"How?"
"By the process of evolution——"
"Exactly!" Norton thundered. "And by that you mean the gradual breaking down of racial barriers and the degradation of our people to a mongrel negroid level or you mean nothing! No miracle of evolution can gloss over the meaning of such a tragedy. The Negro is the lowest of all human forms, four thousand years below the standard of the pioneer white Aryan who discovered this continent and peopled it with a race of empire builders. The gradual mixture of our blood with his can only result in the extinction of National character—a calamity so appalling the mind of every patriot refuses to accept for a moment its possibility."
"I am not advocating such a mixture!" the professor mildly protested.
"In so many words, no," retorted Norton; "yet you are setting in motion forces that make it inevitable, as certain as life, as remorseless as death. When you demand that the patriot of the South let the Negro alone to work out his own destiny, you know that the mere physical contact of two such races is a constant menace to white civilization——"
The professor raised the delicate, tapering hands:
"The old nightmare of negro domination is only a thing with which to frighten children, major, the danger is a myth——"
"Indeed!" Norton sneered. "When our people saw the menace of an emancipated slave suddenly clothed with the royal power of a ballot they met this threat against the foundations of law and order by a counter revolution and restored a government of the wealth, virtue and intelligence of the community. What they have not yet seen, is the more insidious danger that threatens the inner home life of a Democratic nation from the physical contact of two such races."
"And you propose to prevent that contact?" the piping voice asked.
"Yes."