White Mango Research Articles

The War Aims of World War I and World War II and Their Relation to the Darker Peoples of the World

Universal expectation has perhaps never been raised to such a pitch, wrote Prussian statesman, Frederick von Gentz, of Congress of Vienna assembled one hundred and twenty-eight years ago to bring peace to a Europe overrun by Napoleon Bonaparte. War-weary peoples looked forward to an reform of political system of Europe, to guarantees of universal peace; in a word, to the return of golden age. But real purpose of Congress was to divide amongst conquerors spoils taken from vanquished. Well might these words describe deep longings of peoples and objectives of most statesmen one hundred years later at Paris. And again, today, there is universal expectation of an all-embracing reform of political system, not of Europe alone but of entire world, which will herald a just and durable peace. Will hopes of peoples, especially of darker peoples, be realized or will Peace Congress convened at end of this global war have as its ulterior purpose division of spoils of vanquished and a return as near as possible to status quo ante belluu? What is meant when one refers to darker peoples of world? Such a reference is not confined to nearly thirteen million Negroes in United States, who so far as war aims are concerned are hardly taken into consideration, nor to millions of colored in Caribbean and in Central and South America. Rather, in addition to these groups, term must comprehend most of inhabitants of Africa, including those Islamic peoples of Mediterranean littoral and those natives south of Sahara Desert; 400,000,000 or more of India and Burma; Malaysians who inhabit Malay peninsula and archipelago, including former Netherlands East Indies; Chinese; Japanese; and, finally, Polynesians of Oceania and Melanesians, those Negroid inhabitants of islands of Central and Western Pacific, including Solomon Islands. All over world peoples of color are aroused, although in varying degrees, to Imperium of white nations. They are no longer willing to accept white man's exalted view of trusteeship; they no longer quake at teachings of white man's missionaries, who bring them white man's God but a God in whom white man does not believe; no longer are glass beads and trinkets marvelous to them; they are much more interested in marvels of white man's guns. Once colored races feared white man; today that fear has turned to secret contempt. Once they were filled with terror at white man's power; today they know that they themselves are power. Their past

The Burden of the White Man's God

In the land of our fathers there are many strangers. They have drifted away from their homes, across the sea, into the New World which they held to be ‘undiscovered’. Why did they seek a new land, and why did they leave their own? Why did they leave behind the soil from which they were born; why did they break away from the womb to which they belong?With their minds disconnected—and freed—from the earth, they could master the forces of nature. And so they took possession of the land that seemed so empty, so much there for the taking, because no one claimed it. They did not know that man does not naturally possess the land to which he belongs; he does not say: T own this soil’. For how can we own the soil from which we are born and to which we will return? Is not man’s life encompassed by the earth and her dark forces, as in a wider dimension from which things and deeds receive their meaning?

XV. Remarks on the Geology of the Country between Tellicberry and Madras.

THE road between Calicut and Tellicherry runs near the sea all the way, but seldom affords a view of it. Comparing this country with the Carnatic near the sea, it is infinitely more fertile and populous; and where the land is not cultivated, the bushes and grass are greener. The villages are composed of huts not built close together, but each is in its own enclosure, which is separated from the next, not only by a fence, but by a very deep narrow lane. The commonest trees are cocoanuts and arekas, * which are the most valuable production of the coast. Jack trees, † and a kind of slender banian, ‡ are also much cultivated; while innumerable forest trees spring up spontaneously, round all of which the pepper vine is seen winding its graceful tendrils, and climbing almost to their tops. The Malabar huts are remarkably neat: the thatch is thick, and the eaves come very low, to keep the violent rains of this coast from the walls, which are merely composed of mud. The Hindoo inhabitants, of both sexes, wear no clothes above the waist, but the Maplar women wear a loose short shift over their petticoat, not unlike that worn by the Arabs, their ancestors. The face of the country in general below the Ghauts is hilly. These hills are low, of a rounded form, and composed of the ferruginous stone so peculiar to India, called by Buchanan laterite. In this porous rock, the red ochry part is the