In the first place, we in America need not leave our own land to seek reasons for suspecting the sincerity of democratic professions. While we are waging war to establish democracy three thousand miles away, millions of Negroes are disfranchised in our own land by the “cracker” democracies of the Southern States which are more intent upon making slaves of their black fellow-citizens than upon rescuing the French and Belgians from the similar brutalities of the German Junkers. The horrible holocaust of East St. Louis was possible only in three modern States—Russia of the Romanoffs, Turkey and the United States—and it ill becomes any one of them to point a critical finger at the others. But East St. Louis was simply the climax of a long series of butcheries perpetrated on defenseless Negroes which has made the murder rate of Christian America higher than that of heathen Africa and of every other civilized land. And, although our government can order the execution of thirteen Negro soldiers for resenting the wholesale insults to the uniform of the United States and defending their lives from civilian aggressors, not one of the murderers of black men, women and children has been executed or even ferreted out. Nor has our war Congress seen fit as yet to make lynching a Federal crime. What wonder that the Negro masses are insisting that before they can be expected to enthuse over the vague formula of making the world “safe for democracy” they must receive some assurance that their corner of the world—the South—shall first be made “safe for democracy!” Who knows but that perhaps the situation and treatment of the American Negro by our own government and people may have kept the Central Powers from believing that we meant to fight for democracy in Europe, and caused them to persist in a course which has driven us into this war in which we must spend billions of treasure and rivers of blood. It should seem, then, that “democracy,” like “Kultur,” is more valuable as a battle-cry than as a real belief to be practised by those who profess it. And the plea of “small nationalities” is estopped by three facts: Ireland, Greece and Egypt, whose Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, was tumbled off his throne for failing to enthuse over the claims of “civilization” as expounded by Lord Grey. _Sir Harry Johnston Speaks_ But this is merely disproof. The average American citizen needs some positive proof of the assertion that this war is being waged to determine who shall dictate the destinies of the darker peoples and enjoy the usufruct of their labor and their lands. For the average American citizen is blandly ignorant of the major facts of history and has to be told. For his benefit I present the following statement from Sir Harry Johnston, in “The Sphere” of London. Sir Harry Johnston is the foremost English authority on Africa and is in a position to know something of imperial aims.