We English-Speaking People Must Stand Together
Here, too, a choice is not permitted us. The desperate condition of the
world is forcing our minds and hearts. The demand is given to us who
speak English: "CO-OPERATE, OR PERISH WITH A PERISHING WORLD."
This broken world can not be put upon the path of peace and prosperity
without the most careful and courageous leadership. Modern industrial
and commercial conditions, in a word, the machine process, has thrown
all the nations of the world together. If we can not separate ourselves
from the other nations, if all the world must eventually march in the
same direction, the only practical question relates to the direction
of the march. Are we to be saved together, or are we going to fall
together into the pit of a new sequence of the Dark Ages? The great
masses of the colored races, mostly unfitted for self rule, must be
protected, civilized, educated, and led onward and upward toward the
best that they can do. On the other hand lies the dread alternative
of a military imperium which might eventually organize the whole
of China and India. If we do not organize the world for peace, it
is not impossible to conceive that twenty-five years of astute
propaganda might win all these seven hundred and fifty millions to the
militaristic leadership of Japan. A great Indian nationalist leader
recently said that no one fact had so aroused and encouraged the spirit
of India as the present brilliant role of the Japanese nation. Such a
pan-Asiatic movement might very likely draw Russia, Germany and several
other European nations into a new and terrible alliance. The poor and
the dejected always seem to find cause enough to pick a quarrel with
the rich and the powerful. I repeat, if the English-speaking people
will not undertake together the task of giving ordered progress and
freedom to the world, upon what nation or nations is the duty to
devolve? We have rejected, rightly or wrongly, the League of Nations.
What next?
In this connection the happy solution of the age-worn Irish
question makes straight the way. While the Irish in the home-land
were in rebellion against Britain, the political waters of every
English-speaking country in the world were made muddy. Peace in Ireland
makes our task of co-partnership with the British Empire easier and
simpler. Indeed, directly after the signatures were attached to the
British treaty of peace with Ireland, a distinguished Irish leader
remarked that he hoped to see America cooperate with all the other
English-speaking people who are united through the British Empire.
Let us glance briefly at some essential conclusions to which the
reduction of naval armaments inevitably leads. The American and the
British navies are to be made about equal. In ten years time an almost
perfect equality will be secured. These two navies, taken together,
will of course dominate the seven oceans. The only naval power which
will remotely compare to either is that of Japan. Because of our
wealth and population, also because of our industries, production and
commerce, the United States and the British will have no immediate
rivals. Together, we can declare the world's peace. Together, we can
give the world a decent measure of order. We include, of course,
the practically independent and rapidly growing nations of Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It will be readily seen how
much greater is our power, a united power, for good than any other
possible combination of nations in the world. Here, tossed about in a
sea of color, lies the white man's hope. Here, too, is large hope for
all the world. Under the world peace we can establish the forces that
make for international justice which will at last be given a chance
to function; while under the threat of war every sort of inhuman and
barbaric force will win its way. Given an assured peace and better
minds and gentler hearts among our English-speaking people will never
be silenced. They will triumph in our own countries first. They will
save the world as a matter of course. On the other hand, world anarchy
and world war will always submerge every liberal voice and every
progressive policy among all nations, ourselves included.
We need no formal alliance with the British to bring these things to
pass. The alliance of the American with the British people is formed by
all the qualities we have in common. These are already more powerful
than any document. The theory that competition for the world's trade
makes co-partnership in everything and anything impossible for us is a
piece of ignorant nonsense. All our better humanity is crying out the
command that trade keep to its rightful place in human affairs. If this
Anglo-American understanding could have been possible ten years ago
there would have been no World War. At that time we in America were not
ready for co-operation. If we are not entirely ready for it to-day,
then under the Providence of Almighty God, and being responsible to Him
alone, those of us who see the light must make all ready for it.
With every forward step we try to take toward the peace and the
salvation of the world, we shall find, at first, blocking our way and
attempting to push us back, our great foreign cities. The war, in so
far as we Americans ourselves are concerned, has not liberated us
from this tyranny of the foreign vote. It is, in large part, still
mobilized on the wrong side of almost every public question we can
think of. However, we may now expect this influence to slowly give way
to better knowledge and wiser counsels. With the Irish question finally
settled, our Irish fellow-citizens here will have no further occasion
to oppose the British at every step. Our German voters, too, may soon
come to learn that Germany cannot be saved if the world be lost.
If we American-born citizens can only attain sufficient unity to once
for all ignore the foreign vote, and rule ourselves intelligently,
we shall soon discover that vote has ceased to be a danger. But it
will not cease to curse America for fifty years if it is not met with
the firmness of a united American will. Let us draw a line about the
foreign sections and about the hyphenated votes, and declare our
absolute independence of them. During the war this foreign vote was
silenced and nullified. So it will be again as soon as we speak our
national mind with certainty of purpose.
[Illustration: God is our Refuge and Strength]
In perfect harmony with the British people, we are now seeking and
securing naval disarmament. Having limited and equalized our power for
defense, it is absolutely essential that we stand together to prevent
the building, among possible enemies, of dangerous armaments on sea
or land. No doubt Japan will, from this time on, carefully heed the
united demand of our two English-speaking peoples. The first imperative
duty that we must accomplish together concerns the protection of China
from the lusts of the exploiter. The independence of the Chinese nation
must be guaranteed. Her unity must be re-established. Her resources
must be protected from the greedy ones among our own citizens who would
take from the Chinese people the resources they so much need for their
future. To-day China can not protect herself. It is incumbent upon us
to afford her the fullest measure of protection. The gratitude and
esteem our children will receive from the Chinese nation will be in the
future the strongest and surest of all the guarantees of world peace.
We in America are as much interested in the care and progress of the
African peoples as are the British. Why should we not share in this
responsibility? What a boon to the future of those backward black
people of Africa, should they find themselves more largely united
through the more general teaching of the English language! More and
more will such of our American Negroes as are unhappy here, find a
place of refuge in their native land of Africa. We should be serving
the highest purposes in a number of ways were we to purchase the Congo
Free State from Belgium and the Portuguese colonies in the Southern
part of the continent. Side by side with the British Empire we could
help in administering the affairs of those barbaric peoples in their
own interest. The third international plague spot is the Near East.
With the heavy tyranny of the Sultan removed, the conglomeration of
broken and unhappy peoples who composed his subject population have
been freed. To-day they fight and fester like vermin stifled and
starving in a dark place. It seemed to many Americans that, after the
war, supervision of these Christian peoples was our particular duty.
Why should we, speaking the language of the mighty dead, who gave
command in the English tongue, be so fearful of sharing each other's
purposes and each other's tasks? We are what we are; and it so happens
that we are forced by circumstances to guide the world. Let us lead
wisely and well, winning for our children gratitude and esteem. Let us
have done with all this sickening pose of Pecksniff and Uriah Heap,
and do the great deeds to which our times call us as Cromwell and
Washington would have done!
We need world vision to-day. "Without vision the people perish."
But we need more than vision. We require great, practical, general
policies of world reorganization; and the veritable cornerstone of that
policy is this mighty English-speaking co-partnership. This saving
fellowship we Klansmen propose to advance by every means in our power.
The common language through which the whole world must ultimately find
communion is the English language. This is evident to anybody who
even casually surveys the linguistic map of the world. North America,
India, Australia, more than half of Africa--such is the future empire
of Shakespeare and Milton and Lowell and Poe. Beside all the various
national languages and local dialects, our language will be used as a
means of universal conversation. So shall our every word, for good or
for ill, be a word spoken in authority to the whole world.