Page:The American Magazine (1906-1956) - volume 73.pdf/527

 THE PILGRIM’S SCRIP

readers' Letters, Comments and Confessions

An American Who Believes in the Superiority of the Yellow Race

O FOR riches — uncounted millions! I would use, say, a couple of thousand dollars of ’em in a trip to China. I should be there—should be living there. Now, particularly. The most wonderful transformation in the world is going on there. I want to more than see it; I want to be a part of it. China is my real home, the Chinese are my native people; in this grim land, I’ve always been an alien. I've been here so long, too, that I’ve forgotten the few Chinese words of my boyhood. I presume I shall always live here. But if I were able, I’d up stakes to-morrow, and off for the crowded, dirty, barren Celestial Kingdom.

China will not take up with the West as Japan has done. The problem for China is a deeper one. She needs immense changes; three centuries of Manchu rule have well-nigh crippled her. It begins to look as if the Manchu dynasty were to be saved—-in name, at least. I suppose it’s necessary, for the present. The great thing is to choke off these devilish Christian nations. Yuan is a wonderful man; the future will show how sincere he is. Is he the Sage, too, I wonder, that China needs more than the Administrator? Is he a superior man, according to Confucius? Will he be the Prophet of China, as well as her savior—the Chinese Charlemagne? Such a man, with powers, in a reign of thirty or forty years, could accomplish the transformation of a quarter of the population of the world!

The task calls for wisdom—above all things. It is not a question of remolding a people to a known standard, as with the Japanese; it is a question of drawing out the latent strength of a people marvelously sound and able, but, as you might say, cowed, bound, crushed. It is a question of what to take up and what not to take up; not a question of how best to take up everything. The stamping out of the opium evil in a space of five years,—an economic as well as a moral problem, and a thing practically accomplished,—is proof enough, and to spare, of the power of the Chinese people.

They await the Man. Lacking him, the process will take more time. The result, I think and have always thought, is inevitable: the supremacy of the yellow man over the white. Such a statement Bounds incredible; but stranger shifts of power have taken place in history. Imagine yourself for a moment the editor of a Roman magazine, and myself a struggling author in the palmy days of Rome. These Goths, these Teutonic tribes—I write you from a northern province—they must be reckoned with. And you, perhaps, lean back sumptuously in your editorium, and smile as your eye follows the line of skyscrapers along the Tiber. Well, it won’t happen in the old way, surely; the time of fighting, razing, burning has gone by. But if the yeilow race is superior to the white race, it will happen—perhaps in a way so new that it has never yet been seen.

Some time this winter, I plan to come to Rome —I beg your pardon, to New York.

Lincoln Colcord.

What Taft is Up Against—An Illuminating Letter from a Westerner to a “ Corporation Lawyer ”

I SUPPOSE you are one of the "stand-pat” Republicans and think Taft and his policies are just right. I used to think the Republican party was the only thing worth while. But the farmers all over the West, and many business men, are very much dissatisfied with existing conditions. We do not admire Taft, nor are we satisfied with his measly slow policies. He is too much like General G. B. McClellan during our war. He wanted to make peace and keep slavery. So it is with the Republican party and the Trusts.

When I went to Denver last week, one of the old war horses in the Republican party for years in the South end of our county came and took a seat with me and we got to talking politics.

“I have no use for Taft," he said. “We have got to have a change. I have three farms I rent out. There is not a piece of machinery or a thing I buy that is not in a Trust. I have to sell my sugar beets to the Sugar Trust; my wheat to the Milling Trust, and they pay me $1.25 for wheat and charge $1.35 for bran. My cream goes to the Butter Trust, and they rob me. If I ship my stock to market, the railroads charge me four prices because Urey are in a trust, and we are paying interest on over half water, and then I sell to the Packer Trust I guess we have got to have a new deal somewhere along the line, and there is no show in the old Republican party."

“Both parties,” I said, “ in our State are tied up to the interests, and it looks to me it is a good deal as it was when our war came on in x86x. Our relief must come from a new party taken out of