Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 63

Nineteen--The following financial conditions are required: Reparation for damage done. While such armistice lasts no public securities shall be removed by the enemy which can serve as a pledge to the Allies for the recovery or repatriation for war losses. Immediate rest.i.tution of the cash deposit, in the National Bank of Belgium, and in general immediate return of all doc.u.ments, specie, stocks, shares, paper money, together with plant for the issue thereof, touching public or private interests in the invaded countries. Rest.i.tution of the Russian and Rumanian gold yielded to Germany or taken by that power. This gold to be delivered in trust to the Allies until the signature of peace.

V. NAVAL CONDITIONS:

Twenty--Immediate cessation of all hostilities at sea and definite information to be given as to the location and movements of all German s.h.i.+ps. Notification to be given to neutrals that freedom of navigation in all territorial waters is given to the naval and mercantile marines of the allied and a.s.sociated powers, all questions of neutrality being waived.

Twenty-one--All naval and mercantile marine prisoners of war of the Allied and a.s.sociated powers in German hands to be returned without reciprocity.

Twenty-two--Surrender to the Allies and the United States of America of one hundred and sixty German submarines (including all submarine cruisers and mine laying submarines) with their complete armament and equipment in ports which will be specified by the Allies and the United States of America. All other submarines to be paid off and completely disarmed and placed under the supervision of the Allied Powers and the United States of America.

Twenty-three--The following German surface wars.h.i.+ps which shall be designated by the Allies and the United States of America shall forthwith be disarmed and thereafter interned in neutral ports to be designated by the Allies and the United States of America and placed under the surveillance of the Allies and the United States of America, only caretakers being left on board, namely:

Six battle cruisers, ten battles.h.i.+ps, eight light cruisers, including two mine layers, fifty destroyers of the most modern type. All other surface wars.h.i.+ps (including river craft) are to be concentrated in naval bases to be designated by the Allies and the United States of America, and are to be paid off and completely disarmed and placed under the supervision of the Allies and the United States of America. All vessels of auxiliary fleet (trawlers, motor vessels, etc.), are to be disarmed.

Twenty-four--The Allies and the United States of America shall have the right to sweep all mine fields and obstructions laid by Germany outside German territorial waters, and the positions of these are to be indicated.

Twenty-five--Freedom of access to and from the Baltic to be given to the naval and mercantile marine of the Allied and a.s.sociated powers. To secure this the Allies and the United States of America shall be empowered to occupy all German forts, fortifications, batteries and defense works of all kinds in all the entrances from the Cattegat into the Baltic, and to sweep up all mines and obstructions within and without German territorial waters without any question of neutrality being raised, and the positions of all such mines and obstructions are to be indicated.

Twenty-six--The existing blockade conditions set up by the Allies and a.s.sociated powers are to remain unchanged, and all German merchant s.h.i.+ps found at sea are to remain liable to capture.

Twenty-seven--All naval aircraft are to be concentrated and immobilized in German bases to be specified by the Allies and the United States of America.

Twenty-eight--In evacuating the Belgian coasts and ports, Germany shall abandon all merchant s.h.i.+ps, tugs, lighters, cranes and all other harbor materials, all materials for inland navigation, all aircraft and all materials and stores, all arms and armaments, and all stores and apparatus of all kinds.

Twenty-nine--All Black Sea ports are to be evacuated by Germany, all Russian war vessels of all descriptions seized by Germany in the Black Sea are to be handed over to the Allies and the United States of America; all neutral merchant vessels seized are to be released; all warlike and other materials of all kinds seized in those parts are to be returned and German materials as specified in clause twenty-eight are to be abandoned.

Thirty--All merchant vessels in German hands belonging to the Allied and a.s.sociated powers are to be restored in ports to be specified by the Allies and the United States of America without reciprocity.

Thirty-one--No destruction of s.h.i.+ps or of materials to be permitted before evacuation, surrender or restoration.

Thirty-two--The German Government will notify neutral Governments of the world, and particularly the Governments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, that all restrictions placed on the trading of their vessels with the Allied and a.s.sociated countries, whether by the German Government or by private German interests, and whether in return for specific concessions such as the export of s.h.i.+pbuilding materials or not, are immediately cancelled.

Thirty-three--No transfers of German merchant s.h.i.+pping of any description to any neutral flag are to take place after signature of the armistice.

VI. DURATION OF ARMISTICE:

Thirty-four--The duration of the armistice is to be thirty days, with option to extend. During this period, on failure of execution of any of the above clauses, the armistice may be denounced by one of the contracting parties on forty-eight hours' previous notice.

VII. TIME LIMIT FOR REPLY:

Thirty-five--This armistice to be accepted or refused by Germany within seventy-two hours of notification.

THE NEGRO IN THE WORLD WAR.

BEFORE THE WAR.

Civilization evolves destructive forces of change. War is change in explosive form. World notions, points of view, and general ideas of 1914 have spun the cycle of years with accelerated speed. At that time the public mind gained its concept of the Negro from encyclopaedic information. He was regarded as a "sub-species of mankind, dark of skin, wooly of hair, long of head, with dilated nostrils, thick lips, thicker cranium, flat foot, prehensile great toe and larkheel."

He was described as a creature with "mental const.i.tution very similar to that of the child, on a lower evolutionary plane than the white man, and more closely related to the highest anthropoids." His brain weight, we were told, was 35 ounces as compared with the gorilla's 20 ounces and the Caucasian's 45.

In America, conception of the Negro has ever fluctuated in direct ratio to the rise and fall of military domination of the affairs of the republic. Whenever the military agencies of the government have been exalted, the Negro has been benefited by reaction of the public mind.

From 1865 to 1870 exaltation of the military element of American life brought along not only emanc.i.p.ation of the black man, but that conception of him which resulted in the conferring of manhood rights and privileges. In this short s.p.a.ce of five years, so highly had the Negro come into public estimation that, with the protection of the military arm of the government, there were actively engaged in his interest an Emanc.i.p.ation League, a Freedmen's Pension Society, a Freedmen and Soldiers' Relief, a Freedmen's Aid Society of the M.E. Church, a Society of Friends of Great Britain and Ireland for the Relief of Emanc.i.p.ated Slaves of America, an American Missionary a.s.sociation, a Freedmen's Bureau, a Freedmen's Bank, a British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, an American Negro Aid Commission, and other organizations, too numerous for mention. So important, however, was military organization and predominance to the success of any one of these organizations, that Carl Schurz, reporting to Congress the condition of the South, declared: "If the national government firmly and unequivocally announces its policy not to give up the control of free labor reform until it is firmly accomplished, the progress of the reform will be far more rapid and far less difficult than it will be if the att.i.tude of the government is such as to permit contrary hopes to be indulged in."

In 1870, as the military power of the United States weakened its control over the nation, forces of opposition arose to pull down to the depths the black man, who had been exalted by the agencies of military government. The Ku Klux Klan, headed by the Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire, and the Grand Dragon of the Realm, with malignant fanaticism wors.h.i.+pped the lost cause. Hatred of white man for Negro, accentuated and embittered by hatred for the Yankee carpet-bagger and the southern scalawag, resulted in the rise of a powerful southern partisans.h.i.+p, stunned only so long as military power held sway. Peonage took place of colored free labor. Disproportionate appropriation of taxes between blacks and whites lowered the Negro measurably year by year. With the complete removal of military supremacy, the Ku Klux courted publicity which it had hitherto shunned. A leader, the statesman of the new era, in the person of the late Benjamin R. Tillman, of South Carolina, appeared. He split the loose organization of southern aristocracy with the blacks with lily white wedge, and trampled into dust every agency which favored the black man. He deprived the black of all weapons of offence or defence, disfranchised him, shunted him off into the ghetto, and called the world to mock him in his lowly position.

This southern statesman lived to see the Solid South come into national power in 1912. From that time, until the beginning of the world war in 1914, the American negro reached the lowest point of his political and social status.

Compared with Anglo-Saxon, Frenchman, Italian, Austrian, German or Russian, he was of an order and degree reputed farthest down. No celebrity attached to his menial state. No distinction might be his as an award from the courts of nations. Dignity, grandeur and majesty applied to Guelphs, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns. Theirs was all arrogation of supereminence. And to them all, the Negro, throughout the world, was, if a man at all, pre-eminently the mere Man Friday.

From such a status of debas.e.m.e.nt, existing in an intolerable atmosphere of derogation and disrepute, the humble and humiliated American Negro sought the exaltation of international honor. Denied and disavowed at home, through vicissitude of international war, he hoped for affirmation of a new world dictum in acknowledgment of his human qualities and worth. He did not, like Toussaint, long for the high honors of the continental emperor. He sought democratic equality, and he would as lief think of bringing the Kaiser to his level as exalting himself to the plane of that immortal celebrity.

He wanted to make good in public. He wanted to demonstrate both efficiency and initiative. He desired that popular belief conceive him as a man, not a monkey. He wished the Caucasian world to take into its head that he might function as a valuable and serviceable element of twentieth century civilization. He yearned to reveal his powers in every field of endeavor. And he expected that when the Caucasian had arrived at a fair judgment in his behalf, he would issue to him the warrant certifying that he was four-square with the dominant opinion of mankind, and, therefore, ent.i.tled to the honors of superior status.

He aimed to compensate the world by presenting a concept of beauty in place of a general notion of repellent ugliness. Instead of being regarded as a "Hottentot with clicking palate, whom the meanest of the rest look down upon for all his glimmering language and spirituality,"

he wished the world to find in him fitness for survival, conformity with civilization's ideal, example of the world philosophy of forbearance, human relations.h.i.+ps, symmetry and poise in adaptation to the world's tasks, and moderation in respect of the higher laws, whose harmonies order and rectify all creation.

He sought to neutralize the misteachings of Adam Smith, of Darwin and Defoe. Smith's "Wealth of Nations" presumed the material debas.e.m.e.nt of darker peoples of colonial populations, or, in lieu thereof, such debas.e.m.e.nt of Slav, Serf or Serbian as would compensate the vanity of the superior people. Indirectly, Darwin taught, that the Negro closely approached the missing link between the savage beast and the human.

Defoe delighted the world with a picture of the ideal economic status for the maintenance of white superiority over black man. These ideas the Negro wished to topple over.

He felt it necessary to repudiate the indoctrination of racial hatred proclaimed throughout the world by "The Birth of a Nation." He set over against it the reception by all civilization of the Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton life story. He wished to subst.i.tute recognition of worth in place of the things that debase and make ashamed.

His great puzzle was the Anglo-Saxon, cold, austere and uncomplaisant.

This Caucasian, fair of skin, with smooth and wavy hair, small cheekbones and elevated forehead, appeared a wors.h.i.+pful master whose station, under G.o.d, was of preordained and predestined eminence.

Occupying Eurasia from the Channel to the Ganges, together with the most favored portions of Africa and America, he was the author and agency for law and order for the world. St. Augustine, first archbishop and lawgiver of Canterbury, himself of African descent, the son of Monica and Patricius of Carthage, had left the Anglo-Saxon from semi-barbarism to his position of world renown. Would this Anglo-Saxon ever degrade the sons of women of Africa?

The Negro's next puzzle was the French, urbane, amenable and suave.

Negro emotions and French sensibilities mingled even without recourse to the vehicle of language. Imbued with all the finer Latin qualities and characteristics, the French ever invited the black man to a social world which the Anglo-Saxon denied him. E.W. Lightner, writing as a war correspondent, says:

"Long previous to the war thousands of blacks from various States of Africa were in France, most especially Paris, at the universities, in business and in the better ranges of service.

Everywhere and by all sorts and conditions of whites, they were treated as equals. During several visits to the French capital I, an American, knowing full well the prejudices of whites of this country against the race, was amazed to see the cordial mingling of all phases of the cosmopolitan population of the French capital.

Refined white men promenaded the streets with refined black women, and the two races mingled cordially in studies, industries and athletic sports. White and black artists had ateliers in common in the Latin quarter...."

Thus, at hob and n.o.b with the civilities and honors and embraces of this social life, the Negro felt an unaccustomed giddiness seize him. This giddiness was not caused by lack of social poise, nor incited by the French, but it arose from the dilemma, or rather peril, in which the French intercourse placed him with relation to the adjustment of darker races to Anglo-Saxon civilization.

Nevertheless in 1914, the approach to this court of honour and equality must be made by the Negro--and made under restraint sufficient to a.s.sure Anglo-Saxon approval. This was, indeed, a complex problem. Traducers proclaimed his undeveloped capacities; he answered with a claim of long repressed apt.i.tudes. They spoke of intolerable coalescence; he claimed that the times demanded imperative coexistence. They said he had no soul; he claimed the over-soul. They a.s.serted his lecherous character; he referred to statistics. But when they claimed he was pro-German, he stripped for action. World war, and France, prostrate amid its terrors, offered the Negro the great opportunity of the centuries to refute the broadcast propaganda of his enemies.

Beyond the French appeared the German, ungainly, acrimonious and obdurate. Part Saxon, part Hun, part Vandal and Visigoth, a creature of blood and iron, he utilized every force of nature to exterminate his enemies. The Negro knew how to exploit none of nature's elemental energies. But he did know that he could learn how by seizing and mastering the weapons of the enemy.

Of the energies of earth he lacked both scientific mastery and the weapons which give them offensive power and direction. Of the air he lacked all control. Fire he utilized only for purposes of cooking food, but not for the development of machinery of warfare. He has no vessel upon all the seven seas. To seize and master and utilize these energies appeared a thankless job, albeit a necessary one. He voted a grim "Aye."

[Ill.u.s.tration: This is the wreath presented by the Ford-Darney Orchestra in memory of Lieutenant Jimmy Europe, leader of the famous Jazz band which won its laurels with the 369th Infantry in France. His funeral took place from St. Mark's Church in West 53rd St.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The body of Lieutenant Jimmy Europe who died suddenly this week is here seen being carried from St. Mark's Church. Europe was the leader of the famous Jazz band which won its laurels with the 369th Infantry in France.]