The Administration and International Justice does not look beyond our own borders in seeking that on which the welfare of a nation rests, and makes the mistake of over-emphasizing the need of protecting our domestic labor from a competition which, kept within bounds, could not fail to be wholesome. The most regrettable feature of the affair is the appearance of participation, on the part of the Government, in a policy which subordi nates the interests of international good will and of the economic efficiency of our own population to the supposed interests of domestic labor. There would be less ground for such a suspicion of implication in this mistaken policy adopted by the great state of Califor nia, were it not for the many utterances of the President on the need of securing by tariff reductions healthful foreign competition for the development of our own industrial efficiency, utterances in which privileged wealth receives much attention, but in which no reference is made to the paternalistic protection afforded to American workmen by re strictions on the entrance of foreign labor into domestic markets. The Secre tary of State in the past has at times shown himself an overzealous partisan of labor. The party now in power is predisposed to err by leaning as much to one side as the opposite party did to the other. "Dollar diplomacy" has received a rebuff from the present Ad ministration through the withdrawal from the six-Power Chinese loan, but Full Dinner Pail diplomacy offers quite as serious a menace to the peace of the world as Dollar diplomacy, for com mercial greed is equally active in the promotion of discord, whether it seeks undue advantage for American capital or for American labor. While an accusation of this kind against the Administration is easily brought and easily believed to be true,
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it illustrates the natural tendency to give free play to processes of mental association, identifying with the motive of a certain act all the temperamental defects with which the person accused is known to be affected, and to connect with his intention matters that may not have been in his mind at any time while it was being made up. A common-sense view of the matter would be that no ground whatever is afforded by the Japanese affair for the fear that weak ness of a certain kind is to be antici pated in the policy which the Adminis tration will employ in adjusting delicate questions arising between this country and foreign powers. The Japanese inci dent should not be allowed to prejudice a judgment on the wisdom of the foreign policy upon which the Administration is entering, and its record thus far seems to have been irreproachable so far as the Japanese question is concerned. The Japanese affair would probably not have been settled far differently by one of the preceding Republican administrations of Mr. Taft or Colonel Roosevelt, and certainly there has been nothing which can be construed as mak ing a break in our traditional friendship for Japan. It is even possible that the Administration is stronger in this re spect that its predecessor, and would not stand idly by if Congress were to do anything again needlessly offensive to Japan, like the Delagoa Bay resolution. To judge from the reported attitude of the President and his Secretary of State on the Panama Canal question alone, the Administration is less likely to offend than Congress in the settlement of controversies in which there is a sup posed conflict between domestic policy and the rights of other nations. That the Administration in this respect is of somewhat different temper from its predecessor is evident from its prompt
