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"Gentle

is excessively acute, was expressed in the so-called "gentle- The men's agreement" between the United States and Japan. men's By that farsighted arrangement racial friction was dimin- Agreeished and opportunity afforded for the gradual growth of mutual understanding on the part of all classes of each

race.

ment"

tinctions

tions

The problem is not so easily solved in those difficult Racial discases where both races are already present in substantial and racial numbers on the same soil. But, so long as they remain in discriminaclose contact, there is no other policy possible for a modern commonwealth than that which has proved to be sound in dealing with conflicting sentiments of nationality in the same population. Racial may exceed nationalistic feeling in intensity, and its cause, being physical and not merely psychical, may be ineradicable, but it cannot become the basis of offensive political discriminations by the members of one race against another without impairing the character of the body politic. Inferior kinds of states may be governed by a dominant race in their own interest, with little or no regard for the interests of what they may be pleased to consider inferior races, which happen to be subject to their jurisdiction, but the true commonwealth must secure justice and liberty for all.

in the

States

The people of the United States wisely decided at the The political close of the Civil War that all persons should enjoy the equality equal protection of the laws, and that the right of citizens of races to vote should not be denied or abridged on account of United race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Civil and political equality for members of all races alike is one of the obvious characteristics that distinguish a commonwealth from inferior types of states. There was nothing inconsistent with the principle of civil equality in the subsequent recognition by the Supreme Court of the validity of racial distinctions in American law, provided that they did not serve to camouflage unjust discriminations against

Imperialism,

humani

and modern

the weaker race. But it was a mistake to carry the principle of political equality so far as to ignore real differences in the political capacity of individuals, irrespective of race, as was done by the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. The tangled skein of racial relations is no Gordian knot which one swift stroke can cut. The political problems growing out of interracial relations within a state may perhaps be solved by force if the dominant race is willing to pursue the methods employed by the Turks against the Armenians. The only alternative is tactful tolerance and good will. By the treatment which a dominant race accords to weaker races within a state it may be known whether or not that state tends to be a true commonwealth.

It is an interesting speculation whether under present conditions a commonwealth is possible for peoples of tarianism, various and markedly different races.1 Englishmen like nationalism to talk about the British Commonwealth, by which they generally mean a body politic designed to secure justice and liberty for all the people of Great Britain. They sometimes talk about the British Commonwealth of Nations, by which they mean a similar body politic, embracing also the overseas dominions, inhabited by peoples of European extraction. But there seems to be little or no trace of such a corporate sentiment as would bind all the various peoples of the Empire in the same cordial union as that of the English and the Scotch. Modern imperialism does not mean a corporate sentiment, in the consciousness of which the peoples of empires find their bond of union. It means that policy of the Greater Powers which leads them to influence the management of weaker states and to control the destinies of backward peoples primarily in their own interest and for their own. ends. It is a dangerous policy for any people to pursue who wish their state to be a true commonwealth, for the

1 Cf. Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, Part 1, Chapter IV.

commonwealth must reflect the purposes and serve the ends of all its members. One can conceive of a sentiment of humanitarianism strong enough to furnish the foundation for a single universal commonwealth. The development of such a sentiment would be no more extraordinary than the evolution of nineteenth century nationalism from the tribal loyalties and petty clannishness of the barbarous ages. But there is little evidence of such a sentiment among the peoples of the world to-day. The nations are still very ignorant of one another. Racial consciousness, and the sentiment of nationality also, are likely to remain for a long time to come powerful factors in the politics of civilized states. In some cases they may make it easier for the people of the state to form a commonwealth; in most cases they will make the formation of commonwealths more difficult and the further progress of democracy less secure.

NOTES ON BOOKS

For significant interpretations of nationalism from various points of view, see the chapters on that subject in Mill's Representative Government, Wallas's Human Nature in Politics, and Dunning's History of Political Theories: From Rousseau to Spencer, and also Rabindranath Tagore's "Nationalism in the West" in The Atlantic Monthly (March, 1917). On the psychological aspects of nationalism, the fullest treatment will be found in W. B. Pillsbury's The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism (1919). The most attractive side of modern nationalism is shown in A. E. Zimmern's Nationality and Government (1917), and the least attractive side in Treitzschke's Politics (English translation with introduction by A. J. Balfour and foreword by A. L. Lowell, 2 vols., 1916). See also H. W. C. Davis, The Political Thought of Heinrich von Treitzschke (1915). Perhaps the most serviceable single volume on the subject is Sydney Herbert's Nationality and Its Problems (1920). See also Ramsay Muir, Nationalism and Internationalism (1917).

2. The best introduction to the history of nationalism in Europe is G. P. Gooch's Nationalism (1920).

3. The triumph of nationalism at the Peace Conference of Versailles and the effort to prevent the rise of new Kulturstaaten is a topic on which there are not yet any adequate books. The approach to the subject can best be made by American readers through R. S. Baker's Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (3 vols., 1922), and R. Lansing's The Peace Negotiations; A Personal Narrative (1921).

4. Instructive volumes on special problems of nationality and of race are F. Hackett's Ireland, a Study in Nationalism (1918) and. H. M. Kallen's Zionism and World Politics (1921). On the problems of nationality in the United States a suggestive recent work is J. P. Gavit's Americans by Choice (1922) and the other volumes in the Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation. On the negro problem see R. T. Kerlin's The Voice of the Negro (1920), and the report of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (1922). An introduction to the problem of the yellow races is afforded by R. L. Buell's The Washington Conference (1922).

CHAPTER V

THE STRUGGLE OF CLASSES

1

of class

solidarity

THE last of the three principles which have exerted the Principle strongest influence in modern politics is that which was conscious stated most forcefully by the learned Jewish economist proletarian and labor agitator, Karl Marx, in the epoch-making Communist Manifesto of 1848. "The immediate aim of the Communists," he wrote, "is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat." In other words, the Marxian Communists believed that the proletariat should have its own state, just as many nationalists have believed that the national group should have its own state, and as the adherents of many religions have believed that the religious group should have its own state. Socialism or communism, therefore, regarded as a political movement, like clericalism and nationalism, raises the problem of the relations that should obtain between the state and a group within the state which is united by special interests and a corporate sentiment of its own. In the case of socialism and communism, this group is the class of proletarians.

Proletarian was until recently a strange word in What is the American political terminology. It is derived from the proletariat? Latin word for offspring. A proletary in ancient Rome was a citizen of the lowest class, possessing no property and deemed capable of best serving the state by rearing numerous children. Hence the name. In modern times

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