Page:The New Negro.pdf/443

Rh Portuguese parliaments, a hundred black students studied in the Portuguese universities and a new colonial code made black men citizens of Portugal with full rights. But in Portugal, alas! no adequate democratic control has been established, nor can be with an illiteracy of seventy-five percent; so that while the colonial code is liberally worded, and economic power has brought some freedom in Sao Thomé, unrestrained Portuguese and English capital still rules in parts of Angola and in Portuguese East Africa, where no resisting public opinion in England has yet been aroused. This shadow hangs heavily over Portugal.

The African shadows of Spain and Italy are but drafts on some imperial future not yet realized, and touch home industry and democracy only through the war budget. But Spain is pouring treasure into a future Spanish Morocco, and Italy has already poured out fabulous sums in the attempt to annex north and northeast Africa, especially Abyssinia. The prince who is to-day visiting Europe is the first adult successor of that black Menelik who humbled Italy to the dust at Adowa in 1896. Insurgent Morocco, independent Abyssinia and Liberia are, as it were, shadows of Europe on Africa unattached, and as such they curiously threaten the whole imperial program. On the one hand, they arouse democratic sympathy in homeland which makes it difficult to submerge them; and again, they are temptations to agitation for freedom and autonomy on the part of other black and subject populations. What prophet can tell what world-tempest lurks in these cloud-like shadows? Then, there is Belgium.

There is a little black man in Belgium, whose name is Mfumu Paul Panda. He is filled with a certain resentment against me and American Negroes. He writes me now and then, but fairly spits his letters at me, -and they are always filled with some defense of Belgium in Africa, or rather with some accusation against England, France and Portugal there. I do not blame Panda, although I do not agree with his reason-