nd that one year ago he had 266 officers
and 15,048 privates, we must know that inestimable benefit has come to
the race. Among the officers are to be found many of the brightest minds
of the race. Fully 80 per cent of those in authority come from the best
known and most influential families in the land. Their contact with and
influence upon their superior officers will be sure to raise the Negro
in the popular esteem and do an incalculable good."

Reference is made to disbursements to Negro officers and soldiers during
the Spanish war, which he colates to be $5,000,000; adding the salaries
of those employed in the civil service brings up to a sum exceeding
$6,000,000 paid the Negro citizen. This, coupled with the high honor
attached to such military designations as colonels, lieutenants and
captains conferred upon him, shed a halo of generosity over President
McKinley's Administration.

General Grosvenor is richly entitled to and received a just meed of
praise for the great service he has done by putting this grand array of
fact and heroic deed in popular form, and thereby strengthening the
Negro appeal for justice and opportunity, while its pages are a noble
contribution to a valor that will illumine Negro history for all time.
It was most opportune, for the then pressing need to strengthen the weak
and recall the recalcitrants who indiscriminately charge the party with
being remiss in requiting and acknowledging the Negro's devotion. The
well-earned plaudits for his bravery on the battlefield should widen the
area of his consciousness, intensify conviction that mediocrity is a
drug in every human activity, for whether in the professions,
literature, agriculture or trades, it is excellence alone that counts
and will bring recognition, despite the frowning battlements of caste.
As we become more and more valued factors in the common cause of the
general welfare, that the flexibility of American sentiment on
conviction of merit will be more apparent we cannot but believe; for
conditions seem to have surmounted law and seek their own solution,
since the supreme law of the land seems ineffectual and local sentiment
the arbiter, when the Negro is plaintiff.

In the first section of Article 14 of the Constitution we have: "All
persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the
several States wherein they reside. No State shall enforce any l