One of the best replies to colour sentimentalists which we have ever read on this subject is quoted from the `New York World' by the `Crisis' (Professor Du Bois's paper) of the same city. Says the `New York World': —
== The German Ambassador has announced to the United States that he is "unconditionally opposed" to the use of coloured troops. This is a curious prejudice on the part of the diplomatic representative of a Government that is seeking to bring Turkey into the conflict and trying to persuade the Turk to instigate a "holy war" in Egypt and India against all non-Mohammedans.
When Germany went to war with the British Empire she must have expected to fight the British Empire, and not merely a selected part of the population, the colour of whose skin happened to meet the approval of Berlin.
It is natural enough that Great Britain should bring up her Indian troops, who, by the way, are as completely identified with the Aryan race as the Prussians. But no matter what their race may be, they are part of the Empire and part of Great Britain's regular military power.
If Germany were at war with the United States her troops would have to meet our Negro Cavalry, than whom there are no better soldiers in uniform.
German denunciation of the Indian troops is as futile as German denunciation of the Japanese as "yellow-bellies". It is too late to draw the colour line in war. That line was erased more than fifty years ago by Abraham Lincoln in that noble letter to the Springfield Convention: "And there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation." ==
One South African writer to the Press had humanitarian reasons against the employment on the Continent of coloured troops from India. He said that 70,000 of them will be like a morning meal to the trained soldiers of Germany. This sympathetic view does not appear to be shared by German writers to the `Berliner Tageblatt', who have a high regard for the ferocity of "these Eastern devils". Apparently this is the only German view which is in harmony with the dispatches of Generals French and Joffre. His Majesty the King has since been to the front, where, in the presence of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Sir Pertabh Singh and other high Imperial officers, His Majesty personally decorated Havildar Darwan Sing Negi (an Indian) of the 39th Garhwal Rifles, with the Victoria Cross, and we need hardly add that V.C.'s are not awarded for fun.
On the first Saturday in March, 1915, King George went to Aldershot and acted as starter in the big military race in which over 500 soldiers competed. Her Majesty the Queen was also present and graciously distributed the prizes. The race was won by Private Stewart, a black trooper from Jamaica. Even the Coldstream Guards have their coloured private in training for the front; but South Africans inform you that the heavens will fall if coloured troops are sent against the white Germans, who, from the beginning, never scrupled to send black warriors against the British.
In regard to the award of the V.C. to Indians, many writers sent letters to the Press claiming that it was unprecedented for coloured warriors to wear the V.C. Whitaker and similar publications might have told them that a Native African sergeant of the West Indian Regiment wears the V.C. won on the Gambia River as long ago as 1892.