South and West Africa, of the West Indies, and of the United
States are just awakening to their shameful slavery. Is, then, this war
the end of wars? Can it be the end, so long as sits enthroned, even in
the souls of those who cry peace, the despising and robbing of darker
peoples? If Europe hugs this delusion, then this is not the end of world
war,--it is but the beginning!

We see Europe's greatest sin precisely where we found Africa's and
Asia's,--in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference,
however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the
splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among
men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than
any preceding civilization ever faced.

It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself,
first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in
this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or
more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human
hatred,--making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously,
and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of
dislike,--rather a great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down
black; to your tents, O white folk, and world war with black and
parti-colored mongrel beasts!

Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and
the possibility of human brotherhood America has taken her place as an
awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown
and yellow peoples are concerned. And this, too, in spite of the fact
that there has been no actual failure; the Indian is not dying out, the
Japanese and Chinese have not menaced the land, and the experiment of
Negro suffrage has resulted in the uplift of twelve million people at a
rate probably unparalleled in history. But what of this? America, Land
of Democracy, wanted to believe in the failure of democracy so far as
darker peoples were concerned. Absolutely without excuse she established
a caste system, rushed into preparation for war, and conquered tropical
colonies. She stands today shoulder to shoulder with Europe in Europe's
worst sin against civilization. She aspires to sit among the great
nations who arbitrate the fate of "lesser breeds without the law" and
she is at times heartily ashamed even of the large number of "new" white
people whom her democracy has admitted to place and power.