CHAPTER XXV
A NEW PROBLEM: ALIENS AND HYPHENATED CITIZENS IN NEUTRAL STATES
IT has been seen how difficult resident aliens may make it for a neutral to guard its own rights. More and more does he threaten by embarrassing acts and influences to embroil people who offer him hospitality in the wars that are racking other states. It is difficult enough to play the rôle of a neutral, far harder than to enact the part of a belligerent. In the latter case forces are unleashed that aforetime were restrained by law and precept. Simple, primitive hate works its ends upon the enemy without much restriction, and non-combatants excuse much to berserker rage. In the former the neutral is not only expected to maintain with absolute correctness all customary relations with the nations at feud, but to assume many grievous responsibilities which are thrust upon it. Unenviable as is the lot of a people that desires to maintain an impartial attitude toward nations that have drawn the sword, the hyphenated citizen, alien at heart and in heart-allegiance, and the plain unvarnished alien, a less objectionable character, threaten to provide pitfalls that the wisest ministry cannot avoid.
That this has not always been so is explained by the fact that the alien as such, ensconced in neutral territory, has only recently thrust himself upon the world's attention. Up to the period of the Russo-Turkish war immigration for purposes of bettering one's condition by temporarily abiding in foreign lands, was unfashionable. Removal to countries near at hand would be without purpose, because economic conditions therein were no better than those which existed at home, and a voyage across seas for transient residence elsewhere took too much time and money to make it practicable. People who huddled into the uncomfortable steamships of those days were possessed by a dread which made them hate and fear the governments to which they were subject, or by a yearning ambition to better the condition of themselves and their children by permanent settlement under favorable auspices. In direct proportion to their numbers therefore, they were imbued with a spirit which made them welcome to newer countries, whose founders had anticipated their dreams, and they readily became bone of the best bone in the land which adopted them. Subsequent wars being minor in character or else waged between peoples who had not emigrated in such numbers and to such neutral centers as to much affect relations, gave no hint that cheap and quick transportation was already seriously affecting the relations of sovereign states, because of the enormous increase of the emigrant wave moving toward the West. It was obvious that some countries were being depopulated—that sections of other lands were becoming congested, and that knotty problems in civics were the result—but few expressed apprehension as to the bearing these abnormal conditions would have upon a war status, and world hostilities now raging were far developed before the first note of alarm was uttered, or any one appreciated the necessity of enacting legislation to guard against resulting complications.
This has now fittingly become the task of the United States—first—because it has chosen to be the refuge of more migratory peoples than any other land—second—from its notable position as the champion of neutrality—and third—because it has formed the habit of accepting and solving world puzzles that affect humanity without warning or preparation.
It is unfortunate in this case that there is little to build upon but general principles and nothing in the way of precedents.
It is also unhappily true that the American public as such are hopelessly ignorant of the situation that is developing.
Prior to August, 1914, the average citizen knew that in single years a million and a quarter of foreigners, for the most part non-English speaking, were entering the country. He was also dimly conscious that the immigrant tide was swelling because of economic conditions, and the elimination of obstacles that had discouraged travel.
Beyond that point he did not go. Here and there voices were raised in warning because the authorities failed to work out any proper plan for regulating and handling these immense masses between which and the resident population of the country there was little in common. Other voices, however, and these far more numerous and authoritative, were eloquently depicting the virtues of isolated newcomers, elaborating the theory of the melting-pot, and drawing somewhat fantastic pictures of a new nation which if not "conceived in liberty," would arrive at such a oneness of thought and ambition as to make the state omnipotent and bring in the millennium.
It cannot be gainsaid therefore that outside of school-teachers who chafed at the miserable appropriations accorded them for the instruction of these people, and far-sighted manufacturers who had sufficient intelligence to note the revolutionary disposition of the leadership which has secured control of unskilled labor, there has been a disposition on the part of the body politic as a whole to accept the theory of the optimists and to drift.
What is to be done to overcome this inertia before something more positive and satisfactory than opportunist measures can be framed and enacted?
The only answer that readily occurs, if it once be allowed that inaction is dangerous and that Congress does not appreciate the fact sufficiently to pass required laws, is one that urges a publicity campaign to thoroughly arouse the people whose votes make and unmake legislatures. Such a campaign can be initiated by the Administration in power, by groups of informed patriots, or by individuals who have facts and figures at their command. It makes little difference in a Democracy where every citizen is a sovereign who introduces the movement.
The main point is this: that if it be not undertaken, and adequate legislation is impossible without it, then the United States is sure to fail in its duty as a neutral—
First—to its own citizens, who desire to shun war.
Second—to the belligerent governments who are injuriously affected by the action of enemy mobs or persons living under a neutral flag.
Third—to other neutrals.
It is from a conviction that no issue now before the United States and neutral nations similarly situated, outweighs one which has to do with the regulation of the members of foreign colonies—that this and a former chapter have been inserted in a brief treatise upon the Rights and Duties of Neutrals.
Meanwhile, inasmuch as the matter thus referred to is probably for the first time brought to the attention of those interested in the Law of Nations as one deeply affecting the maintenance of neutrality, it seems prudent to attach the following facts and figures: The six states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania appear, from figures purporting to be copied from the Thirteenth United States Census, to have contained in or about the year 1910—99,171 factories, or more than one third of all such establishments in the United States. These represented at that time a capital of $8,593,809,000, or nearly one half of the whole amount of money set apart for manufacturing purposes. The same states, which are contiguous to each other along the Atlantic seaboard, contained in the said year approximately 23,339,674 people of whom 6,383,993, or more than one fourth were foreign-born.
When it is remembered that masses of the latter were so distinctly foreign as to be ignorant of English, and that no reference is made to the millions upon millions who confess a foreign parentage and are themselves foreign at heart, or to the millions of non-English speaking foreigners who have entered this section since 1910, it must graphically appear to the least thoughtful that the situation may well become embarrassing.
Let us suppose that foreign states which are at war, and whose subjects many of these people are, see fit to refuse such accommodation as the United States, strictly within its rights, requires, or to dare its resentment—and that the enemy of the above nations also represented by millions of subjects resident in America, insist that if the United States fails to act, it will be a breach of neutrality.
The American people themselves may be right-minded and high-minded. The Administration in Washington may be farsighted and vigorous, but the position of both people and Executive must in any case remain difficult and dubious because of the sentiment of the foreign colonies, and any action must be taken at risks which need not be recited here, until such time as suitable regulative legislation is enacted.