There are vague rumours that the party of "physical force among the negroes has an enormous following and a competent leader, and if this be true then will the Americans pay dearly for their changing policy. They have wavered always between the "uplift" and the revolver. They have not dared to proclaim themselves openly upon the side of repression. An irrelevant sentimentality has persuaded them to ask the question, in an hour of crisis, "Are we not men and brethren ? Even in the act of professing the universal brotherhood of man, the Americans denounce, rightly enough, the theory which they have adopted, that black and white are equal. Thus are they enslaved by their own past, and they cannot, if they would, act like free men. Though the abolition of slavery was in no sense the cause of the war between North and South, it was an inevitable result of the struggle for the Union. Lincoln himself, as all will remember, refused for months to issue an Emancipation Proclamation; and when at last he consented to sign it, dismissed it with the jest that it would be of no more avail than the Pope's Bull against the comet. And when at last the slaves were given their freedom, all the enmities which slavery excited were violently intensified. The blacks were used as so many scourges wherewith to flog the whites of the South, and it is not surprising that henceforth the problem could not be quietly and calmly envisaged. The disputes which raged during the period of reconstruction about the future of the negro not only destroyed the peace of the country, but left it to after generations to answer a question obscured by passion and resentment. The position of the negro was suddenly reversed. By a stroke of the pen he was changed from a slave to a ruler. The lives and fortunes of his former masters were committed to his hands. Mr Louis Jennings, in a forgotten book, 'Eighty Years of Republican Government,' written a year after the termination of the Civil War. wisely summed up the situation: "If the North," he wrote, "had been perfectly just in its measures on behalf of what it calls 'human freedom,' the exasperation of the South might not have been so terrible. It boasted of its intentions to give the negro the rights of a citizen, while it systematically denied them to him in its own division of the country. Why did Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, within the space of a few months past, refuse to sanction negro suffrage by overwhelming majorities?" Because, says Mr Jennings, "the Northern people at heart are weary of the negro, and his wrongs, and his pretensions, and his champions, and all that appertains to him. They turn him loose in the South that he may be a scourge to the people who strive to de stroy the Government; they was not his fault that, when give him licence, not because freedom was given him, he they love him, but because was set up on a pedestal to they wish to avenge themselves which Southern gentlemen were on his masters, and to hold up invited to bend the knee. But a fearful warning to all advo- to-day must still pay for the cates of secession who may misdeed of yesterday, and no come hereafter." one will envy the United States the task of answering the most difficult question that ever perplexed a politician. So the unhappy negro was made the sport of the politicians. He was flattered, cosseted, and educated that the Thus while South America South might be punished for has solved or (if you will) their contempt of the Union. evaded the problem, North But while he was a master in America, with the passionate the Southern States, he was recklessness of the demagogue, neither man nor brother in the has made it almost impossible North. Even when the vote of solution. And the experiwas granted him, the threat of ence of South and North alike a revolver prevented the exer- warns us that it is better to cise of his privilege. So he keep our race pure and to degrew up with all the makings pend upon the strength of our of a bitter grievance at his own hands, even though so hand, and threatens to perplex doing we delay our material the future of the United States progress for a century. For the with an insoluble problem. Nor mere act of emancipation does can he, poor devil, be blamed not make the black man equal for the disturbance which he to the white, and ten million causes. It was not his fault aggrieved negroes are not the that he was brought from pleasantest citizens which an Africa to do the work which enlightened white hands could not do. It cherish. democracy can Printed by William Blackwood and Sons. Entered as second-class matter, July 3, 1917. at the post office at New York. N. Y.. under the act of March 3, 1879 $5.00 Per Year. Single Copy, 50 Cents L'ANTIQUITÉ EXPLIQUÉE ET REPRESENTÉE EN FIGURES. Paris 1719. 10 vols. Folio. SUPPLEMENT. Paris, 1729-1733. 5 vols. Folio. LES MONUMENS DE LA MONARCHIE FRANCOISE. Paris, 17291733. 5 vols. Folio. A fine set of Montfaucon's works, including the Monumens de la Monarchie francoise, which is seldom offered. All in the original full calf bindings, in good condition. L'Antiquité Expliquée and the Supplement are uniformly bound. The French series have somewhat richer gilding. All with red edges. These noble books constitute one of the most remarkable surveys of ancient and early French life and monuments. They contain hundreds of plates exquisitely engraved and present the most comprehensive book on the subjects of which they treat. 20 volumes in all. A rare and unusual offering. Price, complete, $150.00 LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION CO., to Bolshevist and Pan-Islamic propaganda. Fighting, once begun, spread like some rapid disease which breaks out first in one part of the body, then in another, and for a time the British Government seemed unable to find a cure. Now a stiff dose of medicine has been given, in the shape of a complete change in the form of administration, by the setting up of a native government; and the patient, though still choking and spluttering after his unlooked-for and not altogether pleasing draught, seems likely to make a good recovery THE Hakim Syasi is no more; for a fight, fell an easy prey long live the Mutasarrif! During four difficult years of war, and two still more difficult years of unratified peace, the task of preserving the Pax Britannica among the tribes in Mesopotamia fell to the Political Officer. To provide the Arabs with a temporary government in place of the Turkish one which we had overthrown, until such time as the signing of the Peace Treaty settled the future fate of the country, was a plain moral obligation; but government by any other policy than the Turkish one of divide et impera, setting shaikh against shaikh and tribe against tribe, was no easy task in a country where fighting is every man's recreation, if not his means of livelihood. It is not greatly to be wondered at that, after a long spell of enforced peace and quietness, the Arab, spoiling VOL. CCIX.-NO. MCCLXVIII. in sha Allah! A few of the Political Officers remain in the new capacity of Adviser to an Arab Mutasarrif, or District Governor; many go to rejoin their regiments or other services; but, though full of hope for the future of Mesopotamia, they leave their old duties with 3 A |