Statesman Jane Addams.
"They are trying to bring into actual politics something of a new social order. They are always wanting to bring something from America. Their confidence in us, their affection for us, is quite touching. I have not been in Japan since they learned about our immigration policy, but before that, at least, America was decidedly the promised land. We have, or we would have had, the first chance of helping them work out these problems of theirs." -- Jane Addams, commencement address at Grinnell College on "World Problems in the Orient."
There is something most tragic in the phrase "or we would have had." Consciously, there is in America none of the wanton disposition that slaps a worshipping child. We will be kinder to the Japanese and Chinese when we thoroughly understand the admiration and the spirit of emulation with which they regard us.
Jane Addams is no politician or diplomat, but a long life of the most personal service to society has allowed her to see that. She does not know the calculating refinements of national policy and statesmanship, but she knows human nature and that is a kind of statesmanship.
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