point to the political and military dishonor of the easy defeat of
Belgium and France. Now well might she proceed to the disintegration of
these countries by the weapons of poverty, disease, hunger and bitter
cold. Little did Germany dream what moral advantage she gave these
overrun lands in the hearts of the millions of Negroes of the world.
Germany felt assured that Negroes from all Africa would gloat over the
assassination of Belgium. She was positive that American Negroes would
rejoice. She expected the blacks of the world would rise up and hail her
as the champion of a new day.

In the twinkling of an eye she reduced Belgium to industrial serfdom.
She made the Belgian merchant a business pariah. She reduced the
Belgian citizen to a political Helot, and imprisoned the burgomaster of
Brussels, who refused to yield his citizenship honors. She made of
Belgium a desert. The Belgian woman she whistled at and made a bye-word
and reproach. And she called her treaty of Belgian neutrality a mere
scrap of paper. Namur fell, and Charleroi and lovely Louvain. Liege
succumbed in those hot August days, and Malines and Tournai and Antwerp.
Poor Belgian refugees, starved and naked, fled westward. In remembrance
of barbarities in the Congo under the international commission which
placed Belgium in control, the American Negro quoted the poet: "The sins
we borrow two by two we pay for one by one." But there was no
disposition to gloat. The American Negro, be it said, came to the
Belgian relief with money and goods and prayers and tears, and forgot
the sins of the fathers of the suffering little kingdom. The secret of
this reaction is revealed in the sympathy which the Negro bore toward
another people reduced to his American status, without honor,
recognition or equality.

On, on, precipitate, headlong came Germany with diabolic efficiency,
thrusting viciously at the heart of France. Running amuck through St.
Quentin and Arras, Soissons fell and Laon. Rheims surrounded, astride
the Marne, France awaited her invader. Joffre at the gate! Foch in
charge of the defence! On came the Germans! They crushed his left! They
pulverized his right! He dispatched his courier to headquarters with the
famous message: "I shall attack with my centre. Send up the Moroccans!"
These black troops, thrown in at the first Marne, with the British to
their left, pushed the German right over the stream. Continuing their
action, the colonials won on the Ourcq, a