Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/482

478 not be disputed, but that this will long remain the basis of eastern Asiatic politics is not certain, or even probable. The Japanese alliance with England shows how feeble are ethnic as compared with purely national interests in international relations. The negroid peoples, although they have made little progress towards a distinct race consciousness, are beginning to show glimmerings of a sense of ethnic unity, or at least a consciousness of separateness from the whites. After the Russo-Japanese war a vague rumor that a white race somewhere had been beaten in war by a colored people filtered into very remote portions of Africa. During the Boer war news of British defeats spread with incredible rapidity among the blacks and was everywhere received with exultation. Among the blacks of South Africa the colored churches are found to very soon cast off their alliance with white churches and to insist on separate ecclesiastical organization. This so-called "Ethiopian" movement, it is interesting to note, is fostered by the negro churches in America, with which in several cases definite alliances have been made.

Weale's alarm call to the white race is based on the assumption that the whites as whites are likely to be faced by the colored races in solid array. He calls attention to the fact that the European nations are disunited and can not act harmoniously in either Asia or Africa, and that they will be so hopelessly outnumbered in the near future that even united action would leave their position hazardous. Now it may be possible that we are to see a great development of geo-politics, so that the cry "Asia for Asiatics," or "Africa for Africans," will unite the peoples of those continents in solid mass. But geo-politics must not be confused with ethnic politics; and if considerable independent white groups should arise in Asia or Africa it is probable that they would be among the foremost in resenting European domination. Nor is it likely that the yellow and black races will ever find common ground of union among themselves and against the whites, just as it is unlikely that the white peoples will always remain disunited in the face of a real peril. To assume such a danger is to suppose that the ethnic element will continue to constitute the important factor in world politics that it now does. It is much more reasonable to believe that economic and cultural interests will ultimately supplant purely ethnic interests as the groundwork of world contacts.

The real kernel of the color problem, then, is likely to continue to be what it is at present, the question of social contact among peoples of different racial stocks, and particularly of different cultural levels, living together within given political areas, rather than a struggle of independent racial masses against each other. In America there is a wide-spread belief that our color problem is one peculiar to