e in some abstract sort of fashion that we ought to do
justice and be kind to people beyond our own limits, yet all our
political economy, all our national ideas, are accustomed to emphasize
the fact that we must be just and righteous to our own people, but that
aggression, injustice of almost any kind, is venial in our treatment of
the inhabitants of another country? And it may even flame up into the
fire of a wordy patriotism in certain conditions; and love of country
may mean hatred and injustice towards the inhabitants of another
country, or particularly towards the people of another race.

Let me give you a practical illustration of it. What are the relations
in which we stand to-day towards Spain? I have unbounded admiration for
the patience, on the whole, for the justice, the sense of right, which
characterize the American people. I doubt if there is another nation on
the face of the earth to-day that would have gone through the last two
or three years of our experience, and maintained such an attitude of
impartiality, of faithfulness, of justice, of right. And yet, if we
examine ourselves, we shall find that it is immensely difficult for us
to put ourselves in the place of a Spaniard, to look at the Cuban
question from his point of view, to try to be fair, to be just to him.
It is immensely difficult, I say, for us to look at one of these
international questions from the point of view of another race,
cherishing other religious and social ideas, having another style of
government.

And there is another illustration of it that has recently occurred here
in our country, which is sadder still to me. Only a little while ago a
postmaster in the South was shot by a mob. The mob surrounds his house,
murders him and his child, wounds other members of the family, burns
down his home; and why? Under no impulse whatever except that of pure
and simple race prejudice, the utter inability of a white man to put
himself in the position of a black to such an extent as to recognize,
plead for, or defend his inherent rights as a man.

I am not casting any aspersion on the South in what I am saying, none
whatever. Were the conditions reversed, perhaps we should be no better.
It is not a practical problem with us. If there were two or three times
as many colored men in the State of New York as there are white men,
then we might understand the question. Let us not mentally cast any
stones at the people across the line. I point it o