Chapter D: Webster Davis (8)

We should indeed count ourselves blest if our white brethren would always extend to us that kindness, justice, and sympathy which our services to them in the past should inspire, and our dependence upon them as the more enlightened and wealthy race should prompt them to bestow.

Why should there be prejudice and dislike on the part of the white man to his colored brother? Is it because he was once a slave, and a slave must forever wear the marks of degradation? Is there no effacement for the stigma of slavery--no erasement for this blot of shame? Will our white brother not remember that it was his hand that forged the links of that chain and that riveted them around the necks of the people who had roved for thousands of years in the unrestrained liberty of the boundless forests in far-away Africa? As well might the seducer blacken the name and reputation of the fair and spotless maiden he has cruelly and wantonly seduced. Go far enough back and it is more than probable that you will find the taint of slavery in your line and its blot upon your escutcheon. The proud Saxon became the slave to the Norman, and yet to-day millions are proud to be called Anglo-Saxons.

Will our white brother refuse us his cordial fellowship because of our ignorance? Ignorance is indeed a great evil and hindrance. The enlightened and refined cannot find fellowship with the ignorant, the benighted, the untutored. If this be the line of demarkation, we can and will remove it. No people ever made more heroic efforts to rise from ignorance to enlightenment. Forty-three per cent. of the Negro race can read and write, and with time we can bring our race up to a high degree of civilization. We are determined, by the help of Providence, and the strength of our own right arms, to educate our people until the reproach of ignorance can no longer be brought against us. When we do, will our white brothers accord that respect which is the due of intelligence and culture?

Does our white brother look with disdain upon us because we are not cleanly and neat? It is true that the masses of our race have not shown that regard for personal cleanliness and nicety of dress, which a wealthy and educated people have the means and the time for. Our people by the exigencies of their lot, have had to toil and toil in menial places, the places where drudgery was demanded and where contact with dust and filth was necessary to the accomplishment of their work. But even this can be remedied, and cleanliness and neatness can be made a part of the Negro's education until he can present, as thousands of his race are now doing, a creditable appearance. Will improvement along these lines help us to gain the esteem and respectful consideration of our white brothers? If so, the time is not far distant when this barrier will be removed. Education will help solve this difficulty as it does all others, and give to our race that touch of refinement which insures physical as well as mental soundness.--_mens sana in corpore sano._

But is our moral condition the true reason of our ostracism? Are we remanded to the back seats and ever held in social dishonor because we are morally unclean? Would that we could reply by a denial of the allegation and rightly claim that purity which would be at the foundation of all respectable social life. But here we ask the charitable judgment of our white brethren, and point them to the heroic efforts we have made and are making for the moral elevation of our race. Even a superficial glance at the social side of the Negro's life will convince the unprejudiced that progress is being made among the better classes of our people toward virtuous living. Chastity is being urged everywhere in the school house, and the church, and the home, for our women, and honesty and integrity for our men. We can and will lift the shadow of immorality from the great masses of our race, and demonstrate to the whole world what religion and education can do for a people. We are doing it. Among the thoroughly cultured and rightly trained of our women, virtue is as sacred as life, and among our men of similar advantages, honor and integrity are prized as highly as among any people on the globe.

Is our poverty the barrier that divides us from a closer fellowship with our white brethren? Would wealth cure all the evils of our condition, and give us the cordial recognition we ask from them? If so, we can remove even this barrier. Our labor has already created much of the wealth of the South, and it only needs intelligence to turn it into our own coffers and make it the possession of our own people. Among the whites money seems to be the _sesame_ that opens the doors to social recognition, and converts the shoddy into a man of influence and rank. Barney Barnato, a London Jew, who began life with a trained donkey, became at length the "South African diamond king," and then all London paid homage to this despised son of a hated race. Would money thus convert our despised people into honorable citizens, give them kindly recognition at the hands of our white neighbors, and take from them the stigma which has so long marked them with dishonor and shame? If so, we can hope to secure even this coveted prize, and claim like Barney Barnato the respect of mankind.

But if it is none of these things that doom us to ostracism and degradation, as a people, I ask finally is it our _color_? Alas, if it be this, we can do nothing to remove the line of separation, unless it be to wait the slow process of amalgamation which despite our efforts, the white people of this country seem bound to consummate. If we knew of any chemical preparation by which we could change the color of our skins and straighten our hair we might hope to bring about the desired consummation at once, but alas, there is no catholicon for this ill, no mystic concoction in all the pharmacies of earth to work this miracle of color. We must fold our hands in despair and submit to our fate with heavy hearts.

To be serious, however, I would plead with our white brothers not to despise us on account of our color. It is the inheritance we received from God, and it could be no mark of shame or dishonor. "Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin?" No disgrace can be attached to physical characteristics which are the result of heredity, and cannot be removed by any volition or effort. How cruel it is to visit upon the colored man contempt and dishonor because of the hue of his skin, or the curling peculiarity of his hair. Let him stand or fall upon his merit. Let him be respected if he is worthy. Let him be despised if he is unworthy.

We appeal to our white brothers to accord us simple justice. If we deserve good treatment give it to us, and do not consider the question of color any more than you would refuse kindness to a man because he is blind.

All we ask is a fair show in the struggle of life. We have nothing but the sentiment of kindness for our white brethren. Take us into your confidence, trust us with responsibility, and above all, show us cordial kindness. Thus will you link our people to you by the chains of love which nothing can break, and we will march hand in hand up the steep pathway of progress.

THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK FOR AFRICA[32]

BY EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN

EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN, _one of the greatest scholars of the race; native of St. Thomas, West Indies. Secretary of State of the Republic of Liberia; sent on diplomatic missions to the interior of Africa, and reported proceedings before Royal Geographical Society; Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Liberia at the Court of St. James; Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; Ambassador to France from Liberia; Fellow of the American Philological Association; Honorary Member Athaneum Club. Presented with medal by the Sultan of Turkey in recognition of his services as Mohammedan Commissioner of Education._

[Note 32: Extracts from a speech made at a banquet given in his honor by native Africans at Holborn, England, August 15, 1903.]

...Now as to our political relations, the gift of the African does not lie in the direction of political aggrandizement. His sphere is the church, the school, the farm, the workshop. With us, the tools are the proper instruments of the man. This is why our country has been partitioned among the political agencies of the world--the Japhetic powers, for they can best do the work to be done in the interest of the temporal as a basis for the spiritual advancement of humanity. The African and the Jew are the spiritual races, and to them political ascendence among the nations of the earth is not promised. It was M. Renan, the great French agnostic, who said: "The fate of the Jewish people was not to form a separate nationality; it is a race which always cherishes a dream of something that transcends nations."

This truth will stand, though we cannot help sympathizing with the intense and glowing patriotism of Mr. Zangwill as described in the _Daily News_ the other day. Then as Africans we must sympathize with and assist the powers that be, as ordained by God, whom He will hold to a strict account for their proceedings. We cannot alter this arrangement, whatever our opinion as to the rudeness and ruggedness of the methods by which the human instruments have arrived at it.

It is a fact. Let us then, to the best of our ability, assist those to whom has been committed rule over our country. Their task is not an easy one. They are giving direction to a state of things that must largely influence the future. As conscientious men, they are often in perplexity. The actual rulers of British West African Colonies are to-day an exceptional class of men. And in keeping with the spirit of the times, and in the critical circumstances in which they labor, they are doing their best under the guidance of a chief in this country of large sympathies and a comprehensive grasp of situations.

THE DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF CITIZENSHIP[33]

BY W. JUSTIN CARTER _of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania_

[Note 33: Extract from an Address delivered before the Eureka Literary Society at Penbrooke, Pa., December 16, 1904.]

_Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:_

I am going to speak to you to-night of what your race has contributed and is contributing to this great stream on whose bosom is borne the freighted destiny of the human race, and whose currents wash every shore.

More than two and one half centuries of progress and achievement, on this continent alone, may well vaunt your pride and give you the resolution which belongs to the children themselves of destiny.

Exult copiously, if you will, over the triumphal march of a great material civilization, the marvelous expansion of your territory, your wonderful development of hidden resources, your power and dignity at home or abroad, but invite not, nor condone that spirit of listless satiety, nor sink into that national egotism which lets the dagger steal to the heart of the nation while your reveling conceals the presence of the foe. For, remember, pomp and splendor, wealth, ease, and power's pride and heraldry's boast once echoed

"Through haughty Rome's imperial street."

If American citizenship contains a hope and promise, a wealth, a blessing, and a content, aye! and immortality and just renown, it lives to-day in hearts, and not in stones; it lives in feelings and not in lands; it resides in aspirations and not in coffers, it lives in ideals and not in vaunt and splendor.

It is yours to fulfill its duties; to meet well its responsibilities; it is what your fathers builded out of heart and soul, out of love, compassion, and generous fellowship, and not out of blood and brawn; it is humanity's own; yours be it to study and repeat, if need be, the sacrifices of those who planted its first seeds with the sword, nourished them with their blood and suffering, and with wisdom, blessed by Heaven, consecrated by heroic sacrifices and sanctified by prayer, left it to you and to all of us, more wisely fashioned, more glittering in its prospect and more alluring to our fancy than anything political wisdom ever offered to human hope.

But in order to know and feel what there is of universal interest which we have to do, what there is for humanity's glory and weal we have to preserve; what is the task set to us, as our work in forwarding the current of human life and liberty, we must look to the past, and learn what fundamental, essential truths have grown from its toil and achievement. Many such the American idea of citizenship contains; but of one let us speak.

The American idea of citizenship and its ideal, its aims, possibilities, and destiny, had its origin and enshrinement in that Anglo-Saxon spirit of freedom which has been the peculiar characteristic of a race whose civil and judicial development in the remotest and darkest days of its history distanced all rival clans and, from Alfred to William III, from tribe to Empire, has cherished and sustained a system of civil and religious liberty, which, intolerant of every form of oppression, has made the English language the vernacular of liberty.

In the earliest periods of these peoples' history we find the germinal elements of those great charters of liberty which are to become the chief corner-stone of free government and mighty guarantees of personal liberty.

A philosophical review of the evolution of these early ideas of personal liberty to their full growth into a free constitutional government would make an instructive and interesting study; but I lack the learning and the ability for such disquisitions. I must therefore content myself for the purpose of unfolding the duties and destinies of American citizenship, to review but historically, how from simple communities seeking to free themselves from the rule of individuals or classes, to govern themselves by law, and make that law supreme in every exigency, great charters were established and the reign of law instead of the rule of princes permanently established.

Even in the establishing of their free system of public administration, the Anglo-Saxon aim and purpose was to secure the most absolute guarantees of personal security. The liberty of the individual unit of society secured in the exercise of the largest liberty consistent with the public welfare, and that liberty protected by the just and righteous administration of public laws, was the ideal of the Anglo-Saxon state.

In their religion, philosophy, poetry, oratory, and literature they have always confessed that oppression was venal and wrong. If selfishness, greed, or pride have allured them for a while from that royal path of national rectitude and honor, they have in the final test returned conquering to their true and higher selves. Their inborn hate of oppression, their magnanimous and tolerant spirit of freedom gloriously in the ascendant.

Thus it is that the free institutions of Great Britain and America have grown and towered in strength, and in their onward march startled the world by their progress, and appalled the very lips of prophecy by their bold and daring sweep. They will not stop, for liberty is fearless and the current of freedom is irresistible.

But in the early Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth, the rights, liberties, and privileges of the citizen were not as broad and full as we find them to-day. The spirit of liberty was weak at first, but her demands grew apace with her strength. Neither by the generosity of princes, nor by the wisdom of legislation, were the ordinary English rights of free citizenship enlarged and established. Nor are the first and elemental principles of free government which we find springing up on English soil after the conquests, and whose history in the re-establishment of political liberty we shall trace through countless struggles and repressions, the original of that divine idea of freedom which it has been the mission of the Anglo-Saxon race to give to the world.

It is but a part of that great race spirit which the Conqueror could not conquer; the lingering spirit of freedom which the iron heel of despotic usurpation could not stamp out, the memory of a lost freedom ranking in the hearts of men determined to restore in their island home those ancient rights which no man dared to question in the days of the Saxon, Edward the Confessor.

The condition of the early Saxon as it was raised by the wisdom and benevolence of good King Alfred, and as it remained until the end of the reign of the unfortunate Harold, was that of a freeman, a freeman not merely in the sense of being his own master, but "he was a living unit in the State." He held his lands in his own right. He attended the courts, and entered in their deliberations. He bore arms and, by authority of law, could use them in his own defense. The animating principle of Anglo-Saxon government was local sovereignty. Matters from the smallest to the greatest were vested in the local power.

* * * * *

The establishment, after the granting of the Magna Charta, thus firmly of the liberties of England has been accomplished by bitter and fierce struggles; the obstructive forces were strong, but yielded in the end to the onward sweep of liberty directed by the aggressive spirit of intelligence, manhood, and humanity. At the end of the sixteenth century this much had been gained for freedom. The principles of liberty, which had been constantly acknowledged in written documents or had been established by precedents and examples (some of which were the remains of their ancient liberties) had been embodied as a part of the fundamental law of the land; those local institutions, which a while ago we found among the free Saxons, and even now pregnant with the seeds of liberty,--the jury, the right of holding public meetings, of bearing arms, and finally the Parliament itself had become a part of the common law of England.

Then came the Reformation and its demand for religious freedom. Against the claim of a divinely ordained kingly power, the Cavalier was found ready to revolt. The Puritans writhed under their religious restraint. The Puritan and the Cavalier joined their cause; political liberty invoked the aid of Faith, and Faith hallowed and strengthened the crusade of human liberty. The struggle increased against absolute power, spiritual and political, now concentrated in kingly hands. Giants they were who took up the quarrel of liberty in those dark days of civil strife. Men they were who inherited the blood of the saintly Langton and of his lordly Barons. Five centuries of heroic strife against oppression had sanctified the name of Liberty. They were mad with the hatred of tyranny, and centuries of bitter, heart-rending experience had made them wise and valorous for the fray. Liberty is now about to win on Saxon soil, but not there alone, for those of her yeomanry, who were hardiest for the fight and cherished the broadest liberty, transplanted themselves now upon this new soil of America and laid the foundation of a new Empire, which then and forever should be untrammeled by the conservation of princes and unabashed by the sneers of monarchs. They rejected primogeniture and the other institutions of the Middle Ages, and adopted the anti-feudal custom of equal inheritance. They brought with them the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; they threw around themselves the safeguard of Anglo-Saxon liberty purified and burned by those years of oppression. They transplanted Saxon England freed from the dross of Norman rule and feudal aristocracy. Liberty and law are henceforth to work out the destinies of men. And who contemplating the manner of men and whence they derived their faith, their hopes and fears, can quibble about the aims and purposes of the founders of this Republic? The fathers did not borrow their political ideals from the juriscounsuls of Rome; not from the free democracy of Greece; nor did they fuse into their system the feudal aristocratic imperialism of Europe.

To govern themselves by law, and secure therewith the largest liberty with the greatest security of individual rights and property, was their ideal of statecraft, and this idea, inseparable from the principles they laid down, must endure while the fabric lasts.

I have told you that the government the fathers planted was Anglo-Saxon in law; but it was Anglo-Saxon too in religion and spirit. Nothing has been so conquering in its influence as the Anglo-Saxon spirit; it has assimilated wherever it has gone, and like the leaven that leaveneth the whole, homogeneity has followed in its fierce wake of progress with not a whit lost of its great and fearless impulse of law and freedom.

No race has been so domineering, none stronger and with a more exclusive spirit of caste, none with a more contemptuous dislike of inferiority, none more violent in prejudice once formed, or dislikes once engendered; yet doth the spirit and impulse of freedom move majestic "in the chambers of their soul," raising them finally above those hated obliquities, conquering their repugnance, enfeebling and vanishing their hates. Thus one by one grave wrongs inflicted upon weaker races by the cold, calculating hand of greed have been arrested and blotted out in the holy names of right. Thus it is, and has been, that nations, sects, and creeds coming to these shores lose, in the fascination of free institutions and the august majesty of liberty, the distinctive qualities of their old allegiance, and thus it is that over a broad land composed of all nations, sects, and creeds there reigns one grand homogeneity and a single patriotic impulse of faith and destiny. Few there are of Americans who can to-day trace even the faintest spark of their lineage to an English or even a Norman source. Yet the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon is the presiding genius of our destiny. Its spirit is the spirit of our law, and its religion is the evangel of our political faith.

Inheritors of this great circumstance of power and rule, need I remind you that, though you sacrifice your labor and toil, though you may have brought forth this jewel of liberty regulated by law, you cannot keep it unless you share it with the world. The evils which in days past men had to wipe out in tears and blood will arise again and precipitate convulsions in which liberty may expire.

The very spectacle of seeming grandeur and the outward cast of luxury and splendor invite the enemies' quest and fans into blood-red heat his latent ire, while pride, vanity, and hate surround the heart with the humor of death-breeding slime into which the corroding worm is spawned.

I care nothing for the shell; the fleshy parts are no longer food for the living, but the pearl contained in this Anglo-Saxon mollusk has for me an irresistible charm. The pure spirit of its lofty ideals, distilled from his life and struggles, and living in quickening touch with human thought and aspiration, like the exaltation which lingers after some Hosanna chorus; his sublimated actions and deeds, whose swelling flood of cadence throb with the heart-beat of universal man,--these I love with inexpressible devotion; these are worth preserving. All else, cast in the rubbish heap with past delusions.

Mr. Chairman, men are great and small, they roam the vast wilderness of the stars, and soar the very empyrean of thought and action, and they fear and crouch and kneel; and in their quaking fears and driveling doubts seem like puny things crawling on the ground; they are saints and sinners; sometimes emissaries of light and love, and yet again harbingers of ill, and sometimes the very Nemesis of hate; but in the composite elements of their human thinking, throbbing energies of heart and mind, they are as but a single soul, governed by one law, imbued with one spirit, hearkening to one voice, touched by the one sympathy, inspired by one hope, and in trend of aspiration, love and ideal, impelled by the onward flux of one great life-struggle and purpose.

What, then, are you and I but sentient units in one great evolving process of life-activity and thought; and yet so circumvolved in that process that the impulse, which we irradiate from the point of our single particular seat of energy and feeling, thrills through the vast spheres of human purpose and endeavor, and raises the standard of truth or forwards the advance of enlightened order like each rhythmic melody is gathered in the mightier confluence of chime and strain to swell the torrent of a mighty symphony.

The work we have to do is not outside, but deep down in the teeming flow of struggling human souls. Think of them as your other self, and your own souls will interpret the meaning of their complaints, the quality of their striving, and the measure of their justice.

You will then behold the race of men as I have beheld them once when my single soul seemed with sympathy winged and I sat with the lowly outcast and felt his outrage and his shame; I brooded with him over all his wrongs; I felt within my breast the poison shaft of hate, and clinched like him my fist, scowled, and vengeance swore on them who drove my despair and misery to crime by scoff and rancor and unforgiving hate.

I stood amidst a motley throng and felt my brain bereft of noble thought; I lived in a squalid home and despised the pity which the disdainful cast upon my lot; laughed at ribald jests and quaffed the liquid flame, and the dark-hued nectar which concealed the serpent beneath its foam; I held my head aloft to seem with pride imbued; I gibed at fortune's whim and grinned a soulless sneer at my fate to conceal a deep despair.

I roamed with the savage Indians across the arid plains, stood with them in lonely worship of the great _Unknown_, and dropped like him a silent tear for the woodlands gone; the fleet-footed game no longer at his door; his father's dust, scattered by winds over consecrated and hallowed battle-plains.

I stood beside the enchanted Nile and wondered at the mystery of the Sphinx; I felt the lure, the wanderlust of the mysterious arid plains and laid my body down on the desert sand to sleep, a weapon by my side; I arose to greet the rising sun and, with "_Allah_" on my tongue, bowed my head in solemn worship towards Mecca's distant domes.

I wandered through Africa's torrid forest and scorching plains and sat naked before a bamboo hut; I felt the savage's freedom and his ease; I learned the songs of birds, the shriek of beasts, the omens of the moons, and kenned the dread and sacred lore which tradition single tongue had brought from the ages past and gone.

I walked beside the Ganges' sacred shores, worshiped at the shrine of mighty gods and felt the spirit of the mighty _All_ vibrate through my being. I chanted the songs whose authors are forgot, and studied strange philosophies of sages passed; I starved and hungered on his arid plains; I felt the whips and scorn of cast; the curse of fated birth and the iron rule of oppression's heartless greed.

I was slave, and by fortune scorned; I felt the whip cut into my quivering flesh and my blood rush hot to the gaping wound; I knew the agony of unrequited toil, and with aching limbs dragged my hopeless body to my hut, to think, but not to sleep.

I learned to dream and hate, and at Nemesis' bloody altar immolated in thought and hope the whole detested tribe of human oppressors and cried _Content_.

And thus I know the bondage which men endure, the realty and the delusion in what they think and feel; and the subtlety and strength of those evil forces which color his disposition and becloud his prospect.

And I stand amidst his turbulent fortunes and above the storm and rage of his contentions and despairs to proclaim the divinity of his soul, and to herald a new awakening under which his quickened energies will yet surge forward in mighty waves of better things.

If the Republic is true to the great principles of liberty and justice which it proclaims; if you have learned the lesson of your own history, and appropriated the experience coined out of your own struggles, then will Anglo-Saxon genius and achievement glow like a mighty flame to light the path of struggling men, and Anglo-Saxon glory light angels to restore the rights of man.

THE ARMY AS A TRAINED FORCE[34]

BY THEOPHILUS G. STEWARD, D. D.

_Chaplain 25th United States Infantry_

[Note 34: Delivered before General Conference, Chicago, Ill., 1904.]

_Reverend Bishops, and Brethren of the Ministry, and my Brethren of the Laity:_

I thank the honorable Commission from my heart for the distinguished favor they have conferred upon me in inviting me to address this august assembly. Never before, during all my forty years of public life, have I been granted so majestic a privilege; never before have I ventured to assume so grave a responsibility; and, I may add, never before have I felt so keenly my inability to do justice to the occasion.

I am encouraged, however, by the reflection that I am in the house of my friends, where I may hope for an indulgent hearing, and especially upon the subject which I have the high honor to bring before you.

The purport of my address is the conservation of life; the development of physical and moral power as well as of mental alertness; the creation of bravery and the evolution of that higher and broader element--courage; the formation of character sturdy enough to upbear a State, and intelligent enough to direct its government. What I have to say will be toward the production of a robust and chivalric manhood, the only proper shelter for a pure and glorious womanhood. Noble women are the crown of heroic men. None but the brave deserve the fair, and none but the brave can have them.

For the purpose of illustrating and enforcing these great social, physical, and moral truths, I have chosen the Army of our country, or the character and training of the American soldier. In this I do not depart from Biblical practise. How many hearts have been cheered and strengthened by the thrilling pictures painted by St. Paul of the soldiers of his times! How many have in thought beheld his armed hosts and heard his stirring exhortation: "Fight the good fight of faith!"

We owe our existence as a nation to the men in arms who for eight years met the force of Great Britain with counter force, and thus cleared the field for the statesmanship that can make the proverbial two blades of grass grow. The man with the gun opened the way for the man with the hoe. We who are here, and the race we represent, owe our deliverance from chattel slavery to the men in arms who conquered the slaveholders' Rebellion. It is a sad thought, but nevertheless one too true thus far in human history, that liberty, man's greatest earthly boon, can be reached only through a pathway of blood. The Army made good our declaration of independence; and upon the Army and Navy Lincoln relied for the efficacy of his plan of emancipation. Abstract right is fair to look upon, and has furnished the theme for charming essays by such beautiful writers as Ruskin and Emerson; but right, backed up by battalions, is the right that prevails. When the men of blood and iron come, there is no longer time for the song or the essay. It is, "Get in line or be shot." The days of rhetoricals are over. The eloquence of the soldier silences all. Even the laws are dumb when the sword is unsheathed.

Is this horrible doctrine? It is only God overthrowing Pharaoh by means more humane than His fearful plagues, and less destructive than the billows of that relentless sea over which redeemed Israel so exultingly sang. No, brethren; the sword of the Lord and of Gideon has not ceased to be a useful instrument. It is the proper thing for evil doers.

The army is the national sword, and the "powers that be" bear it "not in vain." It is a fearful engine of destruction, pure and simple. Von Moltke says: "The immediate aim of the soldier's life is destruction, and nothing but destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in are remote and non-military."

An Austrian officer says: "Live and let live is no device for an army. Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. The measure of goodness in him is his possible use in war. War, and even peace, require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The recruit brings with him common moral notions of which he must seek immediately to get rid. For him, victory--success--must be everything. The most barbaric tendencies in man come to life again in war, and for war's uses they are incommensurably good."

Perhaps the greatest of American psychologists, Professor William James, adds to these remarks: "Consequently the soldier can not train himself to be too feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects, whether for persons or for things that make for conservation. Yet," he says, "the fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism and, being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is universally available."

Emerson says: "War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man."

It is not my purpose, however, to glorify war. War to me is horrible beyond description or conception, and it is for war that armies are trained; yet the training of an army, like the training of even a pugilist, is a work of great moral value.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Army gave us our independence, when the Revolution had succeeded, and the Constitution had been framed, and the country launched on her career, there was a tendency to forget Joseph. So strong was the feeling against a standing army that it was with difficulty that even a nucleus was maintained. The first legislation on this subject gave us but one battalion of artillery and one regiment of infantry, the whole consisting of 46 officers and 840 men. In 1814, because of the war with England, the army ran up to 60,000; but the next year fell to 12,000, and continued even below that number up to 1838, when it again went up to about 12,000. In 1846, during the Mexican War, it reached about 18,000. When the Civil War broke out it was about 12,000. There were in the Army, at the time of the beginning of the Civil War, over 1,000 officers. Two hundred and eighty-six of these left the service of the United States, and subsequently served in the Confederate Army. Of these 286, 187 had been educated at West Point. But so far as I am able to say now, not a single enlisted man followed the example of these officers.

Beside the staff departments, the Army now consists of 15 regiments of cavalry, 30 batteries of field artillery, 126 companies of coast artillery, and 30 regiments of infantry. These different classes are known as the three arms of the service: Cavalry, artillery, and infantry. Our whole Army to-day numbers 67,259 men. We are the greatest nation, with the smallest army. Our Army, however, is capable of rapid expansion; and, with our National Guard, we need not fear any emergency. This Army, though so small, is in one sense a trained athlete, ready to defend the nation's honor and flag. In another sense, it is a vast practical school, in which the military profession is taught. The students are not only the 60,000 who are now serving, but the many thousands also, who come and go. Men enlist for three years, and although many re-enlist, the Army is constantly receiving recruits, and constantly discharging trained soldiers. These discharged soldiers are often found among our best citizens.

The entire corps of over 3,800 officers may be regarded as professors or instructors, whose duty it is to bring the Army up to a state of perfection. To this corps of 3,800 commissioned officers must be added, also, the large number of intelligent non-commissioned officers, who are assistant instructors of the very highest utility. The work of the Army consists of study and practice, instruction and drill. It is an incessant school. There are officers' school, non-commissioned officers' school, school of the soldier, school of the company, school of the battalion, post school,--besides drills and lectures without number. The actual scientific information imparted to the enlisted men is considerable. To specify only in small part: It includes all methods of signaling, up to telegraphy; all methods of preserving and preparing food; all methods of first treatment of wounds; how to estimate distance, to map a country, to care for property and stock, and the most thorough knowledge of weapons and warfare. To become a second lieutenant in the Army, a man must either go through West Point, or have the equivalent of a college education, especially in mathematics, history, and law; and have, besides, an accurate knowledge of what is purely military. And when he is made a second lieutenant and enters upon his career as an officer, his studies begin afresh. He must study to prepare himself for subsequent promotions. Failure in this means dismission. The army officer to-day must be exceedingly thorough and accurate in his knowledge.

General Corbin says: "Never before in the history of the Army have there been so many acceptable candidates for promotion as there are at this time. Never before has the Army been in a higher state of efficiency and in more perfect accord than it is to-day. Until within a short time, an officer graduated at the Military Academy at West Point was looked upon as a man with 'a finished education'; but to-day, and for the last four years, we accept that education merely as the foundation upon which a more advanced education is to be built. This theory is in general practice, and has been so accepted. The service schools at Fort Monroe, Fort Totten, Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, and the War College at Washington are, in most respects, high-class post-graduate schools. In addition of this, every post is a school of application, educating officers and men for the duties now required of them."

What, then, is this training of the army for which the officer must possess this most accurate, thorough, and scientific education? He is required to have this education that he may train the soldier up to the highest point of efficiency. The officer must know, and must be able to impress the soldier with the fact that he _does_ know. The officer must have the full _science_ of everything pertaining to the soldier's work, in order that he may teach the soldier the _art_ of it. The nature of the training to which the soldier is subjected may be best understood by considering its end. This, as in all training, is more important than the method. The primary object of the training is to unify the army and make it the efficient instrument for executing the nation's will. By discipline, individual efforts are brought under control of the chief. A company is well disciplined when, in its movement, its collective soul, so to speak, is identified with that of its commander. The officer must have possession of his men, so that when the command is given, an electric current will seem to pass through the company, and the movement will, as it were, execute itself. In a well-drilled and well-disciplined company, the orders do not seem to pass through the intellects of the men. Without reflection, but simply by concentrated attention, the work is done. The wills of the men are not only temporarily dislodged, but in their place is substituted the dominant will of the commander. This is the psychological end sought; and this condition secures instantaneous obedience to orders. It is this which brings about those marvels of execution which occur among disciplined men. Men perform acts in which neither their personal reason nor even their personal will has any part.

A second end of the training is to habituate the men so firmly in the performance of certain movements that no emotion can interfere with their action. Upon the battle-field there is nothing left of the exercises of the times of peace, but that which has become a habit, or in a word, an instinct. The soldier must be so trained that he will go on with his work as long as he has the ability to do so. One has said: "It must be the aim of the new discipline to make the private soldier capable of keeping steadfastly in mind for the whole of the day, or even for several days, and striving with all his might to carry out, what he has been told by a superior who is no longer present, and who, for all he may know, is dead."

A third end sought in military training is to render the soldier strong and agile, so that he can move with rapidity, sustain long marches, and handle his weapon with dexterity.

* * * * *

Every consideration in feeding, clothing, sheltering, both men and animals, has but one object,--efficiency. All questions of moral duty, all ideas of the spiritual or immortal interests, are completely submerged beneath the ever-present thought of material force. Power must be had by men, horses, machinery; power, aggressive power, is the all-pervading and all-controlling thought of the army.

* * * * *

An army is properly an incarnation of the fiend of destruction. Every part of its legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying _it_. Armies lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure are all prey for the voracious destroyer.

The motive employed in bringing the soldier to the high state of excellence here described is always that of duty. The word "duty" is very prominent and very full of meaning in the army. Military duty is made a moral obligation founded upon patriotism. This sentiment of duty is the moral force in the army that gives dignity to its obedience. The army develops, strengthens, and educates this _sense of duty_, until it becomes supreme. It is this _sense of duty_ which produces endurance to undergo privations, and leads men to be patient under the greatest sacrifices. The physical force which we see in the army depends upon the moral or spiritual which we do not see.

The whole life of the army, its very soul, the breath which animates its every part, is _preparation for war_. To be _ready for war_ is the supreme end toward which all its efforts tend. The mechanical parts of the work are so numerous and various that I can barely outline them here. There are those exercises which conduce to health and vigor, known as the setting-up drill. These exercises correct the form of the body and transform the recruit into a soldier. The constant drills all have their effect upon the bearing and gait of the men. The extensive system of calisthenics gives to the body suppleness. All this work is done under direction, so that obedience and discipline are taught at the same time with physical culture. Apart from these exercises are _voluntary athletics_, which are greatly encouraged. It is believed that athletic exercises, by bettering the bodies of the men, better also their minds; that, for the welfare of the army, these exercises rank next to training in shooting. I know you will take pride in the fact that the black soldiers, both of infantry and cavalry, occupy a place in the very front rank in all these manly exercises. They are equal to America's best on the drillground, on the athletic grounds, and on the field of bloody strife.

The practise of cleanliness is enjoined all the time, along with these exercises. The soldier is taught how to make his bed and to put all his effects in order, and is then compelled to do it; and thus there is established within him a love of order. Punctuality, cleanliness, and order are the soldier's three graces. The hygiene of his body, care of his arms and equipments, respect for his uniform, are driven into his inmost soul. Our regiment lived in the midst of cholera, without suffering from the disease. Hence the army is a great object-lesson of what care and training can make of men.

But the army in our Republic is of far greater value in a moral sense than in a physical sense. In these days when authority is departing from the home, the church, and the school, it is well that it can find refuge somewhere in the country. The working of the army rests entirely upon authority. One single will pervades every part of it, although this will is participated in by thousands. Every subordinate is independent within limits; but one general will controls all. Respect for authority is enforced, and thus taught, not in theory alone, but by practice. The corporal is not the same as a private. The man who holds a commission from the President represents the high authority of the Republic; and the true soldier yields him both obedience and respect. Everywhere the soldier is taught obedience to law. After all that I have said, it is scarcely necessary to emphasize the fact that the soldier's obedience becomes voluntary, and that he takes pride in his profession. Hence the army is a body of men, not moving according to their own wills, not a deliberative assembly, but a purely executive body, the incarnation of law and of force. It is silent, but powerful. It does not talk, but acts; army spells action.

The men who are trained in our Army are not likely to become members of the lawless element. They have learned too well the lessons of order and the necessity of subordination. The attitude of the Army upon the vexed race question is better than that of any other secular institution of our country. When the Fifth Army Corps returned from Cuba and went into camp at Montauk Point, broken down as it was by a short but severe campaign, it gave to the country a fine exhibition of the moral effects of military training. There was seen the broadest comradeship. The four black regiments were there, and cordially welcomed by their companions in arms. In the maneuvers at Fort Riley, no infantry regiment on the ground was more popular than the 25th; and in contests the men of the 25th proved their mettle by carrying off nearly every medal and trophy in sight.

"Perhaps the most notable series of events, in the light of the popular notion of Negro inferiority, were the athletic sports. The first of these was the baseball game for the championship of the Department of the Missouri and a silk banner. This contest had gone through the several organizations, and was finally narrowed down to the 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry. On October 27th, which was set apart as a field day for athletic sports, the officers of the encampment, many women and civilians, as well as the soldiers of the regular Army present, assembled on the athletic grounds at 10.30 A. M. to witness the game. A most interesting and thoroughly scientific game was played, the 25th winning in the eleventh inning by a score of 4 to 3. The banner would have gone to colored soldiers in either case."

We must not expect too much of the army. It is not a church, not a Sunday-school, not a missionary society. Its code of morals is very short, very narrow, but it enforces what it has. Its commandments are:

1. Thou shalt not fail to obey thy superior officer.
2. Thou shalt not miss any calls sounded out by the
trumpeter.
3. Thou shalt not appear at inspection with anything
out of order in thy person, clothing, or equipment.
4. Thou shalt not lie.
5. Thou shalt not steal.
6. Thou shalt not leave the post or garrison without
permission.

I would say, further, that warfare now requires so much from the man who carries it on, that it is impossible to unite the general and the statesman in one person. The army must be purely executive, carrying out the mandates of the State. The moral and political questions must be resolved by men of other professions. The soldier has all that he can do to attend to the exigencies of the battle.

The Army of our Republic has a great moral mission which it is performing almost unconsciously. It is a most influential witness against lawlessness. By its own perfect order and obedience to discipline it gives the force of a powerful example in favor of loyalty to the Republic and respect for the laws. The best school of loyalty in the land is the army. Every evening in the camp, to see ten thousand men stand in respectful attention to our song to the national banner is a lesson of great moral force. In still another sense our Army is also a great moral force. When men see what a terrific engine of destruction it is, the good people rejoice because they know this engine is in safe hands; and the evil-disposed look on and are enlightened. Fierce anarchists will stop to count ten, at least, before they begin their attack upon the government.

Lastly, the Army, by the very aristocracy of its constitution, contributes much to make effective the doctrines of equality. The black soldier and the white soldier carry the same arms, eat the same rations, serve under the same laws, participate in the same experience, wear the same uniforms, are nursed in the same hospitals, and buried in the same cemeteries. The Roman Catholic Church, by its priestly aristocracy, has always been a bulwark against caste. So, in the same manner, the Army of our Republic, by its aristocracy of commission, has proven itself the most effectual barrier against the inundating waves of race discrimination that the country has as yet produced.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND CHURCH AS A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM[35]

BY D. WEBSTER DAVIS, D. D.

_of Richmond, Virginia_

[Note 35: Delivered at the International, Interdenominational Sunday-school Convention, Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada, June 27, 1905.]

If I were asked to name the most wonderful and far-reaching achievement of the splendid, all-conquering Anglo-Saxon race, I would ignore the Pass of Thermopylae, the immortal six hundred at Balaklava, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Quebec, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Appomattox; I would forget its marvelous accumulations of wealth; its additions to the literature of the world, and point to the single fact that it has done the most to spread the religion of Jesus Christ, as the greatest thing it has accomplished for the betterment of the human family.

The Jews preserved the idea of a one God, and gave the ethics to religion--the ten commandements, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount; the Greeks contributed philosophy; the Romans, polity; the Teutons, liberty and breadth of thought; but it remained to the Anglo-Saxon implicitly to obey the divine command: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

If some man would ask me the one act on the part of my own race that gives to me the greatest hope for the Negro's ultimate elevation to the heights of civilization and culture, I would not revel in ancient lore to prove them the pioneers in civilization, nor would I point to their marvelous progress since Emancipation that has surprised their most sanguine friends, but I would take the single idea of their unquestioned acceptance of the dogmas and tenets of the Christian religion as promulgated by the Anglo-Saxon, as the highest evidence of the future possibilities of the race.