To this scientific exposition of the Southern attitude Mr. Bailey replies:  “Even if it could be scientifically proved that an infusion of Negro blood would help the white race, the prejudice against a really great branch of the white race like the Jews is sufficient warning to us not to confine our discussion of race problems to the question of equality or inequality of physical and mental endowment.”

What then is race orthodoxy?  Where shall we look for a true statement of the attitude of the South on the subject of the Negro since none of these attempts at interpretation have done justice to it?  The racial creed has been expressed at different times in a number of pithy expressions current in the Southern states.  Here they are in order as the author gives them:  “Blood will tell”; The white race must dominate; The Teutonic peoples stand for race purity.  The Negro is inferior and will remain so.  “This is a white man’s country.”  Let there be no social equality; no political equality.  In matters of civil rights and legal adjustments give the white man as opposed to the colored man the benefit of the doubt.  In educational policy let the Negro have the crumbs that fall from the white man’s table.  Let there be such industrial education of the Negro as will fit him to serve the white man.  Only Southerners understand the Negro question.  Let the South settle the Negro question.  The status of peasantry is all the Negro may hope for, if the races are to live together in peace.  Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest Negro.  The above statements indicate the leadings of Providence.

This statement of the Southern creed is practically the common opinion of the South.  It is not the only opinion.  It is not, perhaps, the “best” opinion.  But is it right opinion?  Mr. Bailey thinks it is, in its underlying meaning at any rate, but not in its “present shape.”  His book may be said, on the whole, to be an interpretation and a justification of this “underlying meaning.”

Race orthodoxy in the South is, take it all in all, the most candid statement of the race problem; the most searching, suggestive and revealing interpretation of the attitude of the Southern white man that has ever been written.  The book is, however, merely a statement of the problem and not a solution.  Rather it is intended, as the author suggests again and again, to provoke and stimulate—­not discussion, heaven forbid,—­but inquiry, investigation.  In spite of the fact that the author professes his personal loyalty to the dogma upon which race orthodoxy is founded, still, by stating it in the clear and candid way in which he has, in pointing out with unflinching directness the moral cul-de-sac into which it has forced the Southern people, he has at once enabled and compelled them to put their faith on rational grounds.  His is the higher criticism in race creeds, and it is hard to tell where criticism once started will lead.