ship with its requirement of compulsory military service to Japan, the United States, in event of war with Japan, could not demand military service from the Americanborn Japanese but would be obliged to permit them to return to Japan, there to render military service in behalf of Japan. American-born Japanese would appear to be enjoying all the advantages of American citizenship without assuming the most important responsibilities of such citizenship.

Once a Japanese always a Japanese, unless each individual Japanese renounced allegiance in the manner prescribed by the Civil Code of Japan and his renunciation is accepted by the Japanese Government. No matter how many successive generations of American-born Japanese there may be, none of the children born in America are relieved of allegiance to Japan unless the parent has renounced allegiance to Japan and had his renunciation accepted by the Japanese Government.

While some of these points might be questioned, an important principle is touched upon in connection with the expatriation of the Japanese. On this point the report quotes from a letter of Dr. Charles E. Martin, Lecturer on International Law, University of California, dated March 25, 1920:

About 1917 or 1918, the Japanese enacted a law of expatriation by which the status of dual nationality on the part of Japanese residing here and claiming citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment could be brought to an end. Japanese who are native citizens of the United States may

expatriate themselves in two ways:

(1) Before the age of 15 through a legal representative:

(2) Between the ages of 15 and 17 years, but never after the age of 17, unless he has presented himself for military duty.

As compared with the practice of the United States, the Japanese law is limited in its scope. Japan will relinquish her jurisdiction over foreign-born Japanese, not through the voluntary act of the individual but only through the permission of the home government. Many countries hold to the view that expatriation is the voluntary right of the individual. Japan does not recognize this principle. The burden is placed upon foreign-born Americans to prove that they have retained their American citizenship, while the burden is placed upon foreign-born Japanese to prove that they have renounced their Japanese citizenship through means provided by, and with the permission of, the Japanese government. In this way, the home government has a rigid military hold on its foreign-born citizens.

In the Pacific Coast states the

Japanese problem is becoming an increasingly serious one. No one state, or group of states, can hope to offer a sane solution for the problem because of the many international factors involved in the situation. The whole

question must be handled by the states in coöperation with the federal government. In this direction only lies the hope for a constructive program.

among the Powers bordering upon it. These Powers are at present represented by Japan in the East and by the United States in the West. The present attitude of fault-finding of each towards the other is fraught with danger, though it may not lead to an armed conflict.

work under a Japanese the men here make for it as fast as they can."

According to the Municipal Employment Bureau of San José the popularity of the Japanese farmers is due to the fact that they are, as a rule, considerate employers. As an American laborer, who applied to that bureau for a job, puts it, “the Japanese give their farm hands white sheets and treat them like white men."

It is but natural that the contact of two different races engenders a race feeling. As between the Japanese and Americans, however, that feeling, if not deliberately exploited by those with their own axes to grind, will create no such wide chasm as would baffle the ameliorating processes of Time and Nature, because their social disadvantage in the American community under normal condition has never been very great.

That this is not a mere assertion has been proved by California's calm attitude towards the Japanese after two years of continuous vitriolic agitation against them. For more than two years Senator Phelan and his political associates, with the solid backing of practically all the California press, have conducted a virulent propaganda against the Japanese, employing every imaginable means to incite racial antagonism. Mr. Hearst's powerful organs, supported by a large number of other papers, have given unlimited publicity to this anti-Japanese propaganda. Day after day, evening after evening, these papers published editorials and "editorialized" news items, all conceived to set the public sentiment against the Japanese. Many of these news items have proved to be barefaced falsehoods. Up and down the state the anti-Japanese forces held public meetings and conferences, whose proceedings and decisions were heralded far and wide by

their newspaper allies. In a few interior towns they even put up sinister placards and posters announcing "No more Japanese wanted here" or "No Japanese employed here," which recalls to our minds "No Irish need apply," a sign seen in the eastern cities when Irish immigrants began to come to the Atlantic shores in large numbers.

To a student of social problems, the exploitation of the Japanese question by Pacific Coast newspapers is an interesting, often amusing, subject of study. When a paper comes out as a crusader against the Japanese, there are usually to be found sinister motives lurking behind the campaign. A few examples will suffice.

A daily journal, identified with organized labor, sells itself to capital in a strike. The strike fails, and capital has no more use for the "yellow sheet." Deserted by capital and scorned by labor which it has betrayed, the paper finds itself between the devil and the deep sea. Soon it starts a spectacular propaganda against the Japanese, thus hoping to regain labor's favor.

Another newspaper tries to extort a handsome sum of money from a Japanese community. The Japanese reject the advance. Soon afterward the paper embarks upon a campaign of defamation against the Japanese.

As with newspapers, so with individuals. A Japanese buys a city home from a real estate agent; whereupon another agent, who failed to make a deal with the Japanese, bestirs himself and spreads the evil tidings of a "Japanese invasion" throughout the city.

Again, two rival agents try to sell a farm to a Japanese. The Japanese deals with one agent, whose offer is more reasonable, and the other disgruntled agent sends for the leaders of an anti-Japanese organization and

holds a mass meeting to stir up animosity towards all Japanese in the village.

When I recall such stories, of which I can write a volume, I am almost inclined to lose faith in the goodness of human nature. Surely, you will begin to think that after all America is not an apotheosis of justice and humanity.

As for the motives of anti-Japanese politicians, I shall confine myself to quoting no less an authority than Governor William D. Stephens of California. He said in January last: "In my opinion the present agitation in California was inspired by candidacy for office. It is true that many worthy citizens have now allied themselves with it with a laudable purpose. The fact remains, however, that the dominant factors in the movement are actuated by their desires for political preferment."

The statement was lengthy and minced no words in admonishing various political aspirants. And yet the same governor made public, on the eve of the Democratic Convention in San Francisco, a lengthy letter addressed to Secretary of State Colby, in which he practically endorsed most of the anti-Japanese program advocated by those politicians whom he had scolded for playing politics. The astute governor did this, not because he had changed his mind, but because the agitation by Senator Phelan and others created an atmosphere in which no politician felt safe in maintaining an attitude liable to be interpreted as pro-Japanese. In the parlance of the political world, the governor's move was a move to steal Mr. Phelan's thunder.

But let us ignore the motive. For our present purpose, it is enough to see only the obvious, and note, as I have noted, how vicious, how vitriolic, the anti-Japanese propaganda has

been. Of late this propaganda has been reënforced by moving pictures and novels, evidently inspired by leaders of anti-Japanese agitation. One newspaper is publishing a serial, an undisguised anti-Japanese propaganda novel, written by a GermanAmerican who was arrested and interned at Fort Douglas during the war for his anti-American activities.

The important point, which I wish to drive home to the public, is that, in spite of all this propaganda, the average Californian shows little disposition to be excited or alarmed by the bogie of the Japanese menace conjured up by agitators. No Japanese has suffered physical attack at the hands of "hoodlums." No property owned by Japanese has been destroyed by the "riff-raff" elements. Only once or twice yellow journals have reported alleged cases of rough of rough treatment meted out to the Japanese, but upon investigation such reports have proved groundless and nothing but the usual trick of newspapers to incite animosity against the Japanese. Everywhere the Japanese are getting along amicably with the Americans. Japanese are employing and being employed by Americans. Americans are glad to employ, and work for, Japanese. In cafés and restaurants, at hotels and theatres, there is no disposition to even discriminate against the Japanese. Senator Phelan is right in objecting to the use of the word "pogrom" used by an ardent defender of the Japanese, for there never has been even a hint of pogrom in the attitude of the Californians towards the Japanese.

The failure of anti-Japanese propagandists to incite race hatred against the Japanese proves two things. First, the Japanese have the innate capacity to live harmoniously side by side with Americans. Second, with the growth of Japanese immigration effectively

checked by federal arrangements, the present Japanese population and Japanese land holdings constitute no real menace. To make them appear a menace by a campaign of exaggeration and falsehood is an affront to the intelligence of the American people. Says the American Committee of Justice, organized in California to oppose the recently adopted Alien Land Initiative Law: "Only 2.2 per cent of California's total population is Japanese. In 1919 more white children were born in California than all the Japanese children born here in the ten years preceding. We should not be placed in the ridiculous position of 97.8 per cent of our population being in fear of 2.2 per cent. We would be confessing ourselves weaklings and fools if we were to think that our institutions and civilization are being endangered by the presence of such a small number of Japanese, unobtrusive, law-abiding, minding their own business, and bothering nobody. The State Board of Control reports that Japanese cultivated 458,056 acres last year. California has an area of 99,617,280 acres of which about 28,000,000 is farm land. Of this vast farm land only 1.6 per cent is cultivated by Japa

Upon this 1.6 per cent they produce 13 per cent of California's total food output. Their produce is valued at sixty-seven million dollars, of which 35 per cent is paid land owners as rentals and 45 per cent to labor as wages. The balance of 20 per cent is the reward for Japanese tenants and contractors. The Japanese have taken up much of the worst land and made it fertile, thus helping to reduce the cost of food for the city worker. With effective restriction of Japanese immigration now being considered at Washington, there need be no fear that the small Japanese population now here will ever become a dominating element.

The present Japanese population is only 2.2 per cent of the total. The highest Japanese birth-rate is only 7.4 per cent of the whole as against 90.8 per cent of American births. Within a few years Japanese births will become even less, because (1) immigrants, irrespective of race, have fewer children after the first generation; (2) the average age of Japanese male adults now here is about 40; (3) the abolition of 'picture marriages' will make it more difficult for Japanese to marry; (4) the arrivals of Japanese will decrease as the result of present diplomatic negotiations."

This complacent attitude on the part of Californians has been proyen by the result of the recent election. Senator Phelan, the apostle of antiJapanism, has given way to his Republican opponent by a difference of 70,000 votes. The majority for the Alien Land Initiative Law has been disappointingly small for the anti-Japanese leaders. On the eve of the election, it was generally predicted, by both the Japanese and the Americans, that the Initiative would be adopted by a majority of 9 to 1. But the returns, though yet incomplete, have revealed a remarkable pro-Japanese sentiment, latent or potential in the hearts of the Californians. Up to date 5,586 electoral precincts out of a total of some 6,000 have made returns