us still be brave,
  And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! 
    What though before us lies the open grave? 
  Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack
    Pressed to the wall, dying, but—­fighting back!

5. The Widening Problem

In view of the world war and the important part taken in it by French colonial troops, especially those from Senegal, it is not surprising that the heart of the Negro people in the United States broadened in a new sympathy with the problems of their brothers the world over.  Even early in the decade that we are now considering, however, there was some indication of this tendency, and the First Universal Races Congress in London in 1911 attracted wide attention.  In February, 1919, largely through the personal effort of Dr. DuBois, a Pan-African Congress was held in Paris, the chief aims of which were the hearing of statements on the condition of Negroes throughout the world, the obtaining of authoritative statements of policy toward the Negro race from the Great Powers, the making of strong representations to the Peace Conference then sitting in Paris in behalf of the Negroes throughout the world, and the laying down of principles on which the future development of the race must take place.  Meanwhile the cession of the Virgin Islands had fixed attention upon an interesting colored population at the very door of the United States; and the American occupation of Hayti culminating in the killing of many of the people in the course of President Wilson’s second administration gave a new feeling of kinship for the land of Toussaint L’Ouverture.  Among other things the evidence showed that on June 12, 1918, under military pressure a new constitution was forced on the Haytian people, one favoring the white man and the foreigner; that by force and brutality innocent men and women, including native preachers and members of their churches, had been taken, roped together, and marched as slave-gangs to prison; and that in large numbers Haytians had been taken from their homes and farms and made to work on new roads for twenty cents a week, without being properly furnished with food—­all of this being done under the pretense of improving the social and political condition of the country.  The whole world now realized that the Negro problem was no longer local in the United States or South Africa, or the West Indies, but international in its scope and possibilities.

Very early in the course of the conflict in Europe it was pointed out that Africa was the real prize of the war, and it is now simply a commonplace to say that the bases of the struggle were economic.  Nothing did Germany regret more than the forcible seizure of her African possessions.  One can not fail to observe, moreover, a tendency of discussion of problems resultant from the war to shift the consideration from that of pure politics to that of racial relations, and early in the conflict students of society the