the significance of it all, they looked into each other’s eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes.  The white world was tearing itself to pieces.  White solidarity was riven and shattered.  And—­fear of white power and respect for white civilization together dropped away like garments outworn.  Through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper:  ’The East will see the West to bed.’” At last comes the inevitable conclusion pleading for a better understanding between England and Germany and for everything else that would make for racial solidarity.  The pitiful thing about this book is that it is so thoroughly representative of the thing for which it pleads.  It is the very essence of jingoism; civilization does not exist in and of itself, it is “white”; and the conclusions are directly at variance with the ideals that have been supposed to guide England and America.  Incidentally the work speaks of the Negro and negroid population of Africa as “estimated at about 120,000,000.”  This low estimate has proved a common pitfall for writers.  If we remember that Africa is three and a half times as large as the United States, and that while there are no cities as large as New York and Chicago, there are many centers of very dense population; if we omit entirely from the consideration the Desert of Sahara and make due allowance for some heavily wooded tracts in which live no people at all; and if we then take some fairly well-known region like Nigeria or Sierra Leone as the basis of estimate, we shall arrive at some such figure as 450,000,000.  In order to satisfy any other points that might possibly be made, let us reduce this by as much as a third, and we shall still have 300,000,000, which figure we feel justified in advancing as the lowest possible estimate for the population of Africa; and yet most books tell us that there are only 140,000,000 people on the whole continent.

Darkwater may be regarded as the reply to such a position as that taken by Dr. Stoddard.  If the white world conceives it to be its destiny to exploit the darker races of mankind, then it simply remains for the darker races to gird their loins for the contest.  “What of the darker world that watches?  Most men belong to this world.  With Negro and Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world.  A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men.  If the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations.  What, then, is this dark world thinking?  It is thinking that as wild and awful as this shameful war was, it is nothing to compare with that fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of the White World cease.  The Dark World is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer.”