Colour

 IN a leading article in a previous issue we dealt at some length with an article in the October number of an American Review entitled "Foreign Affairs," by its Editor, on "Power Politics and the Peace Machinery." After examining in detail the faults and virtues of the post-War peace settlement in Europe, it indicated some measures calculated, in the writer's opinion, to pave the way to peace in Europe in the time to come. Foremost among these were economic adjustments as between classes and individuals, lowered tariffs and a lessening of rigidity in regard to race and population borders, and the spread of educational forces with a view to the promotion of a truer international understanding. The alarmist note in some sections of the Press, not always wisely, or ingenuously sounded, will render a calm and discerning examination of the case, at least in one important quarter, welcome to a large number of readers. Another article, under the general heading, "Italy and Ethiopia," and dealing with the "Inter-racial implications" of that unfortunate situation, in the same issue of the same publication, sets forth the danger liable to arise, or at least the problem requiring to be solved, in the conditions and attitudes of the coloured races of the world.
The writer is Mr. W. E. B. DuBois American Negro Leader, formerly Editor of "The Crisis," and now Professor of Sociology at Atlanta University; and he presents what a sub-title calls "A Negro View." Outlining the history of Ethiopia —the older name of Abyssinia — and sweeping on past the Middle Ages when as yet no race problems existed, he sees the rise of the present problem in the expansion of the factory system in the new land of America. With the end of the slave trade there, the race problem instead of disappearing, was only transformed. Europe also dealt in the importation of slaves from Africa, and afterwards exploited African subjects in Africa itself. Plausible "rationalism" was employed to make this seem justifiable, but the real motive was that of monetary gain. It is of interest specially to Christian people to be told that even Christianity was used by the exploiting forces "as a smoke-screen to reduce the natives and to keep them from revolt." Missionaries were misled into seeking what they took to be the natives' own advantage in inducing them "to become docile Christian workers under the profit-makers of Europe." Germany, Belgium, and Italy, followed in the trail of other European nations— even Britain not being free of the stigma — and founded their colonies on more-or-less similar lines. Belgian slave-trading on the Congo is notorious, and the atrocities of slave-raiding have passed into history. Africa, the West Indies — British and French — were the chief sources of slave supplies — though parts of South America came under the bane in a local and a more modified form.
Apart from slavery came the exercise of political dominance, with economic exploitation always as the dark and forbidding background. Parts of Asia fell under the sinister order, notably India. And so the story has gone on— Britain's act of slave emancipation forming a healing light upon the scene. The "domestic" slave system of Abyssinia, too, is said to be of another and a milder description.
And now these politically, socially, and economically discredited races are coming of age, and are beginning to claim their share of the general human inheritance. War on their part would seem to be out of the question—except possibly by the help of Japan. Lack of unity, organisation, money, and military equipment would preclude that. Let this writer put it in his own way. Italy's probable subjugation of Ethiopia will, he thinks, be likely to cost the world dearly. India, China and Japan, Africa in Africa and in America, and, he even thinks, "all the South Seas and Indian South America," will rise and say of the white races: "I told you so! There is no faith in them even toward each other. They do not believe in Christianity and they will never voluntarily recognise the essential equality of human beings or surrender the idea of dominating the majority of men for their own selfish ends. Japan was right. The only path to freedom is force, and force to the uttermost."
It is not an inviting picture. But it is a picture on which the gaze of the Christian Churches should be steadily and thoughtfully fixed. A pertinent question, and one which the Churches must answer, is this: Do the Churches care? Would some outsider visitor, say, from some other planet, moving about among the Churches of to-day, taking stock of their doings and deportment and endeavouring to estimate the burden of their message, come to the conclusion that matters of tremendous and desperate moment were thus taking form under their very eyes? Would he deem their method — and, much more, their spirit in pursuing it — to be those of men and women thrilled and inspired by the conviction that they held in their possession the only remedy of the world's ills, and that their first and foremost motive in life was that of bringing the world around them into its possession?

Methodist (Sydney, NSW : 1892 - 1954), Saturday 7 December 1935, page 9