SOONER or later the idea that the world belongs of right to the white races must be finally abandoned, and, even from the narrow point of view of the future of the white races, the sooner the better. All over the world coloured people are growing increasingly resentful of white domination, which is often unsympathetic and sometimes intolerable. We agree that self-determination is “a blessed word”, the repetition of which has led to no end of mischief. Nevertheless, it is a doctrine which was authoritatively laid down and accepted at Versailles, though with many qualifications. And the coloured man claims that it applies to him as well as to the white. The Christian religion and common sense surely agree in urging the white man to accept the possibly uncomfortable fact that the days of his domination are growing swiftly to an end, and that it is for him, for his own sake as well as for the sake of the future of the world, sympathetically to assist and maybe to direct such developments of independence among the peoples whom he has hitherto governed as will lead to appreciative friendship rather than menacing hatred. In his speech to the China Association last Friday, Mr. Austen Chamberlain said that the salvation of China can come only from the Chinese. If that be so, it is obviously the duty of foreign Governments not to make it impossible for the Chinese to work out their own salvation.
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