Canada and the Far East

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OVER the main doorway to the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa are inscribed in stone the uninspiring words:

The wholesome sea is at her gates Her gates both east and west.

The developing tension in the Pacific area, however, causes thoughtful Canadians to wonder whether, so far as their western sea is concerned, the word "wholesome" is not as inaccurate as it is unpoetic.

That this tension is increasing is hardly open to question. It is equally true that it threatens to destroy the delicate system of defensive naval ratios between the three great naval Powers. Such a calamity, so far at least as the United States and Japan are concerned, would probably result in the open and avowed substitution of power for coöperative diplomacy in respect to Pacific and Far Eastern affairs. There would be one inescapable result to this -- a naval race in the Pacific. There seems only one end to that kind of a race -- war.

It may be argued that the picture is overdrawn, that the colors are too lurid. And yet, if the experience of the past is any guide to the possibilities of the future, materials for an Eastern conflagration have been assembling for some years. Japan, not realizing how crude her methods have appeared to others, and therefore not appreciating their reactions to those methods, complains that the rest of the world shows neither sympathy nor understanding regarding the hard necessities of her situation. She is angered and bewildered that the finger of accusation has been pointed at her in the council of the nations at Geneva merely because she has played the game according to traditional rules, which some at least of her accusers have not yet themselves abandoned. She has wrapped herself in the mantle of injured pride, stirred up the militant patriotism of her people, and driven straight forward with her plans for hegemony in the Far East.

The parallel to Germany's action in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries comes at once to mind -- exuberant expansion, coldly blocked by those already satisfied; resentful defiance, backed by an increasing weight of arms and directed by a calculating and powerful military and naval clique: a defiance all the more dangerous because, while ostensibly based on reckless confidence and greed for power, it had a strong undercurrent of uncertainty and fear...