from the zeal of members who wish to work openly, whereby the Klan can be seen emerging as Masonry did a century ago.

One more charge against the Klan is worth noting: that we are trying to cure prejudice by using new and stronger prejudice, to end disunity by setting up new barriers, to speed Americanization by discriminations and issues which are un-American. This is a plausible charge, if the facts alleged were true, for it is certain that prejudice is no cure for prejudice, nor can we hope to promote Americanism by violating its principles.

But the Klan does not stimulate prejudice, nor has it raised race or religious issues, nor violated the spirit of Americanism in any way. We simply recognize facts, and meet the situation they reveal, as it must be met. Non-resistance to the alien invasion, and ostrich-like optimism have already brought us to the verge of ruin. The time has come for positive action. The Klan is open to the same charge of creating discord that lies against any people who, under outside attack, finally begin resistance when injuries have become intolerable it is blamable to that extent, but no more. There can be no hope of curing our evils so long as it is possible for leaders of alien groups to profit by them, and by preventing assimilation. Our first duty is to see to it that no man may grow rich or powerful by breeding and exploiting disloyalty.

The future of the Klan we believe in, though it is still in the hands of God and of our own abilities and consecration as individuals and as a race. Previous movements of the kind have been short-lived, killed by internal jealousies and personal ambitions, and partly, too, by partial accomplishment of their purposes. If the Klan falls away from its mission, or fails in it, perhaps even if it succeeds-certainly whenever the time comes that it is not doing needed work-it will become a mere derelict, without purpose or force. If it fulfills its mission, its future power and service are beyond calculation so long as America has any part of her destiny unfulfilled. Meantime we of the Klan will continue, as best we know and as best we can, the crusade for Americanism to which we have been providentially called. HIRAM WESLEY EVANS.

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

BY CHARLES H. SHERRILL

ONCE upon a time, into a small back court of Venice, the stork brought a tiny baby, destined one day to become even a greater traveler than that kindly bird. Go back to the inner, second Corte del Milion, behind the Teatro Malibran, and you will see a much altered medieval tower, two of whose Romanesque arches are all that remains of Marco Polo's birthplace. He lived from about 1254 till 1324, and was the first known white man to penetrate "Far Cathay". Not only did he survive his extensive travels throughout all that vast unknown territory, but also and for many years served as Viceroy of one of China's provinces.

To Marco Polo's distinction as the white pioneer of the Yellow Man's empire, must be added another: He never talked any nonsense about undertaking the White Man's Burden! He quite frankly urged others of his race to go where he had gone because it was profitable. He said nothing about the duty of the White Race to uplift those of darker skins: he left that for us moderns to proclaim.

The date of his return from two decades of profitable residence in the Far East was 1292, just two centuries before 1492, an easy date for Americans to remember. There is much more connection between those two dates than would at first appear. Of all his interesting tales brought home to Venice, none were more alluring to that race of enterprising merchants than his account of a certain island called Zipangu, lying off the coast of China, of whose riches and desirability he could not say enough. Zipangu was and is Japan.

Nearly two centuries later, inspired by Marco Polo's and later tales of Zipangu, another Italian (this time a Genoese) sailed westward with three Spanish ships under the Spanish flag, to find that fabled island. This later Italian, Christopher Columbus, by his epoch-making voyage toward Zipangu, transformed the earth

from a flat map into a globe. Vastly more momentous still, his addition of two continents to the known world started the white man to overrun the earth.

From the day that Columbus sailed westward from Cadiz, the white man has never stopped his determined and relentless expansion. He has obtained undisputed possession of the whole new hemisphere of the Americas, as well as of the continent and countless isles of Australasia. He has acquired all of Africa, of the Near East, of India, and occupied all of that northern half of Asia which we call Siberia. In southern Asia, the English have spread on from India down over the Malay Penninsula, and also up over the lofty Himalayas into Thibet. The French took possession of that huge southern district of China called Tonkin, half again as large as France, with forty million non-white inhabitants, while to the south the Dutch did likewise to Java and Sumatra with their thirty-five millions. And we Americans, although not with deliberate intent but by the chances of war, find ourselves the overlords of eight million Filipinos.

Is it any wonder that the Far East finally awoke to this onward rush of the White Peril? Or that Japan drove back the Russians from the China Sea, so as not to have white warships dominating those nearby waters from that Gibraltar-like base, Port Arthur, or holding the Korean side of Tsu-shima Straits, just across from Shimonoseki?

Much has been said and written of the White Man's Burdenof our race's duty to extend our civilization over territory belonging to the yellow or red or black man so as to better the condition of those aborigines. But is that true? Who shall decide whether such a change really benefits those peoples-they or we? Has not the time come to make frank admission that the "White Man's Burden" is after all only a smug phrase coined to cover exploitation of weaker races for the benefit of the white one? When Bishop Brent and his American associates attempted last year at Geneva, in the home of the League of Nations, to effect a reduction in the growth of the opium poppy, they were opposed by all those European Powers whose nationals profit from opium production in those lands of the Far East seized by white Europeans. The altruistic efforts of these distinguished

Americans failed completely. Those European Powers declined to relinquish that particular portion of the White Man's Burden, nor have they reduced their subsidies to encourage cultivation of the opium poppy by Asiatics in those lands for the benefit of white merchants handling that trade. All the foregoing is well known.

Nothing is further from the writer's mind than a desire to urge that it should not be the acclaimed privilege of the White Man to do all in his power to aid other races. He only desires to protest against the world's opinion that this justifies the occupation of territory belonging to those other races. The port of Guayaquil was cleared of yellow fever by the brains and energy of a citizen of the United States, but that afforded no reason for the seizure by us of that port. The White Man's Privilege of Service is far removed from the White Man's Burden policy of territorial seizure.

All around the world we are beginning to hear the voice of the Native raised against the long accepted doctrine of the White Man's Burden. After having traveled extensively around the Pacific Ocean I can testify that there is as much unrest among the natives across that great water as there is among the tribes in North Africa and the Near East. What have we whites ever done in medical service to the islands of the Pacific to compensate for the hideous wrong done them when Captain Cook's sailors spread a dreadful venereal disease, until then unknown in those sunlit seas?

The cry of "Asia for the Asiatics" is seldom heard and but little understood on our side of the Pacific. In Asia, it represents a great and deep-seated movement, and some of their wise leaders express surprise that Americans cannot realize that their beloved Monroe Doctrine is the world's only exact prototype of "Asia for the Asiatics".

"Yes," says a European poppy grower or merchant, now forced upon the defensive, "but what about the American flag in the Philippines?" To that there is a complete answer. In the first place, our fleet did not go there to seize territory. Admiral Dewey's orders were to seek out and destroy the Spanish fleetnothing more and nothing less. That fleet happened to be found in Manila Bay, and was there destroyed. But that did not

finish his task, for there was still a Spanish army on the shore to be defeated. When that was done and the war ended, there we were, with no local government of natives capable of functioning alone and unaided. So much for our installation in these foreign and distant islands.

"But," continues the said European poppy grower or merchant, "why not now get out of the islands and leave them to the native?" It seems to me that the only way to answer this searching question is not smugly to plead the "White Man's Burden" doctrine, but frankly to point out that we cannot afford, for reasons of worthy national pride, to give complete freedom to those islands unless and until all the great colonizing Powers interested in the Pacific join us in guaranteeing the freedom of a Filipino Republic. It would never do for the United States to withdraw from the Philippines with any risk that, some years later, one of those colonizing Powers on the grounds of avenging its nationals or protecting its trade-the case of the English at Hongkong or the French at Tonkin; the Germans took all Shantung because two of their missionaries were murdered in Kiaochao-should move into some such vantage point as Manila, and stay there. Such a move would inevitably result in the disconsolate but defenceless Filipinos sending us such a heart-rending appeal to return to their assistance as would surely result in our people, always sensible to distress appeals, becoming embroiled with the colonizing Power aforesaid.

No, even though we repudiate the White Man's Burden whenever it means acquisition of lands belonging to other races, we cannot abandon the Philippines until their freedom is jointly guaranteed by all those colonizing Powers who still believe in the superior right of the White Man. We are not a colonizing Power. Also, this seems a proper place to rejoice that the United States is not a partner to the policy of colonial mandates to which the League of Nations is committed. It may serve for a group of colonizing European nations, but it does not square with the Monroe Doctrine.

CHARLES H. SHERRILL.