The white man regarded Asia as his lawful loot, his God-sent dominion, and he regarded Asiatics as ignorant heathens. His formidable guns, his technical equipment in warfare, frightened the Asiatics and they yielded easily. But the wheel turned. The little Japanese tutored by Western masters humiliated the Russian bear. The little Indians led by Gandhi disconcerted and shamed the English lion into giving them their freedom. The white man feels once backward but now awakening Asia slipping through his fingers, his prestige going with it, and he knows there is little he can do about it. The forces of Nature were bringing the white, the yellow, and the brown peoples together that they might affect each other and contribute to each other's wider and fuller development. The avoidance of contact was thus not possible. It was Japan's mistake in trying to shut herself up as a hermit kingdom in the nineteenth century, as it was Tibet's mistake to do the same in the twentieth century. If one thing is clear, it is that a brusquely awakened Asia refuses to drift helplessly but intends energetically to give a positive direction to its fate and fortune.
-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 1 : Meetings of East and West > # 297
