Pacific Problems and Canada's Part in Them

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--I would like to assure you at the outset that, notwithstanding the Chairman's flattering introduction, I do not pose as a pundit on this subject, and I am not going to pontificate upon it. (Laughter) My remarks will be largely based on observations and impressions received at the Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations at Honolulu last summer, a Conference of engrossing interest attended by men from nine countries in the Pacific Basin to the number of about 120, with its object to endeavor to see whether we could not understand one another. It was a measure of precaution as well as of benevolence; and we parted with a strong conviction that we had made definite progress. I do not assume to speak with finality on the matters in question, but merely as a humble reporter of things that I conceive to be vital to the Empire and the race. And if I stress the Asiatic point of view instead of our own it is because I feel that relatively we, perhaps, hear too much of one and too little of the other.

The Pacific Ocean is little known to Canadians, though it covers an area equal to the entire land

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Mr. John Nelson is the newly appointed head of the Department of Public Relations of the Sun Life Assurance Company, a distinguished Canadian journalist and Canada's "unofficial representative" at the recent Pan-Pacific Congress at Honolulu.

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surface of the globe. Every school boy can tell about the Mediterranean, or the lands about it, and its galleys and caravels are associated with history at the dawn. And we all know about the Atlantic, across which came our civilization and culture, and on which is carried today most of our sea-borne commerce. But the Pacific remained an ocean of mystery and romance long after Balboa and his astonished companions first saw it, "silent upon a peak of Darien." It is associated, in most of our minds, with pearl fisheries and cannibals, with South Sea bubbles, and missionary adventure, with languorous life under tropical skies, and with daring traders in strange craft, trafficking in trepang and copra and other unfamiliar wares.

Britain has long had a supreme interest in the Pacific, but her possessions outside of the Canadian seaboard were all on the Asiatic side. Hence Canada was not brought into vital contacts with developments on the other side of the Pacific. Even the United States was hardly aware of the Pacific until their war with Spain gave them island possessions there. Roosevelt, whose historic stature seems to increase as he is removed from the partizan turbulence of his day, was among the first to foresee its importance, and he told his countrymen that the future of America would lie more on the Pacific facing China than on the Atlantic facing Europe. He did a great deal to underwrite that prophecy when he dug a canal through the Panama, made a new sea-lane to the Orient, and practically changed the geography of the world.

There have been a great many developments since then on the Pacific. But it is still a very lonely ocean. In a seven days' voyage to Honolulu from San Francisco we saw only one sail, and coming home to Vancouver we did not see a single craft except our own until we got within Flattery Light. It is destined to be no longer lonely: Captain Dollar, the most incurable globe-trotter in the world, twenty years ago told the men of New York that in his lifetime the trident would be transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and now at eighty-two he is quite confident that he is going to see it.

Ports like Hong Kong and Shanghai have leapt into the front rank, and I think Hong Kong is the third tonnage port in the world today. But while there has been a great development on the Pacific, we in Canada seem to have become very slowly aware of it. There are two reasons for that: one, that while we have 500 miles of seaboard on the Pacific we have a very sparse (though very intelligent) population out there; and the disparity in freight rates has perhaps not made for the development of that coast. I have lived many years in Vancouver, and am now residing in Montreal, and having reached the age of discretion, and valuing my peace of mind, I am not going to venture any opinion as to the justice of those rates. I am too near Montreal and not far enough away from Vancouver to be guilty of such an indiscretion. But the thing that we forget is that while we share the culture and the language of Europe, that of Asia has always been alien to us, and that has always tremendously affected our policies both of immigration and trade. We have tried our best to get settlers from Europe, and tried our best to keep out settlers from Asia. We spent millions to secure immigrants from Europe, and collected millions in head taxes in an attempt to exclude immigrants from Asia. The world war enormously complicated our position. Europe, our big purchaser, has fallen very low in purchasing power; Asia has relatively increased, and we find the states of Europe resenting our efforts to get their people to come in and those of Asia resenting our attempt to keep their people out. There is the problem that presents itself to Canada, and it lies at the bottom of much of the irritation and resentment which we find now around the shores of the basin of the Pacific.

As an outcome of that we have three disturbing situations; you have a feeling of very great uneasiness, I was almost going to say distrust of this country in Japan; in China you have open boycott, particularly against our Empire; and on this side, notably in San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, you have six out of ten men telling you they are going to fight Japan at some indefinite time in the future-the very kind of senseless talk that launched Europe into disaster. today we see those states in Europe that have been impoverished by war dragging their broken bodies into conference, trying to hide the bitter animosities that were stirred up in the strife, and asking one another, as little Peterkin asked old Casper to tell one another "all about the war, and what they killed each other for."

The men who prompted the Conference in Honolulu felt that the same influences developing around the Pacific, if no effort was made to forestall them, would result in the same way. That explains the Honolulu Conference. They felt it was much more sensible to confer before than after fighting. (Hear, hear) So we went into that Conference with two slogans which very well expressed its spirit--one from the French, well known, "To know all is to forgive all"; the other given us by that brilliant Chinese, T. C. Koo, who quoted from his own classics a precept that ought to remain in all our minds: "Proprieties before arms."

We met at Honolulu, the cross-roads of the Pacific, where America meets Asia as nearly as possible half-way, and that was the spirit of the gathering. Honolulu is a world in miniature; it is a racial clinic, and it provided all sorts of object-lessons on the subjects discussed in the Conference. For instance, people of twenty-five or thirty different nations are living there in comparative harmony and peace. It is a mistake to suppose that the races are assimilating in Honolulu; that is not true as far as my observation went. About twenty-five percent of the people are now marrying across racial lines; but that does not apply to the Japanese or to the people of our race. But a much more significant thing is happening; they are not assimilating, but they are learning to accommodate themselves to one another, and that is a very hopeful sign. I think in this country we will have to learn to accommodate ourselves to the Orientals before we attempt to assimilate them.

In Hawaii you have anomalies of all kinds, and a most interesting experiment going on with its 300,000 people. Of these, forty percent are Japanese, and yet not a Japanese is in their Legislature. The native Hawaiian population is only about 20,000, yet it dominates the Legislature, and the white population of about 30,000 practically control the financial and commercial interests of the Island. But all are living in comparative harmony. They have their troubles, but the leaders of the various colonies meet and iron them out, and you have what Governor Harrington aptly describes as a great adventure in friendship. The Pacific Conference was an adventure in faith and good-will; both seemed to be well worth while.

For two weeks we lived together, dined together, walked and talked and rode together, sat on the verandahs away into the night and talked just as freely and naturally as we would at this table, and we established a personal contact which I never had had or hoped to have with Orientals, although I have lived among Japanese and Chinese for twenty-five years. We met in Conference three times daily. For freer expression the Press was excluded. We did not represent anybody; we were not elected by anybody; we did not speak for anybody; we did not bind anybody. There were men there who had been members of governments, but they did not speak for the governments; there were members of great organizations but they did not represent them. We steadily observed the eleventh commandment which Mr. Elbert Hubbard says is this: "Don't take yourself too damned serious." (Laughter) Observing that commandment we passed only one resolution, simply of thanks to our hosts, and we studiously refrained from furthering any opinions, because we had no right to As a matter of fact, we did not go there to formulate conclusions, and we did not bring opinions to the Conference; it was not a congress of that kind; we went there to learn, and I hope we did.

We were of all kinds of nationalities, but none of us spoke the Asiatic language, and what surprised me most was that every one of the Asiatic delegates spoke our language-which was not a very comfortable reflection on our supposedly superior intelligence. We were of different religions, but we found there that you don't have to have the same religion, or to speak a common language with another man in order to worship with him. I apply the name worship because I don't know any other term to apply. It was felt that it would be improper to recognize any particular religion, but also that it would be very proper to provide some medium for its expression. So one of the daily sights of the Conference was when men of all colour, speaking various languages, went up the hillside in that marvellous morning sunshine of Hawaii, to an out-door temple, I suppose you would call it, with its walls of night-blooming cereus, and its roof the fragrant poinsietta; and there for an hour a form of worship, or rather of silence, because it was a regular Quaker gathering in that respect, was held. Somebody would read a few verses, which might be from the Gospels of Confucius or Buddha, sometimes from Emerson or Wordsworth, but in the main it was a period of silence, which seemed peculiarly congenial and natural to the Asiatic and peculiarly strange and irksome to us bustling Westerners. But we learned to do it, and there was a real fellowship, a real communion, which I cannot describe; I am not a specially religious man, I am sorry to say, but there was a great communion of spirit created there, without vocal expression.

There were some dramatic things as well. One morning a very swarthy man read in a strange accent some words from the Acts of the Apostles which stated that God made of one blood all people that dwell on the earth. One would have to be pretty dull of fancy not to have his imagination stirred by the fact that the words of a Christianized Jew were repeated in mid-Pacific 2,000 years later by a Christianized Buddhist; and the words originally spoken on Mars Hill to the Athenians were still apposite to the problems being discussed centuries later by people of a half a score of nations under the poinsietta trees of Punaboa College. (Applause) When we were closing the Conference, President Wilbur of Leland-Stanford University, who I think cannot be described as a particularly reverend man, said that one of the lessons of the Conference was that religion had a real part in the solution of the race question of the Pacific basin.

So much for the Conference. Now for two or three impressions. You will understand that the predominating thing was that of our difficulties over immigration. There is no doubt that we have a right to day to lay down our policy and to do as we have done with regard to immigration. There is equally no doubt that we have occasioned very deep resentment on the other side of the Pacific because of it. For that reason some of the state officials at Wellington were very nervous and wanted the Conference called off. At the opening of the Conference each country was supposed to make a statement explaining its position on the racial question; and we from Canada took great pains to try and explain to the Orientals just why Canada felt obliged to take the course it has in respect to Oriental immigration. We explained that this was an infant country; that we did not come from one but from two great elementary stocks; that they had not yet fused, hence we have not yet established any common national type; that that difficulty had been emphasized and increased by the influx of Nordics, and Latins, and Slavs from Europe, and again increased by the enormous and obstinate impediments we have to overcome and grapple with-railways and roads, and the enormous cost to a sparse population of carrying these charges, and the difficulty created by the advent of an Asiatic civilization, which we found was hard to assimilate. There was also the fact that this Asiatic incursion impinged on only a small section of our country with a very sparse population. We explained that our policy of exclusion was not due to any feeling of superiority to those people, but in pursuance of what we conceived to be our duty to maintain or establish the Canadian National type, which had not yet been normally developed. This we felt was a trust committed to us by our fathers. But we did explain, and we took some pains to explain, that we had tried to do so as inoffensively as possible, and hence the "Gentlemen's agreement" by which we had relegated to Japan sovereign powers, which we might very well have exercised ourselves. It was very gratifying to hear Dr. Sagavayiko, a member of the House of Peers of Japan, and also head of the Education Association of Japan, say that Japan fully appreciated the courteous spirit in which Canada had handled the whole question.

I am sure you will be glad to know that one of your eloquent townsmen, Honourable N. W. Rowell, K.C., in passing through delivered one of his luminous addresses, and explained the exact status of this country, and very much disarmed the Oriental by stating that we retained the right within the Empire to exclude our own fellow subjects under the same rules by which we excluded the Orientals of China and Japan.

The Americans had more difficulty, because they had just abolished their "Gentlemen's agreement," and they know now that they could have practically accomplished the same results without offence by invoking their quota law. However, the thing has been done, and it is up to them now to soften its effects. Dr. Wilbur in a very able speech tried to do so, and he explained to the Asiatics, much the same as we did, their difficulties. He showed how the United States, with its enormous natural resources, had been so concerned in its domestic development that it had not yet developed the international mind; and although he did not say so, perhaps international manners. (Laughter) He went on to explain how democracy operates, and how government, under democracy, must not only respect public opinion but must reflect it, and that that explained why the United States had done something which perhaps seemed to call for explanation.

There were some very shrewd minds among the Japanese and Chinese delegates. One was an old journalist named Zamuto; he looked exactly like the pictures of Buddha, with his wide grey beard and inscrutable face. After Dr. Wilbur's statement he commented on the curious fact that there seemed to be in the United States a division of authority by 'which the high altruistic motives and ideals of the nation were expressed by one section of the community, whereas the offensive governmental activities were expressed by another. (Laughter) That was an example of the courteous and yet rather pointed way in which the Conference went on, discussions in which temper was never lost, but in which candour was always observed.

Out of that discussion, however, grew the development of three principles that I think will interest you. We took the general position that our policies were based upon the sovereign right of any state to determine the character of its own citizenship. The Orientals countered this by challenging the moral right of any people, because of pre-occupancy, to exclude from lands which they did not themselves use, people from other parts of the world who were less fortunate. And they followed that up with another-and this is a pertinent point-that the principle of exclusion or limitation of immigration was a comparatively recent thing, and that the Occidental had been careful not to invoke it until he had secured a good grip on the earth. (Laughter) Then Dr. Takaquaga, who is professor in the Imperial University at Tokio, advanced a most interesting thesis based on the inherent right of any individual to migrate or change his allegiance; and it is rather odd that the treaty which the United States made with China, I think in 1868, embodies and expressed that principle in almost those terms -a principle from which our American friends have had to depart very radically since. (Laughter) Dr. Takaqauaga said: "I do not claim that that principle is absolute, but I also claim that the sovereign right of states to exclude is not absolute, else international relations would be intolerable." He advanced the middle ground-the standardization of immigration policies among the countries of the Pacific, whereby men would not be admitted or excluded on racial grounds at all, but purely on personal qualities, merits or defects as the case might be, relating to health, intelligence, morality, financial positions and so on. I leave that suggestion with this Club for consideration, because I am quite convinced that in the discussions of the future, when we come to closer grips on this particular problem, Dr. Takaqauaga has enunciated a very important and elementary principle of which we are going to hear more.

We found that the Japanese and the Chinese very much distrust our civilization. They say that they were mistaken in trying to adopt Western civilization; that the war has proved that it was defective, and experience has proved that it is not adapted to their temperament or type; and they are quietly turning back to their own old culture to try and find the answer for the civilization of their future. They say that we deify the machine and speed and material things and success, and we idealize comfort; and they think that the great reflective philosophies of the East, which consider more the life of the spirit and of the mind, are better adapted to their particular need.

We had one man, a very clever Japanese, called Yusuk Tsurumi, a son-in-law of Viscount Goto, and whose writings you will find in the Saturday Evening Post, who while speaking of the ancient cultures of the East broke out with this expression: "China was old and splendid when Rome was just a cluster of hovels on the banks of the Tiber. Expert engineers laid out the Capital of Japan when London was but a sordid hamlet on the marshes of the Thames." He said, "We have come to the conclusion that civilization is not typified by a man with a telephone at his ear and a silk hat on his head." (Laughter)

I would epitomize the attitude of Japan by saying that they seemed to be moved by a sense of insecurity, and they were very frank in saying why. They are a crowded nation; they have very little area, much of it mountainous, and a density of population exceedingly great compared to the arable area available. On top of that is the fact that in fifty years they have changed from an agricultural people of 30,000,000 to an industrial people of 60,000,000. They are increasing at the rate of 600,000 a year, and the only avenues of relief are emigration and industrialism. They say, "We cannot migrate because you legislate against it, and we have difficulty in industrializing because we have such limited raw resources, and we have to go to the Asiatic mainland mainly for these." On top of that they have a new franchise law whereby about 20,000,000 young Japanese are going to exercise the franchise for the first time at the next election. These are strongly socialistic in tendency, and there is a feeling of very deep apprehension in Japan as to what may result, because they say while China may make all the mistakes it likes and will always survive, because the Chinese type is very pervasive and insoluble, the Japanese by a few mistakes of policy might in two or three decades be wiped off the face of the earth.

While Japan is suffering from a feeling of insecurity, China is smarting under a sense of injustice. The counts under which they indict us are these Extra territoriality, whereby foreign nations, including our own Empire, administer law and justice for their own subjects within the Chinese Empire in zones which they call their own; the unfair treaties between China and other powers, which they say were not negotiated but were imposed; their lack of tariff autonomy, whereby they are arbitrarily limited to the collection of a five percent ad valorem duty, which does not give them adequate revenues for their own government, they thus have to ship out, against a duty, perhaps ten times that amount to countries which enjoy the five percent privilege; and the corrupt loans which have been made to their government (which is equally corrupt), and which have not been applied to the purposes for which the foreign loans were raised. They want those all removed. Their claims are now engaging the attention of the Powers.

China has not a settled government, but a very definite impression was left on the minds of all the delegates that a wonderful national sentiment is being created in China. It springs from several distinct movements, but all converging in a national idea. One of those is the mass education movement, which has swept China like a prairie fire. We were fortunate at the Conference to have Jimmy Yen, a Yale student, a typical college boy who has been the soul and motive power of that whole movement. It is significant for another reason, besides its effect in curing illiteracy, because it works in village units, which is the natural unit in China, and which Yen thinks will be the basis of the next revolution. Then there is the Renaissance movement for restoring the old culture, and half a dozen others; but all these converge in the strong national sentiment which is likely to be heard of in the very near future.

Behind it all--and this is interesting to us as Britishers--there looms the omnious figure of Russia--Russia which was baffled largely by Britain in Europe, and is now trying to stab our Empire in her Pacific back; Russia, which we sometimes forget is primarily an Asiatic power, and only took on her European veneer after Peter the Great. The Soviet are making friends in the East. They are very deferential to the Americans. They are implacable in fostering enmity against Britain. They have made themselves quite strong with the Japanese by the Treaty of last January in which they reaffirmed the Portsmouth Treaty and gave the Japanese oil rights in Saghalien and fishing and other privileges. Their communist group has made common cause among the rationalistic group of students in China, who are anti-Christian, and who declare that the Christian religion is the most despicable of all religions, because it teaches obedience, which is the code of the serf, and fosters superstition which is the foe of truth.

Some of those people feel that Russia will find her own answer, because the Chinese are home loving people, domestic, agricultural people, who do not readily react to the communistic theories of Russia. That is one of the things that may stop the Soviet agitation, and might conceivably stop this pan-Asiatic movement which naturally grows out of it, because while Japan is liberal, like an adjoining province in this country, and Russia is progressive, like some parts of our West, China is conservative, like-say-Toronto. (Laughter) The virus of the Soviet may yet find its anti-toxin in China, which however often it is conquered always, in the end, prevails.

In the next few years, nobody can declare when, we are going to have across the Pacific an awakened and an organized China. Although the old regime is still in power, T. C. Koo predicts that in ten years young China will be in the saddle; that the new wine will burst the old bottles, and we shall then have in fact as well as in name a great republic in the East. When that time comes there will be a readjustment in the Pacific, and in that we are tremendously concerned, because we have great interests in that sea, and it seems to me we should no more allow our national interests there to be the plaything of chance than we should allow the future of our own children to be a matter of haphazard.

The Premier of this country said not long ago that the future of Canada lies in our export trade. If so, where is the trade more likely to develop than on the Pacific? And if we are going to trade with those people is it not time that we understood them, learned their language, their habits and their ideals? Should not the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa be expanded in its scope and more adequately manned as to numbers? And should we not develop and enlist our cleverest young linguists and put them into our offices in the Orient, and into our Customs and immigration offices in Canada? Our universities should be teaching more Oriental languages and history, and we ought to be trying to bring more of those Orientals into our seats of learning. We were surprised on learning that ninety percent of those young Orientals were graduates of American universities--another direct result of the far-seeing policy of Roosevelt in turning back the Boxer indemnities to China to be used in educating their youth in American universities. While American universities are among the finest in the world, I do not think even an American would suggest that they are the best places to learn the genius of British Government, or even the facts of British History. (Laughter)

The press, the pulpit, and the common man can help in this matter. We complain that the Orientals do not assimilate; but how much are we doing to assimilate them? Their children are being born here, and they are going to die here; why cannot we Canadianize them so that they will be reflectors of our civilization instead of critics of it? One delegate at the Conference said, "There is only one institution in Western Civilization that takes any social interest in the Chinese, and that is the Church." I 'G' fancy that is pretty nearly true.

We ought to take more interest in China. One of the American Professors said, "Japan is the country to tie to; that is a going concern." I submit that China is a coming concern. A Japanese laughingly said. 'You people did not treat us as civilized until we showed you that we could butcher as well as you do." If China has wrongs, doesn't both justice and discretion suggest that we rectify them before they are obliged to do it themselves by force of arms. If we get 900,000,000 of Orientals in a hostile PanAsiatic Confederacy, we will talk very respectfully to them, if we do not do it before. Some of our big institutions-our banks, railways, insurance companies-are already in the Orient doing profitable trade there. It is an alluring field. I have been across the Rocky Mountains a good many times, until I do not have the same reaction as formerly to their majesty and charm, though no one can ever become insensible to them. But I had an unusual thrill the other day when the Trans-Canada train in its eighty-hour race from Montreal to Vancouver was switched onto a siding 1,000 feet up on the shoulder of the Selkirks, to let a special go by. And presently there plunged out of that five-mile tunnel in the summit of the hills two mogul engines screaming for right-of-way, and behind them thundered a solid train of the most costly cargo in the world-the. Silk Express--twenty-seven express cars loaded with raw silk worth $4,000,000. For a moment, as the train flashed by, the odours of Araby seemed to mingle with the fragrance of our own western pines. And I felt proud as a Canadian that we had an institution like the Canadian Pacific Railway, which years ago had the vision and enterprise to go out into the very furthest corners of the world, to send their ships down over the very rim of the world, and wrest away that rich cargo in competition with the traders of the world, and haul it 7,000 miles in Canadian bottoms, over Canadian rails, handled exclusively by Canadian hands, and delivered in Gotham all the way from Cathay. (Applause) That is a very practical demonstration in ration-building compared with some of the vapid things we sometimes hear on the political platform about our greatness. (Hear, hear)

The Pacific lies before Canada as the Atlantic lay before our forefathers. Have we less enterprise and stamina than they? They were not deterred by the fact that other people claimed primacy in the Atlantic; they decided that our flag too should be known and second to none on the main. And they worked in co-operation. While Shakespeare and minor poets sang the greatness of England till it beat like a constant refrain in the hearts of the people, her statesmen did not have their ears so close to the ground that their vision was blinded to the long horizons of the world. So the Cecils and the Chathams and the Pitts envisaged that glory; and the merchants of Bristol and London-just as the merchants of Toronto and Montreal mightprovided the ships and the money; and the great sailors of our Empire, our Raleighs and Drakes and Nelson "with a pinned-up sleeve, and a soul like a North Sea storm" carried the spirit of England on to the high seas. And in a few years, where were the galleons of Spain?

It seems to me to be a similar task that Canadians face. I am not sure it is any smaller, or less alluring in its possibilities, for the perpetuation of our institutions and the welfare of the world

I do not know any Club in all Canada to whom I would rather direct my appeal than to this one, which bears a name indicating your concern in these great things. The Institute of Pacific Relations wants to establish on this Continent, and in Canada, notably in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal and Vancouver, committees which will study these things, talk about them, listen to speakers on them, and our Secretary at Honolulu will wire ahead and tell you when any interesting Oriental speaker is coming. I am hoping that The Empire Club of Toronto, the natural people to do it, will establish such a committee, that when we meet in Honolulu in 1927 we shall have from Canada and the United Kingdom a representation adequate and worthy of this country, and able to deal with the large problems which are looming before us. (Loud applause)

MR. J. E. MIDDLETON expressed the thanks of the Club for the address.