PART II - The Ebbing Tide of White

CHAPTER IX
THE SHATTERING OF WHITE SOLIDARITY

THE instinctive comity of the white peoples is, as I have already said, perhaps the greatest constant of history. It is the psychological basis of white civilization. Cohesive instinct is as vital to race as gravitation is to matter. Without them, atomic disintegration would alike result. In speaking of race-instinct, I am not referring merely to the ethnic theories that have been elaborated at various times. Those theories were, after all, but attempts to explain intellectually the urge of that profound emotion known to sociologists as the "consciousness of kind." White race-consciousness has been of course perturbed by numberless internal frictions, which have at times produced partial inhibitions of unitary feeling. Nevertheless, when really faced by non-white opposition, white men have in the past instinctively tended to close their ranks against the common foe. One of the Great War's most deplorable results has been an unprecedented weakening of white solidarity which, if not repaired, may produce the most disastrous consequences. During the nineteenth century the sentiment of white solidarity was strong. The great explorers and empire-builders who spread white ascendancy to the ends of the earth felt that they were apostles of their race and civilization as well as of a particular country. Rivalries might be keen and colonial boundary questions acute; nevertheless, in their calmer moments, the white peoples felt that the expansion of one white nation buttressed the expansion of all. Professor Pearson undoubtedly voiced the spirit of the day when he wrote (about 1890) that it would be well "if European statesmen could understand that the wars which carry desolation into civilized countries are allowing the lower races to recruit their numbers and strength. Two centuries hence it may be matter of serious concern to the world if Russia has been displaced by China on the Amoor, if France has not been able to colonize North Africa, or if England is not holding India. For civilized men there can be only one fatherland, and whatever extends the influence of those races that have taken their faith from Palestine, their laws of beauty from Greece, and their civil law from Rome, ought to be matter of rejoicing to Russian, German, Anglo-Saxon, and Frenchman alike." (1 Pearson, pp. 14-15.) The progress of science also fortified white race-consciousness with its sanctions. The researches of European scholars identified the founders of our civilization with a race of tall, white-skinned barbarians, possessing regular features, brown or blond hair, and light eyes. This was, of course, what we now know as the Nordic type. At first the problem was ill understood, the tests applied being language and culture rather than physical characteristics. For these reasons the early "Caucasian" and "Aryan" hypotheses were self-contradictory and inadequate. Nevertheless, the basis was sound, and the effects on white popular psychology were excellent. Particularly good were the effects upon the peoples predominantly of Nordic blood. Obviously typifying as they did the prehistoric creators of white civilization, Nordics everywhere were strengthened in consciousness of genetic worth, feeling of responsibility for world-progress, and urge toward fraternal collaboration. The supreme value of Nordic blood was clearly analyzed by the French thinker Count Arthur de Gobineau as early as 1854 (His book "De l'Inégalité des Races Humaines" first appeared at that date.) (albeit Gobineau employed the misleading "Aryan" terminology) and his thesis was subsequently elaborated by many other writers, notably by Englishmen, Germans, and Scandinavians. The results of all this were plainly apparent by the closing years of the nineteenth century. Quickened Nordic race-consciousnees played an important part in stimulating Anglo-American fraternization , and induced acts like the Oxford Scholarship legacy of Cecil Rhodes. The trend of this movement, though crosscut by nationalistic considerations, was clearly in the direction of a Nordic entente - a Pan-Nordic syndication of power for the safeguarding of the race-heritage and the harmonious evolution of the whole white world. It was a glorious aspiration, which, had it been realized, would have averted Armageddon. Unfortunately the aspiration remained a dream. The ill-balanced tendencies of the late nineteenth century were against it, and they ultimately prevailed. The abnormal growth of national-imperialism, in particular, wrought fatal havoc. The exponents of imperialistic propagandas like Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism put forth literally boundless pretensions, planning the domination of the entire planet by their special brand of national-imperialism. Such men had scant regard for race-lines. All who stood outside their particular nationalistic group were vowed to the same subjection. Indeed, the national-imperialists presently seized upon race teachings, and prostituted them to their own ends. A notable example of this is the extreme Pan-German propaganda of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Especially as expounded in Chamberlain's chief work, "Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" ("The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century").) and his fellows. Chamberlain makes two cardinal assumptions: he conceives modern Germany as racially almost purely Nordic; and he regards all Nordics outside the German linguistic-cultural group as either unconscious or renegade Teutons who must at all costs be brought into the German fold. To any one who understands the scientific realities of race, the monstrous absurdity of these assumptions is instantly apparent. The fact is that modern Germany, far from being purely Nordic, is mainly Alpine in race. Nordic blood preponderates only in the northwest, and is merely veneered over the rest of Germany, especially in the upper classes. While the Germania of Roman days was unquestionably a Nordic land, it has been computed that of the 70,000,000 inhabitants of the German Empire in 1914, only 9,000,000 were purely Nordic in character. This displacement of the German Nordics since classic times is chiefly due to Germany's troubled history, especially to the horrible Thirty Years' War which virtually annihilated the Nordics of south Germany. This racial displacement has wrought correspondingly profound changes in the character of the German people. The truth of the matter is, of course, that the Pan-Germans were thinking in terms of nationality instead of race, and that they were using pseudo-racial arguments as camouflage for essentially political ends. The pity of it is that these arguments have had such disastrous repercussions in the genuine racial sphere. The late war has not only exploded Pan-Germanism, it has also discredited Nordic race-feeling, so unjustly confused by many persons with Pan-German nationalistic propaganda. Such persons should remember that the overwhelming majority of Nordics live outside of Germany, being mainly found in Scandinavia, the Anglo-Saxon countries, northern France, the Netherlands, and Baltic Russia. To let Teuton propaganda gull us into thinking of Germany as the Nordic fatherland is both a danger and an absurdity. While Pan-Germanism was mainly responsible for precipitating Armageddon with all its disastrous consequences, it was Russian Pan-Slavism which dealt the first shrewd blow to white solidarity. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, Pan-Slavism's "Eastern" wing led by Prince Ukhtomsky and other chauvinists of his ilk, went so far in its imperialistic obsession as actually to deny Russia's white blood. These Pan-Slavists boldly proclaimed the morbid, mystical dogma that Russia was Asiatic, not European, and thereupon attempted to seize China as a lever for upsetting, first the rest of Asia, and then the non-Russian white world - elegantly described as "the rotten west." The white Power immediately menaced was, of course, England, who in acute fear for her Indian Empire, promptly riposted by allying herself with Japan. Russia was diplomatically isolated and militarily beaten in the Russo-Japanese War. Thus the Russo-Japanese War, that destroyer of white prestige whose ominous results we have already noted, was precipitated mainly by the reckless short-sightedness of white men themselves. A second blow to white solidarity was presently administered - this time by England in concluding her second alliance-treaty with Japan. The original alliance, signed in 1902, was negotiated for a definite, limited objective - the checkmating of Russia's overweening imperialism. Even that instrument was dangerous, but under the circumstances it was justifiable and inevitable. The second alliance-treaty, however, was so general and far-reaching in character that practically all white men in the Far East, including most emphatically Englishmen themselves, pronounced it a great disaster. Meanwhile, German imperialism was plotting even deadlier strokes at white race-comity, not merely by preparing war against white neighbors in Europe, but also by ingratiating itself with the Moslem East and by toying with schemes for building up a black military empire in central Africa. Lastly, France was actually recruiting black, brown, and yellow hordes for use on European battle-fields; while Italy, by her buccaneering raid on Tripoli, outraged Islam's sense of justice and strained its patience to the breaking-point. Thus, in the years preceding Armageddon, all the European Powers displayed a reckless absorption in particularistic ambitions and showed a callous indifference to larger race-interests. The rapid weakening of white solidarity was clearly apparent. However, white solidarity, though diplomatically compromised, was emotionally not yet really undermined. Those dangerous games above mentioned were largely the work of cynical chancelleries and ultra-imperialist propagandas. The average European, whatever his nationality, still tended to react instinctiveIy against such practices. This was shown by the sharp criticism which arose from the most varied quarters. For example: Russia and Britain were alike sternly taken to task both at home and abroad for their respective Far Eastern policies; proposed German alliances with Pan-Islamism and Japan preached by disciples of Machtpolitik were strenuously opposed as race-treason by powerful sections of German thought; while Italy's Tripolitan imbroglio was generally denounced as the most foolhardy trifling with the common European interest. A good illustration of instinctive white solidarity in the early years of the twentieth century is a French journalist's description of the attitude of the white spectators (of various nationalities) gathered to watch the landing in Japan of the first Russian prisoners taken in the Russo-Japanese War. This writer depicts in moving language the literally horrifying effect of the spectacle upon himself and his fellows. "What a triumph," he exclaims, "what a revenge for the little Nippons to see thus humiliated these big, splendid men who, for them, represented, not only Russians, but those Europeans whom they so detest! This scene tragic in its simplicity, this grief passing amid joy, these whites, vanquished and captives, defiling before those free and triumphant yellows - this was not Russia beaten by Japan, not the defeat of one nation by another; it was something new, enormous, prodigious; it was the victory of one world over another; it was the revenge which effaced the centuries of humiliations borne by Asia; it was the awakening hope of the Oriental peoples; it was the first blow given to the other race, to that accursed race of the West, which, for so many years, had triumphed without out even having to struggle. And the Japanese crowd felt all this, and the few other Asiatics who found themselves there shared in this triumph. The humiliation of these whites was solemn, frightful. I completely forgot that these captives were Russians, and I would add that the other Europeans there, though anti-Russian, felt the same malaise: they also were forced to feel that these captives were their own kind. When we took the train for Kobe, an instinctive solidarity drove us huddling into the same compartment." (Pinon, "La Lutte pour le Pacifique," p. 165.) Thus white solidarity, while unquestionably weakened, was still a weighty factor down to August, 1914. But the first shots of Armageddon saw white solidarity literally blown from the muzzles of the guns. An explosion of internecine hatred burst forth more intense and general than any ever known before. Both sets of combatants proclaimed a duel to the death; both sides vowed the enemy to something near annihilation; while even scientists and litterateurs, disrupting the ancient commonwealths of wisdom and beauty, put one another furiously to the ban. In their savage death-grapple neither side hesitated for an instant to grasp at any weapon, whatever the ultimate consequences to the race. The Allies poured into white Europe colored hordes of every pigment under the sun; the Teutonic Powers wielded Pan-Islam as a besom of wrath to sweep clean every white foothold in Hither Asia and North Africa; while far and wide over the Dark Continent black armies fought for their respective masters - and learned the hidden weakness of the white man's power. In the Far East, Japan, left to her own devices, bent amorphous China to her imperious will, thereby raising up a potential menace for the entire earth. Every day the tide of intestine hatred within the white world rose higher, until the very concept of a common blood and cultural past seemed in danger of being blotted out. A symposium of the "hate literature" of the Great War is fortunately no part of my task, but the reader will readily recall both its abysmal fury and its irreconcilable implications. The most appalling feature was the way in which many writers assumed that this state of mind would be permanent; that the end of the Great War might be only the beginning of a war-cycle leading to the utter disruption of white solidarity and civilization. In the spring of 1916, the London Nation remarked gloomily: "Europe is now being mentally conceived as inevitably and permanently dual. We are ceasing to think of Europe. The normal end of war (which is peace) is to be submerged in the idea of a war-series indefinitely prolonged. Soon the entire Continent will have but one longing - the longing for rest. The cup is to be dashed from its lips! For a world steeped in fear and ruled by the barren logomachy of hate, diplomatic intercourse would almost cease to be possible.... In the matter of culture, modern Europe would tend to relapse to a state inferior even to that of mediaeval Europe, and to sink far below that of the Renaissance." (The Nation (London), April 8,1916, pp. 32-33.) In similar vein, the noted German historian Eduard Meyer (Eduard Meyer, "England: Its Political Organization and Development and the War against Germany" (English translation, Boston, 1916).) predicted that Armageddon was only the first of a long series of Anglo-German "Punic Wars" in which modern civilization would retrograde to a condition of semi-barbarism. Germany, according to this prophecy, would be the victo r- but a Pyrrhic victor, for the colored races, taking advantage of white decadence, would destroy European supremacy and involve all the white nations in a common ruin. The ulcerated state of European war-psychology did, in fact, lend ominous emphasis to these gloomy prognostications. Before 1914, as we have seen, imperialistic trafficking with common race-interests usually roused wide-spread criticism, while even more, the use of colored troops in white quarrels always roused bitter popular condemnation. In the darkest hours of the Boer War, English public opinion had refused to sanction the use of either black African or brown Indian troops against the white foe, while French plans for raising black armies of African savages for use in Europe were almost universally reprobated. Before Armageddon there thus existed a genuine moral repugnance against settling domestic differences by calling in the alien without the gates. The Great War, however, sent all such scruples promptly into the discard. Not only did the belligerent governments use all the colored troops they could equip, but the belligerent peoples hailed this action with unqualified approval. The Allies were of course the more successful in practice, but the Germans were just as eager, and the exertions of the Prussian General Liman von Sanders actually got Turkish divisions to the European battle-fronts. The psychological effect of these colored auxiliaries in deepening the hatred of the white combatants was deplorable. Germany's use of Turks raised among the Allies wrathful emotions reminiscent of the Crusades, while the havoc wrought in the Teutonic ranks by black Senegalese and yellow Gurkhas, together with Allied utterances like Lord Curzon's wish to see Bengal lancers on the Unter den Linden and Gurkhas camping at Sans Souci, so maddened the German people that the very suggestion of white solidarity was jeeringly scoffed at as the most idiotic sentimentality. Here is a German officer's account of a Senegalese attack on his position, which vividly depicts the mingled horror and fury awakened in German hearts by these black opponents: "They came. First singly, at wide intervals. Feeling their way, like the arms of a horrible cuttlefish. Eager, grasping, like the claws of a mighty monster. Thus they rushed closer, flickering and sometimes disappearing in the cloud. Entire bodies and single limbs, now showing in the harsh glare, now sinking in the shadows, came nearer and nearer. Strong, wild fellows, their log-like, fat, black skulls wrapped in pieces of dirty rags. Showing their grinning teeth like panthers, with their bellies drawn in and their necks stretched forward. Some with bayonets on their rises. Many only armed with knives. Monsters all, in their confused hatred. Frightful their distorted, dark grimaces. Horrible their unnaturally wideopened, burning, bloodshot eyes. Eyes that seem like terrible beings themselves. Like unearthly, hell-born beings. Eyes that seemed to run ahead of their owners, lashed, unchained, no longer to be restrained. On they came like dogs gone mad and cats spitting and yowling, with a burning lust for human blood, with a cruel dissemblance of their beastly malice. Behind them came the first wave of the attackers, in close order, a solid, rolling black wall, rising and falling, swaying and heaving, impenetrable, endless." (Captain Rheinhold Eichacker, "The Blacks Attack!" New York, Times Current History, vol. XI, pp. 110-112, April-June, 1917.) Here, again, is the proposal of a British officer, to raise a million black savages from England's African colonies for use on the Western Front. Major Stuart-Stephens exults in Britain's "almost unlimited reservoir of African man-power." In northern Nigeria alone, he remarks, there are to-day more than 700,000 warlike tribesmen. "Let them be used!" says the major. "These 'bonny fechters'' are now engaged in the pastoral arts of peace. But I would make bold to assert that a couple of hundred thousand could, after six months' training, be usefully employed in daredevil charges into German trenches." Major Stuart-Stephens hopes that at least the Sudanese battalions will be transferred en masse to the Western Front. "This," he concludes, "would mean the placing at once in the trenches of, say, 70,000 big, lusty coal-black devils, the time of whose life is the wielding of the bayonet, and whose advent would not be regarded by the Boches as a pleasing omen of more to come of the same sort." (Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens, "Our Million Black Army,~ English Review, October, 1916.) The military possibilities are truly engaging! There are literally tens of millions of fighting blacks and scores of millions of fighting Asiatics now living under white rule who could conceivably be armed and shipped to European battle-fields. After which, of course, Europe, the white homeland, would be - a queer place. Fortunately for our race, the late war did not see this sort of thing carried to its logical conclusion. But the harm done was bad enough. The white world grew accustomed to the use of colored mercenaries and to the contracting of alliances with colored peoples against white opponents as a mere matter of course. The German war-mind, in particular, teemed with colored alliance-projects. Unable to compete with the Allies in getting colored troops to Europe, Germans planned to revenge themselves in other fields. The Turkish alliance and the resulting "Holy War" proclamation were hailed with delight. "Over there in Turkey," wrote the well-known German publicist Ernst Jaeckh, "stretch Anatolia and Mesopotamia: Anatolia, the 'Land of the Sunrise'; Mesopotamia, the region of ancient paradise. May these names be to us a sign: may this World War bring to Germany and Turkey the sunrise and the paradise of a new time; may it confer upon an assured Turkey and a Greater Germany the blessing of a fruitful Turco-Teutonic collaboration in peace after a victorious Turco-Teutonic collaboration in war." (Ernst Jaeckh, "Die deutsch-türkische Waffenbruderschaft," p. 30 (Berlin, 1915).) The scope of Germany's Asiatic aspirations during the war is exemplified by an article from the pen of the learned Orientalist Professor Bernhardt Molden. (Bernhardt Molden, "Die Bedeutung Asiens im Kampf für unsere Zukunft," Preussische Jahrbücher, December, 1914. See also his article "Europa und Asien," Preussische Jahrbücher, October, 1915) Germany's aid to Turkey, contends Professor Molden, is merely symptomatic of her policy to raise the other Asiatic peoples now crushed beneath English and Russian domination. Thus Germany will create puissant allies for the "Second Punic War." Germany must therefore strive to solidify the great Central Asian bloc - Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, China. Professor Molden urges a "Pan-Asian railroad" from Constantinople to Peking. This should be especially alluring to Afghanistan, which would thereby become one of the great pivots of world-politics and trade. In fine: "Germany must free Asia." As another prominent German writer, Friedrich Delitzsch, wrote in similar vein: "To renovate the East - such is Germany's mission." (Friedrich Delitzsch, "Deutschland und Asien" (pamphlet) (Berlin, 1914).) In such a mood, Germans hailed Japan's absence of genuine hostility with the greatest satisfaction. The gust of rage which swept Germany at Japan's seizure of Kiao-chao was soon allayed by numerous writers preaching reconciliation and eventual alliance with the mistress of the Far East. Typical of this pro-Japanese propaganda is an article by Herr J. Witte, a former official in the Far East, which appeared in 1915. Herr Witte chides his countrymen for their talk about the Yellow Peril. Such a peril may exist in the future, but it is not pressing at this moment, "at any rate for us Germans, who have no great territorial possessions in the Far East.... We might permit ourselves to speak of a Yellow Peril if there was a white solidarity. This, however, does not exist. We are learning this just now by bitter experience on our own flesh and blood. Our foes have marshalled peoples of all races against us in battle. So long as this helps them, all race-antipathies and race-interests are to them matters of supreme indifference. Under these circumstances, in the midst of a life-and-death struggle against the peoples of the white race, shall we play the role of guardian angel of these peoples against the yellow peoples? For us, as Germans, there is now only one supreme life-interest, to which all other interests must be subordinated: the safety and advancement of Germany and of Deutschtum in the world." Herr Witte therefore advocates a "close political understanding between Germany and Japan. In future we can accomplish nothing in the teeth of Japan. Therefore we must get on good terms with Japan. And we can do it, too. Germany is, in fact, the country above all others who in the future has the best prospect of allying herself advantageously with the Far Eastern peoples." (Lic. Missioninspektor J. Witte, "Deutschland und die Völker Ostasiens im Vergangenheit und Zukunft," Preussische Jahrbücher, May, 1915.) And so it went throughout the war-years: both sides using all possible colored aid to down the white foe; both sides alike reckless of the ultimate racial consequences. In fact, leaving ultimate consequences aside, many persons feared during the later phases of the war that Europe might be headed for immediate dissolution. As early as mid-1916, Lord Loreburn expressed apprehension lest the war was entailing general bankruptcy and "such a destruction of the male youth of Europe as will break the thin crust of civilization which has been built up since the Dark Ages." (The Economist (London), June 17, 1916, p. 1134.) These fears were intensified by the Russian revolution of 1917, with its hideous corollary of Bolshevism which definitely triumphed before the close of that year. The Bolshevik triumph evoked despairing predictions like Lord Lansdowne's: "We are not going to lose this war, but its prolongation will spell ruin for the civilized world." (The Literary Digest, December 15, 1917, p. 14.) Well, the war was prolonged for another year, ending in the triumph of the Allies and America, though leaving Europe in the deplorable condition reviewed in the preceding chapter. The hopes of mankind were now centred on the Peace Conference, but these hopes were oversanguine, for the Versailles "settlement" was riddled with political and economic imperfections from the Saar to Shantung. This was what a sceptical minority had feared from the first. At the very beginning of the war, for instance, the French publicist Urbain Gohier had predicted that when the diplomats gathered at the end of the conflict they would find the problem of constructive settlement insoluble. (The Literary Digest, December 15, 1914, p. 14.) Most persons, however, had been more hopeful. Disappointment and disillusionment were therefore correspondingly intense. The majority of liberal-minded, forward-looking men and women throughout the world deplored the Versailles settlement's faulty character, some, however, accepting the situation as the best of a bad business, others entirely repudiating it on the ground that by crystallizing an intolerable status it would entail worse disasters in the near future. General Smuts, the South African delegate to the Conference, well represents the first attitude. In a formal protest against the Versailles settlement, General Smuts stated: "I have signed the peace treaty, not because I consider it a satisfactory document, but because it is imperatively necessary to close the war; because the world needs peace above all, and nothing could be more fatal than the continuance of the state of suspense between war and peace. The six months since the armistice was signed have, perhaps, been as upsetting, unsettling, and ruinous to Europe as the previous four years of war. I look upon the peace treaty as the close of these two chapters of war and armistice, and only on that ground do I agree to it. I say this now, not in criticism, but in faith; not because I wish to find fault with the work done, but rather because I feel that in the treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace to which our peoples were looking, and because I feel that the real work of making peace will only begin after this treaty has been signed, and a definite halt has thereby been called to the destructive passions that have been desolating Europe for nearly five years." (Official document.) The English economist J. L. Garvin, who, like General Smuts, accepted the treaty faute de mieux, makes these trenchant comments upon the settlement itself: "Derisive human genius surveying with pity and laughter the present state of mankind and some of the obsolete means adopted at Paris to remedy it, might do most good by another satire like Rabelais, Gulliver, or Candide. But let us put from us here the temptation to conjure up vistas of the grotesque. Let us pursue these plain studies in common sense. A treaty even when signed is paper. It is in itself inoperative without the action or control of living forces which it seeks to express or repress. Treaties not drawn against sound and certain assets may be dishonored in the sequel like bad checks or bills. You do not get peace merely by putting it on paper. And, much more to the point, all that is called peace does not necessarily spell prosperity any more than all that glitters is gold. You can 'make a solitude and call it peace.' The quintessence of death or stupefaction resembles a kind of peace. You can prolong relative stagnation and depression and yet say that it is peace. But that would not be the reconciling and lasting, the constructive and the creative peace, as it was visioned by the Allied peoples in their greatest moments of insight and inspiration during the war. For that higher and wiser thing we lavished our pent-up energies and the accumulated treasure of a hundred years, and sent so many of our best to die." (J. L. Garvin, "The Heritage of Armageddon," The Observer (London). Reprinted in The Living Age, September 6, 1919.) That veteran student of world-politics Doctor E. J. Dillon put the matter succinctly when he wrote: "The peace is being made not, as originally projected, on the basis of the fourteen points, nor on the lines of territorial equilibrium, but by a compromise which misses the advantage of either, and combines certain evils of both. The treaty has failed to lay the axe to the roots of war, has perhaps increased their number while purporting to destroy them. The germs of future conflicts, not only between the recent belligerents, but also between other groups of states, are numerous, and if present symptoms may be trusted will sprout up in the fulness of time." (In The Daily Telegraph (London). Quoted in The Nation (New York), June 14, 1919, p. 960.) The badness of the Versailles treaties is nowhere more manifest than in the way they have alienated idealistic support and enthusiasm from the inchoate League of Nations. Multitudes of persons once zealous Leaguers now feel that the League has no moral foundation. Such persons contend that even were the covenant theoretically perfect, the League could no more succeed on the basis of the present peace settlement than a flawlessly designed palace could be erected if superimposed upon a quicksand. Europe is thus in evil case. Her statesmen have failed to formulate a constructive settlement. Old problems remain unsolved while fresh problems arise. The danger is redoubled by the fact that both Europe and the entire world are faced with a new peril - Bolshevism. The menace of Bolshevism is simply incalculable. Bolshevism is a peril in some ways unprecedented in the world's history. It is not merely a war against a social system, not merely a war against our civilization; it is a war of the hand against the brain. For the first time since man was man there is a definite schism between the hand and the head. Every principle which mankind has thus far evolved: community of interest, the solidarity of civilization and culture, the dignity of labor, of muscle, of brawn, dominated and illumined by intellect and spirit - all these Bolshevism howls down and tramples in the mud. Bolshevism's cardinal tenets - the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the destruction of the "classes" by social war - are of truly hideous import. The classes," as conceived by Bolshevism, are very numerous. They comprise not merely the "idle rich," but also the whole of the upper and middle social strata, the landowning country folk, the skilled working men; in short, all except those who work with their untutored hands, plus the elect few who philosophize for those who work with their untutored hands. The effect of such ideas, if successful, not only on our civilization, but also on the very fibre of the race, can be imagined. The death or degradation of nearly all persons displaying constructive ability, and the tyranny of the ignorant and anti-social elements, would be the most gigantic triumph of disgenics ever seen. Beside it the ill effects of war would pale into insignificance. Civilization would wither like a plant stricken by blight, while the race, summarily drained of its good blood, would sink like lead into the depths of degenerate barbarism. This is precisely what is occurring in Russia to-day. Bolshevism has ruled Russia less than three years - and Russia is ruined. She ekes out a bare existence on the remains of past accumulations, on the surviving scraps of her material and spiritual capital. Everywhere are hunger, cold, disease, terror, physical and moral death. The "proletariat" is making its "clean sweep." The " classes" are being systematically eliminated by execution, massacre, and starvation. The racial impoverishment is simply incalculable. Meanwhile Lenine, surrounded by his Chinese executioners, sits behind the Kremlin walls, a modern Jenghiz Khan plotting the plunder of a world. Lenine's Chinese "braves" are merely symptomatic of the intrigues which Bolshevism is carrying on throughout the non-white world. Bolshevism is, in fact, as anti-racial as it is anti-social. To the Bolshevik mind, with its furious hatred of constructive ability and its fanatical determination to enforce levelling, proletarian equality, the very existence of superior biological values is a crime. Bolshevism has vowed the proletarianization of the world, beginning with the white peoples. To this end it not only foments social revolution within the white world itself, but it also seeks to enlist the colored races in its grand assault on civilization. The rulers of Soviet Russia are well aware of the profound ferment now going on in colored lands. They watch this ferment with the same terrible glee that they watched the Great War and the fiasco of Versailles - and they plot to turn it to the same profit. Accordingly, in every quarter of the globe, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States, Bolshevik agitators whisper in the ears of discontented colored men their gospel of hatred and revenge. Every nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social discrimination, is fuel for Bolshevism's hellish incitement to racial as well as to class war. And this Bolshevik propaganda has not been in vain. Its results already show in the most diverse quarters, and they are ominous for the future. China, Japan, Afghanistan, India, Java, Persia, Turkey, Egypt, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and the "black belts" of our own United States: here is a partial list of the lands where the Bolshevik leaven in color is clearly at work. Bolshevism thus reveals itself as the arch-enemy of civilization and the race. Bolshevism is the renegade, the traitor within the gates, who would betray the citadel, degrade the very fibre of our being, and ultimately hurl a rebarbarized, racially impoverished world into the most debased and hopeless of mongrelizations. Therefore, Bolshevism must be crushed out with iron heels, no matter what the cost. If this means more war, let it mean more war. We know only too well war's dreadful toll, particularly on racial values. But what war-losses could compare with the losses inflicted by the living death of Bolshevism? There are some things worse than war, and Bolshevism stands foremost among those dread alternatives. So ends our survey of the white world as it emerges from the Great War. The prospect is not a brilliant one. Weakened and impoverished by Armageddon, handicapped by an unconstructive peace, and facing internal Bolshevist disaffection which must at all costs be mastered, the white world is ill-prepared to confront - the rising tide of color. What that tide portends will be the subject of the concluding chapters.