[While the war lasted those of us who saw unpalatable truths were compelled to do one of two things: either tell the truth as we saw it and go to jail, or camouflage the truth that we had to tell. The present writer told the truth for the most part, in so far as it related to our race relations; but, in a few cases camouflage was safer and more effective. That camouflage, however, was never of that truckling quality which was accepted by the average American editor to such a nauseating degree. I was well aware that Woodrow Wilson’s protestations of democracy were lying protestations, consciously and deliberately designed to deceive. What, then, was my duty in the face of that fact? I chose to pretend that Woodrow Wilson meant what he said, because by so doing I could safely hold up to contempt and ridicule the undemocratic practices of his administration and the actions of his white countrymen in regard to the Negro. How this was done is shown in the first two editorials of the following chapter.] _Is Democracy Unpatriotic?_ The present administration is all right. But it has its obstacles to success. As usual some of the worst of these are its injudicious “friends.” For instance, there are the people who are trying their best to “queer” us in the eyes of civilized Europe. These silly souls, when Negroes ask that the principle of “Justice in War Time”: be applied to Negroes as well as whites, reply, in effect that this should not be; that Negroes should not want Justice—in war time—and that any such demand on their part is “disloyalty.” On the contrary, it is the fullest loyalty to the letter and spirit of the President’s war-aims. To say that it isn’t is to presume to accuse the President of having war-aims other than those which he has set forth in the face of Europe. Besides, no one can deny that freedom from lynching and disfranchisement and the ending of discrimination—by the Red Cross for instance—will strengthen the hand of the administration right now by strengthening its hold on the hearts of the Negro masses and will make all Negroes—soldiers as well as civilians—more competent to give effective aid in winning the war. Let us assume that we consent to being lynched—“during the war”—and submit tamely and with commendable weakness to being Jim-crowed and disfranchised. Very well. Will not that be the proof of our spirit and of its quality? Of course. And what you _call_ that spirit won’t alter its quality, will it? Now, ask all the peoples of all the world what they call a people who smilingly consent to their own degradation and destruction. They call such a people cowards—because they _are_ cowards. In America we call such people “niggers.”