The worldwide struggle between the primary races of mankind-the
"conflict of color," as it has been happily termed-bids fair to be
the fundamental problem of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and great communities like the United States of America, Europe, the South African Confederation, and Australasia regard the "color question" as perhaps the
gravest problem of the future. To our age, therefore, the French Revolution in San Domingo-the first great shock between the ideals of White supremacy and race equality, which erased the finest of European colonies from the map of the White world and initiated that most noted attempt at Negro self-government, the Black republic of Haiti-cannot but be of peculiar interest. The keynote to the history of the French Revolution in San Domingo is a great tragedy-the tragedy of the annihilation of the White population. The period closes sixteen years after beginning with the
complete annihilation of the last remnants of the White population, the subordination of the Mulatto caste to the Negroes, and the destruction of the island's economic prosperity.