2. As to the world’s progress the Colored Americans of the United States occupy a prominent position in the vanguard with the other divisions of the human race, all of whom are moving in the same direction toward carrying out the Divine plan of bringing all nations into one fold.
On July 26, 1912, there opened in the City of London, England, a great congress of the races of the world including all the dark races or their representatives. In fact, fifty different races were represented by their leading men, consisting of over thirty presidents of parliaments, the members of the permanent court of arbitration and of the delegates to the Second Hague Conference, twelve British governors and eight British premiers, over forty colonial Bishops, a hundred and thirty professors of international law, the leading students of mankind, and other scientific men of the world.
When Lord Weardale, at the head of the World’s Peace movement, opened the first session of this congress, he looked into the faces of a thousand people representing fifty different races of men.
Lord Weardale said among other things: “To those who regard the furtherance of international good will and peace as the highest of all human interests, this First Universal Races Congress opens a vista of almost boundless promise.
“Nearer and nearer we see approaching the day when the caste population of the East will assert their claim to meet on terms of equality the nations of the West; when the free institutions and the organized forces of the one hemisphere will have their counterbalance in the other; when their mental outlook and their social aims will be in principle identical; when in short the color prejudice will have vanished and the so-called “white races” and the so-called “colored races” shall no longer meet in missionary exposition, but, in very fact, regard one another as in truth men and brothers.”
Dr. Felix von Luschan, of Germany, declared, “There is an increasing mutual sympathy between the races as they come to know each other.”
Mr. Gustave Spiller, the organizer of the congress, said:
“The common standard provided by university diplomas shows almost all races, even the majority of those which are regarded as inferior, represented successfully in the universities of Europe and America, and that they are equal in intellectual capacity with the others. Hence the difference between them are mere physical characteristics.”
Professor Robertson, of England, among other things established this comforting assurance:
“It is only after a long and painful apprenticeship that European nations have attained autonomy. Why not admit that it may be the same with the so-called backward peoples?”