slowly. Up to this moment he had been quite happy. Despite the feeling of being out of it now and then, he had assumed that this was his world, his people, from the high and beautiful lady whom he worshiped more and more, even to the Egyptians, Indians and Arab who seemed slightly, but very slightly, aloof or misunderstanding.
Suddenly now there loomed plain and clear the shadow of a color line within a color line, a prejudice within prejudice, and he and his again the sacrifice. His eyes became somber and did not lighten even when the Princess spoke.
“I cannot see that it makes great difference what ability Negroes have. Oppression is oppression. It is our privilege to relieve it.”
“Yes,” answered the Japanese, “but who will do it? Who can do it but those superior races whose necks now bear the yoke of the inferior rabble of Europe?”
“This,” said the Princess, “I have always believed; but as I have told your Excellency, I have received impressions in Moscow which have given me very serious thought—first as to our judgment of the ability of the Negro race, and second”—she paused in thought—“as to the relative ability of all classes and peoples.”
Matthew stared at her, as she continued:
“You see, Moscow has reports, careful reports of the world’s masses. And the report on the Negroes of America was astonishing. At the time, I doubted its truth: their education, their work, their property, their organizations; and the odds, the terrible, crushing odds against which, inch by inch and heartbreak by heartbreak, they have forged their unfaltering way upward. If the report is true, they are a nation today, a modern nation worthy to stand beside any nation here.”
“But can we put any faith in Moscow?” asked the Egyptian. “Are we not keeping dangerous company and leaning on broken reeds?”
“Well,” said Matthew, “if they are as sound in everything as in this report from America, they'll bear listening to."
The young Indian spoke gently and evenly, but with bright eyes.
“Naturally,” he said, “one can see Mr. Towns needs must agree with the Bolshevik estimate of the lower classes.”
Matthew felt the slight slur and winced. He thought he saw
