Lothrop Stoddard

“ The effect of such ideas, if successful, not only on our civilization, but also on the very fibre of the race, can be imagined. The death or degradation of nearly all persons displaying constructive ability, and the tyranny of the ignorant and anti-social elements, would be the most gigantic triumph of disgenics ever seen. Beside it the ill effects of war would pale into insignificance. Civilization would wither like a plant stricken by blight, while the race, summarily drained of its good blood, would sink like lead into the depths of degenerate barbarism. ”

“ The Pacific coast is the frontier of the white man’s world, the culmination of the westward migration which is the white man’s whole history. It will remain the frontier so long as we regard it as such; no longer. Unless it is maintained there, there is no other line at which it can be maintained without more effort than American government and American civilization are able to sustain. The multitudes of Asia are awake, after their long sleep, as the multitudes of Europe were when our present flood of immigration began. ”

“ Assuredly, every small-family nation will try to raise such a dam, and every big-family nation will try to break it down. The outlook for peace and disarmament is, therefore, far from bright. One needs but compare the population-pressures in France, Germany, Russia, and Japan to realize that, even to-day, the real enemy of the dove of peace is not the eagle of pride or the vulture of greed, but the stork! ”

“ If the present drift be not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order, the doom will sooner or later overtake us all.
And that would mean that the race obviously endowed with the greatest creative ability, the race which had achieved most in the past and which gave the richer promise for the future, had passed away, carrying with it to the grave those potencies upon which the realization of man’s highest hopes depends. A million years of human evolution might go uncrowned, and earth’s supreme life-product, man, might never fulfil his potential destiny. ”

“ The heart of the white world was divided against itself, and on the fateful 1st of August, 1914, the white race, forgetting ties of blood and culture, heedless of the growing pressure of the colored world without, locked in a battle to the death. An ominous cycle opened whose end no man can foresee. Armageddon engendered Versailles; earth’s worst war closed with an unconstructive peace which left old sores unhealed and even dealt fresh wounds. The white world to-day lies debilitated and uncured ”

“ There lies a danger, not merely to the peace of the Far East, but to the peace of the world. Fired by a fervent patriotism; resolved to make their country a leader among the nations; the Japanese writhe at the constriction of their present race-bounds. Placed on the flank of the Chinese giant whose portentous growth she can accurately forecast, Japan sees herself condemned to ultimate renunciation of her grandiose ambitions unless she can somehow broaden the racial as well as the political basis of her power. ”

“ Japan as hegemon of a Far East in which white influence shall have been reduced to a vanishing quantity. That is the bald truth of the matter—and no white man has any reason for getting indignant about it. Granted that Japanese aims endanger white vested interests in the Far East. Granted that this involves rivalry and perhaps war. That is no reason for striking a moral attitude and inveighing against Japanese “wickedness,” as many people are to-day doing. These mighty racial tides flow from the most elemental of vital urges: self-expansion and self-preservation. ”

“ In the event of war Japan could, as if aided by a magician’s wand, overrun the Pacific with fleets manned by men who have made Nelson their model and transported to the armadas of the Far East the spirit that was victorious at Trafalgar. Whether Japan avows it or not, her persistent aim is to gain the mastery of the Pacific. Although peace seems to prevail over the world at present, no one can tell how soon the nations may be engaged in war. It does not need the English alliance to secure success for Japan. That alliance may be dissolved at any moment, but Japan will suffer no defeat. ”

“ We have erred grievously by prematurely forcing ourselves upon Asiatic races. The instinct of the Asiatic in desiring isolation and separation from other forms of civilization was much more correct than our craze for imposing our forms of religion, morals, and industrialism upon them. It is not race-hatred, nor even race-antagonism, that is at the root of this attitude; it is an unerring intuition, which in years gone by has taught the Asiatic that his evolution in the scale of civilization could best be accomplished by his being allowed to develop on his own lines. ”

“ No more zealous Moslems are to be found in all the ranks of Islam than they who have sojourned longest in Europe and acquired the most intimate knowledge of its sciences and ways.... Mohammedans are keenly alive to the ever-shifting uncertainties and divisions that distract the Christianity of to-day, and to the woful instability of modern European institutions. From their own point of view, Moslems are as men standing on a secure rock, and they contrast the quiet fixity of their own position with the unsettled and insecure restlessness of all else. ”

“ Every principle which mankind has thus far evolved: community of interest, the solidarity of civilization and culture, the dignity of labor, of muscle, of brawn, dominated and illumined by intellect and spirit—all these Bolshevism howls down and tramples in the mud. ”

“ And another French observer, René Pinon, as far back as 1905, found the primary school children of Kiang-Su province chanting the following lines: “I pray that the frontiers of my country become hard as bronze; that it surpass Europe and America; that it subjugate Japan; that its land and sea armies cover themselves with resplendent glory; that over the whole earth float the Dragon Standard; that the universal mastery of the empire extend and progress. May our empire, like a sleeping tiger suddenly awakened, spring roaring into the arena of combats.” ”

“ All this represents not a thousandth part of the desolation which the war has brought upon our civilization. These devastated areas scarring the face of Europe are but a symbol of the desolation which will shadow the life of the world for at least a generation. The coming years will be bleak, in respect of all the generous and gracious things which are the products of leisure and of minds not wholly taken up by the necessity to live by bread alone. For a generation the world will have to concentrate upon material problems. ”

“ The prospects were magnificent, the potentialities of progress apparently unlimited. Yet there were commensurate perils. Towering heights mean abysmal depths, while the very possibility of supreme success implies the possibility of supreme failure. All these marvellous achievements were due solely to superior heredity, and the mere maintenance of what had been won depended absolutely upon the prior maintenance of race-values. Civilization of itself means nothing. It is merely an effect, whose cause is the creative urge of superior germ-plasm. Civilization is the body; the race is the soul. ”

“ One thing alone gives Japan pause—our veto. Japan knows that real aggression against our southern neighbors would spell war with the United States. Japan does not contemplate war with us at present. She has many fish to fry in the Far East. So in Latin America she plays safe. But she bides her time. In Latin America itself she has friends—even partisans. Japan seeks to mobilize to her profit that distrust of the “Yanqui” which permeates Latin America. The half-castes, in particular, rage at our “color line” and see in the United States the Nemesis of their anarchic misrule. ”

“ But against these race-frontiers—these “inner dikes”—the rising tide of color has for decades been beating, and will beat yet more fiercely as congesting population, quickened self-consciousness, and heightened sense of power impel the colored world to expansion and dominion. Above the eastern horizon the dark storm-clouds lower, and the weakened, distracted white world must soon face a colored peril threatening its integrity and perhaps its existence. ”

“ Both these factors favored a prodigious increase in population, particularly in Europe, since Europe became the workshop of the world. In fact, during the nineteenth century, Europe was transformed from a semi-rural continent into a swarming hive of industry, gorged with goods, capital, and men, pouring forth its wares to the remotest corners of the earth, and drawing thence fresh stores of raw material for new fabrication and exchange. The amount of wealth amassed by the white world in general and by Europe in particular since the beginning of the nineteenth century is simply incalculable. ”

“ There is, however, another dynamic which might transform mongrel America. This dynamic is yellow Asia. The Far East teems with virile and laborious life. It thrills to novel ambitions and desires. Avid with the urge of swarming myriads, it hungrily seeks outlets for its superabundant vitality. We have already seen how the Mongolian has earmarked the whole Far East for his own, and in subsequent pages we shall see how he also beats restlessly against the white world’s race-frontiers. But mongrel America! What other field offers such tempting possibilities for Mongolian race-expansion? ”

“ So grand is the prize that failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less alter their conviction. If these movements follow historic lines they will recur for a time upon a constantly ascending scale, each repulse eliciting a greater effort, until at last Asia like Africa is ‘partitioned,’ that is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. If Europe can avoid internal war, or war with a much-aggrandized America, she will by A. D. 2000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to enjoy. ”

“ To support the official world and its garrison—both, recollect, smaller than those of Belgium—there is, except Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. Not only is there no white race in India, not only is there no white colony, but there is no white man who purposes to remain.... There are no white servants, not even grooms, no white policemen, no white postmen, no white anything. If the brown men struck for a week, the ‘Empire’ would collapse like a house of cards, and every ruling man would be a starving prisoner in his own house. ”

“ To me, those who are to come after us stretch forth beseeching hands as well as do the masses on the other side of the globe. Nor do I regard America as something to be spent quickly and cheerfully for the benefit of pent-up millions in the backward lands. What if we become crowded without their ceasing to be so? I regard it (America) as a nation whose future may be of unspeakable value to the rest of mankind, provided that the easier conditions of life here be made permanent by high standards of living, institutions, and ideals, which finally may be appropriated by all men. ”

“ The imperious urge of the colored world toward racial expansion was well visualized by that keen English student of world affairs, Doctor E. J. Dillon, when he wrote more than a decade ago: “The problem is one of life and death—a veritable sphinx-question—to those most nearly concerned. For, no race, however inferior it may be, will consent to famish slowly in order that other people may fatten and take their ease, especially if it has a good chance to make a fight for life.” ”

“ Accordingly, in every quarter of the globe, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States, Bolshevik agitators whisper in the ears of discontented colored men their gospel of hatred and revenge. Every nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social discrimination, is fuel for Bolshevism’s hellish incitement to racial as well as to class war. ”

“ Then down upon this delicately organized mechanism crashed the trip-hammer of the Great War, literally smashing it to pieces. To reconstruct so intricate a fabric takes time. Meanwhile, how are the huge urban masses to live, unfitted and unable as they are to draw their sustenance from their native soil? If their sufferings become too great there is a real danger that all Europe may collapse into hopeless chaos. ”

“ With the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Asia began to show signs of an economic activity as striking in its way as the activity which Asia was displaying in idealistic and political fields. Japan had already laid the foundations of her flourishing industrial life based on the most up-to-date Western models, while in other Asiatic lands, notably in China and India, the whir of machinery and the smoke of tall factory chimneys proclaimed that the East was fathoming the industrial secrets of the West. ”

“ It is clean, virile, genius-bearing blood, streaming down the ages through the unerring action of heredity, which, in anything like a favorable environment, will multiply itself, solve our problems, and sweep us on to higher and nobler destinies. What we to-day need above all else is a changed attitude of mind—a recognition of the supreme importance of heredity, not merely in scientific treatises but in the practical ordering of the world’s affairs. ”

“ In fact, even to-day it tends to intensify Asiatic desires for expansion, and thus exacerbates the third, or migratory, phase of the colored peril, which is already upon us.
The question of Asiatic immigration is incomparably the greatest external problem which faces the white world. Supreme phase of the colored peril, it already presses, and is destined to press harder in the near future. It infinitely transcends the peril of arms or markets, since it threatens not merely our supremacy or prosperity but our very race-existence, the wellsprings of being, the sacred heritage of our children. ”

“ If America is not true to her own race-soul, she will inevitably lose it, and the brightest star that has appeared since Hellas will fall like a meteor from the human sky, its brilliant radiance fading into the night. ”

“ You do not get peace merely by putting it on paper. And, much more [Pg 217] to the point, all that is called peace does not necessarily spell prosperity any more than all that glitters is gold. You can ‘make a solitude and call it peace.’ The quintessence of death or stupefaction resembles a kind of peace. You can prolong relative stagnation and depression and yet say that it is peace. But that would not be the reconciling and lasting, the constructive and the creative peace, as it was visioned by the Allied peoples in their greatest moments of insight and inspiration during the war. ”

“ In Asia white hegemony rests solely on political bases, while the Asiatics themselves, browns and yellows alike, display constructive power and possess civilizations built up by their own efforts from the remote past. The Asiatics are to-day once more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but adapting, white ideas and methods. We behold an Asiatic renaissance, whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that there have been similar movements in past times.
None of this applies to Africa. The black race has never shown real constructive power. ”

“ The colonization of Latin America was the exact antithesis. The Spanish Conquistadores were bold warriors descending upon vast regions inhabited by relatively dense populations, some of which, as in Mexico and Peru, had attained a certain degree of civilization. The Spaniards, invincible in their shining armor, paralyzed with terror these people still dwelling in the age of bronze and polished stone. With ridiculous ease mere handfuls of whites overthrew empires and lorded it like gods over servile and adoring multitudes. ”