Negro children go to school they stand only a fraction of a chance of getting an education—or a seat. In [5]Massachusetts, of the children from six to fourteen years of age, 93 per cent. are in school. In Louisiana 68.4 per cent. of the white children are in school and 37.4 per cent. of the Negro children. In Birmingham there is a public high school to which Negro students have to pay to go; in all Georgia there is no public high school for Negroes at all. Not long ago a colored man of excellent character and standing boarded a train between Birmingham and Chattanooga, accompanying his sister. Some white men invaded the coach and proceeded to smoke. The colored man protested to the officials, and forthwith both he and his sister received a beating. Such are the incidents that drive the iron into the Negro's soul. We submit that they are altogether unjust and entirely at variance with the principles for which we are at war.

[5]

Not only at home, however, do we have to consider the problem. The war has brought us as never before face to face with the whole foreign policy of the United States, especially as regards the mixed races and colored peoples with whom the National Government has to deal. With one country after another the question is raised whether, under her imperialistic policy and the Monroe [6]Doctrine, the United States has acted with the honor and the diplomatic courtesy that the cases demanded. Already, as is well known, in spite of repeated professions of friendship, the whole of South America views the great country at the North with suspicion; and the ultimate reason for the feeling is that in South America the color line is a vanishing quantity, whereas in the United States it is a very definite reality. Chile has not forgotten the gratuitous insults of 1891, nor Brazil our arrogance in 1893. The conscience of the nation is not yet satisfied that we did not for selfish reasons in 1898 force war upon a weaker nation; and the treatment of Colombia in the matter of the Panama Canal Zone was so infamous that ten years afterwards the United States was still wondering just what sum of money would hush the mouths of the Colombian people. In Santo Domingo we have taken away from the people the right to handle their own money; and two years ago in Hayti, ostensibly for the suppression of a revolution, the country was seized, American officers installed, and a Southern white man appointed minister to the country, by tradition one especially jealous of its integrity as a nation. More recently we have purchased St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, on which islands, [7]let us remember, the population is made up almost entirely of Negroes. In this 

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