diterranean civilization. This little was
almost forgotten until religious fanaticism started the Crusades and
brought them into contact with the civilized refinement of the
Arabians, Moors and Saracens, likewise peoples in whose veins flowed
the fiery ferment of African blood. If, as Sir Arthur Evans declares,
classical students must consider origins and admit the ancient
Grecians of African descent, so must they go a bit further and admit
the Renaissance to have sprung because of contact between feudal
Europe and African Mohammedanism. Again we must admit, no matter how
bitter the taste, that the mixed race has always been the great
race--the pure race always the stagnant race. One potent reason for
the possible downfall of European civilization to-day is the fact that
the Aryan element has proven incapable of the mighty trust. It has
forgotten the everlasting lesson of history that mergence of distinct
types means the perpetuation of nationalism. The sole tenet of Europe
has been the domination of the world by the Caucasian and suddenly it
discovers that the term Caucasian is too narrow to include both Saxon
and Teuton. Hence a war for the extermination of both.

The end of the world is not near and the dream of a millennium is
equidistant. The sum of all that is past is but a prelude of that
which is to come. It has taken the brute a myriad of years for his
gaze to reach beyond them. Civilization is a mixture of dictions and
contradictions and none of us to-day is sure that we know just what it
means. Through all there yet remain:

"Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,--
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing,--
Upholds us, cherish and have powers to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of Eternal Silence."

I close with the hope of a time when earthly values will be measured
with a justice now deemed divine. It is then that Africa and her
sun-browned children will be saluted. In that day men will gladly
listen with open minds when she tells how in the deep and dark
pre-historic night she made a stairway of the stars so that she might
climb and light her torch from the altar fires of heaven, and how she
has held its blaze aloft in the hall of ages to brighten the wavering
footsteps of earthly nations.

FOOTNOTES:

[401] This address was delivered before the Omaha Ph