I have seen Chinese of the
highest education, men as cultured as (say) Dean Inge, treated by greasy
white men as if they were dirt, in a way in which, at home, no Duke
would venture to treat a crossing-sweeper. The Japanese are not treated
in this way, because they have a powerful army and navy. The fact that
white men, as individuals, no longer dare to bully individual Japanese,
is important as a beginning of better relations towards the coloured
races in general. If the Japanese, by defeat in war, are prevented from
retaining the status of a Great Power, the coloured races in general
will suffer, and the tottering insolence of the white man will be
re-established. Also the world will have lost the last chance of the
survival of civilizations of a different type from that of the
industrial West.
The civilization of Japan, in its material aspect, is similar to that of
the West, though industrialism, as yet, is not very developed. But in
its mental aspect it is utterly unlike the West, particularly the
Anglo-Saxon West. Worship of the Mikado, as an actually divine being,
is successfully taught in every village school, and provides the popular
support for nationalism. The nationalistic aims of Japan are not merely
economic; they are also dynastic and territorial in a mediaeval way. The
morality of the Japanese is not utilitarian, but intensely idealistic.
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