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The Looking Glass
LITERATURE.
FROM George Eliot:
Dark is the Night,
Yet is she bright,
For in her dark she brings the mystic star;
Trembling yet strong as is the voice of love,
From some unknown afar.
O radiant Dark! O darkly fostered ray!
Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day.

Ralph Cobleigh one of the editors of the Congregationalist has an excellent article on leaders in the new South with pictures of four leading colored men.

St. Nihal Singh publishes in the Modern Review (Calcutta), an article which is copied in the Living Age on "Fifty Years of Negro American Achievement."

The message to America of Romain Rolland:
This is your first task:--The diverse personalities that compose your States must dare to express themselves, freely, sincerely, entirely, in art. They must avoid the false quest after originality. They must be careless of form. They must be fearless of opinion. . . .

You have a second task--one more difficult and more remote. It is to establish from all these free-moving personalities within your States a tie that shall be as a blood-bond. Their lives are of many moods and colors. Build them into a great Cathedral. Their voices are unconscious and spontaneous and discordant. Compose from them a Symphony. Think of the rich foundation of your country. It is made up of all races; it has flowed in to you from all continents. May this help you to understand the essential spirits of these peoples whose sum must be America. May it bring you to realize that a vast harmony exists between their varying intellectual forces.

LOYALTY.
COLONEL CHARLES YOUNG, writing to the Cleveland Gazette, says of the proposed Spingarn camp for Negro officers.
We Negroes must have a part--a glorious one--in the destiny of this country--Our Country. The one where our fathers wrought mightily in spite of handicaps the most stupendous. The one whose soil is red with their blood freely spilled for American liberties and freedom in every war.
Shall we now in the face of the danger that seems looming largely before us play the baby-act and refuse to our country a citizen's bounden duty? Every generous instinct of your heart will tell you no.

Two wrongs never make a right. Let us train and prepare ourselves in every way for the eventualities that appear to be heading our way. And the Almighty Hand that unerringly guides and directs the destinies of peoples and races will bring us tot he haven where we would be, that is, where, as the CRISIS people say to, we shall be "physically free from peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically free from disenfranchisement, and socially free from insult." . . .

Let us do nothing to divide our people in this hour of our country's trials; neither let our work be negative nor reactionary by constructive. THIS PLAN OF DR. SPINGARN'S IS CONSTRUCTIVE, AND I HOPE IT WILL MEET WITH THE BEST OF RESULTS. When the storm is past we can take up the idealism of the cause. . . .

May there be in this case no Achilles sulking in his tent. Such actions "cool our friends and heat our enemies," do no good, and are not in the line of strict loyalty to the flag.

Every white southerner knows that if he were a Negro his treatment in the United States and particularly in the South would make him hate the land of his birth. He, therefore, rushes to assume the Negroes disloyalty in the present war. To such persons the following editorial from the Louisville Courier Journal will be almost inexplicable. The editor says of Roscoe Conklin Simmons, a colored man:

His words, spoken the other day before a gathering of his own race, should spread a blush of shame on the Caucasian skins of some who are conspicuous in the eyes of the nation just now. When men of superior learning and vaunted super-race connections, intrusted [[entrusted]] with the solemn duty of serving and protecting their country's destiny, join with foreign tyrant cutthroats to heap contumely upon the nation's head and tie his hands stretched out to protect the lives and rights of Americans; when snivelling white pacifists join with all the traitor-slacker crew to invite national disgrace and ruin, well may this member of an "inferior race" boast:

"We have a record to defend, but no treason, thank God, to atone or explain.

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THE LOOKING GLASS
While in chains we fought to free white men from Lexington to Carrizal- and never returned again to out chains. No negro ever struck insulted the flag. No negro ever struck down a President of these United States. No negro ever sold a military map or secret to a foreign government. No negro ever ran under fire or lost an opportunity to serve, to fight, to bleed and to die in the republic's cause. Accuse us of what you will- justly and wrongly- no man can point to a single instance of our disloyalty.
"We have but one country and one flag, the flag that set us free. Its language is our only tongue and no hyphen bridges or qualifies our loyalty. To-do the nation faces danger from a foreign foe, treason stalks and skulks up and down our land, in dark councils intrigue is being hatched. I am a Republican, but a Wilson Republican. Woodrow Wilson is my leader. What he commands me to do I shall do. Where he commands me to go I shall go.If he calls me to the colors, I shall not ask whether my Colonel is black or white. I shall be there to pick out no color except the white of the enemy's eye. Grievances I have against this people, against this Government. Injustice to me there is, bad laws there are upon the statute books, but in this hour of peril I forget- all thoughts of self or race or creed or politics or color. That, boys, is loyalty."
Even the Shreveport, La., Times, ac- knowledges the truth of these words albeit with a wry face. Whatever may be said of Simmons' complaint about "chains," "injustice" and "bad laws," of which the Negro is supposed to be the victim, the picture that he drew of the Negro's un- swerving devotion to his country at all times cannot be gainsaid. It is characteristic of the Negro to complain and to indulge the fancy that he is being woefully mistreated. But Simmons' proud boast in behalf of his race was not altogether idle.
Mr. Simmons words are echoed by every colored journal. The Washington Bee says that the Negro
is willing today to take up arms and defend the American flag; he stands ready to uphold the arms of the President; he stands ready to defend the country and his President against this cruel and unjust oppression. His mother, sister, brother and children are being burned at the stake and yet the American flag is his emblem and which he stands ready to defend. In all the battles the Negro soldier has proved his loyalty and today he is the only true American at who, the finger of scorn cannot be pointed.
George William Cook says in the Washington Post:
It is an undeniable fact that the treatment of the colored man, manifesting itself in lynching, disfranchisement and abominable "Jim crow car" accommodations, is inconsistent with what is due loyal citizens; and, while there is no question in the colored man's mind as to his loyalty, it is barely possible that the source of the question in some white people's minds can attributed to a conviction that loyalty is not due from this class of citizens.
The consensus of opinion, and that overwhelmingly, among colored people is that this is their country, notwithstanding persecution; that this is the land of their fathers, and where they died; that their inheritance is inalienable, and that this doctrine is accepted by all colored men, and that we will not allow any class of people to rob us of our inalienable rights without our protest. And, while we expect to protest until things are righted, we propose to be loyal to out country and to stand by the government as strongly as any other class of people, and deny any man the right to treat us other than as citizens entitled to all the rights and immunities as such. The colored man yields to no man in his spirit of patriotism and consecration in defense of the United States. His vision of the future is as strong as his convictions of the past. That we are not treated better is a shame- and a howling shame. But we will not be robbed of our birthright by persecution or otherwise. In war Old Glory will not touch the ground because of lack of patriotism on the part of the colored standard- bearer, and when from his hands she falls her folds will cover his prostrate form. All ye doubters, remember Carrizal, Fort Wagner and State Street, Boston.
Meantime the very dark complexioned Vardaman of Mississippi is as usual seeing things:
"Universal military service means that millions of Negroes who will come under this measure will be armed. I know of no greater menace to the South than this," said Senator James K. Vardaman today visiting at Beauvior.
THE EXODUS
Bradstreet's, perhaps the highest present authority, has this summary of the present situation as to the migration of Negro laborers:
As immense migration of Negroes from South to Northern cities and industrial centres is reported. Overcrowding of sections inhabited by these people and greatly advanced rents are reported. The large migration caused by higher wages offered is expected to have an important bearing on crop, especially cotton culture in the South.