The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-13
SOME ExcELLENr PAPERS.

the Negro Question, by Rev.. Samuel Phillips Werner. particularly the article printed last Sunday. A South caroiinian by birth. an Alabamian by adoption. Mir. Werner has. as missionary of the South ern Presbyterian Church travelled ex- tensively and lived in the interior of Africa, and has thus had opportunities of studying the negroes in their original habitat as well as to become intimately acquainted with them in the Southern States of our Union. A man of keen observation. analytical powers of dis crimination. and with faculty for arriy- ing at just conclusions he also possesses the pen of ready writer and thus makes his articles as interesting as they are in- structive. We copy the conclusion of his last Sundays article:
 The consensus of opinion among those who are free from the Illusions of senti- ment, which binds some white people, or from the deulsions of vain hopes, which inspire some colored men. Is to the effect that if we are to help the African. at home or abroad. we must treat him as child in his present status as race. and we must provide for him as the benevo- lGnL ana kOOu HI dktS HdNC PlONiHCa for the orphan. children of society. Control them. train them. restrain them, correct them. allow no undue self-assertion. but provide for full self-development. and then our great race will go on to It's high destiny, side by side with that race which God has been rasing up for its share in worldwide elevation and redemption.
 There lies "the conclusion of the whole matter" A great deal Is said nowadays about giving the colored man an opportu- nifty to lift himself up and place himself alongside the white man, but it Is all a fallacy, coming from those who know nothing about it or who have ends of their own to serve by misleading the negroes As Mir. Werner says, the negroes, as a race, must still be treated as children. There are exceptions, be- yond doubt There are to be found negroes who have. largely by their own exertions, made material advances and have made themselves good and useful citizens. models for their race and credit to themselves, but these are the excep- tions which prove the rule. As race they are still children to be encouraged trained and restrained as they need it. In word, the negroes of the South will be just such citizens as the white people will them to be.
 There Is another paragraph of Mir. Yer ner's article which we copy because 1t touches a subject which has become of vital interest in all parts of the country.
 He says:
 It need hardly be said that the lawless- ness in the lynchings and burnings or negroes for horrible crimes will continue until the law provides for speedy trials. and for a system of training for the whole youthful negro population by which the vice and insanity of the race can De legally dealt with. do not see how any man of the Anglo-Saxon race, seeing fair and gentle women torn by mad and in- sensate lust and fouily murdered by devils in human form can refrain from tearing them limb from limb. Why the very African natives often torture the rapist with inconceibable tortures. It must be remembered that for every two lynch ings whose numbers are so carefully enumerated by the press, at least one wo- man has been foully assaulted, her family left in tears, her home under a weight of grief that no sophistry can roll away. Perish every negro on earth rather than that women of the Anglo-Saxon race, the hope of the world In the future, should
 
 the South. t's-. & MT. Werner speaks warmly because he feels warmly, just as all white men feel on the subject. His language is not a defence of lynching, or an argument in support of that form of justice, but Is an admission of conditions as. they exist and which will not cease to exist as long as the cause remains with us. It Is well enough to argue and plead for the supre- macy of the law. and 1t is we'll enough to deprecate and condemn lynching, but white blood is the same color everywhere and white human nature differs little In all the States of this Union. Whenever a white woman is outraged by a negro brute, the blood of all white men is stir red by the same sentiment and the beast dies, illegally, it may be, but justly, as we all will admit If we go down deep in our hearts and take counsel with our feelings. However wrong lynching may be, 1t will only end with the cause which brings 1t about unless human nature | changes.
 We can see but two remedies, both of which can be used with effect. The first is that speedy trial and just punishment shall follow whenever an outrage has been committed. If it is necessary for the courts as they now exist to do some extra work, 1t should be done. If 1t is necessary for the State to incur additional expense, there should be no hesitation. No reasonable labor or expense should stand in the way of an effort to put down the most brutal crime that can occur any
 where, and if the certainty of speedy
 trials and prompt punishment will reduce lynchings by abolishing the cause. in
 Gods name let there be no hesitation
 about doing what is both justice and
 mercy.
 The other remedy, as we have more
 than once insisted, lies with the negroes
 themselves. They must be made to under
 stand that rape means death to the per
 petrator; cruel and awful death in many
 cases, but death as sure as man lives
 There are some negroes who understand | this and who condemn the crime for
 which their race suffers, but to their dis
 credit be it said only a few of them | make any effort to suppress 1t. Some of 1 them are earnest in their advice and their pleadings to the debased members of their race to desist from their brutal l xvo otSoo. hut tbara ara hut faur of thar,,