August 8, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



123 



migration to America, namely, the grinding 

 poverty under which the great masses of hand 

 laborers of Asia live at home. Surely it 

 would be disastrous to both western America 

 and eastern Asia as wholes, for the former to 

 becbm^e Asiaticized to the extent that the 

 Hawaiian Islands have become so. But the 

 only rational way and, as I believe, the most 

 effective and practical way to prevent this 

 is to make the economic conditions of Asiatic 

 laborers in Asia at least approximately as 

 favorable to them as are the conditions which 

 they find in America. 



If statesmanship pronounces this an utterly 

 unrealizable ideal, it thereby merely declares 

 its own incompetency to bring it about, this 

 incompetency being due to the fact that states- 

 manship of the traditional sort is not pri- 

 marily a thing of comprehensive, accurate 

 knowledge and reason, but rather only of 

 partial knowledge and of instinct and im- 

 pulse. And this raises the question, very 

 pertinent at this time: What has been in 

 general the fundamental nature of political 

 motive and action, especially as between na- 

 tions, do^vn to this time 1 Has it been mainly 

 rational and intelligent, or has it been mainly 

 instinctive and passionate? Let history an- 

 swer. 



' In the cataclysmic condition of the world 

 to-day, three occurrences in particular are 

 recognizable which should encourage the at- 

 tempt to deal with the Asiatic-American prob- 

 lem on the principles I am setting forth. (1) 

 The revised covenant for the League of Na- 

 tions (which will surely soon be adopted if 

 reason is indeed now to be enthroned in the 

 grovernment of the world), making the League 

 the central body for coordinating and pro- 

 moting international activities generally; (2) 

 the provisions of the covenant relating to 

 labor problems which are international in 

 scope; (3) the determination by the American 

 Federation of Labor at the Atlantic City 

 convention (according to press dispatches) to 

 cooperate with Japanese workers for bringing 

 about a better understanding between work- 

 ing men of Japan and the LTnited States. 



I venture to predict that were tlie agencies 



and. movements here indicated to become 

 really active in behalf of the Asiatic-Amer- 

 ican problem, they would inevitably move in 

 the direction of some such solution of it as I 

 am indicating. 



A thing that science can say which ought 

 to contribute much as an initial step in this 

 direction is that the civilized world may as- 

 sure itself that given adequate scientific in- 

 vestigation and utilization of the resources of 

 nature; and given a due measure of scientific 

 knowledge and of the spirit of justice and 

 morality in politics and law in national and 

 international affairs; and given, further, a 

 due sway of reason in the gi'owth of popula- 

 tion, and no people of the world need live in 

 danger of starvation or even of serious want. 

 The proposition is surely susceptible of some- 

 thing approaching demonstration that the 

 dogma of the inevitability of material poverty 

 for great sections of the world's population is 

 a mark of primitiveness, of immaturity of 

 huinan societies. 



And I wish here to affirm the unhumanness 

 of national policies which encourage large 

 families in the interest of large armies and 

 cheap labor. 



Probably the foremost significance of reason 

 in the human animal is that it is the device 

 or agency developed by nature to relieve the 

 species from the uncertainty and precarious- 

 ness of material sustenance as instinct alone 

 is able to secure it. 



To develop the latent natural resources of 

 the whole Pacific area, of land and water 

 alike, and then to distribute and use the 

 fruits obtained in such fashion that all por- 

 tions of all the populations shall be bene- 

 ficiaries in just ratio, would be exactly one of 

 the most characteristic things which these 

 peoples could do as rational, i. e., as truly 

 himian animals. 



This paper and those to follow in this sym- 

 posium are so many indices of what would 

 be involved in carrying out such a proposal 

 80 far as the great ocean itself is concerned. 



Many decades of common experience with, 

 and scientific research upon the oceans of the 

 earth, the atmosphere which overspreads them, 



