A Study in Racial Problems By Dr. Arthur Smith, Tue Risixc Tipe or CoLovr Acarnst Ware Wortp-Sueresacy.—By Lo: throb Stoddard, ast. ru.p. (Har-yard) With an Introduction by Madison Grant, Author of "The Stakes of the War," ete. New York Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920 Pp 320.
Some 25 years ago, when Prof. Charles H. Pearson's epoch-making book' "National Life and Character" reached China, some at least of his readers were filled with amazement, and perhaps with amusement, at his dismal prophecies of the White Race in competition with the Coloured Races, more especially the Browns and the Yellows. Ten years later Putnam Weale in his "Conflict of Colour" by the use of incisive language brought the same topic before us from a Far Eastern point of view.
Mr. Stoddard's volume has the advantage not merely of the lapse of another decade, but what is far more important, that of the background of the Great War and its Iessons. Whether we agree or disagree with his conclusions they are of capital importance to every reader of these lines. The extended Introduction is by Mr. Madison Grant, a New Nork lawyer whose book The Passing of a Great Race" (1916) gives an historical survey of human history from a racial point of view, hich affords a prelude to the discussion.
Four hundred years of unbroken triumph naturally bred in the white race an instinctive but uncritically optimistic belief in an indefinite continuance of success The recently formulated biological law of the "Survival of the Fittest" became a popular catchword, But the words "best" and "fittest" bad money drives out good. Meredith Townsend in the fourth edition of his work sia and Europe," written in the light of the Russo-Japanese war, predicated absolute eviction of Europeans from present Asiatic holdings, whereas in the original introduction he foresaw a great European assault upon Asia. In 1900 the white tide was at its flood of 400 years. Within four short years Port Arthur revealed to a startled world the beginning of the ebb.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.