Cayton's Weekly

State Library Cayton's Weekly --- PRICE FIVE CENTS CAYTON'S WEEKLY Published every Saturday at Seattle, Washington, U. S. A. In the interest of equal rights and equal justice to all men and for "all men up." A publication of general information, but in the main voicing the sentiments of the Colored Citizens. It is open to the towns and communities of the state of Washington to air their public grievances. Social and church notices are solicited for publication and will be handled according to the rules of journalism. Subscription $2 per year in advance. Special rates made to clubs and societies. HORACE ROSCOE CAYTON..Editor and Publisher Entred as second class matter, August 18, 1916, at the post office at Seattle, Wash., under the Act of March 3rd, 1916. TEL-EPHONE: BEACON 1910 Office 303 22d Ave. South PORT COMMISSION ELECTION While not considered quite so important as the late November election, yet in fact the election today (Saturday) is every whit as important as was it and it therefore is the unqualified duty of every voter of Seattle to turn out and vote today for port commissioner, but before you do so, give those, who are seeking your suffrage on this occasion, not only the once, but the twice and thrice over. Lest you conclude that we do not practice what we preach, permit us to say that we have thoroughly done so and after due deilberations have come to the conclusion to support and to recommend to you for your favorable consideration Richard M. Buttle for Port Commissioner of Seattle. Two others are seeking this self-same position, but it's of the incumbent, of whom we propose to discuss in connection with this election, for a moment. For the past nine years C. E. Remsberg has held this position without pay. The P.-I. has repeatedly pointed out that Mr. Remsberg has sought this position for selfish motives and he has not publicly denied the accusations. Bob Bridges has held a corresponding position and has been Remsberg's chief colleague. Both of them have exetnsive realty holdings and it has been publicly charged that the port commission has made its improvements with an eye single to the realty holdings of Remsberg and Bridges. Since Mr. Remsberg has held this "thankless job" the bank in which he was one of the chief stockholders has gone to the wall, but in spite of that, ever since he has lived in luxury and occupied spacious private offices, where his extensive realty holdings have been handled. Is there a nigger in the wood pile? Remsberg and Bridges, as members of the port commission, worked together like the gold dust twins and dictatorially domineered the expenditures of the board. They forced Gen. Chiteenden to resign and they have ridden over T. P. Lippy rough shod. Bridges is now turning heaven and earth, figuratively speaking, to have Remsberg elected, which leads us to suspect that there may be another nigger in the wood pile. If Remsberg should be defeated there might be things uncovered that would reflect on Bridges. Remsberg and Bridges have conjointly fought to prevent the election of port commissioners that would lose to them the control of the board and they must have had a reason for doing so. Why should a colored person vote for Remsberg for port commissioner, for under his control, it has steadily refused to give a single colored man employment though it has been employing hundreds of working men. While Mr. Buttle is making no promises as to what he will do, yet he can do no worse, so far as colored men are concernde, than have Remsberg and Bridges and any change must be for the better. To hear the conclusion of the whole matter we trust the readers of Cayton's Weekly will support Richard M. Buttle for port commissioner. Do not fail to vote today! THE NEGRO AND THE WAR (By Harrison Rhodes) There are something like twelve million Negroes inhabiting these United States; roughly speaking, one in every ten of us Americans is black. A statement of the large numbers of Negroes in the country is usually a prelude to the consideration of the black man as a "problem." It is here suggested that in time of war the question had perhaps better be how much is he a national asset., Before the outbreak of war the Negro had for some years been represented in the Regular Army by the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry. These regiments saw service in the Philippines, in Hawaii and in the far West, where the Indians called them "Buffalo soldiers"—a name now assumed with pride by the 367th or "Buffalo" Regiment. In Mexico, particularly at the ambuscade of Carrizal, they demonstrated their value, and the services rendered by black troops in Cuba, notably at San Juan Hill, are still vivid in the public mind. Negroes here and there complain that the courage of their troops there was never sufficiently recognized by the nation, but most white people could assure them that theirs was the best-remembered military exploit of that Cuban campaign; not the less well-remembered, of course, because it afforded an opportunity for a good-natured jibe at the popular Rough Riders. There were colored officers, too, before the war. One Negro, Charles Young, a graduate of West Point, who organized the Liberian Constabulary in the Republic of Liberia as the representative of the American Government, and performed a similar work in the Republic of Haiti, rose to the rank of colonel. The race had one major, Benjamin O. Davis, of the 9th Cavalry; several captains and a great many non-commissioned officers. With the coming into being of the National Army, the number of coloerd soldiers has greatly increased. In filling the first draft quota of 687,000 men, the number of colored men called for entrainment was 94,483, almost fourteen per cent. And on June 1st the available figures were that an additional 62,213 had already been called since the first draft, making a total of 156,696. About 1,000 Negro line officers have been commissioned in the National Army as captains, first and second lieutenants, with approximately 250 colored medical officers in the Medical and Dental Reserve Corps. The 92nd Division and the 93rd Division (Provisional), the first comprising about 30,000 Negro soldiers and the latter so far about half that number, made up of National Guard Units, have been organized, and are commanded by Major-General C. C. Ballou and Brigadier-General Roy C. Hoffman, respectively. These divisions will embrace, when fully constituted, practically all branches of military service, including Infantry, Engineer and Artillery (Field and Coast) Regiments, Signal Corps (radio or wireless telegraphers, etc.), Hospital and Ambulance Corps, Medical Corps, Aviation Corps (Ground Division), Service Battalions, with men technically trained in all branches of scientific work. The training of colored officers, after being considerably hesitated over and debated was undertaken last year at Fort Des Moines, Iowa—the Negro Plattsburg . The training camp was quickly filled up for the four months' course and about 750 commissioned officers were turned out, a large part of them already college graduates. A colored man from Tuskegee, Emmett J. Scott, is Special Assistant to the Secretary of War, and George M. Haynes from Fisk University occupies a similar position in the Department of Labor, Mr. George Creel's Bureau thinks it important to send out speakers to the colored population. So that one may say that in many if not in most ways the administration, which might colorably be accused of VOL. 3. No. 26 being Southern in composition and tone, has gone a very long way towards recognizing and utilizing the colored citizen, soldier and civilian. One black man in a remote Florida cabin wrote, in some trust and simplicity, a letter to the President of the United States about the drafting of his son, and received promptly a reply from the President's secretary himself, a message of explanation and encouragement to a fellow American citizen which will be treasured many years in the pine woods. Records of Black Bravery There were pleasantly picturesque black notes in the war scene at the very beginning. At the declaration of war, it was colored troops who were set as guards around the White House. Some Negroes cynically observe that when one of their officers died, a colored Major, he was not afforded a military funeral. But such a disturbing note did not for most Negroes appreciably diminish the compliment to the one part of the American population in which, it was jocosely said, there couldn't possibly be any Germans. There is a rumor, which though it cannot be authenticated, will not down, that General Pershing, when he went to France, absolutely insisted that he should take Negro troops with him. And almost at the outset of America's fighting on the western front there came home the stirring tale of two black heroes, Needham Roberts and Harry Johnson (it is rather pleasant that it should be Mistah Johnson) who though both wounded by enemy grenades, one on the elbow forearm and left leg, the other on the right hip and left leg, beat off a raiding party of twenty-five Germans, killing or wounding five of them. It was a good fight, with grenades, rifles and at last a bolo knife. These were cited to receive that wonderful Croix de Guerre of our sister Republic, and it would not perhaps be possible to better the simple description of them in the final phrase of the French text of citation—"good and brave soldiers." The news was received at home with delight by the Negroes, and for the most part with simple ungrudging and unsurprised admiration by the white press. Indeed on the whole it may be said that whatever may be thought of the colored man in times of peace, we confidently expect him to be brave in war. There is indeed a long tradition of black bravery, from the day when a Negro Crispus Attucks was the first man to be killed in the Revolutionary War, down. There are famous names in the roll, famous that is to Negroes, possibly to them only. Students of America might profitably read this chapter of the nation's history, possibly, shall we say in the Pullman Porters' Review, an admirable publication which probably few people who travel on sleeping cars know. There are, it appears, 1083 stars in the Pullman Company's service flag; 1083 blacks who hitherto were only modestly ambitious to keep the world well brushed and are now risking their lives to keep it safe for a better future. There has perhaps been in the past something faintly comic in George the porter; now he gives you a deepened sense of the solidarity of America, and a renewed conviction that this war is essentially every American's war. Even before the news began to come from France, experts of fighting thought well of the colored soldier. Colonel Moss, a Louisianian who is in command of the 267th (Buffalo) regiment, has been considerably quoted. At the outbreak of the war he asked for colored troops and he believes they make good soldiers. But he is scrupulously temperate on the subject and says that it is unwise to talk too much about anyone, black or white, being "able to lick his weight in wild-cats." But his imperturbability is not perfect for he permits himself to say, with an ill-hidden light of enthusiasm in his eyes that "they are the only soldiers ```markdown ``` that will go into a ngnt singing." He corrects this betrayal of enthusiasm by an extremely shrewd observation concerning our attitude towards the race. The Negro, he says, gets too much credit when he does a good thing—but he gets also too much blame when he does a bad thing. Colonel Roosevelt, speaking to the Buffalo soldiers at Camp Upton, made his own pleasantly turned comment on this tendency when he assured the boys that General Bell was there to see that they got what they ought to have when they behaved thmslves and also to see that they got what they ought to have when they didn't behave themselves. And the boys roared with delighted laughing appreciation of his humor. Humor is perhaps not commonly enough considered in appraising the mental equipment of a good soldier. A young lieutenant of the Buffaloes, a Des Moines graduate, puts stress on this point. A soldier who can laugh and sing like the Negro canot, he points out, be unhappy long nor troubled by premonitions of evil. Not to "care which way the river runs" is in this case a virtue. It does away with complaining and the colored soldier in the camps sums things up with a cheerful philosophy when he says "it's a great life if you don't weaken." It would be pleasant to linger on this topic with an anecdote or two. The two colored soldiers who in the early days were whittlnig out dummy rifles from pine boards for drill purposes expressed no impatience with the war department's delays, they only remarked as they plied their jack-knives that they were glad they were not in the artillery! A race naturally inclined to contentment. Let us delay what reports there are from the trenches of actual battle performance and consider something of the situation of the Negro at the beginning of the war. It is rarely plain sailing for that race and so it need surprise no one to learn that at the beginning at least it was not always made easy for the black man to be a patriot and a soldier. Anyone who ws in the South during April and May of last year knows how immediately after the declaration of war a wave of hysterical apprehension ran over the land. It was suddenly declared that the German propaganda had been long and successfully at work among the colored population. There were wild rumors of secret drilling and hidden stores of arms. One lurid unauthenticated tale was of a burial suddenly stopped by the authorities because of the suspicious heaviness of the coffin, which, being opened, disclosed no stiff black corpse but cartridges and rifles! In some districts there is no doubt that parts of the white population genuinely believed that the supreme horror of the South, the bloody black uprising was at hand. In such moments actual facts count for very little, and there is always the danger that wild talk and armed vigilance committees will bring about the very dangers they seek to avoid. It is a considerable evidence of the South's real deep-lying conviction of the Negro's loyalty that there was as little trouble as there was. In many parts the responsible leading Negroes of the community held public meetings and did all they could not only to rouse the patriotism of their own race but to increase the confidence of the whites. Gradually, by June or July, the fear died down. Most Negroes will tell you however that the danger was more from the whites than from the blacks. In any case it was a feverish frightening time, and it is just possible that the aftermath of that early suspicion has been the unhappy increase of lynching in the country during the past year, a phenomenon which has certainly not made the path of patriotism any easier for the race of its victims. The question of course may still be asked—was there German propaganda? And it may be deliberately said in reply that there undoubtedly was. It is extremely difficult to bring forward definite detailed proof. The subject brings into evidence the age-old tendency of the Negro to keep certain things from the whites, even from those with whom he is on friendly and confidential terms. This habit is violently denounced by many whites, especially in the South, but it may at least be said that caution and secretiveness are a legacy from slavery days, the persistence of which it is not difficult to understand. But there is no question but that odd traevlers in the backwoods dropped hints at dusk into black ears that the Negro has no flag, and told of some mysterious black republic which the Kaiser at Berlin would like to see in existence. Some facts concerning the treatment of natives in the German colonies in Africa might easily have disposed of the whole matter, but there was no American propaganda at work. It is almost certain that Berlin, with its almost unfailing misreading of conditions in English-speaking countries had counted on the "black terror." A well-known woman in New York, whose two-starred service flag floats over the most magnificent part of Fifth Avenue, states categorically that an evening some years before the war, on the deck of a yacht at Kiel when she was talking with the Kaiser he turned to her with a certain air almost of gay mischievousness and said: "I expect in many ways I know as much about America, Mrs. ——, as you do. In some ways I expect I know more. I know things that may happen which you Americans never suspect." She prtoested deprecatingly and the night and the Imperial mood being propitious to confidence, he continued. "You don't know, of course, that if America were at war—with me, for example, all the Negroes would rise and join the enemy.' The Germans knew of the days of slavery, they knew too of the feeling most Negroes have that the process of emancipation is only half completed. Berlin could foresee that even after the war had begun Negroes could scarcely help saying that a nation warring to make the world safe for democracy ought to make itself democratic at home. And it may have known from spies that before America's entrance into the war many Negroes of the upper and more thinking classes took the Presidential proclamation of neutrality literally and tried to obey it, keeping themselves to a certain extent aloof from the Great War in feeling. To that degree they were pro-German. But the Kaiser and Berlin knew very little of Negro psychology. They did not know that temperamentally it is extremely difficult for the black man to cherish rancor. He blusters a bit, but he really does not do much because he does not like to hate his neighbor. One of the most eloquent of Negro orators claimed lately for his people, in a noble passage, that the race is almost the only one which has learned the lesson of not bearing malice. Indeed if it were not so how, after slavery had disappeared, could the two races so soon have settled down into what was after all a pretty fair friendly relation? The carefully built-up structure of Negro disaffection indeed crumbles like a house of cards if you touch it. And the Negro's attitude to the German propaganda can perhaps be disposed of in a story which Negro audiences greet with uproarious amusement and patriotic delight. The Hun propagandist is represented as buttonholing a black boy and telling him that the colored drafted men are going to get special positions assigned to them. "Yes, you'll be right forward in the first trenches. And when there is an attack to be made the white men rae going to put the colored men all in front of them." "Is they?" the black boy replied, grinning. "Well that's all right; that's one time the white folks ain't going to be running over the colored folks!" Funny, certainly, but, if you think it over, deeply pathetic. When the war came at last the Negro race rose to the occasion with really touching simplicity. No observer could fail to see that the Negroes thrilled deeply to the thought that the American flag was their flag and that it was not only their duty, but their privilege to defend it. Whatever we may feel them, the colored people feel themselves not African but American. Have they not indeed drunk of our wells and eaten of our bread for three centuries? The German propagandists told them the flag was not theirs. But it is the only flag they have ever had, and under it, in spite of adverse conditions, they have attained to a degree of civilization and prosperity and happiness which their fellows have reached under no other. We must remember too that American citizenship, of which some of its white possessors think lightly enough, if for the Negro stiii a great, almost romantic privilege, and that all his hopes for the future are summed up in complete attainment of it and full enjoyment of all its rights and advantages. The race is emotional and the days are propitious for an emotional patriotism. It is too a simple race, still, as far as the vast majority is concerned, uneducated. There is something very engaging in the direct and definite way the Negroes view war, something also very manly and helpful. In these days of bothersome intel- lectual sophistrications it is encouraging to find one class in the community which thinks that the whole business of a soldier is to kill Germans, a necessity that some whites lose sight of in war talk. One black soldier told an officer whom he didn't recognize as his general, "No, boss, I ain't exactly thinking about laying down my life for my country. I'se thinking about how them Germans is going to lay down their lives." Nearly every black soldier has cheerfully promised someone at home to bring back the Kaiser's head on a platter. The black imagination jumps all the stages from the registration table to the front line of trenches. "Well," said one lad as soon as he had signed his name, "when you want me to fight?" "Ever seen military service?" asked a colored member of an exemption board. "No? Well, you're going to!" The colored people believe in the colored troops. They truly believe that when enough Negroes are in the fighting line the war will be over. It may be untutored and naive, but it is such beliefs that win wars, such passionate faith behind the lads in khaki that drives them forward irresistibly. Its very simplicity saves it from being braggadocio and makes it instead a home fire burning as all such fires should. He Does His Bit Financially Too The Negro is of course in no position to give the war the financial support possible to the white. But what he has done will perhaps surprise many. There is time for only a few examples. The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, a Negro corporation of Durham, N. C., has taken a total of $100,000 worth of Liberty Bonds. The Mosaic Templars of Little Rock, Ark., subscribed for $80,000 worth. The Knights of Pythias of Florida took $25,000 worth. One Tuskegee Institute graduate, William V. Chambliss, bought $20,000 worth. The congregation of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, Pa., invested to the amount of $10,000 and churches, fraternities and clubs all over the land place large blocks of their savings and surplus funds in Liberty Bonds through their official authorities. The War Savings Stamps campaign resulted, to take one example, in $800.00 a week being collected in the colored public schools of the capital. A colored banker of Waco, Texas, contributed a full page advertisement of Liberty Bonds and war stamps, as did groups of colored citizens at Louisville, Kentucky; Daytona, Floria, and doubtless other towns. There are several Negro organizations for doing war relief work, the Circle for Negro War Relief, the National Colored Soldiers Comfort Committee, the War Chest, and so forth. To all of these funds are contributed by Negroes, perhaps the most touching gift of all being one hundred dollars sent to the Circle for Negro War Relief by colored prisoners in the New Jersey State Penitentiary. To the Red Cross too the colored people have given money and service, though often under difficulties and discouragements which must be spoken of later. Difficulties and discouragements must indeed now claim attention, since some knowledge of them will perhaps help the nation in utilizing more fully its colored population. Even the North had a record of not being wholly favorable to the Negro as a soldier. The old fifteenth regiment (colored) of the National Guard, which from France sent back the first stories of Negro bravery and won there its two Croix de Guerre was organized in the face of determined opposition. A bill authorizing such a regiment was greeted with violent protests when it was introduced in the New York Legislature of 1911. Passed in 1912, it was vetoed by Governor Dix. Finally, in 1913, it was passed and signed by Governor Sulzer. Now when Negro troops parade up Fifth Avenue they receive a hearty welcome—the press almost instinctively writes of "Bronze heroes." But though the friendliness in the North is fairly evident there are lingering traces of an inability to take the raising of a colored army seriously. A popular magazine in New York lately printed a would-be popular article entitled "Mobilizing Rastus." This, treating the colored soldier in a humorous and friendly way was quite probably designed to give him and his humble friends pleasure. Instead it roused among Negroes generally a very genuine indignation. They want their soldiering to be taken seriously, and they are undoubtedly over-sensitive about the matter. --- Yet it is unquestionably true that being a good soldier is a serious thing. As a contrast to Rastus one might quote from a Negro poet who spoke of the colored troops going to France as "Ethiopia paying her debt to the nation which gave the world Dumas!" The attitude of the South toward the Negro soldier is complicated, difficult to understand, often self-contradictory. In the beginning there were undoubtedly many who felt that this was a "white man's war" and who viewed with apprehension the existence during the war and the return after it of a large body of Negroes who had fought on equal terms and who had learned their power to fight. Exactly what was feared it would be difficult to say; probably not armed uprising of the race, but only a general tendency for the Negro to "feel his oats." And of course any race may "feel its oats" too much. The mere wearing of a uniform makes some people lose their heads. And in any case no one will try to deny the Southern contention that there are "good niggers and bad niggers." Bad Negroes make bad soldiers. There were unhappy outbreaks of violence and lawlessness in some of the Southern camps, and perhaps more such than ever will be known were avoided by tact, diplomacy and persuasion from Washington. And besides the naturally lawless there is the tendency of a very considerable part of the colored race to make the war and the uniform an occasion for a firm stand for equal rights. It was possibly against this tendency that Major General Ballou's much discussed statement was aimed, when he urged his troops not to force the issue of race equality. There had been no definite and final public pronouncement by the War Department on this subject, but it may be here stated with authority that the Secretary. of War has taken a firm stand, which is perfectly understood by those leaders of the colored race whom it chiefly concerns. His attitude is, concisely, that the purpose of the United States army is to win the war, not to settle race questions. If race questions could be settled doubtless no one would be more pleased than he, but such settlements must be incidental to the greater one of defeating Germany. On the whole it may be said that the apprehensions before the advent of the Negro soldier have not been justified by the results. Governor Manning of South Carolina, for example, made a trip to Washington to protest against the placing of Negro soldiers in the training camps of his state. It was possible lately to read in one of the leading newspapers of Columbia an editorial highly praising the colored recruits for their behavior and saying in effect that it had been a pleasure, if not even a source of pride to have them quartered there. It was said that the necessity of white privates saluting colored officers was an intolerable, almost insuperable difficulty. There were people who talked as if it might almost be better to give up the war rather than to try to enforce any such discipline. But we hear almost nothing of all that now. The simple common sense of the American army declined to exaggerate or lend undue significance to a mere disciplinary form. Some of the things which have happened at the cantonments indeed show an almost fantastic disregard of the race feeling which it was said would be so dangerously rife. There are colored Y. M. C. A. huts at the camps and in some of the camps they are constantly resorted to by white, and even Southern white soldiers. And at one Southern camp an order had to be issued forbidding white soldiers to use the colored hut, as there was not sufficient accommodation for both races. And it almost came to a point where the segregated white soldiers protested for their equal rights! The "Buffalo Auditorium" erected at Camp Upton by the 267th Infantry at their own expense or with money raised by them and presented to the camp is the theatre of constant entertainments, and when the "Darktown Follies" or other classics of the colored theatre are presented the white audience is as big if not bigger than the colored, and often bigger than the audiences at the white camp theatres. The singing of the colored soldiers, which has been developed under competent training has doubtless had much to do with the promotion of good feeling. No one who has heard a few hundreds or thousands of black boys singing "The Old Flag Never Touched the Ground," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," or "Little David, Play on Your Harp," can keep from at least a momentary friendliness towards the singers. And when Little David is enthusiastically conjured to jump on his harp and even t oslide on it the infectious good nature of the black race generally conquers the listener. So much for the problem of the actual mingling of the races in camps. One Negro lad laughingly assured a white boy that there was no harm in their soldiering together; he too, so he said, had white blood in his veins, as his ancestors had once eaten a Baptist missionary! So far we have dealt only with white objections to the Negro's being a soldier—we have still to touch on too great eagerness to force him into the ranks. In some parts of the South—by no means all parts—there appeared on the announcement of the draft a feeling that the Negroes must be taken for "cannon fodder" before the white were heavily drawn upon. The Local Boards of Exemption of Fulton County, Georgia (Atlanta the county seat) and Taliaferro County were so unfair to colored draftees that the Secretary of War ordered their immediate discharge or removal. In the cases of both of these Boards there were wholesale exemptions and discharges of white men for all sorts of causes or excuses, and (in the case of the Atlanta Board) only six discharges or exemptions granted colored draftees. The unfairness and discrimination was so manifest that the Secretary of War did not hesitate for a moment. These are of course exceptionally flagrant cases, yet the figures of the first draft are food for thought. 36.23 per cent of the colored men examined were certified for service, while only 24.75 per cent of the white men were taken. The Provost Marshal General's office officially says that this difference between colored men and white men is "probably not due to either a difference in physical qualifications, nor to a difference in the applicability of the several legal grounds for exemption and discharge." One can only comment, probably not. But if the Negro is really so much stronger, so much more available for military service than the white man, so much more is he a national asset. Even outside actual military service there have been what seemed to the Negro discouragements to patriotism. It seemed for example that colored trained nurses should be enrolled and allowed at least to give their aid to the ill and wounded of their own race at home and abroad. No very strong argument against this enrollment was advanced, but for a long time it did not take place. And the Red Cross, which has as a national organization, all the best intentions in the world toward the colored race, encountered many difficulties in carrying them out. Membership in the Red Cross was, fantastically enough, conceived in some parts of the country to be a social distinction which could never be bestowed upon the Negro. It was even suggested that a "Black Cross" be organized. Difficulties were put in the way of organizing colored chapters, badges and pins were withheld, and surgical dressing produced by Negro women were rejected wholesale. Yet the colored people persisted. The nurses raised money to present an ambulance and Red Cross branches were formed and knitting and sewing do go on. The Negro is after all an optimist, an opportunist, and something of a gambler. He believes that the war presents the greatest opportunity of service to the country which has even been offered his race. And broadly speaking he is content to wait for his reward rather than to fight for it now. He believes that if he proves himself a brave soldier in France and a patriotic citizen at home both the white soldier in France and the white civilian here will gain some new conviction that the Negro is a true American and perhaps even a brother American, and that after the war the gates of opportunity will open wider to him. Of course this attitude seems to trusting to many Negroes, who are instead determined to win recognition as they give service. And what may be termed the "black intellectuals" often say they must "know where they are going in this war." This temper of mind we often encounter in "white intellectuals" who seem incapable of abandoning themselves to the simple patriotic elan. Perhaps neither class quite represents the feeling of the whole people. A New Day for the Negro in the South A very prominent Negro said lately that already in the last six months his people had made more progress than in any six months since Lincoln's time. Mr. Emmett Scott's appointment in the War Department is very significant, as in the later one of Dr. George Haynes to the Department of Labor. Mr. Scott's attitude is frankly that he is not in the Department to explain the administration to the Negro but instead to explain the Negro to the administration. The Ft. Des Moines camp too is symptomatic. One of the chief contents of the Negroes has been for years that they should be allowed to fight and to work under leaders and supervisors of their own race. When the Government no longer puts out posters advertising for "white men accustomed to handling Negroes" a great step will have been taken, according to the views of the colored people. And every time that a shop or a factory puts Negroes in charge of Negro laborers—as is happening now—an advance has been made. The enormous migration of Negroes from the South to the North during the past two years is also speeding up the settlement of various problems touching on colored labor. The South is facing the simple fact that the Negro is leaving because he is not satisfied with either social or educational or economic conditions there. And all over the South the better and the more thoughtful element among the whites is coming forth frankly to say that the Negro is so valuable to the South that fairer, better conditions must be made and made at once so that he may be induced to stay. There are of course fire-eaters here and there who say if war is to mean that the Negro is to get equal rights the war had better not be fought. And there is of course the contradictory and saddening increase of lynching which has been one great cause of the migration. And yet on the whole this is a new day for the Negro in most parts of the South. In the North the war shortage of labor has also given the Negro a new value. Up to the present perhaps the greatest disadvantage under which he worked was his exclusion from the ranks of organized labor. All efforts by the laboring class for the improvement of their conditions were efforts exclusively for the white man. The Negro, whether he would or not, was looked on largely as a "strike breaker" and an outcast. Now at last the American Federation of Labor has made the move, and it is now possible for the Negro to enroll himself. He will thus be brought to the notice of a large element in our population as a fellow worker and even possibly as a human being. The first international riviting prize went to a Negro, and everywhere hammers in black hands moved more swiftly and more proudly. Provision is now being made by the Government for special training of the young men of the race in technical and mechanical work, which will add to their efficiency as a factor in the army and render them capable of earning a better livelihood for themselves at the clsoe of the war. Definite arrangements and contracts have been made with several standard schools to give selected students training during the summer and fall in such branches as radio engineering, general engineering, woodworking, electricity, carpentry, auto-mechanics, blacksmithing and operation of motor vehicles of many kinds. Accommodations had in June been provided for about 3,000 men. Several other institutions were under contemplation and the number of men to be provided for will reach about 4,000. In the army itself the mechanical ability of the Negro is being fostered and utilized. Educated colored men have been afforded opportunities to enlist or qualify for such branches as the Field Artillery, and there are now in active service three regiments—the 349th, 350th and 351st Field Artillery. A training school to prepare officers of the race for these regiments has been established at Camp Meade, Maryland, and it is said that the young men detailed for this training are showing marked adaptability for the intricate work involved. Many of them are college-trained—graduates from Amherst, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania. Chicago University and other institutions of the first rank in America. The Personnel Officer of the Coast Artillery has thrown open the doors to this branch to colored men not yet called into active service and announces that there is a need for college equipment and Negroes with the necessary educational qualifications will be warmly welcomed into the Coast Artillery. There is one regiment of Engineers (the 317th) at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio, under command of Col. Early I. Brown, and many of the officers are colored. The race is also numerously 4 Aw hho rier agi sie 4 weaker hs dete usc on te Le +e eRe ee Hee » +i Bivena al ee ek sade ee in the Aviation Corps there or elsewhere. Thus again we come back to the army and the Negro as a soldier. But as the war progresses it is the Negro at the front in France who seems to call for notice. Here on the battle-line is his real test as an American in the year 1918. Here he, as well as other races not of: the old American stock, hopes to be fused into the new American- ism which embraces all. Here on this old and scarred soil, the Negro hopes not only to receive the cross from France, but from America, his own America as he feels it, the even greater prize, American citzenship in a broader deeper sense than ever before. Testimony must come straight from the front. And happily it is possible to reproduce here parts of a letter to Mr. Emmett Scott from a command- ing officer of one of the first in France. Himself a white man, he speaks for us all with authority. “I have two battalions in the trenches. The three rotate. Our boys have had their baptism of fire. They have patrolled No Man’s Land. They have gone on raids and one of my lieutenants has been cited for a decoration. Of course, it is still in the experimental stage, but two questions of the gravest importance to our Country and to the Negro race have, in my opinion, been answered. “First: How will American Negro soldiers, in- cluding commissioned officers (of whom I still have five), get along in service with French sol- diers and officers—as for instance a Negro regi- ment of Infantry serving in a French combat di- vision? “Second: Will the American Negro stand up un- der the terrible shell fire of this war as he has always stood under rifle fire and thus prove his superiority spiritually and intellectually to all the black men of Africa and Asia, who have failed under these conditions and whose use must be limited to attack or for shock troops? “We have answered the first question in a most gratifying way. The French soldiers have not the slightest prejudice or feeling. The poilus and my boys are great chums, eat, dance, sing, march and fight together in absolute accord. The French officers have little, if any feeling about Negro of- ficers. What little, if any, is not racial but from skepticism that a colored man (judging of course by those they have known) can have the technical education necessary to make an efficient officer. However, as I write these lines Capt. —— and Lieut. —— are living at the French officers’ mess at our division Infanterie School, honored guests. “The program I enclose gives you an idea of the way I’ve cultivated friendship between my boys and the poilus. You should have seen the 500 soldiers, French and mine, all mixed up together cheering and laughing at the show while the Boche shells (box car size) went screaming over our heads. “Now on the second question, perhaps I am premature. But both my two battalions which have gone in have been under shell fire, serious and prolonged once, and the boys just laughed and cuddled into their shelters and read old news- papers. It was getting very warm around the roll- ing kitchen. The cooks went along about their business in absolute unconcern until the alarmed French soldiers ran to them and told them to beat it. One of the cooks said, ‘Oh that’s all right, boss. They ain’t hurting us none.’ They are pos- itively the most stoical and mysterious men I’ve ever known. Nothing surprises them. And we now have expert opinion. The French officers say they are entirely different from their own African troops and the Indian troops of the Brit- ish, who are so excitable under shell fire. Of course, I have explained that my boys are public school boys, wise in their day and generation, no caste prejudice, accustomed to the terrible noises of subway, elevated and street traffic of New York City (which would drive any desert man or Hima- laya mountaineer mad) and are all Christians. Also that while the more ignorant ones might not arrant coward, who refused to throw. Said he coudin’t. Another threw prematurely after ignit- ing the bomb. We asked him why he did not wait for the command to throw (Barrage). He said ‘Kunnel, that old grenade—she began to swell right in my hand.’ The boys keep writing home that the ‘war is not so bad if you just go at it right.’ Well, a very wise command somewhere, I don’t know where, has let us go at it right. You know I’ve always told these boys I’d never send them anywhere I would not go myself, so I went first to the trenches, prowled around, saw it all and came back to the regiment to take in the battalion which was to go in first. When they Saw me covered with mud, but safe and sound they said, ‘How is she, Kunnel? ‘She’s all right,’ I said. They all laughed and then the sick and the lame of that battalion began to get well mirac- ulously and begged to go. Capt. Clark called for twelve volunteers for a raid and the company fell in to the last man—all wanted to go—and he had to pick his twelve after all. - “Do you wonder that I love them, every one, good, bad and indifferent?” May one not add here, do you wonder that they, every one, good, bad and indifferent, love the colonel There is more pleasant talk, a mention of Jim Europe, and of the fact that they loyally call their village “Bakersville.” And finally a cheerful state- ment that they will “plant the hobnailed boots of the Heavy Ethiopian foot in the Kaiser’s face all right.” Does anyone much doubt that such sol- diers will? Is it nt a newer, better world where all America’s children can so gaily, passionately fight for her? And if we fight for Liberty and win it, shall we be sparing of it to any soldier boys when peace shall come?—Metropolitan. NEVE Evia et Suggestions for Christmas Gifts that would be appreciated by the most fas- tidious :— Life and Work of BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Life and Works of PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR Any of Prof. Kelly Miller’s publications Negro Soldiers in Our War By FREDERICK E. DRINKER Or a subscription to a Negro Journal or Magazine. We also carry useful gifts in Toilet Articles Toilet Water, Perfumery, Razors and Strops, Combs and Brushes, Etc. High Class Tonsorial Artist in Attendance Mr. Edw. Gardner, Mr. J. C. Garner, Mr. Thos. Williams, Mr. George E. Tlayes. We Solicit Your Inspection TUTT’S BARBER SHOP 300 Main St. r \ J NG a i fr ; ec Se Phone East 179 PENN UNDERTAKING COMPANY Funeral Directors and Embalmers The only Colored Undertaking Estab- lishment in the Northwest Owned, Managed and Financed by Colored Brain and Money. ‘‘Best service at moderate prices,’’ is our motto. Your business will be highly apreciated. Calls promptly answered day or night. P. FRAZIER Funeral Director and Manager Parlors, 1215 East Marion St., Seattle Phone 2647 1034 Jackson Tailors and Cleaners. Clothes called for and delivered. Hats retrimmed and blocked. H. S. Frazier C. W. Curtest SEATTLE LIGHTING CO. Lightens your burdens. Day or night it’s always there with the goods. SEATTLE LIGHTING CO. WEST & WHEELER There are real estate dealers and real estate dealers, but— WEST & WHEELER Marion Building Cheasty’s Good Clothes for Men and Women. You can’t beat it. CHEASTY’S Second and Spring Alhambra Cash Grocery a ee Vv; H. Banks, Mgr. ‘we Carry a Full Line of Fancy and Staple Groceries WE KINDLY INVITE YOUR INSPECTION Our New Store: 1201-3 Jackson St. Phone Beacon 505 Seen water) ae aaa eet) Cee ee a en heer ———— IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF Washington, for King County. In the Mater of the Estate of Nelson J. Wing, De- ceased—In Probate. No. 23689. Notice to Credit- ors. Notice is hereby given that the undersigned has been appointed and has qualified as Executrix of the estate of Nelson J. Wing, Deceased; that all persons having claims against said deceased or against said estate are hereby required to serve the same, duly verified, on said Executrix or her attorney of record at the address below stated, and file the same with the Clerk of said Court together with proof of such service within six months after the date of first publication of this notice, to-wit: within six months after the 7th day of December, 1918, or the same wil be barred. Date of first publication December 7, 1918. VIOLA GRAY, ’ Executrix of said Estate. Address 701 Leary Bldg., Seattle, Washington. E. H. GUIE, Attorney for Estate. 701 Leary Building, Seattle, Washington, Dec. 7, Jan. 4, 1919. IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF Washington, for King County. In the Matter of the Estate of Enoch J. Mathis, De- ceased.—In Probate. No. 23991. Notice to Credit- ors. Notice is hereby given that the undersigned has been appointed and has qualified as Executor of the estate of Enoch J. Mathis, Deceased; that all per- sons having claims against said deceased or against said estate are hereby required to serve the same, duly verified, on said Executor or his attorney of record at the address below stated, and file the same with the Clerk of said Court together with proof of such service within six months after the date of first publication of this notice, to-wit: within six months from the 7th day of December, 1918, or the same will be barred. Date of first publication December 7, 1918. WILLIAM H. CLARKE, Hxecutor of said Hstate. Address 701 Leary Building, Seattle, Washington. E. H, GUIB, Attorney for Estate. 701 Leary Building, Seattle, Wash. December 7, January 4, 1918, IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF Washington, for King County. In the Matter of the Estate of Cora Green, Deceased. =In Probate. No, 22412. Notice of Hearing Final Report and Petition for Distribution. Notice is hereby given that W, D. Carter, Ad- ministrator of the Estate of Cora Green, has filed in the office of the Clerk of said Court his final Report and petition for distribution, asking the Court to settle said Report, distribute the property to the per- sons thereto entitled and to discharge said W. D. Carter; and that said Report and petition will be heard on the 2nd day of January, 918, at 9:30 A. M., at the Court Room of the Probate Department of said Court. Dated this 27th day of November, 1918. , PERCY F, THOMAS, »Clerk of said Court. By GEO. L. BERGER, Deputy. December 7, December 28, 1918 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF Washington for King County. Victoria. M. Glass and George Glass, her husband, plaintiffs, vs. Times Printing Co., a corporation, et als, Ernest Huschke, and any known or unknown heirs or per- sons having or claiming to have any interest in Lot 5 and W. half of Lot 4, in Block 10, of Hill- man’s School House Division of Green Lake Addi- tion to City of Seattle, King County, Washington, defendants.—No, 131890. Summons by Publica- tion. The State of Washington to the said Ernest Huschke and any known or unknown heirs or persons hav- ing or claiming to have any interest in Lot 5, and West half of Lot 4, in Block 10, of Hillman’s School House Division of Green Lake Addition to City of Seattle, King County, Washington, defena- ants: You are hereby summoned to appear within sixty days after the date of the first publication of this summons, to-wit: within sixty days after the 16th day of November, 1918, and defend the above entitled action in the above entitled court, and answer the complaint of the plaintiffs, and serve a copy of your answer upon the undersigned attorney for plaintiff at his office below stated; and in case of your failure so to do, judgment will be rendered against you according to the demand of the complaint, which has been filed with the clerk of said court. The object of the above entitled action is to quiet title to Lot 5 and West half of Lot 4 in Block 10 of Hillman’s School House Division to Green Lake Addition to City of Seattle, King County, Washing- ton. Z. B. RAWSON, Attorney for Plaintiffs. P.O. Address: 617 Pacific Block, Seattle, King County, Wash. is