ncement of the Negro
tends to create the race problem, and do not hesitate to say that if the
Negroes could only be kept as laborers in the cotton and rice and sugar
fields, in the furnaces and mines of the South, aspiring to nothing
higher and not antagonizing the whites in political matters, there would
be no race problem.

Six months ago we could quote from an editorial column written by an
ex-Confederate officer for an influential Democratic paper in the South
these words: "The duty of the white people of the South is plain. In the
spirit of _noblesse oblige_ we must sympathize with those who are
fitting the colored people for the duties of life, remembering what the
Negroes were to our forefathers and what our forefathers were to them.
No one can doubt that a Negro has a soul to save. That admitted, he is
as much entitled to the benefits of salvation as the white man. But", he
adds, "what do we see? Nearly all the bodies of Christians even, except
the Roman Catholics, shuffling to set the Negro apart and leave him
largely to his own ways, shuffling out of their responsibility according
to the gospel which they profess as their guide, and putting the Negro
apart in spite of the word of God, whom they worship, that he is no
respecter of persons. The Negro was brought over here by theft and
outrage. He is here to stay, and we must deal with him according to the
golden rule, and as we would wish to be done by if we were similarly
placed."

This is not a quotation from the National Council of Congregational
Churches, where such an utterance would both by nature and by grace find
expression, but it is from the pen of an officer of the Southern
Confederacy, who knows the light when he sees it, who keeps open an
honest eye, and who does not hesitate to speak from an honest mind. This
sentiment balances somewhat of that which pleads against the black man,
and not a few friends of this kind has the American Missionary
Association won to itself throughout the South. It never had so many who
are saying: "Yours is the most practical missionary work ever undertaken
by a Christian body." "You have won our confidence by your spirit and
your methods; you have our cordial sympathy." At the same time we
recognize the fact that both prejudice and partisanship are now making
strenuous efforts to create the judgment that the Negro should be
stripped of his civil rights and that his education is going on too
rapidly. For example, the _