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290
THE CRISIS

bucks, but such is the case, for we took in the scene with our own eyes and there are hundreds of people who will take the stand today and swear that such a condition exists, although the law against whites and blacks working in the same room is very plain. 
    "Standing at a row of machines was a bunch of pretty girls and young matrons, one of whom the writer recognized as a girl belonging to one of the best families in the county, but forced by adverse circumstances to work for a living. Within ten or twelve feet in the front and rear of these girls were a number of Negroes. No partition of any kind separated the two races." 

THE AMERICAN AMUCK.
FEW Americans or Englishmen realize the kind of wild animals which they send abroad to represent them and the way in which these scoundrels seek to sow hatred and the despising of black for among foreigners. In Havana, for instance, George M. Bradt, a Russian from Tennessee, edits the Havana Post and speaks for America. In a recent leading editorial he says: 
    The high-brows of the Cuban Ateneo would have us believe that Washington was by no means alone-that Toussaint l'Overtire, a contemporary, should occupy a pedestal beside him. Nothing more insulting to the memory of Washington has ever been said, for George III and his ministers never forgot that the commander of the American revolutionary forces as a gentleman. 
    Toussaint l'Ouverture was just a bad nigger who ran amuck in Haiti and lay down just as soon as Napoleon sent over General Leclerc to punish the rebellious Haitians. He was born a slave and showed his slavish streak by betraying this French masters to Spain, then surrendering to France, and later betraying every trust reposed in him. He finally died a prisoner in France. 
    Now, we really object to this bad nigger, no better than Estenoz or a number of others happily dead in Cuba, being mentioned in the same breath with Washington. One might as well place Lincoln and Jose Miguel side by side. 
     The same despicable methods are being used today by white American solderers in France. A colored soldier from the former 15th New York Infantry, now in France, write to is wife: 
    Dear, you do not know what we have to go through here, but in the end "The Great God" above will right all wrongs. I would never have dreamed that the American white man would ever at this time, when each and every man of the dear old U. S. A. is sacrificing his all and all for his country regardless of his creed or color, use prejudice and try his utmost to poison another nation against the American Negro soldier. Just for the sake of you I am swallowing some bitter pills in that respect. You know my temper. 
    The officers in our regiment are all gentlemen and men in every respect, and our good Colonel Hayward is all that a man could be. We love our officers and our Colonel, and we are taking the slurs, insults, and the sarcasm that confront us daily on duty and off duty from the heathen people who do no know any better, but bye and bye some day in the end, there will be a justification. Oh, our wives, our mothers, sisters, brothers, and our families pray that we may be able to govern ourselves!

AFRICA
THAT this war is the beginning of the end of the world slavery in Africa no thoughtful person can doubt. Even the white South Africans are beginning to see this. The ninth annual report of the South African National Union says that after the war not only will it be impossible tot keep the Indians in subjection, but also:
The colored corps, many of them artisans who have captured several skilled trades at the Cape, will also become enlightened as to labor conditions in Europe, and will receive a more exalted opinion of their own worth. They will most certainly invade with success the industrial sphere in other parts of Africa. Even the humble Kafir who has gone in his thousands to France will come back form the point of view of his race a better man, and will no longer see the social or economic situation through a glass darkly. It must be remembered also that in Europe and especially in France there are none of our color prejudices; hence the returned black man will be largely "Americanised."
     We note also that General C. J. Smuts, a Negro-hating white South African now highly popular in England, is giving much time and discussion to the "native problem." In a speech at the Savoy Hotel, reported in the London Times, he begins with an interesting discussion of race: 
    It is really only in recent years that the remarkable doctrine of the pure race has sprung up-and again in Germany. I am sorry to say the man who has preached that doctrine most frequently is a Germanized Englishman with the name of Houston Chamberlain. The doctrine is to the effect that you must keep your race pure. There are certain races created by Providence for a great rôle in the world, and the conclusion was that the German race must keep to itself in future because it is one of the pure [[continued on next page]]

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THE LOOKING GLASS
291

nations. (Laughter.) Could there be any more arrant nonsense? We doo not intend in South Africa to listen to these forces. We want to create a blend out of various nationalities. We want to create a new nation, and that is the South African nation. If we succeed in doing that we shall achieve a nation not standing on one leg, but ton various legs. We shall have a nation which will embrace various traits. You will have a people all blending into one. 
    It is only by bringing about a union like that and by making the different racial types of people work together, respect each other, co-operate with each other, and understand each other that you will bring into being a unanimous people which will take the broadest and the largest view of the problems with which it is confronted. I am hopeful that although we in South Africa travel slowly, travel at the rate rather of the ox-wagon than the train, we shall in the end achieve success and create under our South African sun a new type in the world. 
    Immediately thereafter General Smuts comes to this remarkable conclusion: 
    There are certain axioms which have been laid down in regard to the black and white races. One is that there must be no intermixture of blood. All previous civilizations on the African continent have failed-perhaps because that principle was never recognized. The superior civilized race was lost in the quicksands of African blood. Our forefathers, both English and Dutch, have been strong on that point, with the result that to an unexpectedly large extent the white blood has remained pure in South Africa. 
    We cannot, of course, say just what expectations General Smuts and his social scientists had, but anybody who has seen the Boers with their dark and even brown faces and curly hair will conclude that their expectations must have been fairly large. Coming more specifically to the native problem, General Smuts says: 
    In South Africa we are not simply a white man's country. It has been our ideal to make it a white man's country, but its is not a white man's country yet. It is still a black man's country. Our problem of racial unity is being solved in the midst of the much larger question of the black environment in South Africa. That is a much larger issue, and no one can have any great assurance that we shall succeed in solving it. We know that on the African continent civilization at various times has gained a foothold. You may have read in your books of a university of Timbuctoo. You know of the ruins discovered in Rhodesia and other parts, bearing testimony to a great civilization which at one time must have existed there. These civilizations have now disappeared and barbarism is once more in power over that once apparently civilized land.  
    That is what creates the fundamental doubt about the whole position in South Africa. There are people in South Africa, and they are not foolish people, who are not certain that the white experiment there will be a success, or that we shall ever succeed in making it a white man's land. We are going to make the attempt. (Cheers.) The effort has now been made for some hundreds of years, and it may be that the way we have now set about it is the best way. Former civilizations in Africa have been more for the purpose of exploiting the native populations of Africa, and have probably followed lines of development and action which had the seeds of decay in themselves. But we have created a base, so to speak, in Southern Africa, and today we are in a position to move forward, and we are moving forward, in the promotion of the civilization of South Africa. 
    Our problem there is a very difficult one, and quite unique in a way. In the United States you have a much smaller problem with the Negro population. In the United States you have an overwhelming white population with a much smaller Negro element in the midst of it. But in South Africa the relation is reversed. There you have an overwhelming black population with a small white population which is doing its best to make its footing secure for the future. You can understand that a problem like that is not only uncertain in its ultimate solution, but it is most difficult in the procedure which has to be followed for its solution. 
    As to specific methods for the solution of the race problem, the General says:
    I think we are all agreed on these two points. I wish we had made more progress and had discovered also a political axiom. But there, although we have arrived at nothing definite or settled, still we have gained a great deal of experience in the years of our history, and there is now shaping in our institutions in South Africa a view which may have very far-reaching results in the future civilization of the African continent. We have found that the ideas which apply to our white civilization largely do not apply to the natives, and that to give a political existence on an equal basis to white and black alike does not lead to the best results. The practice is being built up in South Africa of creating parallel institutions and of making the natives run on different but parallel lines to the white. It may be that on these lines we may be able yet to solve a problem which might otherwise prove to be entirely insoluble. 
     Years ago an experiment with native self-government was started in the old Cape Colony. Under legislation for which, I believe, Cecil Rhodes was largely responsible and under which local self-government was given to the natives in a large location. That principle has been extended over a large part of Cape Colony, and so successful has the experiment been that when we came to frame the South African Constitution, an appendix was added about protectorates

Transcription Notes:
[[last word is actually "protectorates" split into 2 lines Katie 12/23/19]]