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292     THE CRISIS

[[protectorates]] torates in case they had to be incorporated in the Union. This was the work of Lord Selborne. I am not certain now whether in the distant future the South African Act will not be remembered more for its Appendix than for its principal contents. This Appendix lays down that the native territories in South Africa shall be governed apart from the Parliament of the Union, on entirely different lines, which will achieve the principle of native self-government. Subsequently commissions have been appointed in South Africa to deal with the native question; and more and more the trend of opinion has hardened in the same direction. 
    
We have felt that if we are to solve our native questions it is useless to run black and white at the same moment and to subject them to the same machinery of legislation. It is useless to try that. White and black are different not only in color, but almost in soul; they are different in political structure, and their political institutions should be different, though both should proceed on the principle of self-government. We now have legislation before the Parliament of the Union which is trying to put into shape these ideals I am talking of — ideals of creating all over South Africa, wherever there are considerable native communities, independent self-governing institutions for the native population.  
     
Instead of mixing up black and white all over the country, we are now trying to keep them as far apart as possible in government. In that way we are trying to lay down a policy which may take hundreds of years to work out, but which in the end may be a solution of our native problem; and the result will be that in the long run you will have all over South Africa large areas inhabited entirely by blacks, where the blacks are looking after themselves according to their own ways of life and forms of government. In suitable parts you will have your white communities. Economically, the native will go on working in the white areas. As far as possible the forms of political government will be such that each will be satisfied and each will develop according to its own proper rights. This is the attempt which we are now making in South Africa; and, although the principle underlying our legislation cannot be considered axiomatic in any way, I am not sure that we are not coming out on the right lines — and lines which, in the end, may prove more fruitful in the solution of the problem which has been confronting us.  
    

Of course, General Smuts is neither honest nor frank in his statement of this solution, because he omits to say that hitherto and in all future plans so far formulated the black areas are under the absolute domination of a white general government, in which they have no voice, vote, or influence. 
    
General Smuts then proceeds to another declaration:
    

What the future of that country will be nobody knows, but, remembering my experience in East Africa — (cheers) — my eyes have been opened to the many serious dangers which threaten the future, not only of Africa, but of the world. I have seen there what I have never before realized — what enormously valuable material you have in that black continent. We are all aware of the great German plan that existed before the war, and is still no doubt in the background of many minds in South Africa, of creating a great Central African Empire, which would embrace not only Cameroon and Central Africa, but Portuguese East Africa and the Congo. It would be one of the most valuable tropical parts of the world, and one in which it would be possible to train one of the most powerful armies the world has ever seen.
    
Before the war we were not aware of the military value of the natives. It will be a serious question for us in the future, and a serious question for the statesmen of the Empire and of Europe, whether they are going to allow a state of affairs like that to be a menace not only to South African problems, but to Europe itself. I hope one result of the war will be that some arrangement may be made by which the military training of the natives in that area will be absolutely forbidden. Otherwise, armies may be trained so large that, properly led by whites and properly equipped, they may be a danger to civilization itself. I hope that will be carefully borne in mind by our statesmen when the question of settlement comes. 
     
We are astonished to find that this pronouncement is receiving the enthusiastic support not only of the English War Party, but of Pacifists and even Germans; in other words, finding how effectively the Negro is fighting in this war there is arising a singular unanimity among white peoples that the African Negro should be disarmed "for his own good"; so that after the war he may still be the victim of the devils who have hitherto raped and enslaved him. In this "new Pacifism" we find such strange bed-fellows as General Smuts, the New York Evening Post, and Dr. W. S. Solf, the German secretary for colonies!

What I would like to do more than anything else is to work among the colored men over here. They are not having the happiest kind of a time and I have heard of no one who is specially interested in them, though there may be plenty who are. There have been some race disturbances. I hear that there are a good many colored men at Brest, and I shall hope to be able to do something for them there. 
    
Mrs. S. C. Armstrong, in the Boston Herald. 



The Horizon


SOCIAL PROGRESS.

THE Knights of Pythias in Chicago, Ill., have purchased a lot at a cost of $25,000 for the erection of a National Pythian Building.

¶ The Department of Education reports 643,624 cans of food put up by Negroes in thirty-three counties of North Carolina last summer. The Agricultural Extension Service is arranging to place colored women as assistants to County Home Demonstration Agents to instruct colored people in gardening, canning, and the preparation of foods. 

¶ Lillian Brown, a nine year old colored girl of Greenville, S. C., has received $9,000 insurance from the Government, on account of the death of her father, a private in the 368th Field Hospital of the 92nd Division.

¶ The Hope Day Nursery of New York City recently raised over eight thousand dollars for improvements and the maintenance of its work. Mrs. Daisy C. Reed conducted the campaign. 

¶ A $15,000 colored annex to the white hospital in Paris, Ky., has been completed. Colored citizens are raising money to furnish and equip it. 

¶ The New York Court of Appeals in the case of Johnson vs. the Auburn and Syracuse Electric Railway Company has decided that Negroes cannot be prevented from entering public dancing pavilions. 

¶ Independence Heights is an exclusive colored community of Texas, six miles northeast of Houston. It was set apart as a municipality three years ago and has now a population of seven hundred. It has the commission form of government, and G. O. Burgess is the present Mayor. 

¶ The Negro Industrial and Educational Commission of St. Louis, Mo., met February 12 in the Executive Chamber of Governor Gardner. A number of committees were appointed. The Governor assigned to the Commission a room in the Capitol to be fitted up and designated as the Negro Industrial and Education Room with a statistical secretary in charge. 

¶ Walter's Institute, Warren, Ark., has recently lost by fire Blackwell Chapel, a modern two story brick building named in honor of Bishop Blackwell, and its Boys' Dormitory. 

¶ The Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute, after a warning against discrimination by the War Department, has announced its course in wireless telegraphy open to Negroes as well as other people. 

¶ Representatives of seventy-five races were among the fifteen hundred persons at a loyalty banquet at Hotel La Salle, Chicago. Twelve American Negroes were present. 

¶ A sickness census of 20,000 white people and 10,000 Negroes has been taken in New York City. The rate of illness for Negroes was 37 5/10 per cent for whites 24 8/10 per cent. 

¶ A colored probation officer will be appointed in Indianapolis. 

¶ A Negro Welfare Bureau to cost $8,000 a year has been established by the Legislature of New Jersey after much opposition by both colored and white people. 

¶ Seventeen white men have been put in jail in Paris, Tex., charged with trying to terrorize Negro farmers and drive them from their homes.

¶ Cincinnati reports that three and one-half times as many Negroes as whites die from tuberculosis each year. At the same time, while the white death rate decreased 7.4 percent from 1912 to 1916, the Negro rate decreased 24 per cent.  

¶ A colored lawyer, R. L. Bailey, was selected by the regular judge to preside over one the city courts of Indianapolis one day last month.

¶ Dr. E. P. Read, a colored man, has been elected magistrate for the Small Cause Court of Camden, N. J.

¶ A white citizen of Pittsburgh has given $10,000 for a public bath in the Negro section of the city. 

¶ A colored community Y.M.C.A. Branch has been erected at East Moline, Ill., at a cost of $10,000. Arrangements have been made so that the building can be used by women and children during the day. 

THE WAR.

OSCAR B. POLK, of Dallas, Texas, has been assigned to the United States Naval Station at Key West, Fla., as an aviation machinist. 

¶ On Washington's Birthday colored Battery C in the 351st colored artillery marched through the streets of Baltimore, proceeded by a band of forty pieces. 

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