476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



population within their natural habitats. Eoughly speaking, eastern 

 Asia is already peopled almost to the limit under present conditions, 

 while tropical Africa is but sparsely populated in proportion to its 

 capacity. Under favorable conditions of economic efficiency tropical 

 Africa would be the home of nearly a billion blacks. Taken together, 

 and allowing for a normal growth, these two ethnic groups may pos- 

 sibly increase in numbers until they shall cause the whites of Europe 

 and America to dwindle into insignificance by comparison. 



This is the thesis of a recent significant book by B. L. Putnam 

 Weale, an authority on far eastern politics. 4 The peril of white su- 

 premacy arises, Weale believes, not alone from the growing balance of 

 numbers in favor of the colored, great as that is likely to prove, but 

 from the fact that the colored races are beginning to acquire and will 

 continue to gain a distinct race consciousness and a sense of race 

 solidarity. And just as the narrow interests of the little Greek lands 

 were supplanted by the wider outlook of Alexander's empire, as the 

 peninsular civilization of republican Rome was swallowed up in the 

 world dominion of the imperial period, so the continental system of 

 modern Europe is being swept into the whirl of world-wide interests. 

 In this great historical change the ethnic element, or, more specifically, 

 color, is to be the militant factor. With the increase of intelligence the 

 aggressiveness of the colored races will augment and they will begin to 

 take conscious advantage of their weight of numbers. A readjustment 

 of power must follow as fast as the colored races become efficient in the 

 arts that make for group self-assertion. For, says Weale : 



Eeal frontiers — real barriers to the swaying to and fro of peoples — are 

 no longer rivers or mountains or seas or any of those physical features still 

 referred to in the geography books. These are only the frontiers of savages; 

 the real frontiers of civilization are formed by masses of men distributed in 

 proper density, highly civilized, irrevocably locked to the soil by their history 

 and their culture, and sufficiently warlike to make their physical boundaries 

 respected should wanton aggression menace them. ... A deep instinct will 

 continue to push men to substitute for the purely political demarcations which 

 have come down from other days a new class which may be called racial 

 demarcations. That such demarcations are necessarily blurred is no matter; 

 this only adds one more difficulty to a question which force may attempt to 

 solve. It is this knowledge — that racial instinct and racial pride ignore political 

 boundaries — which is the nightmare of statesmen. 5 



The colored already outnumber the whites of the world nearly two 

 to one, and this proportion is likely to increase rather than diminish 

 in the immediate future. Weale estimates that by the year 2000 China 

 will have eight hundred million population and Japan one hundred and 

 twenty to one hundred and forty million. As race consciousness grows 

 more pronounced war must constantly occur as the colored races be- 



4 "The Conflict of Color," London, 1910. Weale is the pseudonym of 

 Mr. B. L. Simpson. 



5 Ibid., pp. 90-91. 



