Cayton's weekly. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1916-1921, 1918-12-07

observation concerning our attitude towards the
race. The Negro, he says gets too much credit
when he does good thing-but he gets also too
much blame when he does bad thing. Colonel
Roosevelt, speaking to the Buffalo soldiers at Camp
UPTON made his pleasantly turned comment
on this tendency when he assured the boys that
General Bell there to see that they got what
they ought to have when they behaved thmslves
and also to that they got what they ought to
have when they didn't behave themselves. And
the boys roared with delighted laughing apprecia-
ton of his humor.
Humor is perhaps not commonly enough consid-
cred in appraising the mental equipment of a good
soldier. young lieutenant of the Buffaloes, a
Des Moines graduate, puts stress this point A
soldier who laugh and sing like the Negro
canot he points out, be unhappy long nor troubled
by premonitions of evil. Not to "care which way
the river runs is in this case virtue It does
away with complaining and the colored soldier in
the camps things up with cheerful
philosophy when he says cts great life if you
don't weaken" 1t would be pleasant to finger on
this topic with an anecdOte or two. The two col
ored soldiers who in the early days were whiting
out dummy rifles from pine boards for drill pur-
poses expressed no Impotence with the de-
partments delays, they only remarked as they
piled their jack-knives that they were glad they
were not in the artillery! race naturally in
cned to contentment.
Let delay what reports there from the
trenches of actual battle performance and consider
something of the situation of the Negro at the be-
ginning of the 1t is rarely plain sailing for
that and it need surprise one to learn
that at the beginning at least it was not always
made easy for the black man to be patriot and a
soldier.
Anyone who WIS in the South during April and
May of last year knows how Immediately after the
declaration of wave of hysterical apprehen-
sion the land. 1t suddenly declared
that the German propaganda had been long and
successfully at work among the colored population
There wild rumors of secret drilling and hid
den stores of arms. One lurd unauthenticated tale
was of burial suddenly stopped by the authorities
because of the suspicious heaviness of the coffin
which, being opened disclosed no stiff black corpse
but cartridges and rifles! In some districts there
is no doubt that parts of the white population
genuinely believed that the supreme horror of the
South the bloody black uprising was at hand. In
such moments actual facts count for very little
and there is always the danger that wild talk and
armed vigilance committees will bring about the
very dangers they seek to avoid. 1t is consider
able evidence of the South's real deeplying convic
ton of the Negroes loyalty that there as little
trouble as there was. In many parts the respon-
sble leading Negroes of the community held public
meetings and did all they could not only to rouse
the patriotism of their own race but to increase
the confidence of the whites. Gradually, by June
or July, the fear died down. Most Negroes will
tell you however that the danger from
the whites than from the blacks. In any it
was feverish frightening time and it is just pos
sble that the aftermath of that early suspicion
has been the unhappy increase of lynching in the
country during the past year, a phenomenon which
has certainly not made the path of patriotism any
easier for the race of it's victims.
The question of course may still be asked-was
there German propaganda? And it may be de-
iberaely said in reply that there undoubtedly was
1t is extremely difficult to bring forward definite
detailed proof. The subject brings into evidence
the age-old tendency of the Negro to keep certain
things from the whites from those with
whom he is friendly and confidential terms
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