Page:Jay William Hudson - America's International Ideals (1915).djvu/27

 doctrine of the equality of practically all races under the American institutions of society and government. This American civilization represents the world in miniature, and we have gained so much by this free interchange of cultures that we have come to lay less and less stress upon differences of race and to recognize that every race has its valuable and permanent contribution to that which makes modern civilization worth while.

But, once more, the European war is based upon premises which are utterly antagonistic to the American point of view. For from across the seas we hear the continual insistence that one culture is so ineffably better than another that it deserves to prevail, even to the destruction of every other culture in the world. That one culture should try to obtain predominance over the rest, not through its intellectual and moral superiority, but through expertness in killing and destroying, is paradoxical enough; but it is still more paradoxical that any culture worthy the name should deny co-operation and help, even for the sake of its own development, to the other cultures, which are themselves also the result of long ages of striving toward ideals valuable and indispensable to the race.

America cannot look upon this provincial conception of culture passively. Indeed, many Americans are not at all sure that any solution of European difficulties is to be found in a final segregation of races in terms of separate national integrities: for this might mean only an intensification of both racial and national antipathies, the existence of which has been one of the main causes of the European conflict, and the perpetuation of which may be the cause of further strife. But whatever the American people may say with regard to racial pride and that racial civilization which is its motive and ideal,