University of Virginia Library

The Rating of Races

There is a rooster that develops a tail forty feet long, but this long tail will not give him the highest rating. Likewise a race can be great along lines which do not bring the highest esteem. The ability of the Negro race to produce talented individuals is no longer questioned but is cheerfully conceded. But individual excellence does not bring the highest rating. Races are rated according to the capacity manifested for sustained collective action of the highest order.

The late Gen. Foch who commanded the greatest army of men ever assembled under one leadership thus commended the American people for their efficiency: "A prodigious effort on the part of your entire nation's intelligence, will power and energy. A prodigious effort which has filled your associates with admiration and gratitude, and confounded your enemy."

Mr. A. Wendell Malliett, in one of a series of articles appearing in the Pittsburgh Courier, says, "To my mind the black man of America is the most individualistic human being in existence."

Mrs. M. E. Tracy says: "Haiti symbolizes a universal problem. What our attitude should be toward Latin-American countries is submerged in the greater question of what the attitude of all civilized governments should be towards the semi-civilized world. Call

it tyranny, imperialism or exploitation, as you prefer, but those people who know how to do things, who want to do them and who need material with which to do them will make others behave while they work. That is the basic law of progress."