392 THE CLASS STRUGGLE ARMED PEACE ON THE PACIFIC 393 other great western powers. And this crude method of the militarists is made feasible by the fact that the force of public opinion has been eliminated, and that the workers have been kept from organizing, so that they are reduced to a condition of cannon fodder.
The Chinese are the very opposite to the Japanese in these matters. They are entirely at home in the sphere of diplomacy, and are keen and shrewd in the conduct of negotiations. They have not attained political unity and centralization of power, but have learned by long training to use their industrial capacity as a weapon. Their method is the boycott and they maintain it to the point of efficiency, violations sometimes having resulted in instant assassination. Thus even the great Chinese masses are highly developed in the economic field, but politically the country is ruled by the educated classes comprising about 5, 000, 000. When the whole race awakens to the value of political in addition to economic power, China will assume a new role representing a definite break with the past. The importance of this situation cannot be over estimated when we take into account that the economic interest of the civilized world after the present war will converge on the Far East, which is the coming sphere of capitalist exploitation.
Meanwhile the Chinese play off one nation against the other in competition, in order to take sides in the end with the strongest as the best means of attaining their purpose. Thus the recent Chinese Japanese pact shows that the educated classes of China who are ruling the country politically have taken sides with Japan as the best way of satisfying their interests, because Japan appears to them at present as the strongest power in the Far East.
That a situation of this kind is fraught with great possibilities, either for good or for evil, of that there can be little doubt.
Is the armed peace of the Pacific to be an intensification of armament opening up the way to a succession of wars? Or is the armed peace to be converted into a lasting peace? The answer depends on whether the white race is going to build its peace plans on the backs of the yellow peril, or whether it will include the yellow nations in the universal brotherhood.
Is the peace to be organized around the Atlantic, and against the Pacific, or is it a lasting world peace to include both Atlantic and Pacific?
As intelligent a man as Bernard Shaw answers this question in a manner somewhat as follows: Speaking on the alliance of nations, he shows the utter impossibility of the white and yellow races understanding each other, referring specifically to the English and the Japanese. We deal in alliances and in guarantees, and behind it there is always the threat of war. When we establish an organization which will make us less anxious about the future there will still be the important question of the balance of power between eastern civilization and western civilization, between the white and the yellow nations.
The present war has given us reason to be very anxious on this point. In the New York American of December 19, 1915, Shaw continues to deal with this subject. He concludes that an effective alliance requires psychological and political homogenity, that the English and the Japanese cannot understand each other in view of the great difference between races of different color, which extends even to the sense of smell, just as a blood hound senses a criminal in this respect. Thus Shaw has reached the point where he decides international questions of the future by the odor test.
His socialism and internationalism are narrowed down to the white race. It is necessary to form a strong alliance among the white countries to subjugate the yellow nations. The time may approach when the white civilization may have to fight for its life against the whole mass of yellow and oriental civilization. We want to produce a combination that will make an attack of that description virtually impossible.
Shaw has also addressed himself directly to the Japanese in a monthly published in Japan The New East. The truth is the West was beginning to fear the East. From the moment