thousands of Negro nurses whom the Red Cross won’t accept. They must want to give Europe a “rotten” opinion of American democracy. For we may be sure that these things are known in Europe—even as our lynchings are. And anyone who would give Europe a “rotten” opinion of America at this time is no friend of America.

The American Red Cross must be compelled to do America’s work in the spirit in which America has entered the war. There need be no biting of tongues: it must be compelled to forego Race Prejudice. If the N.A.A.C.P. were truly what it pretends instead of a National Association for the Advancement of Certain People, it would put its high-class lawyers on the job and bring the case into the United States courts. It would charge the American Red Cross with disloyalty to the war-aims of America. And if it does not (in spite of the money which it got from the “silent” protest parade and other moneys and legal talent at its disposal) then it will merit the name which one of its own members gave it—the National Association for the Acceptance of Color Proscription. Get busy, “friends of the colored people”! For we are not disposed to regard the camouflage of those who want nurses but do not want Negro nurses in any other light than that of Bret Harte’s Truthful James:—

A Hint of Our Reward

The wisdom of our contemporary ancestors, having decided that “We Negroes must make every sacrifice to help win the war and lay aside our just demands for the present that we may win a shining place on the pages of history,” it must be cold comfort to learn that the first after-the-war schoolbook of American history is out, that it is written by Reuben Gold Thwaites and Calvin Noyes Kendall, that it devotes thirty-one pages to the war and America’s part in the war, and that not one word is said of the Negro’s part therein.

Of course, sensible men should feel no surprise at this, for they will realize how little the part played by the Negro in the Civil War is known by the millions of white school children who read the school histories. Yet, if there is a spark of manhood left in the bosoms of our “white men’s niggers” who sold us out during the war they must feel pained and humiliated when the flood of after-the-war school histories, of which this is the first, quietly sink the Negro’s contributions (as chronicled by Mr. Emmett Scott and others) into the back waters of forgetfulness.

The times change, but we don’t change with them.

The Negro at the Peace Congress

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