The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1920. RACIAL INCOMPATIBILITY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3646, 6 December 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1920. RACIAL INCOMPATIBILITY.

With which is Incorporated “The Tathape Post and Waimarino News ”

Japanese determination to find room <on this seemingly too small a globe for Japan’s surplus population is causing considerable friction in those countries which are most honoured ■With the attentions and presence of •Japanese migrants. There is* apparent truth in the statement that barbarism cannot be bred out of a people in a ■generation or two-; that while on the •surface the suave and wily Jap copies to a nicety the manners, usuages and customs of western peoples he i» still at bedrock a barbarian. A cable ■message received yesterday, one of a long list of a similar character, once more brings up the question as to whether the Japanese people have yet arrived at that stage and degree of civilisation that renders them fit to be absorbed in, and to become biologically a component part of civilised western races. Dr Martin, of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission at Seoul, Korea, has issued a statement charging Japanese troops with indiscriminate slaughter of Christians in the Chientao district of Manchuria; also with having destroyed standing C"ops ocereals. The Japanese War Office does not deny the slaughter, hut it claims that none were slain because of their religion. The execution of revolutionists and bandits was orderoc? when caught red-handed. It is unfortunate for the Japanese War Office that all the revolutionists and bandits so caught should be Christians; and the War Office appears to have levelled a gratuitous insult at Dr Martin; at the Canadian Presbyterians, and at | Christians generally. There is a lurking suggestion, in this selection of Christians for slaughter Jhat the Japanese Government .desire, to , eliminate every vestige of western influence from a zone it is their particular wisn to make Japanese territory.; . In this cheapness of human life era the Japanese are probably under the impression that the slaughter of a few hundreds, or thousands, of Manchurian and Korean Christians will not attract anything more than local notice. But It is such indiscretions which do particularly Interest civilisation, owing to the demonstrations they constitute of what Japanese methods of colonisation in unchecked practice consist, of. Official Japanese statements convey the intelligence that Japanese soldiers have been ordered to slaughter -sfee native Christians of Manchuria if they are engaged in revolution or robbery. It is not denied that squads of Japanese soldiers are ordered to go about shooting down, slaughtering Manchurians. Is there any doubt, about Manchurians being shot down, slaughtered* in hundreds, just because they oppose the wishes, and stand in thp way of the attainment of Japanese ambitions? Whatever the answer to that question may be there is certainly no doubt in the minds of western civilised methods of colonisation in whatever country and upon whatever people they might think they were strong enough to put them into practice. In Manchuria Japanese businessmen arc following up closely, the- Japanese army of occupation, and, to put the most probable construction upon the statement of Dr Martin, when the Japanese discovered the blunder made in slaughtering a few hundred Christians, those businessmen appealed, to the Japanese Government for more soldiers, more armies, to further clear Die country of 'cfirisfTali revolutionaries and bandits. Japanese action in Manchuria and Korea, in connection with their colonisation schemes furnish an unerring example of what Japan would do elsewhere should that country over become powerful enough. People in British Dominions have hitherto not shown any desire to * share their respective countries with the Japanese: Australia and New Zealand have rendered any considerable influx of Asiatics virtually impossible; Canadians arc discovering that it was a mistake to permit Japanese immigration, and the United States is persistently trying to undo the crime of the apostles of cheap labour in importing Japanese workmen. Farmers and Railway Companies' benefitted by imported cheap labour from Japan, but the cry at the present time is to have the Japanese banned and banished from California. To-day, the men who followed the little brown labourers arc monopolising Califorian industries and despite all laws, agreements and treaties to the contrary still more Japs continue to find a way of getting into California. In ten years Japanese in California have doubled their number in face of all anti-Asiatic log-

islation, In or about 1907 an agreeimerit between the American and. Japanees Governments, called the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” was entered into forbidding Japanese immigration to California; but the Jap proved himself equal, if not more than the equal, or the American in that duplicity commonly known as diplomacy, tor they secured the right for Japanese women to join their husbands, with the result that vety nearly every male Jap in California proved to be a married man, and their presumed wives commenced to arrive in shiploads from the land of the Rising Sun. The natural sequence of course, is that with the increase from these unions, and the smuggling into Calofornia over the Mexican border Americans are becoming alarmed and distracted at Japanese peaceful penetration through the back-door into western civilisations. It will not be denied that Americans made a serious blunder by importing cheap male labour from Asia. American society was immediately places between two evils; it became certain that the low class Japanese labourers would ally themselves with American women, unless that menace were lessened by permitting' them to have wives from Japan. The racial difficulty is one the League of Nations is much concerned with, and, as yet, no solution is in sight. But is not the New Zealand Government inviting trouble similar to that experienced by America? Cheap labour is wanted in Samoa to produce sugar at a price that will enable plantations to be kept in cultivation. It cannot be conceded that this is a just claim, no more so than similar claims made by American railway (companies, and land trusts. It is, however, the racial question that now chiefly obtrudes itseJf. The Asiatics in Samoa allied themselves with ' native women and a most degenerate and shameful social situation arose. It is now proposed to do just what the Americans did, that is, let the Asiatics have wives from their own country. Will not the New Zealand Government be contributing largely to the growth and intensiveness of the yellow peril by having children born of alien, parents reared educatied in a New Zealand dependency, virtually born New Zealanders? Can the parents of those children be deported at the end of their indenture if the children refuse to leave?. It must be admitted that the cheap Asiatic labour is a very rH-ngornus thing to have anything to |do with. Americans know to their sorrow and disgust how indiscreet they have been by inviting into their land, an enemy that has at last become a nightmare which leaves no rest from the work of increasing armaments and in building up a navy hitherto unprecedented. The worlds naval race Is not now between Britain and Germany, but it is between America an(T Japan. What position will Samoa occupy, and what part will its Asiatic population play when the trouble comes?