410 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



The duty of English statesmen would thus be to attach less importance 

 than they do to immediate accidental combinations ; and more importance 

 to ultimate contingencies in the future. Alliances with Japan, under- 

 standings with France, cordialities with the United States, may serve an 

 immediate accidental interest of England. But the party which aims at 

 making such temporary and accidental combinations the comer-stone of 

 British foreign policy would appear to be dangerously short-sighted. The 

 Japanese .statesman who cleverly contracted the British alUance served 

 thereby the best interests of their coiuitry ; for they had in view the con- 

 flict with Russia and the probability of European intervention, as in the 

 war with China in 1895 ; and they saw in the British alliance the best 

 means of preventing any such intervention. But what constitutes the 

 interest of Japan does not necessarily constitute the interest of England. 

 The "yellow peril" is much derided in England. But what is the yellow 

 peril if not the expansion of the yellow races, expansion which, owing to 

 the vast numerical superiority of the latter, would constitute a terrible 

 danger for European civilisation ?i The argument that China wiU never 

 expand is futile. What justification is there for this prophecy ? Who 

 could have foretold in 1850 the astonishing expansion of Japan ? And 

 would not Comte himself have refused to believe in the reality of such an 

 event as the Ukase of October 30, 1905, with aU its possible consequences 

 for Russia and the world ? Arguments based exclusively on prophecy 

 are always weak ; and, in the present instance, the prophecy of those who 

 maintain that China will never stir, examined by the only light we can 

 examine it in — that of analogy — is found to be devoid of all value. 



The same reason which appears to us to condemn, from the point of view 

 of the national interest of England, the alUance with Japan ; appears to 

 us to condemn also the policy, now so much in favom*, of hostility to Ger- 

 many. Even as an accidental interest may have been served by the aUiance 

 with Japan — though what this interest was, or is, does not seem clear — 

 so an accidental interest may be served by a poUcy of hostility to Germany ; 

 though here again we are wholly unable to discern the interest which it 

 proposed to serve thereby. But, in the one case, the ultimate contingency 

 of a vast conflict between the white and yellow races for the domination 

 of the world is complacently overlooked and relegated to the domain of 

 fiction ; and, in the other, the ultimate contingency of a conflict between 

 the Slav and Germanic races for hegemony in Europe is similarly over- 

 looked. We have spoken in the last chapter of the poHcy of Germany 



1 The incident which has recently occurred (December, 1906) between 

 Japan and the United States with regard to the exclusion of Japanese 

 children from State schools in California, is pregnant with meaning. 

 The Califomians are in a position to appreciate the ultimate consequences 

 of excessive Japanese immigration. 



