we should
ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and
order together under the head of "sentimentality" and shrug our
shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim--any American will tell
you that--so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the
negro?

But W.E.B. Du Bois does insist on justice for the negro, and in his book
"Darkwater" (Harcourt, Brace & Co.) his voice rings out in a bitter
warning through the complacent quiet which usually reigns around this
problem of America. Mr. Du Bois seems to forget that we have the affairs
of a great many people to attend to and persists in calling our
attention to this affair of our own. And what is worse, in the minds of
all well-bred persons he does not do it at all politely. He seems to be
quite distressed about something.

Maybe it is because he finds himself, a man of superior mind and of
sensitive spirit who is a graduate of Harvard, a professor and a sincere
worker for the betterment of mankind, relegated to an inferior order by
many men and women who are obviously his inferiors, simply because he
happens to differ from them in the color of his skin. Maybe it is
because he sees the people of his own race who have not had his
advantages (if a negro may ever be said to have received an advantage)
being crowded into an ignominious spiritual serfdom equally as bad as
the physical serfdom from which they were so recently freed. Maybe it is
because of these things that Mr. Du Bois seems overwrought.

Or perhaps it is because he reads each day of how jealous we are, as a
Nation, of the sanctity of our Constitution, how we revere it and draw a
flashing sword against its detractors, and then sees this very
Constitution being flouted as a matter of course in those districts
where the amendment giving the negroes a right to vote is popularly
considered one of the five funniest jokes in the world.

Perhaps he hears candidates for office insisting on a reign of law or a
plea for order above all things, by some sentimentalist or other, or
public speakers advising those who have not respect for American
institutions to go back whence they came, and then sees whole sections
of the country violating every principle of law and order and mocking
American institutions for the sake of teaching a "nigger" his place.

Perhaps during the war he heard of the bloody crimes of our enemies, and
saw preachers and editors and statesmen stand aghast at the bar