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[[image - black & white photograph of Chandler Owen]]

Chandler Owen, well-known Negro publicist, is a resident of Chicago.  Born in North Carolina, he was graduated from Virginia Union University and did his post-graduate work on fellowships both at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work, majoring in political and social sciences.  He has a wide acquaintanceship among Negro leaders all over the country and has contributed for many years to newspapers and national magazines.  He is widely recognized for his trenchant style, his inquiring and objective thinking, his solid and scholarly research, and his cultural understanding.

NEGROES and the WAR
by Chandler Owen

Some Negro Americans say that it makes no difference who wins this war.  They say that things could not be any worse under Hitler.  These are the people who emphasize liabilities; they never appraise their assets.  They magnify the bad.  They minimize the good.

Without underestimating the Negro's liabilities, without denying the fact of handicaps and inequalities, I want to set down just what stake the Negro has in America - just what he has to lose under Hitler.

That he would lose it goes without saying.  Race prejudice, from the first, has been Hitler's stock in trade.  In his book, [[italic]]Mein Kampf[[/italic]], he brutally calls Negroes "half-apes." At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin he greeted Aryan winners at his private apartment so that he would not have to shake the hands of Jesse Owens, Cornelius Johnson, John Woodruff, and the other great Negro athletes who played so large a part in bringing victory to the United States.  Hitler's newspapers called these fine university-trained boys "the Black Auxiliaries."

Hitler and his false prophets have told the people of Germany that a Negro has neither a soul nor an intellect, that he is incapable of being civilized.  The man in the street in Germany, deluded by the very magnitude of the Hitler lie, would not believe you if you told him that our Army is proud to have in its ranks many regiments of Negro soldiers, that there are now two full divisions of Negro soldiers, that Negroes serve in all branches.  He would not believe you if you told him that there are Negro officers in our Army,