The same “smoke-screen” that is
being- used by John W. Troy in his
Juneau Empire to fool the newly
enfranchised women has been em
ployed the world over.
What is the key to these appar
ent absurdities? Class feeling, pure
and simple. We like the negro, we
appreciate the negro, we want to
have him among us—so long as ‘ho
knows his place/ ” says Mr. Guerard.
“That is the great Shibboleth of the
South. You may be as kind as you
please to your niggers; you may
even devote your whole life to the
improvement of the race; the South
will praise you, if, throughout your
charitable activities, you never fail
to ‘keep the darkies in their place.’
“Now that phrase, which sums up
the whole creed of the South, is not
peculiar to the South. I had come
across it, times out of number, in
11) ropean history and literature.
Nay, I had heard it with my own
cars, in France and especially in
England, although it can no longer
be freely spoken with the same
wide approval as twenty-five years
ago. Tenants, servants, working
people, had to ‘know their station
and acknowledge their ‘betters.’ Be
tween the attitude of the nobleman
to the commoner under the ancient
regime, that of the bourgeois to
his ‘inferiors/ that of the gentle
manly officer in England, Germany
or America to the enlisted man, and
that of the Southern whites to the
negro, there is no fundamental dif
ference. It is the same unlovely but
irresistible instinct to lord it over
one’s fellowman; in a word, snob
bishness. Cringing before those
higher in station is only one aspect
of snobbishness; despising those be
low is the very essence of the dis
ease. That is why Thackeray has a
passage on ‘the Royal Snob.’ ”
“The temptation is most irresisti
ble, of course, when the lower class
is indelibly branded. The old aris
tocracy in Europe distinguished it
self by elaborate trappings, and was
fenced off by a formidable etiquette
of high sounding titles, etc. In
those happy days, every one ‘knew
his place.’ * * * The man born
in the racial abyss must remain in
the abyss. And we all want to keep
him there, for there would be no
heights for us if there were no
depths for him. How pitifully we
are striving to fasten ourselves to
some kind of aristocracy—Pilgrim
Fathers, Cavaliers, Dutch Patroons,
Huguenots, Revolutionary h roes!
Those of us whose hapless ances
tors missed all these opportunities
can at least claim we are Nordic;;
or at any rate Aryans; or Caucas
ians, whatever that may mean.
“Conditions in Algeria somewhat
resemble those in the South. There
also we have two peoples side by
side, one vastly inferior to the other
in wealth and culture. And the Al
gerian colonists think and act just
in the same way as the Southern
whites with the negroes.” Only in
Algeria the natives are of white
stock the same as the colonists.
Mr. Guerard thinks that the ac
quisition of money is at least part
of the solution of the trouble. “In
a civilization which ultimately has
no other standard of valuation but
money, enrichment means power. In
the most exclusive store in my South
ern city, I have seen colored belles
buying expensive shoes, with white
attendants literally at their feet.
* 1 * Get rich! Money will slow
ly purchase for you the respect that
plain justice could not secure.”
Perhaps Mr. Guerard is right, and
despised peoples might attain a
“place in the sun” indirectly, that is
through purchase. Still we prefer
to feel that “right makes might”
and the causes that give strength to
men who believe that “our cause is
just” and lends charm and power to
the story of the Good Smaritan,
will also compel citizens of a free
democracy to admit the force of
justice and liberty. We strive to
say from the bottom of our hearts
that the Great Emancipator was
right when he said that our fore
fathers “brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in
liberty and dedicated to the propo
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