ite schools by which they remember Napoleon and forget
Sonni Ali.

The greatness of Europe has lain in the width of the stage on which she
has played her part, the strength of the foundations on which she has
builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than
that of other days and races. In other words, the deeper reasons for the
triumph of European civilization lie quite outside and beyond
Europe,--back in the universal struggles of all mankind.

Why, then, is Europe great? Because of the foundations which the mighty
past have furnished her to build upon: the iron trade of ancient, black
Africa, the religion and empire-building of yellow Asia, the art and
science of the "dago" Mediterranean shore, east, south, and west, as
well as north. And where she has builded securely upon this great past
and learned from it she has gone forward to greater and more splendid
human triumph; but where she has ignored this past and forgotten and
sneered at it, she has shown the cloven hoof of poor, crucified
humanity,--she has played, like other empires gone, the world fool!

If, then, European triumphs in culture have been greater, so, too, may
her failures have been greater. How great a failure and a failure in
what does the World War betoken? Was it national jealousy of the sort of
the seventeenth century? But Europe has done more to break down national
barriers than any preceding culture. Was it fear of the balance of power
in Europe? Hardly, save in the half-Asiatic problems of the Balkans.
What, then, does Hauptmann mean when he says: "Our jealous enemies
forged an iron ring about our breasts and we knew our breasts had to
expand,--that we had to split asunder this ring or else we had to cease
breathing. But Germany will not cease to breathe and so it came to pass
that the iron ring was forced apart."

Whither is this expansion? What is that breath of life, thought to be so
indispensable to a great European nation? Manifestly it is expansion
overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone
adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize
the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe
which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow?
Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to
divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe's good.

This Europe has largely done. The European world is using black an