thirty million progressive whites instead of a few hundred thousand miserable aboriginals?
At the other end of the scale we have, as I said, peoples who are most probably or certainly educable. At a hazard one might instance the Thibetans and Siberian Mongolians, the Koreans, the Maoris and Polynesians, the Lapps (of the same blood as the Finns), and a large number of Asiatic and African peoples. We must keep in mind the high civilisation reached by the Amerinds of Peru, whereas their modern descendants, the Quichwas, seem so negligible. In Africa there is a vast amount of experiment and classification to do, and already the pure Bantu races are furnishing scores of men who are susceptible of a university education. I know several of them who are as competent and well-educated as the average English university man.
Has the white race a duty (“the white man’s burden”) to attempt to civilise the coloured races? I speak in general terms, of course. It is sheer insolence to regard the Chinese or Burmese—one must not mention the Japanese—as lower races. Now, speaking in the abstract, as a matter of general moral principle, the white has no clear duty to civilise the coloured races. The sentiment of brotherhood may inspire a feeling of duty in some, but one cannot build firmly on that phrase. It is, however, not an abstract ethical question. The white men have, in point of fact, spread over the globe, and they are in a fair way to occupy all the territory on which the coloured races (except the
