mental administration, must henceforth
regard the Negro not as an aggregate all in a mass, but as a synthesis,
composed of gradations from lowest to superior. This is the new concept
which the war of 1918 has forced upon America, in spite of the bias of
1914.

Civilization left the parting of the ways when Woodrow Wilson's rallying
cry for world democratization led America into the war. It decided to
seek the path of Peace not along the lines of permitted autocracy, but
of firmly and thoroughly well administered democracy. In administering
democratic government, Negro regiments, graded from private to superior
officer, came first as an academic proposition, and, finally, as an
actuality. They came four hundred thousand strong. No group of that
number can longer be considered as a mere accumulation of black men. One
hundred thousand Negroes of the 92nd Division and regiments of guard
have been commanded on the field of action by black headmen, with white
headlight. They have taken their objectives with speed and control and
the management of both of these elements of transfused morale has been
in the hands of colored college men or their military equals.

The hour of decision to make the world safe for democracy was the crisis
of civilization. Victory on the fields of France has been the
satisfactory denouement. The question naturally arises: Shall there be a
happy ending of the great drama for the white American and a tragic
ending for the Negro? Or, rather, as the American brotherhood gathers
about the charmed circle and smokes the pipe of peace, shall the Negro
report: "I see and am satisfied?"

In other words, shall the 92nd Division of Negro fighters and the
greater hosts of black war workers overseas, return to America with
honor in theory, but not pursued in fact to its logical finality? Shall
these black bulwarks of the business of world war find the door of the
business world of peace slammed in their faces? Shall these black
survivors of terrific struggle for world democracy return home only to
be declared unfit to vote an American ballot? Shall the black soldier
hero be allowed to take his croix de guerre into a jim-crow car? Shall
the black Red Cross nurse, rushing to the aid of benighted humanity
regardless of color, be refused accommodation at places of public
proprietorship whither she may seek rest or refreshment? Tragedy begets
tragedy. Seventeen seventy-six begot 1861, and 1861 begot 1914.

The time