Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/140

122 blood, which means the commingling of history, a race of human flesh eaters, and who would consume human flesh again with relish, were they returned to the country from whence they came? Are we to make a hatchery of this fair land of ours for unbridled crime and disease simply because we are afraid to act? Are we of the North to remain deaf to the earnest cry for our aid in this matter from the mothers and daughters of our own race in the South? What in the name of all that is manly and brave and honorable has come over this American nation? Are we becoming so foully adulterated by the black scum of the earth that we can no longer be moved through the spirit of chivalry, through the dictates of honor, through the highest instincts of manliness, to listen to and to heed the distress and danger of thousands of our own women?

Are we, as a nation, after all our effort, with all our civilization, with everything before us, to have no better record for the coming future, that after all, in the outcome, we proved a curse rather than a benefit to mankmd? It is a nation's highest duty so to acquit itself in its career that its national ethics will not only redound to its own credit, but that in the general trend of humanity's progress, mankind will ever be improved and served.

In this race question we are simply submitting to a mixing of the good and the bad, and that is reprehensible practice in anything, but I shall have more to say on this point in a later chapter. One thing certain, our mothers and daughters in the South are becoming thoroughly awake to the dangerous side of the freed negro's character so far as it concerns them.