ASIATICS AND THE EMPIRE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 30, 30 October 1907, Page 6

ASIATICS AND THE EMPIRE.

. According to a cable message published, yesterday}' finality has by no means beeii reached on the question of Japanese immigration into Canada. Japan, it is said, is.pleased at tlie attitude of tlie .Canadian authorities regarding' the anti-Asiatic outrages in Vancouver last month, but .strongly opposes the restriction of Japanese im ■ migration'on the double ground that it is "an insidious discrimination anJ also'unnecessary," inasmuch as the inflow of labourers to Canada has ceased. Vancouver, however, has not abated ■its antagonism .towards the Japanese, and the Eiiianc.e Committee of the Corporation declares that 7700 Japanese and over 2000 other Asiatics have entered ■ British Columbia: during this year. The problem is a very serious one for; the Canadian province, and it. is one that has a special interest for. Australasia, which is, geographically, temptingly open to .settlement by the overflowing population of Japan. The 'objections of British Columbia to the free influx of the Japanese are twofold in character. Not only is there a violent racial antipathy "towards the Asiatic, but there is a serious anxiety lest tlie Asiatic,' with his lower of' living, will either oust the white man,in the long: run, or drag down the level of tlie colony's civilisation and the scale of life. As a Canadian journal puts it, "nothing is more certain than that a higher civilisation cannot be maintained in presence of a lower, or that the free admission of Asiatic people will 'submerge white labour wherever the two forces c6me into contact." But we. do not intend to traverse the general lines of a subject already Over-written in every country in the Empire. When the. question is .probed to its centre, it is found to resolve itself, into the problem of the duty of a Dominion towards the Empire, and of Great Britain towards the oversea-Dominions.' Nobody affects to deny that what is violently, agitating British Columbia to : day may one .lay violently agitate Australia and New Zealand. It is a distant prospect, certainly, but,it is none the less one to be provided for beforehand. The rights of the self-governing Dominions to regulate the inflow of coloured immigrants, and the amount of liberty left to the individual members of the Empire by such international arrangements as the Anglo-Japanese treaty, were subjects that should have been fully discussed and finally settled at the last Imperial Conference. Unfortunately these questions were not discussed, and the, peace of the Empire is liable at a'uy moment to serious disturbance arising "from a conflict between colonial feeling and Imperial treaty obligations. While the AngloJapanese treaty exists, the Imperial Government, until it makes some satisfactory arrangement, will run the double risk of offending the Dominions and annoying Japan. To the London "Times," the British Columbian " intolerance" is " painfully common" in Australia, New Zealand, and Natal, and "the men who foster it and who guide it are as ignorant and as narrowminded as they arc selfish." These men—who, of course, include the foremost statesmen of the Dominion— "appear, to be absolutely insensible to the complexity of the Empire to which they belong,' and of the paramount duties which each class within it owes to it as a whole." This violent and bitter distortion of the real feeling in the Dominions is .fortunately confined,

to the, "Times," but it indicates the difficulty which Englishmen at Home experience in trying to understand the true positirv. We do not agree with those who discuss the " Yellow,peril" as if it were an immediate menace to the social and political future of New Zealand, and we recognise that there is a tendency in some quarters to unduly press the views of outlying portions of the Empire on questions in which the whole Empire is concerned. If people were only holiest with themselves, they would admit that there has been no occasion for much of the alarmist talk of the last few years. We are nevertheless impressed by the position ,in British' Columbia with the necessity for an early discussion and settlement '.of what "The Times" calls "the whole subject of the relations between our colonists and their Asiatic fellow-sub-jects, on the one hand, and between them and friendly Asiatic States an.l peoples, upon the other."