nreasoning, undying courage--men of
elan--men of morale! Send Jew or Gentile--white men, yellow men, brown
men, black men--it matters not! Send us men who can halt the Hun!"

So early in May of 1918 went up to sea, partly under their own officers,
90,000 and more American Negroes, registered as of African descent, and
drafted to do battle in France. It was sub-species against super-man,
broad head against long head, flat nose against sharp nose, thick
cranium against Hun helmet. It was this unprecedented synthetic group of
black men sailing the sea of darkness on a mission concerning the vital
interests of Englishmen and Americans who had misused them for
centuries, and concerning beloved France, which laid the real claim for
honor and recognition and equality for the American Negro.

The American Negro, as he bade his black comrades "Good-bye! Good luck!
God bless you! Take keer o' yo' self!" felt in his heart that all
America ought to forget her prejudices. He felt that if she did not do
so, she was indeed only fit to be characterized as narrow-minded,
mean-spirited, illiberal and warped--entirely unfit for the position of
leadership in democratization of the world.

So taken up with this idea was the entire Negro race that an editorial
appearing in the "Crisis," the leading Negro magazine, from the pen of
the Negro scholar, W.E.B. Dubois, came as a dash of cold water from an
upper window. This article set the whole race agog. There was nothing in
it about America's forgetting her prejudices, the idea which filled the
Negro heart and soul and mind. It was entitled "Close Ranks!" and read
as follows:

"This is the crisis of the world. For all the long years to come
men will point to the year 1918 as the great Day of Decision, the
day when the world decided whether it would submit to military
despotism and an endless armed peace--if peace it could be
called--or whether they would put down the menace of German
militarism and inaugurate the United States of the World.

"We of the colored race have no ordinary interest in the outcome.
That which the German power represents today spells death to the
aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom
and democracy. Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts,
forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to
shoulder with our own white fellow-citizens and the allied nations