I listened when at New Orleans to a lecture given by Sergeant Needham Roberts of the 369th U. S. Infantry, a handsome young Negro warrior, twice wounded, the first American to be decorated by the French Government. He was entirely patriotic, and made the apathetic Negro audience stand to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner.” He told how he ran away from home to enlist, trained with a mass of black strangers, went across the ocean—quite a terrifying experience for some of these young soldiers, who but for the war had never crossed the sea. He gave his first impressions of France and of the line, the exaggerated fright of shell explosions and night attacks and bombs from the air. They were just getting used to the first aspect of war when one day the news flew round—“We are all ordered home again.” Official orders to that effect quickly followed. They had all packed up and were marching to entrain for Cherbourg when, according to the sergeant, Foch intervened. “Why are you sending them back?” said he. “They are not wanted.” Foch seemed astonished. “If you cannot use them, I can,” said the French marshal. And then, hurray!—we were attached to the French. It was no playground, the French front, but, as ever, a sterner piece of reality than American or British. The Negroes were hotly engaged and had many casualties. Roberts won his Croix de Guerre for a feat which he performed with his chum, Pete Johnson. They had been left at an advanced listening post and apparently overlooked—not relieved for three days and three nights. The division had been relieved. On the third night the Germans made a raid which the two Negro soldiers repelled by themselves, first throwing out their bombs, then firing, and finishing with a remarkable bit of butchery with the bayonet. The Germans whom they did not put out of action they put to flight. How many Germans lay dead it would be difficult to say. The number probably grew like those of Falstaff’s men in buckram, but I did hear twenty mentioned. There was no doubt about the fact that Sergeant Roberts was a jolly soldier—a “bonny faechter”—and he made himself on good terms with his audience very quickly. He came from New York, and had swung along Fifth Avenue with the heroes of New York’s Fighting Fifteenth. He was full of the faith of the North, horribly depressed by the atmosphere of the South, above all by the passivity and apathy of the Negroes of New Orleans. He had better keep north of the Mason-Dixon line, for he is evidently a born fighter. If the war itself was a persistent educator of the Negro, his subsequent treatment after the Armistice enforced very terribly what he learned. It would be hardly worth while to enlarge on this in detail. The fact which I wished to isolate is the growing resentment of the colored people, the fact that some twelve millions are becoming highly charged with resentment.