ussia might afford. From July until November, their
brothers of the Negro guard regiments, of Negro pioneers and Negro
casuals were within earshot of the murderous rumble of contending
artillery. By November 8 every command in the Negro American division,
including the units of guard, had more than once or twice been at the
front or over the top and at them.

Ralph W. Tyler, of Ohio, a Negro on the staff of General Pershing,
representing the Bureau of Public Information, says of Hill 304:

"I have learned that Hill 304, which the French so valiantly held,
and which suffered such a fierce bombardment from the Germans that
there is not a single foot of it but what is plowed up by shells,
and whose sides, even today, are literally covered with the corpses
of French soldiers who still lie where they fell, was later as
valiantly held by the colored soldiers from the United States, who
fought with all the heroism and endurance the best tradition of the
army had chronicled. The colored soldiers who held that bloody and
ever historical Hill 304 had the odds against them, but like
Tennyson's immortal 'Six Hundred,' they fought bravely and well,
firm in the belief 'it was not theirs to reason why--it was theirs
to do and die.' And like the patriots they were, they did DO, and
this war's history will so record."

The Prussian, at last, sought safety in flight. Britisher, Frenchman,
Italian, Portuguese, Canadian, black and white American were at his
heels. Italy created a debacle in Austria. And then, wonderful news came
through of what was happening in the Near East.

It had been impossible for the Negroes of America to come to France and
preserve the nicely calculated adjustments which England had set up
through the years. The East Indian, the Arabian, the Egyptian could not
but observe, and observing, fail to understand why American Negroes
could be entrusted in command of troops, if they were not given the same
recognition and honor and equality. Quietly England prepared them all.
Under General Allenby and dark-skinned officers of the East, the black
Caucasians and the brown Caucasians and the yellow Caucasians fell upon
the Turk, until, regardless of his German master, he cried aloud for
terms. The horde of dark-skinned captors of Turkey, under the British
supreme command, threatened and attacked Bulgaria, who quickly
succumbed. So came the Turkish armistice,