kind. The mental adaptations which
modern man has inherited from the immensity of his past we may briefly
describe as part of Nature's tribal machinery. The thesis, then, which I
propose to expound to you is that in our modern racial strifes and
national agitations we see man's inherited tribal instincts at war with
his present-day conditions of life. We have broken up, or are attempting
to break up, Nature's ancient tribal machinery and at the present time
are striving to replace her designs by others evolved in the minds of
modern statesmen and politicians. We moderns are like hill sheep turned
into fenced fields with all our wandering instincts still grafted on our
original nature. As in them, our instincts are at war with our
surroundings. It is the most natural thing in the world that we should
blame the barriers which have been set round us because we are scarcely
conscious of the inherited predispositions with which Nature encompasses
her tribal fields. We cannot understand the nature of our modern racial
and national problems until we perceive that in these days we are
endeavouring to build a new world out of the wreckage of an old.

RACIAL AND NATIONAL PROBLEMS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Having thus laid before you the general lines on which I propose to deal
with problems relating to race and nationality, I propose now that we
should make a lightning trip round the world and cull, as we go, samples
which will illustrate the kind of friction which arises wherever races
or nationalities come into close contact. As I have already said, every
country can yield us material for our study, but none on such a vast
experimental scale as the United States of North America; we shall
therefore commence our hurried survey in that country. Within the
frontiers of the States is massed a population of 110 millions. When we
look closely we see that over ten millions of these inhabitants are
marked off from the rest by a frontier, a colour line, as sharply
defined and jealously guarded as the frontiers of a kingdom. Across that
racial frontier all legitimate social traffic is barred, the custodians
of the frontier being those who stand on the white side of the line. Any
attempt to cross that racial frontier produces mob war. While these ten
millions of segregated citizens abide within their racial fence, they
see millions arrive from Europe and pass freely through the national and
social gateways--which for them are bar