[oldcynic]

I don't think they have given a helpful broader context though. How common were those more tolerant views in that era? If just a few extreme outliers or a significant minority would be relevant.

This is citizen of the Weimar Republic writing 3 years after the end of WW1. China had joined the allies in 1917, the same year as the US. Education of the era tended to encourage belief in the Empire first, civilising mission. Not to forget years of wartime propaganda. Belief in eugenics was rising and becoming popular. Including in the US and UK. It was a little later in the century those ideas would die out.

Certainly tolerance was famously prevalent in the theatre district of Berlin in the pre-Nazi early 30s. Elsewhere not so much. No doubt the historians I've read have also been biased or incomplete - that of course is far harder to judge.