Lusitania (1915)

The last horror of a horrible war is come! It puts a period to what we have already said: European civilization has failed. Its failure did not come with this war but with this war it has been made manifest. Whatever of brutality and inhumanity, of murder, lust and theft has happened since last summer is but counterpart of the same sort of happenings hidden in the wilderness and done against dark and helpless people by white harbingers of human culture. But when Negroes were enslaved, or the natives of Congo raped and mutilated, or the Indians of the Amazon robbed, or the natives of the South Seas murdered, or 2,732 American citizens lynched—when all this happened in the past and men knew it was happening and women fatted and plumed themselves on the ill-gotten gains, and London and Berlin and Paris and New York flamed with orgies of extravagance which the theft of worlds made possible, when all this happened, we civilized folk turned deaf ears. We explained that these “lesser breeds without the law” were given to exaggeration and had to be treated this way. They could not understand civilization but as for the White World, there humanity and Christianity and loving kindness reigned. This was a lie and we know it was a lie. The Great War is the lie unveiled. This world is a miserable pretender toward things which it might accomplish if it would be humble and gentle and poor and honest. It is a great privilege in the midst of this frightful catastrophe to belong to a race that can stand before Heaven with clean hands and say: we have not oppressed, we have been oppressed; we are not thieves, we are victims; we are not murderers, we are lynched!

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Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1915. “Lusitania.” The Crisis. 10(2):81.