THE REDMAN'S MESSAGE

EPILOGUE

THE Civilization of the Whiteman is a failure; it is visibly crumbling around us. It has failed at every crucial test. No one who measures things by results can question this fundamental statement.

Apparently, the money-madness is the main cause of it all. We know that such a thing was unknown among the Indians. Their big menace was failure of food supply, and against this they prepared by a storage plan that was effectual.

What is Civilization? Literally, it is a system by which men can live in a large group (a city, or civitas) and enjoy all the benefits without suffering the evils that result from such association.

For example, a man with his family is living isolated in the woods. They make or capture all the necessaries of life. They defend themselves by fighting against the next family on the next stream, and their only answer to sanitary problems is to move out when the camp stinks. But suppose one hundred families agree to live together in the same camp, and combine their efforts to solve more effectively the problems of hostile tribes, food failure, disease, social pleasures, spiritual life. The men become cives. The resultant system evolved is a Civilization.

How are we going to appraise the value of a Civilization? By certain yard measures that are founded on human nature, and which remorselessly investigate the fundamentals of the man-mind and the man-needs.

First of these is: Does your Civilization guarantee to you absolute freedom of action so long as you do not encroach on the equal right of your neighbour to do the same thing?

Does your system work for the greatest happiness of the greatest number?

Is your Civilization characterized by justice in the courts and gentleness in the streets?

Are its largest efforts to relieve suffering and misery?

Does your Civilization grant to every individual the force and rights of humanhood?

Does your system guarantee absolute freedom of religion?

Is everyone in your community guaranteed food, shelter, protection, dignity, so long as your group has these things in its gift?

Does your system guarantee the tribal control of tribal interests?

Does your system guarantee to each man one vote; but so much influence as his character can command? Does your system guarantee to each man the product of his industry?

Does your system accept the fact that material things are of doubtful or transient value, that the things of the spirit are all that are enduring and worth while?

Does your system set larger value on kindness than on rigorous justice?

Does your system discourage large material possessions in one man?

Does your system provide for the sick, the helpless, the weak, the old and the stranger?

Does your system guarantee the integrity of the natural group called the family?

Does your system recognize and further the fundamental thought that the chief duty of man is the attainment of manhood, which means the perfect and harmonious development of every part and power that goes to make a man; and the consecration of that manhood to the service of one's people?

By every one of these tests, the White Civilization is a failure.

How is it that we of the Whiteman's way have just as much food in the land as ever we had, just as much wealth as ever we had, just as much need for labour, just as much material of every kind, just as much readiness to work; and yet we are facing a breakdown because we cannot co-ordinate these things into effective action?

Our system has broken down - our Civilization is a failure. Wherever pushed to a logical conclusion, it makes one millionaire and a million paupers. There is no complete happiness under its blight.

Men of the White Race! We speak now as representative of the most heroic race the world has ever seen, the most physically perfect race the world has ever seen, the most spiritual Civilization the world has ever seen.

We offer you the Message of the Redman, the Creed of Manhood. We advocate his culture as an improvement on our own, if perchance by belated repentance, remorse, restitution, and justification, we may save ourselves from Divine vengeance and total destruction, as did the Ninevites in their final stance; so that we may have a chance to begin again with a better higher thought.