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344    THE CRISIS

or 94 per cent, are illiterate. Indians live in such conditions under British rule. In view of this fact, it may be asked if Great Britain is qualified to speak of the "yellow peril."

It is said that Great Britain is a country of ideals and America of humanity, but things happen in the two countries which are contrary to the principle of ideals and humanity. Even the Negroes, who are most despised by the whites, have made a considerable intellectual advance and will not bow to unreason. Have Europeans and Americans not been urging that no other races or peoples should be subjected to unreasonable pressure? Are they not able to find food for thought in the racial troubles now occurring in various countries and set about amending their own attitude? As things stand there is little hope for the maintenance of future peace.

THE NEGRO "IS NOT WITHOUT HONOR SAVE—"

JEAN BOILEAU throws some light on a discussion which has been pretty widely mooted in the American press in the last few months. M. Boileau writes in the Baltimore Evening Sun:

I should prefer to remain silent on the question of the comparative merits of the American and the French girls. But since so much is being said in your Forum, favorable and unfavorable to the girls of France, I beg to state what I and thousands of other Frenchmen believe to be the main cause of all this hostile criticism of the women of my native land.

The main cause of this criticism is found in a letter to your Forum of the 6th instant signed by "Allen P. Sadtler." Your correspondent unwittingly "gives the game away" when he says that "the good French girl loves a Negro." This fact of French women's love for American Negroes is the taproot of the unfavorable comments made by white Americans against French women. French women were urged not to mingle with colored American soldiers. They were told many awe-inspiring tales about Negro soldiers as a whole. But their social experiences with these men of color absolutely failed to verify the many stories which had been pouring into their ears. A brief social contact with the American Negro soon caused all fear to vanish like a stain of vapor upon a mirror. But had the women of my country fallen victims to this subtle and extensive propaganda launched in France by white Americans against colored Americans; had they allowed their souls to be filled with what is known in America as "nigger-hatred"; had they drawn the "color line" and refused to open their doors, their arms and their hearts to the Americans of ebony hue, they would probably have been exalted to the sky as being among the best and most worthy girls on earth.

But no! French women do not measure men according to the color of their skin. A white skin is not an essential attribute of French society or French citizenship. French women are criticized because of their love for colored soldiers. But why should they hate Negroes as such? Or why should they even ignore them for no other reason than their color? The Negroes' very polite, sincere manner, their exemplary conduct among the French civilians and their reckless, brave and courageous conduct on the firing line won the hearts, not only of the French women, but also of the French people as a whole. These brown skin sons of America were conceded to be the most lovable of all foreign soldiers on French soil. If French girls are to be regarded as unworthy because of their affection for these men of color, then the French people as a whole must for the same reason be deemed unworthy.

The French people do not discriminate against their own colonials on account of their color. They honor and respect them. It was the mighty Senegalese who saved the day for their beloved France in the first battle of the Marne. And France is not ashamed to acknowledge her indebtedness to these conquering sons of Africa. The French girls would regard as unreasonable any criticism against them because of the social welcome they extend to their colonials. Likewise, they cannot see the reason or sense of any unfavorable comments because of their widely known, hearty attachment to American Negroes.

As compared with this "fault" of having deep affection for colored Americans, all other faults of French women sink into insignificance. If the American people as a whole knew the fruitless efforts of these very ones who are finding fault with French girls to prejudice their minds against American Negroes, they could then see, as I do, the real reason for all this talk against French girls. French girls have no hatred or prejudice in their hearts based on the color of the skin of other people. Is this a just cause for condemnation? French people do not think so, and cannot be made to think so.

Many French girls will testify that they received more courtesy and better treatment from the American Negroes than from the whites. No Negro ever referred to a French woman as a "jane" or with any other slurring epithet. By the way, I notice that even your correspondent uses the term "frog jane" in reference to the French girl.

If the failure on the part of French women to hate and discriminate against American Negroes merely because of race or color be regarded as a fault, then French women are proud of such a fault.

White Americans seem none too popular with either friend or foe. The Herald, London, England, tells us:

According to the Morning Post, the Pan-German Deutsche Zeitung is highly indignant at a report that 140 American soldiers have applied to their government for permission

THE LOOKING GLASS

345

to marry German girls. In an article on the subject the Berlin paper says: "It is not an ignominious peace, but racial disgrace, that threatens our destruction. The damage exists less in the marriages themselves than in the fact that there should exist German girls capable of entertaining such an idea. These abandoned females may conclude such 'love pacts,' but we shall refuse to admit such couples into our society. We will fight by all the means in our power an infusion of blood by niggers, Frenchmen, Indians, Tonkinese, Americans, and other exponents of culture."

"Abandoned females"!  That has a familiar ring.

THE AMAZING MAJOR

ACCORDING to a widely quoted Associated Press dispatch, Major R. R. Moton expressed himself thus on the race riots:

"I have never known the colored people to have more intense feeling toward the white people than at the present," he said, "and I have never known a time when there was less reason. I never knew a time when the white people of the South, not only the leading white people, but the average white man, were more anxious than at present to be absolutely fair and just to the Negro. This is also true of the North.

"There was never a time when the South, and the North, too, saw more clearly the value of the Negro as an economic factor in industrial operations."

The News, of Indianapolis, Ind., asks in not unnatural surprise:

Is it true that the bitterness is, as this authority insists, all on one side? One could hardly say that all the Negroes are bitter against the whites, or all the whites against the Negroes. It will not do to judge races, any more than nations, in this wholesale way. There are extremists on both sides. We should like to believe that the great body in each race is kindly disposed toward the other and that the haters are in the minority in both. Yet Mr. Moton must be presumed to know his own people, and he says that he has "never known the colored people to have more intense feeling toward the white people than at present." If that is so, it behooves the white people to ask themselves whether they are not largely to blame for it.

If, as the major implies, the onus lies on the Negro, the New York Post wonders:

Why, then, the hideous spectacle of mob murder in the streets of Washington and Chicago and the lynchings and church burnings in the South?

The New York Sun likewise queries:

Whence, then, arises the dangerous ferment, the existence of which Dr. Moton admits? It is in evidence not merely in the South but along the "Border States" and even in the North. Who are its leaders? Or can it be a spontaneous, undirected surge? It will not do to ignore it.

The Negro press is indignant. Dean William Pickens says in the Advocate, Portland, Ore.:

If Dr. Moton or any other man cannot see any reason for the Negro's intense feeling, there is surely something wrong with that man's reasoning faculties.

In the same column of the same paper wherein I read these words attributed to Dr. Moton, I read the South's unintentional answer to the matter:

"Pine Bluff, Ark., Sept. 3.—Flinton Briggs, 26, a discharged Negro soldier, was shot and killed by a mob of thirty men three miles south of Star City, Ark."

I wonder if Dr. Moton knows that it is now the policy in much of the South to keep the REPORT of the lynching of Negroes out of the papers, and that colored people are being killed and no report at all reaching the press. If he does not know and wants to, I will give him the names of well-known people who can give him places, details and references.

But still I insist that the most probable thing is that somebody has lied on Moton in ascribing this absurd statement to him.

The Savannah, Ga., Tribune, says pointedly:

The address of Principal R. R. Moton of Tuskegee Institute, in which he is reported to have said a few days ago that he doesn't understand the reason for the recent race riots which have occurred in various sections of the country, and could see no reason for the intense bitter feeling which is being manifested by white and black men toward one another, comes as no surprise, and simply confirms the reports which have been going the rounds of the country as to his addresses several months ago to the Negro soldiers in France, when it is said that he told the men to go back home, be submissive and perfectly satisfied with conditions as they found them.

A letter from Dr. Moton in the Philadelphia Tribune says:

I feel that I ought to explain a part of the statement which was given out in which I said that the best white people in the South were more determined than ever before that justice be given the Negro. I said that because I know that there is a large and growing group of white people in the South who are determined to handle the race problem in such a way as to give protection and justice to the Negro. Their greatest handicap, however, is the menace of the lawless element of their own people who seem to be on the other hand more determined than ever before to be more unjust towards the Negro and to seek to humiliate and intimidate the members of our race.