WHITE SNOBBERY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3190, 8 April 1911, Page 10

WHITE SNOBBERY.

POSITION IN THE FAR EAST. “I believe the European snob in Asia is distinctly the enemy of the civilised West. And his coadjutor in this country is a fitting criminal yokefellow.” ' „ „ So writes M. Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press and an experienced traveller, in the “National’Geographic Magazine.” Mr. Stone entitles his paper “Race Prejudice in the Far East,” but it is evident from the incidents he records and the unchallengeable facts that he. presents that for “prejudice” we must now read “snobbery.” He reminds us that “whatever our ignorance of, or indifference for, the Orientals in the past, it is well to note that conditions, both for us and for them, have entirely changed within the last decade. There is, as he says, a new United States, and a new Asia. One was created by the Spanish war; the other, by the Russo-Japanese conflict. The Asian has discovered that a yellow man behind a gun is quite as effective as a white man; and the question is, “What is to be the outcome?” How long “will the G,OGO soldiers we have m the Phillippines be able to keep our flag afloat among 8,000,000 of natives? How long will the 75,000 English soldiers in India be able to maintain British sovereignty over 300,000,000 of Asians?” / . Mr. Stone is convinced that there is real danger awaiting us, if we do not mend our ways. We shall never meet the problems growing out of our relation with the Far East unless we “absolutely and once for all put away race prejudice.” In illustration of the paragraph at the head of this paper, Mr. Stone gives some incidents which came under his personal observation : From Bombay to Yokohama there is not a social club at any port or treaty point where a native, whatever his culture or refinement, will be admitted. Last year at the Bengal Club, Calcutta, a member aroused such a storm of opposition by inviting a Eurasian gentleman—i.e., a half native and half European—to dine with him, that the matter was only adjusted by setting aside the ladies’ department and allowing the offending member and his guest to dine there alone. . . While in Calcutta I attended a ball in Government House and noted that while native princesses were dancing with white men, a score of native gentlemen stood about as “wall-flowers.” Calling Lady Minto’s attention to the fact, she explained that no white woman would think of dancing with a native: it would mean social ostracism. . . The son of a maharaja, educated at Oxford or Cambridge, may be honored by an invitation to Windsor ; but when he goes back home he may enter no white man’s club, no white woman will associate or dance with him, and, if he haply marry a European, he. his wife, and his children become outcasts. . . Although native troops have shown undying lovnltv to the British flag, and have exhibited the highest courage, no one of them has ever received or ever can receive tli© Victoria Cross.