In the light of Ellador's colossal innocence of what we are ac- customed to call "life," I began to see that process in a wholly new perspective. Her country was but one; her civilization was one and indivisible; in her country the women and children lived as mothers, daughters, sisters, in general tolerance, love, education and service. Out of that nursery, school, garden, shop, and parlor, she came into this great scrambling world of ours, to find it spotted over with dissimilar peoples, more sep- arated by their varying psychology than by geography, politics, or race; often ignorant of one another, often fearing, despising, hating one another; and each national group, each racial stock, assuming itself to be "the norm" by which to measure others. She had first to recognize the facts and then to disentangle the causes, the long lines of historic evolution which had led to these results. Even then it was hard for her really to grasp the gulfs divide one part of the human race from the others.
And now I had the unpleasant task of disabusing her of this last glad assumption, that race and color made no difference.
"Dear," I said slowly, "you must prepare your mind for anoth- er shock— though you must have got some of it already, here and there. Race and color make all the difference in the world. People dislike and despise one another on exactly that ground—difference in race and color. These millions who are here marked 'Aryan or White' include Persians and Hindus, yet the other white races are averse to intermarrying with these, whose skins are indeed much darker than ours, though they come of the same stock."
"Is the aversion mutual?" she asked, as calmly as if we had been discussing insects.
I assured her that, speaking generally, it was; that the flatter-faced Mongolians regarded us as hawklike in our aquil- ine features; and that little African children fled screaming from the unnatural horror of a first-seen white face.
But what I was thinking about was how I should explain to her the race prejudice in my own country, when she reached it. I felt like a housekeeper bringing home company, discovering that the company has far higher and more exacting standards than herself, and longing to get home first and set the house in order before inspection.
We spent some little time in Japan, Ellador enjoying the fairy beauty of the country, with its flower-worshipping, sunny-faced people, and the plump happy children everywhere.
But instead of being content with the artistic beauty of the place; with that fine lacquer of smiling courtesy with which their life is covered, she followed her usual course of penetrat- ing investigation. It needed no years of study, no dreary tables of figures. With what she already knew, so clearly held in mind, with a few questions each loaded with implications, she soon grasped the salient facts of Japanese civilization. Its conspicu- ous virtues gave her instant joy. The high honor of the Samurai, the unlimited patriotism of the people in general, the exquisite politeness, and the sincere love of beauty in nature and art—these were all comforting, and the free-footed women also, after the "golden lilies" of China.
But presently, piercing below all these, she found the general poverty of the people, their helplessness under a new and hard-grinding commercialism, and the patient ignominy in which the women lived.
"How is it, dear," she asked me, "that these keenly intelligent people fail to see that such limited women cannot produce a nobler race?"
I could only say that it was a universal failing, common to all races— except ours, of course. Her face always lighted when we spoke of America.
"You don't know how I look forward to it, dear," she said. "After this painful introduction to the world I knew so little of—I'm so glad we came this way —saving the best to the last."
The nearer we came to America and the more eagerly she spoke of it, the more my vague uneasiness increased. I began to think of things I had never before been sensitive about and to seek for justification.
Meanwhile Ellador was accumulating heart-ache over the Japanese women, whose dual duty of child-bearing and man- service dominated all their lives.
"It is so hard for me to understand, Van; they aren't people at all, somehow—just wives—or worse."
"They are mothers, surely," I urged.
"No—not in our sense, not consciously. Look at this ghastly crowding! Here's a little country, easy to grasp and manage, capable of supporting about so many people—not more. And here they are, making a 'saturated solution' of themselves. She had picked up that phrase from one of her medical friends, a vigorous young man who told her much that she was eager to know about the health and physical development of the Japan- ese. "Can't they see that there are too many?" she went on. "If a people increases beyond its means of support it has to en- dure miserable poverty—or what is that the Germans de- mand?—expansion! They have to have somebody else's coun- try. How strangely dull they are!"
"But, my dear girl, please remember that this is life," I told her. "This is the world. This is the way people live. You expect too much of them. It is a law of nature to increase and multiply. Of course, Malthus set up a terrified cry about over-populating the earth, but it has not come to that yet, not near. Our means of subsistence increase with the advance of science."
"As to the world, I can see that; but as to a given country, and especially as small a one as this—what does become of them?" she asked suddenly.
This started her on a rapid study of emigration, in which, for- tunately, my own knowledge was of some use; and she eagerly gathered up and arranged in her mind that feature of our his- tory on which hangs so much, the migration and emigration of peoples. She saw at once how, when most of the earth's sur- face was unoccupied, people moved freely about in search of the best hunting or pasturage; how in an agricultural system they settled and spread, widening with the increase of popula- tion; how ever since they met and touched, each nation limited by its neighbors, there had been the double result of over- crowding inside the national limits, and warfare in the in- terests of "expansion."
"I can see now the wonderful advantage you have," she said eagerly. "Humanity got its 'second wind' with the discovery of the 'new world'—didn't it?"
It always delighted me to note the speed and correctness with which she picked up idioms and bits of slang. They were a novelty to her, and a constant delight.
"You had a big new country to spread out in, and no compet- itors— there were no previous inhabitants, were there?"
"Nothing but Indians," I said. "Indians?"
"Yes, savages, like those in the forests below your mountain land, though more advanced in some ways."
"How did you arrange with them?" she asked.
"I hate to tell you, Ellador. You see you have—a little—ideal- ized my country. We did not 'arrange' with those savages. We killed them."
"All of them? How many were there ?" She was quite calm. She made no movement of alarm or horror, but I could see the rich color fade from her face, and her dear gentle mouth set in harder lines of control.
"It is a long story, and not a nice one, I'm sorry to say. We left some, hemming them in in spots called "reservations.' There has been a good deal of education and missionary work; some Indians have become fully civilized—as good citizens as any; and some have intermarried with the whites. We have many people with Indian blood. But speaking generally this is one of our national shames. Helen Hunt wrote a book about it, called 'A Century of Dishonor.'"
Ellador was silent. That lovely faroff homesick look came into her eyes.
"I hate to disillusion you, dear heart," I said. "We are not per- fect in America. I truly think we have many advantages over any other country, but we are not blameless."
"I'll defer judgment till I get there," she presently answered. "Let's go back to what we were discussing—the pressure of population."
Rather sadly we took it up again, and saw how, as long as warfare was the relief, nations continually boiled over upon one another; gaining more land by the simple process of killing off the previous owners, and having to repeat the process in- definitely as soon as the population again pressed against its limits. Where warfare was abandoned and a settled boundary established, as when great China walled itself in from maraud- ing tribes, then the population showed an ingrowing pressure, and reduced the standard of living to a ghastly minimum. Then came the later process of peaceful emigration, by which the coasts and islands of the Pacific became tinged with the mov- ing thousands of the Yellow Races.
She saw it all as a great panorama, an endless procession, never accepting a static world with the limitations of parti- colored maps, but always watching the movement of races.
"That's what ails Europe now, isn't it?" she said at last. "That's why those close-packed fertile races were always strug- gling up and down among one another, and making room, for awhile, by killing people?"
"That's certainly a good part of it," I agreed. "Every nation wants more land to accommodate its increasing population."
"And they-want an increase of population in order to win more land—don't they?"
This, too, was plain.
"And there isn't any way out of it— on a limited earth—but fixed boundaries with suicidal crowding inside, or the 'fortunes of war ?' "
That, too, was plain, unfortunately.
"Then why do not the women limit the population, as we did?"
"Oh, Ellador, Ellador—you cannot seem to realize that this world is not a woman's world, like your little country. This is a man's world—and they did not want to limit the population."
"Why not?" she urged. "Was it because they did not bear the children? Was it because they would rather fight than live in peace? What was the reason ?"
"Neither of those," I said slowly. "The real reason is that neither men nor women have been able to see broadly enough, to think deeply enough, sufficiently to visualize these great ra- cial questions. They just followed their instincts and obeyed their ancient religions, and these things happened without their knowing why."
"But the women!" protested Ellador. "Surely the women could see as simple a thing as that. It's only a matter of square miles; how many people to a mile can live healthfully and pleasantly. Are these women willing to have their children grow up so crowded that they can't be happy, or where they'll have to fight for room to live? I can't understand it."
Then she went determinedly to question a Japanese author- ity, to whom we were introduced by one of our friends, as to the status of women in Japan. She was polite; she was meek; she steeled herself beforehand to hear without surprise; and the authority, also courteous to a degree, gave her a brief out- line with illustrative story and quotation, of the point of view from which women were regarded in that country.
She grasped it even more thoroughly than she had in India or China.
We left Japan for Home, via Hawaii, and for days she was si- lent about the subject. Then, as the wide blue sea, the brilliant days spinning by, the smooth magnificence of our progress comforted her, she touched on it once more.
"I'm trying not to feel about these particularly awful things, and not to judge, even, till I know more. These things are so; and my knowing them does not make them any worse than they were before."
"You're a brave girl—and a strong one," I assured her. "That's the only way to do. I'm awfully sorry you had to have such a dose at first—this war, of all things; and then women in the East! I ought to have prepared you better."
"You could not have, dearest—it would have been impossible. No mere words could have made me visualize the inconceiv- able. And no matter how I came to it, slow or fast, the horror would have been the same. It is as impossible for me to make you see how I feel it now, as it would have been for you to make me feel it beforehand."
The voyage did her great good. She loved the sea, and glor- ied in the ships, doing her best to ignore the pitiful labor condi- tions of those who made the glory possible. Always she made friends—travelers, missionaries, business men, and women, wherever she found them. Yet, strangely enough, she seemed more at a loss with the women than with the men; seemed not to know, quite, how to approach them. It was not for lack of love and sympathy—far from it; she was eager to make friends with them. I finally worked out an explanation like this: She made friends with the men on the human side rather than at- tracting them by femininity; and as human beings they ex- changed ideas and got on well together. The women were not so human; had a less wide outlook, less experience, as a rule. When she did get near enough to one of them for talk at all in- timate, then came the ultra-feminine point of view, the differ- ent sense of social and moral values, the peculiar limitations of their position.
I saw this, as reflected by Ellador, as I had never seen it for myself before. What I did not understand, at first, was why she seemed to flag in interest and in patience, with the women, sooner than with the men. She never criticised them, but I could see a puzzled grieved look come over her kind face and then she would withdraw.
There were exceptions, marked ones. A woman doctor who had worked for years in China was going home for a long needed vacation, and Ellador was with her day after day, "learning," she told me. And there was another, once a mission- ary, now a research worker in biology, who commanded her sincere admiration.
We came to the lovely Hawaiian Islands, quite rested and re- freshed, and arranged to stay there awhile and enjoy the splendor of those sea-girt mountains. Here her eager social in- terest was again aroused and she supplied herself with the his- tory of this little sample of "social progress" most rapidly.
There were plenty to teach her, a few excellent books to read, and numbers of most self-satisfied descendants of missionaries to boast of the noble work of their fathers.
