In perfect harmony with the British people, we are now seeking and securing naval disarmament. Having limited and equalized our power for defense, it is absolutely essential that we stand together to prevent the building, among possible enemies, of dangerous armaments on sea or land. No doubt Japan will, from this time on, carefully heed the united demand of our two English-speaking peoples. The first imperative duty that we must accomplish together concerns the protection of China from the lusts of the exploiter. The independence of the Chinese nation must be guaranteed. Her unity must be re-established. Her resources must be protected from the greedy ones among our own citizens who would take from the Chinese people the resources they so much need for their future. To-day China can not protect herself. It is incumbent upon us to afford her the fullest measure of protection. The gratitude and esteem our children will receive from the Chinese nation will be in the future the strongest and surest of all the guarantees of world peace.
We in America are as much interested in the care and progress of the African peoples as are the British. Why should we not share in this responsibility? What a boon to the future of those backward black people of Africa, should they find themselves more largely united through the more general teaching of the English language! More and more will such of our American Negroes as are unhappy here, find a place of refuge in their native land of Africa. We should be serving the highest purposes in a number of ways were we to purchase the Congo Free State from Belgium and the Portuguese colonies in the Southern part of the continent. Side by side with the British Empire we could help in administering the affairs of those barbaric peoples in their own interest. The third international plague spot is the Near East. With the heavy tyranny of the Sultan removed, the conglomeration of broken and unhappy peoples who composed his subject population have been freed. To-day they fight and fester like vermin stifled and starving in a dark place. It seemed to many Americans that, after the war, supervision of these Christian peoples was our particular duty.
Why should we, speaking the language of the mighty dead, who gave command in the English tongue, be so fearful of sharing each other's purposes and each other's tasks? We are what we are; and it so happens that we are forced by circumstances to guide the world. Let us lead wisely and well, winning for our children gratitude and esteem. Let us have done with all this sickening pose of Pecksniff and Uriah Heap, and do the great deeds to which our times call us as Cromwell and Washington would have done!
We need world vision to-day. "Without vision the people perish." But we need more than vision. We require great, practical, general policies of world reorganization; and the veritable cornerstone of that policy is this mighty English-speaking co-partnership. This saving fellowship we Klansmen propose to advance by every means in our power. The common language through which the whole world must ultimately find communion is the English language. This is evident to anybody who even casually surveys the linguistic map of the world. North America, India, Australia, more than half of Africa—such is the future empire of Shakespeare and Milton and Lowell and Poe. Beside all the various national languages and local dialects, our language will be used as a means of universal conversation. So shall our every word, for good or for ill, be a word spoken in authority to the whole world.
The Nemesis of Immigration
Our American civilization has received during these three hundred years two crushing blows. So staggering have been these onslaughts that it is still doubtful whether or not we can recover and go on as a democratic people. On both occasions the blows have come primarily from a relatively small group of profiteers. During the first two hundred years of our history the African slave traders of old England and New England traded their vile cargoes of rum for the black man, and sold him throughout the Americas. So they accursed half our country with slavery. To-day their deeds remain in the form of a large population of black people, which, like a millstone about its neck, still drags upon every natural aspiration of the Southland.