In many ways the war meant the awakening of new impulses. As one traveled through the South, again and again he noticed a service flag at the window, sometimes in a cabin forlorn and dilapidated, sometimes in one neat and in a cluster of trees or surrounded by cotton. Sometimes there was only one star, but often there were two; and whenever those stars appeared they meant that the deeper springs of life were being stirred, and that a people whose horizon had been limited was beginning to think in terms of the world. If such was the influence at home, even stronger was that with the men who went to France. They were thrilled with a new hope. One and all they were willing to give their very lives if things might be better for those in the little home in South Carolina or Georgia. They had seen their glorious Stars and Stripes and they knew that they had not fully realized its benefits; but now as never before that banner unfurled meant democracy, and as a beacon light it pointed the way for all lovers of liberty. Negro men went to war believing that a new day was dawning for them, and that loyalty to their country’s cause in her hour of need would be the means of their enjoying in fuller measure the blessings for which they were fighting. In that faith they were willing to face shells and gas at Verdun, in Champagne, and in the Argonne, or wherever duty might lead them. When the war closed then, it is unfortunate that the experiences of thousands of these men had embittered them instead of bringing them into the freedom for which they had longed. Let us pass over smaller matters and consider only two of the larger reasons that accounted for their feeling. It is possible that no group similarly situated did more to make Armistice Day possible than did the American Negro soldiers; and we have seen that the record of the 369th Infantry was such that it was given the honor of leading French troops to the Rhine. When, however, in Paris, on July 14, 1919--on Bastille Day, the day of freedom--the Allied generals and their armies participated in the greatest military demonstration in the history of the world, the American Negro was not there. Other nations had all the races that fought under their flags in line. Belgium had her black colonial troops; England had Indians and Africans with her own sons and her soldiers from the colonies; and France had her Senegalese, Moroccans, Algerians, Soudanese, and Madagascans: every race that came to her defence was in her victorious army on that memorable day. Only America left her Negro troops behind. The last soldiers in the Victory Parade passed down the Champs Elysees, and still the hero of the 369th or the 371st had not appeared. He alone in the day of glory was the Disowned, the Disinherited.