When Might Makes Right
A correspondent whose letter appears elsewhere raises the question of the relation between mental competence and property rights. “Does inability to govern destroy title to ownership?” he asks. The white race assumes an affirmative answer in every case in which the national property of darker and weaker races are concerned and deny it in cases in which their own national property interests are involved. It seems strange that whereas the disturbances occurring in our own southern states are never considered sufficient to justify the destruction of their sovereignty, on the other hand, such disturbances occurring in Hayti or Mexico are considered a sufficient reason for invasion and conquest by white Americans. The same is true of England, France and Italy. A disturbance in Alexandria, Delhi, Ashanti or the Cameroons suffices to fix upon those territories and cities the badge of inferiority and incompetence to rule themselves. The conclusion is always drawn in such cases that the white race has been called by this fortunate combination of circumstances to do the ruling for them. But similar disturbances occurring in Wales, Essen or Marseilles would never be considered as sufficient to justify the dictatorship of foreign powers in the interest of “law and order.”
The truth is that “might makes right” in all these cases. White statesmen, however, often deny this at the very moment when they are using “force without stint, force to the utmost” to establish “rights” which they claim over territories, peoples, commerce and the high seas. Their characteristic hypocrisy keeps them from telling the truth as plainly as Von Bernhardi did in his now famous book, “Germany and the Next War.” The “sociological” reason for this hypocrisy is the fact that they need to preach “goodness,” “right” and “justice” to those over whom they rule in order that their ruling may be made easy by the consequent good behavior of the ruled. But they themselves, however good, must practice ruthlessness, injustice and the rule of the strong hand to make their governance go. It is this fact which causes intelligent Negroes, Filipinos, Chinese and Egyptians to spurn with contempt the claims which Caucasian diplomats, statesmen, writers and missionaries make on behalf of their moral superiority. They lie; they know that they lie, and now they’re beginning to know that we know it also. This knowledge on our part is a loss of prestige for them, and our actions in the future, based upon this knowledge, must needs mean a loss of power for them. Which is, after all, the essential fact.
Bolshevism in Barbados
Among the newspapers in Barbados there is a charming old lady by the name of the Barbados Standard. From time to time this faded creature gets worried about the signs of awakening observable in those Negroes who happen to be living in the twentieth century. Then she shakes and shivers, throws a few fits, froths at the mouth, and, spasmodically flapping her arms, yells to all and sundry that there is “Bolshevism among Negroes.”
Recently this stupid old thing and its congeners have discovered evidences of a Bolshevist R–r–r–revolution in Trinidad, and, presumptively, all over the British West Indies. Now the specter which these fools fear is nothing but the shadow cast by the dark body of their own system of stiff-necked pride, stark stupidity and stubborn injustice whenever the sun of civic righteousness rises above the horizon of sloth and ignorance. But, like fools afraid of their own shadows, they point at the thing for which they alone are responsible and shriek for salvation.
We shouldn’t care to suggest to them that to lie down and die would be one good way to avoid these fearful shadows, because we see the possibility of another way. Let them resolve that they will cease making a lie of every promise of liberty, democracy and self-determination that they frantically made from 1914 to 1919. Let the white Englishman learn that justice exists not only for white Englishmen, but for all men. Let him get off the black man’s back, stand out of the black man’s light, play the game as it should be played, and he will find very little need for wasting tons of print paper and thousands of pounds in a crusade against the specter of Bolshevism.