I believe this to be fundamentally a sound and proper
attitude, an attitude which must be insisted upon, and yet which can be
insisted upon in such a manner and with such courtesy and such sense of
mutual fairness and reciprocal obligation and respect as not to give any
just cause of offense to Asiatic peoples. In the present state of
the world's progress it is highly inadvisable that peoples in wholly
different stages of civilization, or of wholly different types of
civilization even although both equally high, shall be thrown into
intimate contact. This is especially undesirable when there is a
difference of both race and standard of living. In California the
question became acute in connection with the admission of the Japanese.
I then had and now have a hearty admiration for the Japanese people.
I believe in them; I respect their great qualities; I wish that our
American people had many of these qualities. Japanese and American
students, travelers, scientific and literary men, merchants engaged in
international trade, and the like can meet on terms of entire equality
and should be given the freest access each to the country of the other.
But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion into
their country of a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the
business of the land.
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