Listen now to the dream of Thomas Carlyle as set forth in his lecture on "The Hero" as a poet. Says he:
"England, before long, this island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English; in America, in New Holland, east and west to the very antipodes, there will be a great Saxondom covering great spaces of the globe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together in virtually one nation, so that they do not fall out and fight, but live at peace, in brother-like intercourse, helping one another? This is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish this? Acts of parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far as parliament could part it. Call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in it; here, I say, is an English king whom no time or chance, parliament or combination of parliaments, can dethrone! This King Shakespeare, does he not shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the nations of Englishmen, a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of parish-constable soever, English men and women are, they will say to one another: 'Yes, this Shakespeare is ours, we produced him, and we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him.'"
As set forth here the travail of the English heart is toward a unified Saxondom, and, as indicated above, its hour had come. It was in the hour when the world paused in awe to see a fruition of this dream, that Mr. Dixon asked—insisted upon being heard. Anxious to know upon what terms the South would be a contented member of this new accord, Mr. Dixon, essaying to speak for the South, got his hearing.
What a terrible enemy to humanity does Mr. Dixon prove himself to be when, essaying to speak for the South, he would impart to this mighty force, with work before it worthy of the gods, a larger measure of the virus of race prejudice. Rather, may this unified Saxondom, as the agent of that "divinity that shapes our ends rough-hew them how we will," choose the opening hours of its era for the purging from its great heart all the lingering vestiges of hatred of men, and with eyes ever on the heights above, begin the final climb of the human race toward the ideal state. May this trumpet call to a greatness of soul in keeping with its greatness of power, supplant the voice of Dixon the hater, summoning men to grovellings in the valleys of a thousand years agone.
MR. DIXON'S BORROWED POWER.
We shall now make mention of a force within Mr. Dixon which, from our point of view, enabled him to seize the passing opportunity and challenge the attention of so great a constituency. There is nothing more patent to an observer of life in the South than the fact that the Anglo-Saxon and Negro races are producing in each other modifications of many of their racial characteristics. The erstwhile, abounding humor of the Negro has found its echo in the white race of the South and we find the dignified L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, succeeded in his grasp upon public attention by the witty, fun-loving John Sharp Williams, while the great American humorist, Mark Twain is likewise a product of the South.
The unquestioning faith of the Negro in the Bible is largely responsible for the militant orthodoxy of the white Christian ministry of the South, which makes life miserable for any mind retaining and applying to religious matters the old Anglo-Saxon habit of investigating. "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world," even if that hand is a black hand. It is the boast of the Southern white preacher that he was nursed by a black mammy.
Along emotional lines there is appearing a marked difference between the white people of the South and those of the North. It was remarked of the National Democratic Convention, held in the city of St. Louis in 1904, that such an emotional convention could only have been held somewhere in the South. The Negro race is noted for its highly emotional nature, and while contact with the Anglo-Saxon race is toning it down, there is also evidence that the Negro race is affecting the Anglo-Saxon.
Now, Mr. Dixon's publishers, in announcing a second book from his pen, singled out for purposes of parade what they regarded as the most powerful element in his work, namely, his grasp upon the emotions of men, his ability to arouse and sway their feelings. In the long line of men of letters of the Anglo-Saxon race we find no counterpart of Mr. Dixon. So the question is very pertinent as to what influence has given power to this pale-face shout exciter, this expert player upon men's emotions, this literary (we beg a thousand pardons for seeming billingsgate) demagogue and exotic in Anglo-Saxondom. The irony of fate! Mr. Thomas Dixon, Jr., beyond doubt owes his emotional power to the very race which he has elected to scourge.
Mr. Dixon has not breathed the Negro air of emotionalism without being affected thereby. The Negro minister whom Mr. Dixon derides in his book is beyond all doubt Mr. Dixon's spiritual parent so far as power is concerned. The fact that Mr. Dixon has chosen the discomfiture of the Negro race as the chief end of his existence is not inconsistent with the fact that the predominating element in his power is the gift of that race. It is perhaps this subconscious feeling on the part of Mr. Dixon that he is in the grasp of a power not Anglo-Saxon that causes him to rant and cry for a freedom that his own Southern brethren less affected do not understand.