of water into a quart bottle. So we have spilled much water and come near breaking the bottle. The people of the Philippine Islands are, on the average, much more highly developed than our Negroes. Yet the better advised among them realize that they are not yet ready to get on without our supervision and help. Let me not be misunderstood. I am not here trying to offer any permanent solution for certain aspects of this problem. That solution if ultimately sought will require, for many years, the painstaking and united efforts of our best thinkers in all sections. I am now merely stating certain facts and principles upon which any future solution whatsoever must be based. All I ask is that we take these facts into every phase of our argument. The Negro is not yet prepared, mentally or morally, to share all the results of our civilization with us. Amid the great complexities of modern social and political life, it is difficult indeed to prepare our white electorate to bear the responsibilities of government. Wherever the Negro numbers twenty per cent of our population, his vote on election day would endanger democracy. In every state where he lives there are and will be vicious white demagogues who will work upon his credulity to mislead him and misuse him politically. Where he numbers forty per cent of the population, his suffrage would throw us back to Reconstruction times and make democracy impossible. Let us not refuse to shoulder the full burden of this responsibility. But the burden belongs rightfully to the Nation as a whole, not to the people of the South alone. We of the South know full well that, once rightly understood by thoughtful minds in other sections, we can ask the nation to undertake those larger policies of reform and readjustment which conditions undoubtedly require. [Illustration: Revealing the Mysteries at Midnight] CHAPTER XVI We Americans are a Peculiar People Even among the various nationalities of the white race there are very great differences of character and temperament. To try to overlook these, to declare that they do not exist, is both dishonest and dangerous. Moved by the inspiration of a common cause in the Great War, no doubt the American troops and the French people made every possible effort to be agreeable and companionable. Still their very real differences caused friction. We recognize all sorts of peculiar characteristics among individuals. Why this folly of trying to deny their existence among nations? Sound conclusions in any matter are reached only by starting with facts. But the humanitarian and sentimental purposes which some of us have in mind often lead to the misuse of facts. Self-deception is the very last support upon which to build a sense of international or interracial friendship and good will.