Nearly every human empire that has arisen in the world, material and
spiritual, has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of
Africa, from Greece to Great Britain. As Mommsen says: "It was through
Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world." In Africa
the last flood of Germanic invasions spent itself within hearing of the
last gasp of Byzantium, and it was through Africa that Islam came to
play its great rôle of conqueror and civilizer.

With the Renaissance and the widened world of modern thought Africa came
no less suddenly with her new-old gift. Shakespeare's "Ancient Pistol"
cries:

A foutre for the world and worldlings base!
I speak of Africa and golden joys!

He echoes a legend of gold from the days of Punt and Ophir to those of
Ghana, the Gold Coast, and the Rand. This thought had sent the world's
greed scurrying down the hot, mysterious coasts of Africa to the Good
Hope of gain, until for the first time a real world-commerce was born,
albeit it started as a commerce mainly in the bodies and souls of men.

The present problem of problems is nothing more than democracy beating
itself helplessly against the color bar,--purling, seeping, seething,
foaming to burst through, ever and again overwhelming the emerging
masses of white men in its rolling backwaters and held back by those who
dream of future kingdoms of greed built on black and brown and yellow
slavery.

The indictment of Africa against Europe is grave. For four hundred years