Sunday, August 4, 2019

World War Taught Non-Whites to Fight, Aug. 4, 1919

From the editorial page of the Hickory Daily Record, Aug. 4, 1919

Started in Europe

Soon after the outbreak of the great war a captain in the United States army told us that the world would reap the consequences of employing every race under the sun on the battlefields of Europe. He had in mind the Africans used by the English and French, the Japanese allies of England and the Turks and other people used by the Germans. The United States was yet to add to the conflict its colored soldiers and further complicate the racial question.

The great war shook the world of its very foundations. It unloosed forces that could not be controlled in the former easy fashion. In India, Africa, Egypt and China the masses were stirred, and the spirit of unrest gathered momentum as the conflict raged. The war, which augmented the mrrtial spirit of the races, at the same time augmented racial antipathy, and we see outcroppings of this in our own large industrial centers.

What it is in the colonies of England we can only guess; the censor is a very busy man these days.

What the white races have most to fear in future is a coalition of the colored races—we do not include our colored people in the United States, of course—and a great war between the Caucasian and other peoples. The Japanese are striving for domination of Asia, which includes India and other warlike groups. Has the white man put the sword into wrong hands? Has the white man taught the Asiastics how to fight?

The time may come when the countless millions of colored people throughout the world will rise against the white race; and if that time does come, we may ascribe it to the fact that in the great world war the colored soldier was exploited freely by all the white powers, and that he learned thehis strength as a result of his participation in this war.

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