The other day President Roosevelt invited the famous Negro, Booker T. Washington, to lunch with him. Nothing could be more natural. The two men are old friends who respect each other, and Professor Washington is, besides, a man who is able to bring to the President valuable information concerning the race question and other matters in the South. Even the Democrats in the South have admitted that Mr. Washington is one of the ablest and most far-sighted men in that part of the country and that his activity has been of great benefit both to the colored and the white population in the southern states. They have sought his aid when they wanted to achieve some goal, and he has ever been ready to lend his support. In addition, his conception of the relation of the federal government to the political parties in the South coincides with that of the southern Democrats.

It might well have been expected, therefore, that the Democrats of the South 2would prize the fact that the President of the United States sought the advice of this man. So they did, too, as long as the President only met Professor Washington at his office. When the President invited him through the door of his dining room and bade him sit down to a meal, the storm broke. The fact that Washington had been using his influence to obtain a federal judgeship for a prominent Democrat in Alabama was in order. But when the President treated him as any other man of standing, as "his equal socially", such attitude was intolerable.

The sudden and violent burst of anger in the South shows most clearly how deeply rooted is the prejudice against the Negroes in the earlier slave states. There is not, however, complete unanimity among the white people in the South. The progressives are not in accord with the tastes of the President, to be sure; yet they maintain that he must have the right to be the master at his own table. The Southerners of the old school, however, make no concessions. They are reactionaries who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and they consider the President's action a disgrace to the country.

Nothing can be done about people of this type; they will go to their grave with all their prejudices. Our only hope is that a generation with broader and more healthy vision will take their place.

It is possible that this incident, insignificant as it is in itself, may have important and unfortunate consequences; it may cause a breach in the cordial approach between the North and the South which started so auspiciously while President McKinley held office, thus serving to strengthen the reactionaries in the South. If so, there is nothing to be done about it. President Roosevelt has acted altogether correctly, and no unprejudiced man will blame him if he again should invite Professor Washington to lunch, as he probably will. Some day the silly prejudice must be broken down, and Mr. Roosevelt is just the right man to take the first blows.

Until it becomes possible for a Negro to be a guest at the White House without a storm of anger arising in the South as a consequence, American "liberty and equality" will not have been realized throughout our country.