Viewing page 18 of 26

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

34
the soldats noirs of France. They have made a name for themselves. 
Not only are the Senegalese troops brave and efficient, but they have the physical strength which enables them to undergo constant fighting with but little food and rest. They have more than once formed the backbone of France's fighting force. They have fought in the battles of Champagne, Soissons and Verdun in France. They were in the expedition at the Dardanelles and afterward in Northern Greece and Serbia. They have been worthy of the French.
The correspondent for the New York Tribune writes from France, concerning the black troops of Africa:
The American was loud in his praises of the black troops. He thought them the superior of any soldiers for African work and almost the best for warfare in any clime. 
"I never saw such courage as the King's African rifles displayed under fire." he said. "These were men recruited out of savage tribes and given perhaps aa year's training in soldiering. 
"We had a very heavy scrimmage with the Germans one day and an officer was hit. He managed to craw; behind a bush, but the Germans had him spotted as a white man and kept peppering away to finish him. One of our black soldiers, about thirty yards off, crawled very cautiously to the bush, keeping under cover, and then suddenly stood up and began to limp away. He succeeded in fooling the Germans into thinking he was the wounded officer and he drew all the fire away from the bush and on himself. He was hit a dozen times. We got him to a field hospital, and he was still conscious."
In America, alas, we are still wandering in the shadows, although Secretary Baker, according to the Army and Navy Journal, has made the following announcement:
The rule of the Regular Army in the matter of the training of colored troops, which is that they are trained in separate organizations, will be adhered to. The call for colored men will be postponed until one of the later calls, so that they will be called at a separate time, giving an opportunity to the officers at the camps to assemble the organizations, of which they are a part, substantially all at one time. All colored men called in a state which has a cantonment in it will be organized and trained there; provision will be made, but it has not yet been made for the assembling of colored troops for training from those states which have not cantonments of their own. An opportunity will be given to both white and colored men, among the selected forces, to volunteer for training service and in line of communication organization, which it is necessary to organize, and it is hoped that an adequate number will volunteer for this military but non-combatant service; but there will be both combatant and non-combatant organizations of colored men just as there are for white men. 
Incipient trouble at Camp Upton, L. I., has been quickly dealt with, according to the Brooklyn Eagle:
From all accounts the colored troops were not the aggressors, but once the trouble started they were ready for it. Since the men have been in camp they have been continually made the butt of abuse of the white workmen who unfortunately are quartered within a stone's throw of the Negro quarters.
Disorder was quickly quelled and the colored troops unmolested. 
Even in the South there are sings of sanity. The Charlotte, N. C., News says on hearing that colored soldiers are coming: 
There must be displayed by them a recognition that the colored man has rights, in alienable rights, that he has come forward just as his white neighbor to put his life at the disposal of his government, that he has made himself ready for whatever sufferings and sacrifices may be thrust upon him, that he has yielded himself to the test, that he will unstintedly and unselfishly toss himself into the oceans of anguish whose waves are rolling through Europe. he must be dealt with as a patriotic citizen. From the people of this community who will make exactions of him he has a right to take a toll of respect and wholesome regard. If he is treated otherwise, he will keenly feel the pangs of it, and disorder and discord and mutiny may arise. If he is insulted and made to believe that he is unworthy of the uniform his government has clothed him with, naturally enough, there will be resentment which is the first flame of revolt. The obligations entailed by the incident are many, and they rest more heavily, we are of a mind to believe, upon the white man than upon the Negro.
The Lexington, Ky., Herald denies that there was any such race riot as the Associated Press reported:
Impossible it is to estimate accurately the damage done to Lexington, because of these widespread publications. yet in the highest sense, that damage is the smaller part of the injustice done. The Negroes of the United States will be called upon, have been called upon to serve in the armies of the nation. Hundreds of them have volunteered. Thousands of them are as ready as any men of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Gaelic, or Teutonic blood to give their lives for the only nation they know in which they have risen from a state of slavery to a state of independence. When they wear the uniform of the nation, when they are sent to France, there to shed their blood and give their lives, they are not only the wards but the defenders of the nation. There could be no greater damage done than to foment between the races inhabiting

35

this country an unfriendly or hostile spirit. Unfortunate, criminally unwise, has been the policy of some of the public officials of the Southern States in drawing a distinction between the white and colored troops. Every community should welcome the presence of any troops, it matters not what their color may be, who wear the uniform of the nation and are ready to give their lives in defense of the nation. If this nation cannot so train and discipline its troops that there will not be such outbreaks as that which occurred at Houston, there is but little hope of its winning the war against Germany.
If any community cannot so regulate and manage its own affairs, as to prevent what seems to be the unjustifiable attacks on individual soldiers by the peace officers of Houston, that community is not representative of American ideals or American purpose.
A colored man, D. W. Cannon, writes thus plainly to the Atlanta Constitution:

You further admonish, and I fully agree with you, that the Negro must feel that he is on trial to-day as never before in history; and as one engaged in the educational and religious training of the Negro and who will do his part to help save the Negro young men who will be at Camp Gordon, I assure you that our boys there will deport themselves as becometh soldiers going out to do and die for the Stars and Stripes.
But I ask that you be as careful to admonish the white people of this community that these soldiers are human and know when they are treated right and feel as keenly as anybody else an unnecessary insult. Also, remind the white people that in some crisis across the sea, these same black boys, whom they fear and the wisdom of whose presence they question, may eventually have to save the shattered remnants of some company of their own white sons who may have fallen into some trap set by the wily and resourceful Germans. 
Treat the Negro soldiers right! And you will have no more trouble with them than you will have with white soldiers.
Our Dumb Animals finds this clear voice:

Unless the Government of the United States sets itself resolutely to protect the sacred rights of its citizens, who, at last, will blame the twelve millions of the colored race if they rise in determined rebellion to vindicate their rights by the only forces left at their command? No other race has equaled, in patient suffering of justice and wrong, the colored race. At times it has almost seemed as if they had won their plea for justice by obedience to the Christian teaching of returning good for evil. But they, too, are human, and the day may be nearer than we think when lowly, enduring patience, outraged beyond measure, will give way to the spirit which will demand justice. It was out of this spirit that America was born. Put yourself, white American citizen, in the colored man's place! How long would you endure at the hands of your fellow-citizens the cruel injustices that are being heaped upon him?
HOUSTON
The Twenty-fourth Infantry, which made the outbreak at Houston, Tex., was with General Pershing in Mexico. He said to them and to the colored Tenth Cavalry, December 27, 1916:
"Men, I am authorized by Congress to tell you all that our people back in the States are mighty glad and proud at the way the soldiers have conducted themselves while in Mexico, and I, General Pershing, can say with pride that a finer body of men never stood under the flag of our nation as we find here tonight."
But The Public knows better and has this extraordinary editorial:
What was looked upon as an accident at Brownsville will now be considered by many as an inherent weakness of character; and it may take generations to live it down. But whatever the cause it must be removed. The Negro is a part of our citizenship. If he is not worthy of that responsibility he must be made so. If there is a weakness in his moral nature that has given way under the terrible strain of race prejudice it must be fortified. 
Miss B.W. Stillman, a white teacher, wrote the following letter in answer to this extraordinary statement: 
"A weakness in his moral nature?"-- What about the moral nature of the whites in East St. Louis? What about the moral nature of the lynching mobs? What about the moral nature of those who put through segregation laws, "Jim Crow" laws?
George Eliot makes one of her characters say, in substance, "I'm not denying the women are foolish; God Almighty made them to watch the men." And I say, "I'm not denying there is moral weakness in the nature of the Negro; God Almighty made them to match the rest of humanity."
This country demands that the Negro risk their lives in this war, "to make the world safe for democracy," and then, while they are making ready for the sacrifice, it is made very plain, in many galling ways, that they are not considered the equals of the white men whose dangers they are to share. Would the moral nature of all whites (who, by the way, on the whole have far greater opportunities for growth and development) stand such a strain? If it were not so tragic, it would be humorous. Democracy!
Instead of suggesting moral weakness in the Negro will not The Public, which so often speaks eloquently for fundamental democracy, cry out against the moral weakness of the white citizens in their relations to the Negro? 
This letter The Public refused to publish, a thing that could not have happened under the editorship of Louis F. Post.