the two nations that gnn at each other across the Pacific it is not difficult to see that any incident like the blowing up of the Maine before tlie war with Spain would he a match, m a gunpowder magazine. And probably it would be good for both nations, hut especially for America, if the explosion, were to come soon. Both would begin to realise how evil a thing war is and how far from invincible any nation will always be. And in finance in the two nations that won most from the war would eyen up the financial and trade chances tit the nations of the world and make lor a longer peace.

Axe There Any Signs That This AutoIntoxication is More Than Temporary? " But is there anything deeper in tho ' America of to-day to justify tbe P®f? 1_ tbistao forecasts of the future °*, leaders of the white race? Is there - any Belshazaar's feast going on in the United States or any writing on the trtU? "Thou are weighed in the bali aaoes and found wanting" ? If we are t to trust the evidences of the movies I, there is. They depicture the wild res el J. , that ia proceeding amongst the young ~ Jiien and young women of America, fheir life, according to these painters - of morals and manners, is one Jong jazz interspersed with cigarette smokitig ana cocktails thrown against a background of abhorrent humdrum life and iruritan past that is best forgotten, except to : emphasise the delight . v; saying and doing what is "wicked. The superficial and trivial are eschewed not for the sertous an • solid and thoughtful, but for the outre and immoral. The lawbreakers, if successful and striking, are the heroes an heroines, and the best joke is a breach ?>.■ of the law, especially the Volstead law , one instance will suffice; a comedian oomes on th© stage and says tnafc a policeman is after a man in the auoi- . ence who is suspected of having a Has ~ -of alcohol in his pocket; he will p« out the lights for a moment to g£ the man a chance of disposing or his .."hootlegging" pocketful; when the lights go up, all the passages are sf 611 strewed thick with whiskj . ' Is there any evidence of this being a Correct representation of popular and conduct? if we aro to .newspapers, it is the comnicnest thing • Jfor young men to take to , • 'picnic a flask of alcohol in hip rtocket and for y.mng women to indulge " v , iW cocktails and get f igrtatly doubt such reports, they re ! -i the exception and not the , I am to judge by thc«e I hare> ■ i . op seen in my wanderings. Xne £

majority of those I have talked with I are strongly in favour of the Volstead r Act, and 1 hope, for the sake of posterity, that they are right in thinking that it will ultimately be efficient; it means so much for the talent and enterprise and youth of a nation ; whether or not it is due to their dryness that the representatives of the two dry nations, the United States and Finland, were the most successful in athletes at the Olympic Games, abstinence trotn ulcohol will make a great differ- ( physical, as in the mental, efficiency of the youth of a nation. jJnc ominous -sign is the growth of the • habit thai creates a thirst more than anything else; that is. the use of tobacco. The most lreguent- store in the streets of any American city is the cig;:r shop ; next to it comes the lunch loom a,s the business occupation of > 'nost is far from the home; and nest ' , ;'t c-omes the drug store and the ivociai: and film-developing store: the > most- frequent conversation one listens . to amongst Americans has as its theme uicting and you never meet an AmerinV l ""''dn.v without a tinall camera. ' ut rour.-- there are other uses of <lrusi • * t,)res . as one can see from the daily s re "' er enne to dope and dopers in the newspapers. In almost every r-itv I noticed m the journals references to the enormous growtlr in the use of tobwo; hi. one large city I saw a. note r lament over the increase in the sale or cigarettes in one year by twentv mulions ,'ind the assignment of it to tlien- use by women. Nor does their rn.th 3 the I,so oi ' d«pe; it is much on the increase amongst- women. 31 Li ca ;; lc I nf ' ross «ot n few who inminff cigarettes and vet manifestly indulged as freelv in much stronger narcotic*. But the Women Are At' Work Both in Business and Politics. One striking piece of evidence against the prevailing belief that American women are degenerating, especially in the \\ est, was the vast armv of' the other sex T saw in the ferries across the Bay, going to business in the morning and returning in the' evening; most were young, and a large proportion pretty if not handsome; and the curious thing I was that they looked as unfatigued and rosy after the fatigue of the day as in the morning aft6r a night s sleep; the rose of the cheek and lips seemed absolutely fadeless. A I ragged edge and a hectic blob here and tlicro revealed the secret; these young women were San Francisco's free picture gallery; the art was manifest, and often superb; America will never lack painters. And it is a consolation that even indirectly city girls have come to admire the rosy health of their country sisters. _ The pity is that they do go a little farther in expressing their admiration, and begin their art from within. In spite of this concealment of their complexion, theso' young women, I could see in the offices, showed real business ability. Some I had to deal with could,. I am sure, hold their own with tho best of our sex; and one or two I met, with offices of tlioir own, were making thousands of pounds a year. Nor do they confine themselves to private affairs. American women are fast making their way into public positions. Somo are on tho Bench, some at tho head of Departments of the Administration. And though only a few have got into Congress,, thoy are. making their influence felt in the political sphere. They hold their own in the Conventions for the choice of candidates for the Presidency. One sensation occurred In Seattle when I was there. A lady on the City Council, wife of a University professor, when she was taking the place of the Mayor, who had gone east to a political convention, bade tho head of tho police clean up the city, and when he refused dismissed him, only to be replaced when the Mayor returned. Another in Texas, the wife of a former Governor, whom she considered wrongfully driven out of office, stood against the candidate of the Ku Klux Klan, and was clearly about to be successful. Yet the Dominant Passion is Pursuit of tie Thrill. This is manifestly all to the good. But there is another side to the picture. The movies and vaudevilles are crowded all day and all night, and tjiat' largely with women —mostly young women. And when I looked at their faces as they troopedi out I seemed to see the pursuit of pleasure written upon them as the dominant principle of life. They were very fine faces lit up by this passion; the ends of the mouth were drawn up in a pleasant, fixed self-satisfaction, as if they were finding all they were pursuing; it made .the expression most attractive; but there was wanting that proper complement to the pursuit of pleasure —the sense of duty and selfdenial which I thought I Baw made the faces of the American women attractive when I travelled through America some forty years ago. I could see in many that this ideal was about to decay; and I begin to fear it has now succumbed to the pursuit of pleasure. Since then the movie business has become one of the greatest in America, and the automobile has turned life into a rush that leaves no room for leisured enjoyment or thought. The aeroplane will still further increase the speed of the torrent that courses in American veins. There seems already no room for Test or silence in- American cities; what will it be when the throb and beat of the winging car fills the air? And here I must modify my phrase the dominant passion of American women, and I might add of young American men. It is the pursuit of the thrill. The seemingly unbroken calm of the old life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is to youth of the present age Hades, a monotony to which death would be preferable; the old undying fire and everlasting torture would be more like heaven to them, for it would give them a thrill every minute. A fine instance of this passionate pursuit of the thrill has just finished its long course in the law courts of Chicago. Two young Jews of wealthy families, one consumed with a passion for the fine face of the other, kidnapped another young Jew and put him to death cruelly. Hiding his body, they demanded from his father ten thousand dollars for his return. That crime puzzled the detectives long; but a pair of tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles found near the body were homed by an optician to one of them, and slowly by manifestation of one after the other the story came out. It was for a new thrill that the handsome bov wished to commit the crime, and his admirer gave way and to please him joined in it. They pleaded guilty, but the alienists brought into the witness- | box tried to prove them abnormal, so J that if they were committed to a men- i tal hospital, they might get out on the evidence of other alienists that they were sane; they were committed to prison for life. They were both students of Chicago University, of exceptional talent. And their case brings out in letters of fire the secret of the decay of modern civilisation; the "worm in the bud" of American wealth is the pursuit of pleasure, however unlaw- ■ ful, and most of all its new version the pursnit of the thrill. This is written all over the new amusement, the movie, now that it is almost wholly in the hands of Americans. Even the young women who go in their hosts into offices and business are perhaps, most of them, there to make money in order to buy some thrill, something that will break the still monotony of life. Here jve have the secret of the increasing number of divorces; here we have thie secret of tho lust of speed, which through autotnobilism, sacrifices its holocaust of 14,000 every year in the United States. It is a consequence i of the increasing neurotism of modern •

life, especially amongst women, the sure brand of decay. The Contrast Between the America of Forty Years Ago and Now. But the men, at least those out of youth, are different. On their faces everywhere is cloarly marked the pursuit of the 'iollar: tor all values iu American life are reduced to that standard. The eyes are keen, the jaws are set and string, the lips are firm and the ends of the mouth are drawn down. It is neurotism. too, but tense in aim and rutlibv-s in pursuit of it. It leads to marvellous efficiency in business. muscukr with the energy of resolve to get ahead of rivals or neighbours in wealth and in the display of wealth. The battle is to the efficient, the strategv is not based on the Ten Commandments, the tactics ignore the law of honour, the end is to get beyond competitors in the race for wealth; and what is the use of wealth if it is not for display? And display h.i s its best chance iu generosity to public institutions. especially to Universities. How different is all this from what I saw and heard in 1885; the professors lamented the almost complete absence of gifts to the universities, such as was so often the rule in Britain. The professors and literary men were ooorlv pai'J, positively starved compared with the princely salaries of movie stars now. But "the reputation of men like Kussell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes was supreme, even beyond that of great actors and great statesmenNow to get a wide reDutation a man of talent and ambition must become a multi-millionaire or a film star. Nor need he keep a high standard of morality or a high ideal like the literary men of forty years ago. There is Now a Mongrel Ethics Without the Old Hearth Education. 1 am afraid that this can be called nothing else than decay. Increase of neurotism is decay; a lower standard of reputation is decay; a lower ideal of life is decay; a lower moral type of amusement is decay. It may be the drift from the old religious moorings. A handsome young pair returning from their honeymoon in Tahiti boldly asserted to me that no one in America went to church; tliey all played golf or automobiled or "hiked." I doubted the truth of this statement and found that it shot far beyond the facts. Yet there is evident a complete relaxation of the old rules of life that came down from Puritan New England; religion and religious ideals seem as far from the minds and lives of men and women as the old belief in sorcery and witchcraft. . And with the majority drift from religious ideals means a drift from moral ideals. There are, of course, other causes at work. The crossing of the different racial strains from the backbloelcs of Europe does not lead to higher ethics, but to lower and often to none at all; where the ethical standard of the father differs from that of the mother, the child falls_ between the two and often right into the abyss. Then the drift to the cities, so marked a feature of modern white civilisation and perhaps most marked in America, by no means leads to a higher moral standard; there is less of home life and fewer guiding traditions where the home life persists. There is no education to be compared to that of the hearth and no conservator of national life and strength ecfual to family life. And it must be confessed that in modern civilisation and most of .all in the new lands of the Anglo-Saxins there is little or no home life. It is all a tale of deeay. A Foil to the Dark Background. And yet here in California have I been immediate witness of the admiration for the old type of family life and ethical ideals. I have been staying in the house of Mr Robert Dollar, the great steamship owner, and he and his wife are about to celebrate their golden wedding; the newspapers have almost persecuted them with interviewers and photographers, and their columns are full of details of their life, attempting to get at the secret of their success. They can easily get at the rise of Mr Dollar to be the grand old man of the Pacific Coast and of the American mercantile marine. He has steamship lines all along the coast and across the Pacific, and has just inaugurated an enterprise that would have been impossible before this age of electricity, cables and wireless, a round-the-world service, cargo and passenger; seven huge steamers fol lowing each other with punctuality to the minute every fortnight. But he belongs in his ethical business and household ideals to the world that is just about to vanish. As a Scot he bases these on the old Scottish traditions of respect for the Ten Commandments, the Bible and commercial honour. He is withal a generous giver to noble public purposes in the old Scottish style of never letting the left hand know what the right hand doeth. One of the best signs of a halt on the path of decadence is the lavish way in which the public institutions and newspapers aro acknowledging his services to America, bringing out the fact that he has done more for the development of the Pacific, of trade with the East, of friendly feeling with China, and Japan, and of the bond between the English-speaking peoples than any other American. But he is still as much a Britisher as he is an American, and in this duplicate allegiance he is in a better position for accomplishing these aims t-lian perhaps any liuui living. It is the emphasis they lay on his beautiful family life for half a century that is especially significant; they seem to count it as a relic of a long past age like the dinosaur's bones and eggs the American expedition has found in Mongolia. It is, in fact, an acknowledgment tlia.t- those noble old ideals hrtve passed and will return no more, a sure sign that decay has begun. Perhaps the fact that on this-visit I have only seen the Pacific coast, whilst on my •visit in 1885 I saw the East as well as the West may somewhat discount my comparison of the two Americas separated by a generation. And it is to the Pacific coast, with its fine climate, that all the people of leisure in the East are crowding, so that there is more pursuit of pleasure here than in the rest of America. In my trip north, however, I have met people from all parts of the United States. But the wonder and curiosity aroused by Mr and Mrs jMlar's golden wedding is evidence enough that a change has occurred that cannot lie called advance especially on the _ side of ethics and family life." And it is not the material side of life but the spiritual that must be taken ci-s the real test of progress, Empires and civilisations die from the spirit outwards. And it is to be feared that the doom of the white raoo has already begun to be written in the book of fate.