meant what he said, because by so doing I could safely hold up to contempt and ridicule the undemocratic practices of his administration and the actions of his white countrymen in regard to the Negro. How this was done is shown in the first two editorials of the following chapter.]

Is Democracy Unpatriotic?

The present administration is all right. But it has its obstacles to success. As usual some of the worst of these are its injudicious “friends.” For instance, there are the people who are trying their best to “queer” us in the eyes of civilized Europe. These silly souls, when Negroes ask that the principle of “Justice in War Time”: be applied to Negroes as well as whites, reply, in effect that this should not be; that Negroes should not want Justice—in war time—and that any such demand on their part is “disloyalty.” On the contrary, it is the fullest loyalty to the letter and spirit of the President’s war-aims. To say that it isn’t is to presume to accuse the President of having war-aims other than those which he has set forth in the face of Europe.

Besides, no one can deny that freedom from lynching and disfranchisement and the ending of discrimination—by the Red Cross for instance—will strengthen the hand of the administration right now by strengthening its hold on the hearts of the Negro masses and will make all Negroes—soldiers as well as civilians—more competent to give effective aid in winning the war.

Let us assume that we consent to being lynched—“during the war”—and submit tamely and with commendable weakness to being Jim-crowed and disfranchised. Very well. Will not that be the proof of our spirit and of its quality? Of course. And what you call that spirit won’t alter its quality, will it? Now, ask all the peoples of all the world what they call a people who smilingly consent to their own degradation and destruction. They call such a people cowards—because they are cowards. In America we call such people “niggers.”

Is anyone unpatriotic enough to pretend that “cowards” can lick “Huns”? No, this great world-task can be accomplished only by men—English men, French men, Italian men, American men. Our country needs men now more than it ever did before. And those who multiply its reserve of men are adding to its strength. That is why the true patriots who really love America and want it to win the war are asking America to change its Negroes from “niggers” into men. Surely this is a patriotic request; and any one who says that it isn’t must be prepared to maintain that lynching, Jim-crow and 

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