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Darkwater - Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois
page 53 of 248 (21%)
A great Englishman, familiar with African problems for a generation,
says frankly today: "There does not exist any real international
conscience to which you can appeal."

Moreover, that treatment shows no certain signs of abatement. Today in
England the Empire Resources Development Committee proposes to treat
African colonies as "crown estates" and by intensive scientific
exploitation of both land and labor to make these colonies pay the
English national debt after the war! German thinkers, knowing the
tremendous demand for raw material which would follow the war, had
similar plans of exploitation. "It is the clear, common sense of the
African situation," says H.G. Wells, "that while these precious regions
of raw material remain divided up between a number of competitive
European imperialisms, each resolutely set upon the exploitation of its
'possessions' to its own advantage and the disadvantage of the others,
there can be no permanent peace in the world. It is impossible."

We, then, who fought the war against war; who in a hell of blood and
suffering held hardly our souls in leash by the vision of a world
organized for peace; who are looking for industrial democracy and for
the organization of Europe so as to avoid incentives to war,--we, least
of all, should be willing to leave the backward world as the greatest
temptation, not only to wars based on international jealousies, but to
the most horrible of wars,--which arise from the revolt of the maddened
against those who hold them in common contempt.

Consider, my reader,--if you were today a man of some education and
knowledge, but born a Japanese or a Chinaman, an East Indian or a Negro,
what would you do and think? What would be in the present chaos your
outlook and plan for the future? Manifestly, you would want freedom for
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