with the white man, they declined. Take the island of Jamaica, for instance. Two hundred and fifty years after its discovery the Arawak Indians had totally disappeared. They could not stand slavery, while the Negro brought there as a slave, and subjected to as harsh or harsher treatment, is today master of the island. I have seen a great deal of Indian life, and I think it much below the Negro standard."

The passenger again brought up the subject of Negro mentality and Dixon referred him to the following quotation from Myers, Lecturer on Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, England, in his paper before the Races Congress:

"The mental characters of the majority of the peasant class through Europe are essentially the same as those of primitive communities."

Just then another passenger, on his way from the observation car, entered the room, and, handing a telegram to Dixon, asked him to send it at the next stop. When this passenger had gone, the other once more brought up the subject of Negro mentality. Dixon then read to him the following passage from Finot: "It is fruitless to maintain the theory of the mental inferiority of Negroes. Twenty years of intellectual work has often proved sufficient for a Maori, Zulu, Red Skin or Negro to win back in his individual self, the centuries of mental arrest or mental sleep experienced by his congeners. This property common to all human being provides them at once with a trait of ineffacable equality.

"The psychology of primitive peoples and especially of Negroes strangely resembles that of the uncultured classes of Europe. Their prepossessions, ideas and superstitions betray a similarity which draws them singularly together. The inhabitants of Negro villages in Central Africa are like the peasants living far from railways in

the extreme north of Russia, or the extreme south of Italy."

Dixon then lowered his book, and remarked: "One of the greatest arguments brought forward in support of Negro inferiority-an argument that not a few Negroes are inclined to admit-is that the Negro has been a slave. But I am sure that if the slave traders had captured some primitive European people, and subjected them to the same dehumanizing treatment, the result would. have been the same. For instance, in Richard Hildreth's 'Memoirs of Archie, a White Slave,' a prominent slave-dealer says (here Dixon consulted his note book): 'Just catch a stray Irish or German girl and sell her a thing sometimes done-and she turns a "nigger" at once, and makes just as good a slave as if there were African blood in her veins.'"

He now closed his note book, saying at the same time: "The more I study anthropology, the stronger is my belief that the difference between one people and another is the result of environment."

"But," objected the passenger, “even in the black man's home, the white man is master. Look how easy it is for small numbers of white men to rule large numbers of Africans! Look in India! A mere handful of English persons holding in subjection hundreds of millions of natives. Then, too, take the New World. What ,was it before the white man came here? Imagine what it would be now if the white man had not come here. Look at China, the oldest country in the world! It stood still until the white man got there. Japan owes its progress to the white race. The white man has conquered or overrun almost every country on the globe. He rules Europe, the whole of Africa, except one or two inconsequential spots; the far greater part of Asia, the whole American Continent and Australia; in fact, he is master of the world. That the world is a better place to

live in is due entirely to the magic touch of the white race."

"Of course," concurred Dixon, "The Caucasian is the most advanced and we must look to certain of its branches to take the lead in material progress. I readily admit that the general awakening all over the world is due almost entirely to his energy. But even this energy is conquered by the climate, which has retarded the growth of many of these peoples you speak about. The white man going to these countries with his superior fighting implements, his more developed intellect and higher civilization, has a decided advantage over the natives. But he must be reinforced from time to time by fresh numbers or he, too, is likely to yield to the spell of the climate. I have seen white men in the tropics sink so low as to be objects of disgust to the lowest native. Blackburn, speaking of this, says: 'In Africa the animalistic self-indulgent white man approximates yet nearer the animal; the intellectually active, destitute of the stimulus of conversation and encounter with diverse opinion and nimble wits, becomes an intellectual fungoid.' The white immigrant in the tropics becomes less energetic, while the black one in northern latitudes improves in energy. The Negro of northern latitudes, I think, is superior in energy to the average white man in the tropics."

"But Negroes have been living in northern latitudes for nearly three hundred years," protested the passenger, "and yet from among them has not emerged one single genius, indeed, not even a famous man. Many Negroes pampered by white admirers, and gross exaggerations from their own race, have acquired a pseudo-fame, but had they been white men no special notice would have been taken of them."

"It is true," acknowledged Dixon, "that the Negro has been living in northern latitudes for three hundred years, but under what debased conditions? Just see

what he has done in fifty years of freedom. It is also probably true that the mediocre attainments of certain Negroes have been enhanced by the fact of their color, but is it not also probable that these men would have done better but for the handicap of color? Thus, you see, one compensates for the other. Then, too, since mediocrity is a human characteristic, and is to be found in human beings having the widest and fullest opportunities for advancement and development why marvel at its appearance in a people who have been almost universally and uniformly oppressed and repressed below the level of self-respect?

In

"Yet there are many Negroes who have achieved prominence regardless of color. It is generally conceded that the most remarkable man that the South has produced since Lincoln is Booker T. Washington. my opinion he is the most remarkable figure the United States has yet produced, and he is undoubtedly one of the greatest men of all time. There are also many Negro authors of unqualified merit, as Dunbar, Blyden, DuBois, Kelly Miller, Braithewaite and Oscar Mischeaux. DuBois belongs to the aristocracy of English letters. There are few, if any, living English authors who excel him in eloquence and elegance of diction. He is doing more than any other that I know of, especially through his magazine, 'The Crisis,' to awaken the Negro to a fuller sense of his manhood rights. Kelly Miller is a distinguished sociologist and essayist, and a born mathematician, a fact apparent in his writings, for although he speaks on a subject that must affect him deeply, yet he is always the polished analyst. Braithewaite is one of the foremost critics of poetry in this country, and Oscar Mischeaux, according to the 'London Standard' and other critics, is in the front rank of American novelists. If white America, with thousands of years of culture behind it, has produced so remarkably few geniuses, not half a dozen, how can you expect geniuses from a peo

ple but recently in slavery's chains? In two European countries, men of Negro descent, Poushkin and Dumas, have led all the others in their respective spheres."

The wind was whistling through the ventilators, blowing in small flakes of snow. Dixon arose and closed the transom.

"But the ability of these men is due to their white blood," said the passenger when Dixon returned. "The pure-blooded Negro is incapable of reasoning. He learns things like a parrot."

"No, indeed, sir," protested Dixon. "When I was in Europe, I met and heard of many African lads fresh from the jungles, who were acquitting themselves with honor in the best universities there. An Oxford graduate told me of one James Chala Selfy, an old classmate of his, who, as a boy, was taken at random from among among hundreds on a captured slave ship and carried to England. This lad eclipsed his classmates, especially in Latin and Hebrew. Abbe Gregoire speaks of Amo, a full-blooded Negro who was an astronomer and lectured on philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. A Zulu once won the gold medal for oratory at Columbia University. Kelly Miller is a distinguished mathematician, and there is Dr. Bowen of the Gammon Theological Seminary. In 1914 a full-blooded Negro led all his classmates at Harvard. Psychology really is independent of color. Negroes like the Haytian novelist, Fernan Hilbert, have been able to write novels depicting the sensations and emotions of the whites in a way to satisfy the whites themselves. Shakespeare, when he created Othello with such stateliness of character, saw that color had no effect on the soul. One of the ablest of Othellos was Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius; Bilal, a full-blooded Negro, was the first to utter the Azan, or Call to Prayer of the Mohammedans, ranking next to Mahommed, who accorded him precedence in Heaven; Kafur, a full-blooded Negro, was also one of the most