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162                THE  CRISIS

conscience--that is to say, the ordinary citizen going about his business or pleasure. A very large responsibility rests upon all agencies for social uplift. If they do not take the right stand it is hard to expect individuals here and there to do so. The encouraging aspect of the matter is that the difficulties are usually much more imagined than real, and this will be realized sooner or later. In a certain social work, covering a period of some years, there has been the opportunity to observe and compare most interestingly the workings of this unintelligent tendency to race prejudice.
   The first to appear on the scene  were the Irish, the next were the French Canadians; upon the approach of the latter the Irish rose in a body and demanded that the French-Canadians be excluded, saying that they did not want them coming there, that they would break up the club if they came, and that many of the best members would leave. The reply of the authorities was: "This institution is open to all nationalities and all creeds. The only basis of admission is good character and good behavior. The French-Canadian members fulfill those requirements. The house is here for those who come to it; if you do not come, then you have nothing to say about how it shall be run." The Irish and French-Canadians son found that they liked each other very well indeed. The Jews were the next to approach. Both Irish and French-Canadians united against them. Again the management stood firm and the results were the same.
   This experience was repeated with more than fifteen nationalities.  Finally all combined against the Negro.  The management again withstood the combined pressure, saying cheerfully, "If you all leave, the place can still be run for colored people, and if you remain and make it uncomfortable for them or any other nationality you most certainly will be requested to leave."  Again the result was the same as on previous occasions. Almost immediately the whole incident was forgotten.
   In a social settlement in Cambridge, in a colored and white district, colored and white district, colored and white have been coming to the house in equal numbers for over fifteen years. SO little is the question of color thought of that it not infrequently happens that in selecting  persons for a play the young people entirely forget that perhaps some of the audience may feel that the dramatic unities are not being altogether preserved, when a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed boy or girl and a very dark colored child elect to be brother and sister in the play.  The Woman's Club has always had an equal number of white and colored members. The colored people are often in greater demand than some of their white neighbors owing to their agreeable and refined manners.
   The distinctive traits of the colored people, those in which they seem to surpass the other nationalities which go to make up the American people, are urbanity, love of music, poetic imagination and social adaptability.  Has America so many of these qualities that it can afford to cavil if the gift comes to it wrapped up in brown paper instead of white?
   When one looks at what the Negro has accomplished in a generation since the war, when one considers the amount of education he has been able to acquire, the amount of his savings and his investments, when one catches in the literature of his race the strong, clear note of a rising people, a people meaning to rise to the highest American ideals (they know no other), it seems to be no longer a question of the education of the black, but of the education of the educated whites.
              _____________________
               THE HEART'S DESIRE.
               By Robert W. Justice.
            Float ever by me
            In countless numbers,
            Like waves in the mighty sea,
Strange faces of alien gaze,
Hurrying on to and from the daily strife,
This way, and now that, yet all, all
Foreign, unfamiliar--still I stand and call
In hushed breath, and wait for one
Who passeth by, never.
Yet I fear to leave my lonely place---
My watch-tower of delight where with me
Dwell Hope and Patience;
The one--sweet counseling voice---
Makes day grow short, and I rejoice
When Patience laves my distressed soul
With reason and points to the goal
Where, though faint and dim,
I shall stand face to face,
And in love's sweet embrace,
Find and know My Heart's Desire.

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The Congo Express
by Virginia Wright

'Express train for Timbuktu ready!" announced the Parisian papers a few weeks ago. "This way to buy your ticket for the Congo!"
They were not announcing the arrival of some new sort of exhibition by real Arabs; they were stating sober fact. If you live in Paris and want to go to the heart of Africa you just go and buy your ticket as you would for any other place.
In short, a railway has been built across the desert from the West Coast of Africa to the Congo, running along the course of the Niger passing Timbuktu, that ancient city of mystery, stopping at the Gao, the capital of a mighty empire until the demand for slaves sent raiders across the sands to capture and sell, going on safely and comfortably until it reaches the frontier of the Belgian Congo. It means the rapid development of that part of Africa and the restoration of the civilization so cruelly uprooted two hundred and fifty years ago.
The country is fertile if properly cultivated. The Niger carries wealth along with it and fine crops of grain are being raised along its banks. The Soudanese are industrious and capable, and above all the French apparently are really trying to do the right thing-they want the native to get an education and they respect his point of view. "White superiority" is not the chief clause in their credo.
Timbuktu is becoming a center of trade. Its houses are growing larger and it takes on the appearance of a modern city. The town of Gao, one the capital of the empire, is still a collection of huts, but all along the banks of the Niger busy emporiums are springing up and the natives share largely in the development of the country.
A lively Frenchman, Monsieur Felix Dubois, has written a book in which he gives an account of French progress in the Soudan which is extremely entertaining reading. Seventeen years ago he studied the country. At that time all the papers in France were crying out that there was nothing worth having in that sandy desert. Alone among a;; the critics, Monsieur Dubois stoutly held to his belief that the country would prove a tremendous commercial asset to the French and that its people would prove the best of citizens.  
The Soudanese, he says, is brave at the same time that he is gentle, industrious and good tempered. Crime is almost unknown among them. They deserve, he declares, the best possible education. He thinks that France has done better than any other Colonial power in the country of the blacks because the French soul shrinks from the brutal exploits of the native people and regards color prejudice as a vice rather than as the virtue "certain other nations would make it."