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252 THE CRISIS sometimes made to throw the whole blame on the native girls. Without discussing the value of this excuse from the abstract point of view, it is quite safe to say that, unless there has been demoralizing contact with Europeans, it is quite exceptional to find a native girl "soliciting." To forestall contradiction from people "on the spot," possessed of that amount of knowledge which is such a dangerous thing, I may say here that it seems, from the reports of various independent observers, to be a common thing if not the rule among the Bantu for the first advance in sexual relations, whether legitimate or otherwise, to come from the woman. But whatever the reasons for this fact, which is deeply rooted in sociological conditions, it is an entirely different matter from that referred to above; and I repeat that if native girls are found making immoral advances to white men, it is the latter--or the conditions they have created--who are to blame. To illustrate this point I may recall how in many books dealing with the West Coast of Africa (the first one that comes to mind is Tuckey's "Expedition to the Cataracts of the Congo," 1818), the statement is repeated with sickening iteration, that the natives have no morality, that the men are always on the look-out to hire their wives to strangers, or entrap the latter into adultery so that they may claim damages, etc., etc. They omit to notice, as a rule, that the places where these things happen were the very foci of the slave-trade. Before this plague had eaten into the vitals of the Coast, William Finch, in 1607, could write of Sierra Leone: "The men of this country ... keep most faithfully to their wives, of whom they are not a little jealous.... They are very just and true in their dealings." The same was doubtless true of other places at that time, or somewhat earlier. To conclude, there is no proof that exceptional legislation, which is sometimes demanded, is needed to meet this kind of case in South Africa. Still less is there to justify the panic-stricken cry occasionally raised for the abrogation of all law and the condoning of such acts as that of Lewis at Bulawayo or of a resident of Nairobi (East Africa), who some years earlier, "took the law into his own hands" with even less excuse. But it sadly discounts our hopes of progress in the only real sense to find any one at this time of day seriously advocating such a remedy. THE RAGTIME REGIMENT By Henry David Middleton "War! War!! War!!! John Brown startled, let his weak watery eyes wander aimlessly across the way where a street orator stood upon a soap box haranguing a mass of idlers grouped about him. "This merciless war! This pitiless war!! This ruthless way!!!" roared the speaker. John Brown crossed the street and nudged and elbowed his way through the outer fringe of the crowd. "O, the horrors of this way!" bellowed the man on the box, the echo of his voice resounding above the rumble and roar of the noisy traffic of wagons, motors and street cars. With his hand cupped to his ear, that he might catch at once the sound and sense of the speaker's harangue, John Brown stood wedged in the midst of the eddying, pushing, polyglot mob. "Peace! Peace!! Peace!!!" suddenly roared the speaker, "World peace, peace without honor if you will, but peace at any price!" John Brown, veteran of the civil way gleaned from this last bit of oratory that the speaker was a pacifist, fat, pat, impatient and unpatriotic. He glared wildly up at him as the crowd lustily yelled its approval of the speaker's sentiments. His seventy year old body, electrified and fired by the patriotism that burned unquenchably and eternally within him, vibrated and pulsated with emotion; his scrawny gray beard fairly bristled as he mouthed murmurings of deprecation; his hands clenched in a frenzy of righteous anger. He wanted to cry out against this villifier, to refute his imputations, to stem the tide of abuse aimed by the speaker against his country--the country he had once fought THE RAGTIME REGIMENT four long years to preserve--but the words stuck in his throat; and but for a sort of wheeze that escaped his chattering teeth, only to be lost in the uproarious din of the riotous rabble, like sparks as they flare up and flicker out as they are cast off from a fire-brand hurled through space--no sound escaped him. John Brown's eyes were unused to such scenes of anarchy as they now beheld; his ears were unaccustomed to such cowardly, undemocratic utterances as smote them-- preachments of this demagogue that dwarfed the souls and dampened the patriotism of men and dammed the deeds of their brave countrymen, "Whose bones are dust, Whose good swords rust." Baffled but not beaten, distraught by the actions and utterances of these traitorous people, he wormed his way through and from this motley throng. For just then he remembered a spot in the great metropolis, far from the din of downtown Chicago, where the shard of the pacifist propaganda had failed to hit its target; where Americanism and Democracy, real and unalloyed, permeated the very atmosphere--thither he resolved to turn his steps. Hailing a passing street car, Veteran Brown was soon within the proscribed realms of a despised, oppressed, rejected, but not depressed people--his own beloved people with whom loyalty is a hereditary trait and patriotism a passion perpetual, reverential and profound. He alighted unsteadily from the car and with the aid of his cane hobbled homeward, pausing here and there wherever his friends and neighbors were grouped discussing the declaration of war. "He's daffy," laughed the first group he encountered and to whom he unfolded his practical scheme of preparedness by suggesting the formation of a regiment of the citizens of the neighborhood for service in the present strife. "He's daffy, but he's all right at that price," they commented respectfully. "Bug-house, simply bug-house," was the slangy sentiment of the second group as he tottered about the walk endeavoring to define and impress upon them their duty. "He's bug-house, but we're with him just the same," they concluded. "Nutty, nutty, nutty," was the swan song of the next group, to whom he vigorously expounded the aims, purposes and ambitions of the proposed regiment. "He may be nutty, but what he says is true, beyond question," was their final verdict. Leisurely and reminiscently Veteran Brown resumed his stroll homeward, heartened by the unmistakable signs of approbation he had read beneath the outward unenthusiastic appearance of indifference of those with whom he had conferred. For he knew most intimately his people and their natures. He realized that while smarting under the lash of proscription and of the curse of civil and civic narrowness at the hands of an arrogant, despotic, defiled democracy, they would now in this crisis, as they always had, arise as one man in defence of the only country they knew--the only home they had. Just as Veteran Brown reached his home, his entrance thereto was arrested by the distant blare of bugles, the rattle of drums and piping of fifes. With the instinct of a homing pigeon, John Brown retraced his steps, circled the block and brought up at "attention" by the fence of the play-ground where the boy scouts were manoeuvering to perfect themselves in the artifices of the scouts as set down in their manual. "Ah wants to borrer dem scouts of yourn termorrer," announced he to the scout-master lounging on the other side of the fence. "You do?" laughed the scout-master induulgently rising to reach over the fence and shake hands with his old friend, the veteran, whom he had known since his boyhood days. "I am afraid they are too young as yet to enlist in the army and go into actual war, but they can help out," he encouraged. "Dat's jes' it," laughed the old veteran, good naturedly, "Ah wants dem jes' fo' to hep out." "When do you want them?" rejoined the scout-master, puzzled as the the veteran's intent. "Termorrer aftahnoon," replied the veteran with serious mien. "Then," replied the scout-master, "I will be able to furnish you three times the number of scouts here this afternoon, as tomorrow we have a mass drill of three troops of scouts with a massed drum, fife and bugle corps." "And,--added the scout-