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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