Minoret

“ Delighted I turned and glanced at Mink; he was cranking furiously.
With an uncontrollable shout of triumph and delight I pranced toward the huddling cave-girls, arms outspread as though heading a horse or concentrating chickens. And, totally forgetting the uselessness of urbanity and civilized speech as I danced around that lovely but terrified group, "Ladies!" I cried, "do not be alarmed, because I mean only kindness and proper respect. Civilization calls you from the wilds! Sentiment, pity, piety propel my legs, not the ruthless desire to injure or enslave you! Ladies! ”

“ The pre-adolescent boy glorying in full Indian regalia, the early-adolescent proud in the suit of his team or in his accouterments as a Scout, and a little later, with quieter taste, the persistent fraternity pin--all of these tell the same story of the love of insignia and the power of the emblem in the social control and development of youth. Think also of the collecting mania, which among primitives was less strong than is ordinarily supposed, but which in early boyhood reaches forth its hands, industriously, if not always wisely, after concrete, tactual knowledge and proprietorship. ”

“ IF it be true, as scientists tell us, that the period of boyhood corresponds, in human development, with an early phase of savagery, and that the individual boy is himself an epitome of the uncivilized tribe, it may be said with still greater confidence that an English public school, or “boy-farm,” where life is mostly so ordered as to foster the more primitive habits of mind, is essentially a nursery of barbarism—a microcosm of that predatory class whose members, like the hunters of old, toil not, neither do they spin, but ever seek their ideal in the twofold cult of sport and soldiership. ”

“ You want to catch your boy young, and study him before he has either virtues or vices, in order to understand the primitive man.
Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, before children were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with the word “culture” written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing, and war. The military instinct, which is the special mark of barbarism, is strong in him. ”

“ Less noisy, except in battle, but even more fearful, were the half-human possessors of the same regions, the savages, who, at that period, in almost countless tribes or families, hovered around the habitations of the European. Always restless, commonly treacherous, warring or preparing for war, the red men required of the white borderer the vigilance of an instinct which was never to be allowed repose. This furnished an additional school for the moral and physical training of our young Huguenots. ”

“ The mixed school helps to eliminate this tendency.
With the Reverend it was a self-evident fact, that the only thing he cared about was that it would be easier for the colored girls to teach, if the schools were separate. I was becoming more and more convinced that he belonged to the class of the negro race that desires ease, privilege, freedom, position, and luxury without any great material effort on their part to acquire it, and still held to the timeworn cry of "no opportunity." ”

“ And more, was it not a minority which plundered and oppressed us?
"If, then, we, being determined men who would not be obedient slaves, have preferred to risk death rather than endure enslavement, who DARES to question our right to rebel?
"We have disregarded the apathy of the majority, have attacked the ruling MINORITY, and overthrown it. ”

“ The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they were præpostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their colleagues' desertion to the enemy, could not make head against them. ”

“ Fortunately we are now directing our attention to training them to acquire passable ability in simple occupations, or to adjust themselves to the life of a colony. In the education of the mentally weak the most promising field is undoubtedly with the conative cases with passable intellects. At Templin, outside of Berlin, there has been established the first home school devoted entirely to the training of such unstable and inert boys. ”

“ If the youth of the colored race is incorrigible because of instinct or environment, or both, the place for them is in some kind of home where they can be protected against themselves and society, and trained and developed. Let them have four years of training in the public schools and emerge from these into ‘a boarding and working school.’ This would be far better than furnishing a chain gang system for them to go into after bad character has been formed. ”

“ Ah, no! ‘The Boys’’ standard is bravery. ‘White men’ they know and understand. The puppets of the party whips they will blow away like chaff whirled before a storm. And out of their suffering will come sanity, peace, goodwill to men and nations. ”

“ Of course, these rebel leaders are men who have absorbed the white man's culture, at least in part; practically always they are of the younger generation, which has been to the white man's schools. But this is the very answer we have been seeking—as to whether the race is permanently inferior, or merely immature and in need of training. It is not only among the brown and black and yellow races that progress depends upon the young generations ”

“ There they find others possessing the same viewpoint, tastes, desires, ambitions, and occupations as their own. To the active boy the gang is a democracy made up of those of his own kind in which he is a free citizen without paternal or maternal restraint. In his new world there [174] is no querulous nor uncomprehending adult to shout repressive commands directed at conduct or action. All is as wild and free as his own wild nature.
There are two classes of organization to which boys belong—those formed by themselves without supervision; and those formed and supervised by adults for them. ”

“ It is haughtily asked, who will stand in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with a negro? I answer, no one in time of peace; no one when your musters and trainings are looked upon as mere pastimes; no one when your militia will shoulder their muskets and march to their trainings with as much unconcern as they would go to a sumptuous entertainment or a splendid ball. But, Sir, when the hour of danger approaches, your 'white' militia are just as willing that the man of Color should be set up as a [Pg 27] mark to be shot at by the enemy as to be set up themselves. ”

“ From high, from low, on the right, on the left, these predatory tribes, échelonned by legions which succeed one another and relieve one another each in its month, in its day—the immense, the irresistible conscription of nature—will march to the conquest of man's works. The division of labour is perfect. Each has his post marked out, and will make no mistake. Each will go straight to his tree or his plant. And such will be their tremendous numbers, that not a leaf but will have its legion.
What wilt thou do, poor man? How wilt thou multiply thyself? Hast thou wings to pursue them? ”

“ During the wars of the Empire, while husbands and brothers were in Germany, anxious mothers gave birth to an ardent, pale, and neurotic generation. Conceived between battles, reared amid the noises of war, thousands of children looked about them with dull eyes while testing their limp muscles. ”

“ How the recruiting authorities at home ever managed to send a child of less than fifteen out to France as a fighting man remains mysterious. But they did.
These were besides boys of a certain particularly difficult kind. It is not your “good” boy who rushes to the recruiting office and tells a lie about his age. It is not the gentle, amiable, well-mannered boy who is so enthusiastic for adventure that he will leave his home and endure the hardships of a soldier’s life for the sake of seeing fighting. ”

“ If they are kept in separate schools this line becomes more distinct, with one colored child filling the mind of other colored children with bad ideas, and the white child doing likewise, which is never helpful to the community. ”

“ For young men—and we must always remember that it is the young men who are called for this purpose—for young men to be called to the colours by the tens or the hundreds of thousands, unskilled and untrained, to be shot down, decimated by the thoroughly trained and skilled troops of another nation, or a combination of other nations, is indeed the crime. ”

“ Rebellions, for one cause or another, broke out in almost every one of these schools presided over by white faculties, and as a rule, the Negro students triumphed.
These men who engineered and participated in these rebellions were the future leaders of their race. In these rebellions, they learned the power of combinations, and that white men could be made to capitulate to colored men under certain circumstances. In these schools, probably one hundred thousand students had these thoughts instilled in them. ”

“ As the child's sobs continued he shrunk together—he would rather meet an enemy in the open and be shot at twenty times than face these savage and mysterious blacks—and then he suddenly decided that, if there were a child there, he must go and look for it and do his best, blacks or no blacks. ”

“ If I thought such a scheme of boy-training would bolster up privilege, foster a dangerous docility, put power into the hands of our Junkers, and generally convert our country into a kind of Germany, I would shun it like the devil. ”

“ Ah, I remember the times when on our fatherland there first descended the fashion of imitating the French; when suddenly brisk young gentlemen from foreign lands swarmed in upon us in a horde worse than the Nogai Tatars, abusing here, in our country, God, the faith of our fathers, our law and customs, and even our ancient garments. ”

“ At that time, as in many other towns and villages, great and small, the absence of young men was particularly noticeable, the last wars of the Empire having summoned to the defence of the flag nearly all who were young and able-bodied, until a young man of twenty-five who had remained a civilian, unless he was a hunchback, or crippled, was almost as rare a phenomenon as the phoenix or a white crow. ”

“ These agents of the Black Hand have their plans always laid in advance; they are aggressive, they pretend to know the laws and by-laws, and brush the ordinary parents out of the way. At one of the general meetings of the association they rushed through an endorsement of military training in the schools. ”

“ Some of the older officers, who had been called out after many years of civilian ease, found the spirit of youth again as soon as they set foot on the soil of France, and indulged in I the follies of youth as when they had been sub-lieutenants in the Indian hills. ”

“ Private soldiers in blue flannel shirts were learning to stand attention and touch their caps to young men in shoulder-straps whom they had laughed at and called "tin soldiers" a year agone because they belonged to the militia—a thing most of the gilded youth in many of our Western cities seemed to scorn as beneath them. ”

“ Perhaps even a larger proportion of minors served in the navy than in the army; and the record of some of them could be recited to prove that in those days boys became men prematurely, and distinguished themselves by brave and daring deeds. ”

“ A Negro with a college degree is two steps ahead of his uneducated brothers, every one had assured him, and his attention was directed to the number of graduates who had risen to such heights in their race that they lived lives of comparative ease and comfort, respected even by white people. ”

“ It made her sallow, contradicted the nice blue of her eyes and caused her brown hair to look dust color. She and mother felt pride in their plain appearance, and betrayed this in their manner. They were travelling to France on a high mission. Mother meant to write a book concerned with the war, and wished to study conditions on the spot. The scenes she would treat were on the French front, or rather, several French fronts, the British not allowing their fronts to be seen by the eyes of women. ”

“ The learned professor infers that this vast army will be "doomed to remain where they have been, and be hewers of wood and drawers of water," because they form a "distinct alien race." I think, if the professor will wait until 1980, he will find that this "alien race," which profligate white men have done and are doing so much to amalgamate with their own race, will not only increase approximately as he has figured it out, in numbers, but in wealth as well. ”

“ Nearly, but not quite, for it is a mistake to say such things of one's brothers in the League. Besides, I like them. They are pleasing, amusing fellows, and do not rasp one's nerves like the Germans and many others. One can forgive them much; indeed, one has to. Many people, again, would be glad to put responsibility on the Germans. An unfortunate race, for nothing is so unfortunate as to be unloved. We must discover the truth, Mr. Beechtree. You have a line of inquiry to follow?”
“I am making friends with the fellow's secretary,” said Henry. “She likes me, I may say. ”

“ All youths that are unhealthy, weak, or affected with infirmities, on the other hand, are spared by the “military selection,” and remain at home during the war, marry, and propagate themselves. The more useless, the weaker, or infirmer the youth is, the greater is his prospect of escaping the recruiting officer, and of founding a family. ”

“ Those various city circles were unwilling to receive young persons whom the future alone was to form into people. On the student side lack of steadiness, violence of speech, insolence, and other native traits usual to youth were not very willing to bend themselves to social requirements ”