“What’s the answer? Well, I think our new friend and member here, Lucian Firelock, has the only answer, complete segregation, so successful in the South and some day soon, God willing, to be universally demanded throughout the North. In the next war, I’d like to see the Negroes not even called soldiers, not given any uniforms except overalls, and kept by force in a work corps.”

(Neil looked at Lucian Firelock, who sat next to Duncan Browler, vice-president of Wargate’s. He did not think that Lucian was comfortable over either Rod’s compliments or putting his feet up on the table.)

“But now,” said Rod, “I have a few things to tell you about the Negroes right here in Grand Republic. When we citizens-in-arms went off to fight for our homes, there were only a few of the black folk here, and the predominant element among them were well-trained old-timers like Wash, who has blacked all our shoes since we were kids, and enjoyed it, bless his dear old ebony hide, and whom we all loved and respected!

“But we G.I.‘s came back to find that hundreds of the worst type of colored men have forced their way in here, and are being followed by all their unwashed and unwanted and lice-infested relatives from the South—which is powerful glad to get rid of them—and so we are on our way to accumulate such a sinister darktown that race-riots are going to be inevitable—and all because of a false liberalism, an ignorant tolerance of the Negro.”

(Major Rodney Aldwick never said “nigger.” He would not have said it even at a lynching.)

“We already have approximately two thousand of these Sons and Daughters of Mumbo-jumbo here, and soon there will be twenty thousand, and a fair city will be fouled and smirched and ruined—if we don’t do something about it!

“On my own initiative, I have been having an investigation made of some Negro agitators who are trying to corrupt our labor picture, and I’m going to tell you about these fancy fellows, of whom most of you have never heard, but who are getting ready to take over your own business, gentlemen, and have a pretty fair chance to do it, too, if you don’t wake up and get very, very busy!”

(At this line of the spy-melodrama, all their heads went up.)

“They are plotting to compel the unions, most of which have hitherto barred out black members, or hamstrung them by keeping them in phony auxiliary unions, to open their ranks, so that any ignorant, black ditch-digger can come in and even take office.

“Soon you will have the spectacle of a big, black union official coming into your private office and sitting down with his hat on, puffing a fifty-cent cigar in your face and telling you how to run your business, that you’ve given the best years of your life to building up. Yes, and you’ll have coal-black wenches demanding the ‘right’ to share the toilets with your own daughters and delicately bred secretaries!