So-Called Races 83 



So-Called Races 



There are symptoms to-day that this horizon is be- 

 coming enlarged. For instance, a favorite doctrine of 

 old international law was that a subject could not cast 

 off his allegiance to the land of his birth without the 

 consent of his sovereign. The United States, one of 

 the youngest in the family of nations, has always in- 

 sisted on expatriation as a fundamental right of man. 

 It is an exclusively American doctrine, but we would 

 seem to be succeeding measurably in our novel conten- 

 tion. I think it will hardly be questioned that patriotic 

 sentiment is steadily, not declining, but being overlaid 

 by a wider race sentiment. Men have a vague sort of 

 idea that it is somehow too narrow for the field of human 

 sympathy that a mere accident of birth in a certain 

 locality should be allowed to circumscribe their feelings 

 of humanity. To go forth and shoot fellow human 

 beings for no other reason than that they happen to 

 belong to a nation at war with one's own nation — a 

 war in all probability brought on through the folly or 

 venality of ruling powers — becomes increasingly dis- 

 tasteful and repulsive to thinking men as their horizon 

 of sympathy widens. The danger now is lest we con- 

 tent ourselves with but a single step in advance and 

 stop short at a so-called "race" loyalty. Recent 

 events, particularly the war in the East, have opened 

 men's eyes to the apparently impending struggle in the 

 marts of trade between the so-called yellow and white 

 races. To what lengths the coming strife for the 



