The Pride of Palomar Part 18

"I wonder what spiritual binder holds the people of the United States together, Mr. Parker?" Don Miguel queried naively.

"Love of country, devotion to the ideals of liberty and democracy,"

Parker replied promptly, just as his daughter joined them.

Farrel rose and surrendered to her his chair, then seated himself on the edge of the porch with his legs dangling over into a flower-bed.

His face was grave, but in his black eyes there lurked the glint of polite contempt.

"Did you hear the question and the answer, Miss Parker?" he queried.

She nodded brightly.

"Do you agree with your father's premise?" he pursued.

"Yes, I do, Don Mike."

"I do not. The mucilage in our body politic is the press-agent, the advertising specialist, and astute propagandist. I wonder if you know that, when we declared war against Germany, the reason was not to make the world safe for democracy, for there are only two real reasons why wars are fought. One is greed and the other self-protection. Thank G.o.d, we have never been greedy or jealous of the prosperity of a neighbor. National aggrandizement is not one of our ambitions."

Kay stared at him in frank amazement.

"Then you mean that we entered the late war purely as a protective measure?"

"That's why I enlisted. As an American citizen, I was unutterably weary of having our hand crowded and our elbow joggled. I saw very clearly that, unless we interfered, Germany was going to dominate the world, which would make it very uncomfortable and expensive for us. I repeat that for the protection of our comfort and our bank-roll we declared war, and anybody who tells you otherwise isn't doing his own thinking, he isn't honest with himself, and he's the sort of citizen who is letting the country go to the dogs because he refuses to take an intelligent interest in its affairs."

"What a perfectly amazing speech from an ex-soldier!" Kay protested.

He smiled his sad, prescient smile.

"Soldiers deal with events, not theories. They learn to call a spade a spade, Miss Parker. I repeat: It wasn't a war to make the world safe for democracy. That phrase was just a slogan in a business campaign--the selling of stock in a military enterprise to apathetic Americans. We had to fight or be overrun; when we realized that, we fought. Are not the present antics of the Supreme Council in Paris sufficient proof that saving democracy was just another shibboleth? Is not a ghastly war to be followed by a ghastly peace? The press-agents and orators popularized the war with the unthinking and the hesitant, which is proof enough to me that we lack national unity and a definite national policy. We're a lot of sublimated jacka.s.ses, sacrificing our country to ideals that are worn at elbow and down at heel. 'Other times, other customs.' But we go calmly and stupidly onward, hugging our foolish shibboleths to our hearts, hiding behind them, refusing to do to-day that which we can put off until to-morrow. That is truly an Anglo-Saxon trait. In matters of secondary importance, we yield a ready acquiescence which emboldens our enemies to insist upon acquiescence in matters of primary importance. And quite frequently they succeed. I tell you the Anglo-Saxon peoples are the only ones under heaven that possess a national conscience, and because they possess it, they are generous enough to a.s.sume that other races are similarly endowed."

"I believe," Parker stuck in, as Don Miguel ceased from his pa.s.sionate denunciation, "that all this is leading quite naturally to a discussion of j.a.panese emigration."

"I admit that the sight of Mr. Okada over in the corner of the patio, examining with interest the only sweet-lime tree in North America, inspired my outburst," Farrel answered smilingly.

"You speak of our national shibboleths, Don Mike Farrel," Kay reminded him. "If you please, what might they be?"

"You will recognize them instantly, Miss Parker. Let us start with our Declaration of Independence: 'All men are created equal.' Ah, if the framers of that great doc.u.ment had only written, 'All men are created theoretically equal!' For all men are not morally, intellectually, or commercially equal: For instance, Pablo is equal with me before the law, although I hazard the guess that if he and I should commit a murder, Pablo would be hanged and I would be sentenced to life imprisonment; eventually, I might be pardoned or paroled. Are you willing to admit that Pablo Artelan is not my equal?" he challenged suddenly.

"Certainly!" Kay and her father both cried in unison.

"Very well. Is Mr. Okada my equal?"

"He is Pablo's superior," Parker felt impelled to declare.

"He is not your equal," Kay declared firmly. "Dad, you're begging the question."

"We-ll, no," he a.s.sented, "Not from the Anglo-Saxon point of view. He is, however, from the point of view of his own nationals."

"Two parallel lines continued into infinity will never meet, Mr.

Parker. I am a believer in Asia for Asiatics, and, in j.a.pan, I am willing to accord a j.a.p equality with me. In my own country, however, I would deny him citizenship, by any right whatsoever, even by birth, I would deny him the right to lease or own land for agricultural or other purposes, although I would accord him office and warehouse s.p.a.ce to carry on legitimate commerce. The j.a.p does that for us and no more, despite his a.s.sertions to the contrary. I would deny the right of emigration to this country of all j.a.panese, with certain exceptions necessary to friendly intercourse between the two countries; I would deny him the privilege of economic compet.i.tion and marriage with our women. When a member of the great Nordic race fuses with a member of a pigmented race, both parties to the union violate a natural law. Pablo is a splendid example of mongrelization."

"You are forgetting the shibboleths," Kay ventured to remind him.

"No; I am merely explaining their detrimental effect upon our development. The j.a.panese are an exceedingly clever and resourceful race. Brilliant psychologists and astute diplomatists, they have taken advantage of our pet shibboleth, to the effect that all men are equal.

Unfortunately, we propounded this monstrous and half-baked ideal to the world, and a sense of national vanity discourages us from repudiating it, although we really ought to. And as I remarked before, we possess an alert national conscience in international affairs, while the j.a.p possesses none except in certain instances where it is obvious that honesty is the best policy. I think I am justified, however, in stating that, upon the whole, j.a.pan has no national conscience in international affairs. Her brutal exploitation of China and her merciless and b.l.o.o.d.y conquest of Korea impel that point of view from an Anglo-Saxon. When, therefore, the Tokyo government says, in effect, to us: 'For one hundred and forty-four years you have proclaimed to the world that all men are equal. Very well. Accept us. We are a world-power. We are on a basis of equality with you,' and we lack the courage to repudiate this pernicious principle, we have tacitly admitted their equality. That is, the country in general has, because it knows nothing of the j.a.panese race--at least not enough for moderately practical understanding of the biological and economic issues involved. Indeed, for a long time, we Californians dwelt in the same fool's paradise as the remainder of the states. Finally, members of the j.a.panese race became so numerous and aggressive here that we couldn't help noticing them. Then we began to study them, and now, what we have learned amazes and frightens us, and we want the sister states to know all that we have learned, in order that they may cooperate with us. But, still, the j.a.p has us _tiron_ in other ways."

"Has us what?" Parker interrupted.

"_Tiron_. Spanish slang. I mean he has us where the hair is short; we're hobbled."

"How?" Kay demanded.

His bright smile was triumphant.

"By shibboleths, of course. My friends, we're a race of sentimental idiots, and the j.a.panese know this and capitalize it. We have promulgated other fool shibboleths which we are too proud or too stupid to repudiate. 'America, the refuge for all the oppressed of the earth!' Ever hear that perfectly d.a.m.nable shibboleth shouted by a Fourth of July orator? 'America, the hope of the world!' What kind of hope? Hope of freedom, social and political equality, equality of opportunity? Nonsense! Hope of more money, shorter hours, and license misnamed liberty; and when that hope has been fulfilled, back they go to the countries that denied them all that we give. How many of them feel, when they land at Ellis Island, that the ground whereon they tread is holy, sanctified by the blood and tears of a handful of great, brave souls who really had an ideal and died for it. Mighty few of the cattle realize what that hope is, even in the second generation."

"I fear," quoth Parker, "that your army experience has embittered you."

"On the contrary, it has broadened and developed me. It has been a liberal education, and it has strengthened my love for my country."

"Continue with the shibboleths, Don Mike," Kay pleaded. Her big, brown eyes were alert with interest now.

"Well, when Israel Zangwill coined that phrase: 'The Melting-Pot,' the t.i.tle to his play caught the popular fancy of a shibboleth-crazy nation, and provided pap for the fanciful, for the theorists, for the flabby idealists and doctrinaires. If I melt lead and iron and copper and silver and gold in the same pot, I get a b.a.s.t.a.r.d metal, do I not?

It is not, as a fused product, worth a tinker's hoot. Why, even Zangwill is not an advocate of the melting-pot. He is a Jew, proud of it, and extremely solicitous for the welfare of the Jewish race. He is a Zionist--a leader of the movement to crowd the Arabs out of Palestine and repopulate that country with Jews. He feels that the Jews have an ancient and indisputable right to Palestine, although, parenthetically speaking, I do not believe that any smart Jew who ever escaped from Palestine wants to go back. I wouldn't swap the Rancho Palomar for the whole country."

Kay and her father laughed at his earnest yet whimsical tirade. Don Miguel continued:

"Then we have that asinine chatter about 'America, the land of fair play.' In theory--yes. In actual practice--not always. You didn't acc.u.mulate your present a.s.sets, Mr. Parker, without taking an occasional chance on side-tracking equity when you thought you could beat the case. But the j.a.p reminds us of our reputation for fair play, and smilingly asks us if we are going to prejudice that reputation by discriminating unjustly against him?"

"It appears," the girl suggested, "that all these ancient national brags come home, like curses, to roost."

"Indeed they do, Miss Parker! But to get on with our shibboleths. We hear a great deal of twaddle about the law of the survival of the fittest. I'm willing to abide by such a natural law, provided the compet.i.tion is confined to mine own people--and I'm one of those chaps, who, to date, has failed to survive. But I cannot see any common sense in opening the lists to Orientals. We Californians know we cannot win in compet.i.tion with them." He paused and glanced at Kay. "Does all this harangue bore you, Miss Parker?"

"Not at all. Are there any more shibboleths?"

"I haven't begun to enumerate them. Take, for instance, that old pacifist gag, that Utopian dream that is crystallized in the words: 'The road to universal peace.' All the long years when we were not bothered by wars or rumors of wars, other nations were whittling each other to pieces. And these agonized neighbors, longing, with a great longing, for world-peace, looked to the United States as the only logical country in which a great cure-all for wars might reasonably be expected to germinate. So their propagandists came to our sh.o.r.es and started societies looking toward the establishment of brotherly love, and thus was born the shibboleth of universal peace, with Uncle Sam heading the parade like an old bell-mare in a pack train. What these peace-patriots want is peace at any price, although they do not advertise the fact. We proclaim to the world that we are a Christian nation. _Ergo_, we must avoid trouble. The avoidance of trouble is the policy of procrastinators, the vacillating, and the weak. For one cannot avoid real trouble. It simply will not be avoided; consequently, it might as well be met and settled for all time."

"But surely," Parker remarked, "California should subordinate herself to the wishes of the majority."

"Yes, she should," he admitted doggedly, "and she has in the past. I think that was before California herself really knew that Oriental emigration was not solely a California problem but a national problem of the utmost importance. Indeed, it is international. Of course, in view of the fact that we Californians are already on the firing-line, necessarily it follows that we must make some noise and, incidentally, glean some real first-hand knowledge of this so-called problem. I think that when our fellow citizens know what we are fighting, they will sympathize with us and promptly dedicate the United States to the unfaltering principle that ours is a white man's country, that the heritage we have won from the wilderness shall be held inviolate for Nordic posterity and none other."

"Nevertheless, despite your prejudice against the race, you are bound to admire the j.a.panese--their manners, thrift, industry, and cleanliness." Parker was employing one of the old stock protests, and Don Miguel knew it.

"I do not admire their manners, but I do admire their thrift, industry, and cleanliness. Their manners are abominable. Their excessive courtesy is neither instinctive nor genuine; it is camouflage for a ruthless, greedy, selfish, calculating nature. I have met many j.a.panese, but never one with n.o.bility or generosity of soul. They are disciples of the principles of expediency. If a mutual agreement works out to their satisfaction, well and good. If it does not, they present a humble and saddened mien. 'So sorry. I zink you no understand me.

I don't mean zat.' And their peculiar Oriental psychology leads them to believe they can get away with that sort of thing with the straight-thinking Anglo-Saxon. They have no code of sportsmanship; they are irritable and quarrelsome, and their contractual relations are incompatible with those of the Anglo-Saxon. They are not truthful.

Individually and collectively, they are past masters of evasion and deceit, and therefore they are the greatest diplomatists in the world, I verily believe. They are wonderfully shrewd, and they have sense enough to keep their heads when other men are losing theirs. They are patient; they plan craftily and execute carefully and ruthlessly.

Would you care to graft their idea of industry on the white race, Mr.

Parker?"