EASTERN SHADOWS

Two events, one just past and the other soon to come, point to a realignment of powers in the Pacific. Mexico and Japan, both harboring grudges against the United States, have signed a treaty of amity; and information comes from reliable sources that the United States and Australia are planning to take joint action in a nine months manoeuvre off the Hawaiian Islands. In case of an outbreak of war in the Pacific, the position of the nations is vaguely outlined by these very tentative rapprochements.

The treaty between Japan and Mexico provides for the disallowance of all claims rising out of civil wars, a clear benefit to Mexico, and for uniformity of tariff between the two countries, a decided gain for Japan's rising commerce. That the people of Mexico believe that intervention by the United States is always in favor of American capitalists or equally odious native exploiters, that the Mexican electorate resents the suspicion that the United States exercises any control over its government or diplomacy,--are facts, unfortunate, yet admitted. That Japan resents the discourteous establishment of a prejudicial immigration law, that Japan fears the naval preponderance secured to the United States by the 5-5-3 ratio of the Washington Conference,--are also facts. What more natural then that two countries whose national sensibilities have been rudely bustled by exuberant American imperialism should unite in a policy of close relations and increasing friendship?

Australia and America, on the other hand, are nearly at one in law, ancestry, and ambitions. They are cousins closely enough allied to be on a most friendly footing, and yet geographically separate enough to prevent a clash of interests. That there is rather an identity of interests is hinted at by the repeated references to the Australian exclusion of Orientals as a precedent for our recent action. The maintenance by Australia and the United States of tariff bars against England, the common need to limit Japanese power in the southern and eastern Pacific, suggest a basis for understanding and cooperation. An entente between the Dominions of the Pacific and the United States seems to be the natural result of the lining up on opposite sides by the English-speaking colonials and by the Oriental and South American nationalities.

The sharpening of this division, indicated by these two present events, is fraught with great import to the peace of the Pacific. The deepening of the gulf between east and west seems inevitably to lead to a gigantic conflict of racially hostile nations, its gradual effacement to peaceful tolerance. And only by voluntary limitation of imperialistic ambitions can the nations of the Pacific find that road to peace.