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244 THE CRISIS "We fought with Perry at Lake Erie." "10,000 of us fought in the the Spanish American War." "From Bunker Hill to Carrizal we have done our bit." "The world owes no man a living, but every man an opportunity to earn a living." "We are maligned as lazy and murdered when we work." "We are excluded from the unions, and condemned for not joining them." "Repelled by the unions we are condemned as scabs." "They refuse us opportunity, then deny our capacity." "Suffer little children and forbid them not." "Unto the least of these my brethren." "3,000 Negroes fought for American Independence under George Washington." "We helped plant the flag in every American dominion." "Were we first in France? Ask Pershing." "Thirty-four Negroes have received Carnegie hero medals." "Our music is the only American music." "Give us a chance to live." "So treat us that we may love our country." "Interpret for us in living, loving acts, the religion of Jesus Christ." "India is abolishing caste; America is adopting it." "Race prejudice is the offspring of ignorance and the mother of lynching." "If the fault is to be found with color, blame God and yourselves." "Not alms but OPPORTUNITY." "Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty." "We have 1,000,000 farmers." "We have 30,000 carpenters." "We have 30,000 clergymen." "We have 12,000 brick and stone masons." "We have 30,000 teachers." "We have 3,000 physicians." "We own 250,000 farms with 20,000,000 acres of land worth $500,000,000." "We have church property worth $76,000,000." "A square deal for every man." - T.R. "The Negro has never betrayed the flag, attempted to assassinate the President or any official of this government." "We have 60,000 iron and steel workers." "We have 20,000 slaughter and packing house operators." "No land that loves to lynch 'niggers' can lead the hosts of Almighty God." "Put the spirit of Christ in the making and execution of laws." "Your hands are full of blood." "Mother, do lynchers go to heaven?" "Cain, where is Abel, thy brother?" "The great contradiction - love of God and hatred of man." "Color, blood and suffering have made us one." "Pray for the Lady MacBeths of East St. Louis." The New York World says: The Rev. Dr. H.C. Bishop was President of the parade. The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Martin was Secretary. The Rev. F.A. Cullen was Vice President. The first Deputy Marshal was J. Rosamond Johnson. Others were A.B. Cosey, C.H. Payne, formerly a member of Troop A, Ninth Cavalry; the Rev. E.W. Daniels, Allen Wood, James W. Johnson, and John Nail, Jr. Rev. G.M. Plaskett and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois were in the line of officers. THE WAR IN AFRICA H.G. WELLS writes in Cassell's magazine: "This talk of 'legitimate expansion' is indeed now only an exploiter's cant. The age of 'expansion', the age of European 'empires' is near its end. No one who can read the signs of the times in Japan, in India, in China, can doubt it. It ended in America a hundred years ago; it is ending now in Asia; it will end last in Africa, and even in Africa the end draws near. .... "As administrators the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to give a black people, and no disposition to give. The Latin-speaking peoples, the Mediterranean nations, on the other hand, have proved the most successful assimilators of other races that mankind has ever known. Alexander Dumas is not the least of the glories of France. In a hundred years' time black Africa, west of Tripoli, from Oran to Rhodesia, will, I believe, talk French. And what does not speak French will speak the closely related Italian. I do not see why this Latin black culture should not extend across equatorial Africa to meet the Indian influence at the coast and reach out to join hands with Madagascar. I do not see why the British flag should be any impediment to the Latinization of tropical Africa or to the natural extension of the French and Italian languages through Egypt. I guess, however, that it will be an Islamic and not a Christian cult that will be talking Italian and French. For the French-speaking civilization will make roads not only for French, Belgians and Italians, but for the Arabs whose religion and culture already lie like a net over black Africa... "A unification of Africa under Latin Auspices carries with it now no threat of missionary invasion. Africa will be a fair field for all religions and the religion to which the Negro will take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we are told by nearly everyone who has a right to speak upon such questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab. There is no reason why he should not be a Frenchified Arab." THE LOOKING GLASS TWO POINTS OF VIEW THE other man's point of view is strikingly afforded by the African Times and Orient Review in a comment on the article by John H. Harris on "Native Races and Peace Terms" in the Contemporary Review, Mr. Harris says: To this one may fittingly add a quotation from the article by John H. Harris on "Native Races and Peace Terms" in the Contemporary Review: "Who gave the European nations the right to barter these people as a result of war for which they had no shadow of responsibility? The answer to these questions is self-evident. But whilst in equity there can only be one answer common sense forces us to admit the impracticability of summoning to a "European Peace Congress illiterate Mandigoes, Fiots, Herreros, Fans, the senile Polynesian, or the wild Bedouin. Yet there is one point at least which the European powers should concede to these native races, namely, to agree that within one year of the declaration of peace another European and American International Congress should be held to amend the existing agreements for maintaining the rights, liberties and welfare of native races. "This course is dictated no less by equity than by the truest interests of the colonizing powers of Europe and America. It must not be overlooked that almost every acre of those two million square miles is sparsely populated and that hardly fifty miles of it is capable of white colonization, except by the aid of an adequate supply of colored labor. If the Great Powers should make the fatal blunder of reshuffling these territories without at the same times agreeing to consider once again the supreme problem of conserving the native population, they would be almost better advised to surrender such areas once again to the recuperative forces of so-called barbarism, say to the third and fourth generation, for by that time the indigenous populations might possibly regain their stamina. "Apart altogether from the dictates of right action and material interests the lapse of time demands another International Congress. It is now thirty-two and twenty-six years respectively since the Berlin and guiding principles for the abolition of slavery, the restriction of the sale of arms and Brussels congresses met and laid down alcohol. That these congresses did not accomplish all that was hoped of them is notorious, but equally is it true that they raised to a higher level than ever before the accepted standards for the treatment of native races. Thus there are at least three cogent reasons, each of which constitutes an all-sufficient argument for securing as a condition of peace, that within a defined period after the declaration of peace there should be held another International Congress on Native Affairs. "The suffering of native peoples and the depopulation of their territories within the last fifty years has demonstrated the evils of white industrialism, and if civilization will heed the lessons this martyrdom would teach it, there is yet time to stop that degradation, disintegration of tribal life and the thoughtless exploitation which will ultimately spell economic ruin to the white races no less than to the native tribes." To this the African Times and Oriental Review replies: Mr. Harris has written a very clever article. This article has been reprinted by his Society for distribution at threepence per copy, and the glowing criticisms of the Press have been printed on the cover. We said that Mr. Harris's article is clever because the plea he makes for the native is both excellent and able; but underlying it all is that patronizing Anti-Slavery Society slime which sets down all Africans as illiterates, thereby showing the prime necessity for the existence of an Anti-Slavery Society in these days of freedom, enlightenment, and progressive European civilisation, and the incapacity of any African to voice intelligently the requirements of his people. Of course, we quite understand that Mr. Harris's duties necessarily take him among "illiterate Mandingos, Fiots, Herreros, Fans, and wild Bedouins," and we regret that during the reverend gentleman's wanderings he has met none other. We wonder what Mr. Harris's West African friends will think of these statements. Save us from our friends! We merely quote Mr. Harris's article to show what a pernicious influence such statements have upon the African and Oriental. It is because Mr. Harris's article is so cleverly written, showing on the face of it purity of intention, that it is dangerous to our aims and desires. The average Briton -- even many members of the British House of Commons -- knows nothing whatever about native peo- [[people]]
