The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-01-03

India harassing the British govern
ment by means of its non-cooper-
alton movement, with Egypt in tur-
mol with the negroes forming a
world association under Marcus
Carney, with the Jewish Zionist
movement well under way, and with
the Chinese patiently but stubborn
~ asserting their right to be let
alone, inviting all the other nations
of the earth to go out the open door
and close 1t after them, this seems
truly to be an epoch of self-asser-
ton on the part of oppressed peo-
pies.
The dominant nations absorbed in
their own debts and wars, seem
hardly aware of the widespread and
spontaneous character of this move
ment toward self-assertion on the
part of the peoples who have worn
Jokes for centuries. Seryitude, ex-
ploitation; personal and national
prejudice, contempt, these people
have all known some or all of these
expressions. Barring the Hebrews,
who are a case unique, they have
all been known as inferior or sub
jected races.
Now all of them, but especially
the Indians and Chinese, are show
ing signs of a growing inchoate
strength. They lack organization,
unified purpose, and they probably
will lack these things for genera
lions yet. But it is in these things
that they are growing. And the
strength they have is an immense
racial vitality and persistence.
While the dominant nations of the
earth are becoming vast polyglot
mobs in which the best strains tend
to decrease while the poorer in
crease, the Chinese and the East
Indians retain their racial identity
and homogeneity. They are con-
quered. owned and exploited by
spheres of influence ard protector
ates; they are subjected to massa-
cres and famine and oppression:
and yet by tending steadily to the
business of raising babies and crops
they have remained distinctive peo-
pies with distinctive ideals.
Racial Identity.
An Englishman or an American
these days may be a Mediterranean
or a Nordic. He may be of an old
Indigenous family or he may be an
immigrant of few years ago. The
streets of all of the principal cities
of the great western nations are
streets of Babel. In them swarm
vast motley crowds of men who
have nothing in common except
THEW httnornv. Tor laDI
Melting pots where the ingredients
do not fuse are these great cities,
SO that an American or an English
man may be anything. But when
you say a Chinese or an East In
dian, you know exactly what you
mean. The word summons a pic
ture Of a distinctive kind of man.
These peoples are united in aspira-
ton and purpose because they are
uniform in blood and tradition.
That is one great advantage they
have over the nations which now
dominate the earth. When you say
Great Britain you mean a govern
ment, and governments have always
been transient and troubled things.
But when you say China OF India
yOu AICaA q pSoptCr SOAlO anu lO1i1O-
geneous, and that is a thing as real
and permanent as continent or an
ocean.
The reasons why these people
persist, retain their racial identity
and multiply, while the occidental
nations lose their identity and die
out at the top, seems to be chiefly
two. In the first place, they do not
go in for war and in the second
place they have no talent for nj
dustry.
War, as has been pointed out a
great many times in the last few
years, really threatens the destruc-
ton of western civilization. The
Napoleonic wars weakened France
enormously, and are said to have
reduced the average height OF
Frenchmen several inches. The
Franco-Prussian war was a further
blow. France has not, in any line