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AFRICAN ROOTS OF WAR                              DU BOIS

and races. The ruling of one people for another people's whim or gain must stop. This kind of despotism has been in later days more and more skillfully disguised. But the brute fact remains: the white man is ruling black Africa for the white man's gain, and just as far as possible he is doing the same t colored races elsewhere. Can such a situation bring peace? Will any amount of European concord or disarmament settle this injustice?
  Political power today is but the weapon to force economic power. Tomorrow, it may give us spiritual vision and artistic sensibility. Today, it gives us or tries to give us bread and butter, and those classes or nations or races who are without it starve, and starvation  is the weapon of the white world t reduce them to slavery.
  We are calling for European concord today; but at the utmost European concord will mean satisfaction with , or acquiescence in, a given division of the spoils of world dominion. After all, European disarmament cannot go below the necessity of defending the aggressions of the whites against the blacks and browns and yellows. From this will arise three perpetual dangers of wat. First, renewed jealousy at any divisions of colonies or sphered of influence agreed upon, if at any future time the present division comes to seen unfair. Who cared for Africa in the early nineteenth century? Let England have the scraps ;eft from the golden feast of the slave trade. But in the twentieth century? The end was war. These scraps looked too tempting to Germany. Secondly: war will come from the revolutionary revolt of the lowest workers. The greater the international jealousies, the greater the corresponding costs of armament and the more difficult to fulfill the promises of industrial democracy in advanced countries. Finally, the colored peoples will not always submit passively t foreign domination. To some this is a lightly tossed truism. When a people deserve liberty they fight for it and get it, say such philosophers; thus making wat a regular, necessary step to liberty. Colored people are familiar with this complacent judgement. They endure the contemptuous treatment meted out by whites to those not "strong" enough to be free. These nations and races, composing ad they do a vast majority of humanity, are going to endure this treatment just as long as they must and not a moment longer. Then they are going to fight and the War of the Color Line will outdo in savage inhumanity any war this world has yet seen. For colored folk have much to remember and they will not forget.
  But is this inevitable? Must we wit helpless before this awful
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