CHAPTER IX

THE HINDU

I

Is it, then, that Canada fears the growth of Japan as a great world
power? No, the thing is deeper than that. We have come to the place
where we must go deeper than surface signs and use neither rose water nor
kid gloves. The question of the Chinese and the Japanese is entirely
distinct from the Hindu.

If you think that shutting your eyes to what you don't want to know and
stopping your nostrils to the stench and gathering your garments up and
passing by on the other side ever settled a difficult question, then the
Pacific Coast wishes you joy to your system of moral sanitation; but
don't offer the people of the Pacific Coast any platitudinous advice
about admitting Asiatics. They know what they are doing. You don't!
Theoretically the Asiatic should have the same liberty to come and go
with Canada as Canadians have to come and go with the Orient.
Theoretically, also, the colored man should be as clean and upright and
free-and-equal and dependable as the white man; but practically--in an
anguish that has cost the South blood and tears--practically he isn't.
The theory does not work out. Neither does it with the Asiatic. That
is, it does not work out at close range on the spot, instead of the width
of half a continent away.