THE ULTIMATE CHOICE .sx ARNOLD TOYNBEE .sx 'To dwell together in unity' has not been coming easy to the human race .sx We may agree that this is 'good and pleasant' for 'brethren' , but few human communities , so far , have been prepared to take all other human beings to their bosoms as their brothers .sx They have usually found some excuse for treating the majority of their fellow-men as 'lesser breeds without the law' .sx If one stigma wears off , we invent another .sx When our neighbour ceases to be an infidel , we still stigmatise him as a foreigner , and , if he ceases to be a foreigner , we still ostracise him as a Negro or an albino .sx This widespread passion for being a 'chosen people' evidently has deep psychological roots .sx We human beings have gone on indulging in it at the price of bringing endless disasters on ourselves .sx We have gone on till we have now been overtaken by the Atomic Age .sx In this age the price of disunity is evidently going to be prohibitive .sx This has been recognized quickly and widely , so today we have a stronger motive than we have ever had before for trying to get rid of our self-inflicted divisions .sx Our choice now lies between co-existence and non-existence .sx The removal of the main present hindrances to co-existence has therefore become the most urgent item on mankind's agenda .sx Three outstanding present hindrances are ideologies , nationalism , and race-feeling .sx We have to get rid of them all , and we have not left ourselves much time for that .sx This raises a practical question of priorities .sx Which of these three evils is going to be the most difficult to eradicate ?sx Whichever it is , we ought to concentrate our efforts on combating this one first .sx One answer to this question about priorities was implied in the foundation of the Institute of Race Relations .sx This answer was made explicit in a paper addressed to Chatham House in 1950 by one of the moving spirits in the launching of the Institute , Mr. Harry Hodson .sx 'There are two problems in world politics today which transcend all others,' Mr. Hodson said in this context .sx 'They are the struggle between Communism and Liberal Democracy and the problem of race relations .sx Of the two , I am prepared to argue that the problem of race relations is the more important , since , for one thing , it would remain with us in its full complexity even if Communism were to settle down to peaceful neighbourliness with Democracy in a world partitioned between them .sx ' Mr. Hodson is surely right in holding that ideological differences can be overcome more easily than racial differences can .sx An ideology can be put into cold storage .sx The more awkward and obnoxious of its tenets can be reduced to dead letters .sx More than that , there is the possibility of conversion from one ideology to another .sx In the past , this process of conversion has sometimes gone with a run .sx Racial differences , too , can be overcome by conversion , but the process in this field is a physical , not an intellectual , one .sx The other name for it is intermarriage .sx Happily for mankind's prospects , intermarriage between geographically intermingled populations of different physique has been normal hitherto , whereas racial segregation has been exceptional .sx In our present-day world , the normal way of overcoming race-differences is exemplified in two large and important constituents of the human race :sx the Muslim community and the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Roman Catholic community .sx In Mexico and Brazil today , most people have at least three different racial strains in their physique :sx the European , the pre-Columbian American , and the African ; but domestic injustices and dissensions in these and other Latin American countries do not , on the whole , run on racial lines .sx Latin Americans are not race-conscious , and Muslims are not either .sx Visit , for instance , the American University of Beirut and watch the students on the campus there .sx You will observe a great variety of race , but no tendency towards antipathy or segregation on account of this .sx In fact , race-feeling seems to be an exceptional failing .sx In the present-day world it is virtually confined to three minorities :sx the Teutonic-speaking peoples , the high-caste Hindus , and the Jews .sx In the Atomic Age the prejudice for which these three minorities stand has no future .sx 'The wave of the future'- supposing that the human race is going to allow itself a future- is the comparative freedom from race-prejudice that is exhibited by the Latin Americans and the Muslims .sx The third of mankind's present three apples of discord is one that is not mentioned by Mr. Hodson in the passage that I have quoted from a paper of his .sx It is nationalism ; and perhaps the only good thing that nationalism has to be said for it is that , as some offset to the havoc that it works , it does at least cut across the alternative division of mankind into conflicting races .sx Nationalism in its present-day form originated among the West European peoples .sx Unhappily it has now infected most of the rest of the world , but it is still rampant in its birth-place , and this has had at least one fortunate result .sx It has saved the majority of the human race from falling under the lasting domination of the minority that has an unusually small amount of pigment in its skin .sx If this bleached minority had chosen to gang up together , it might have been able to dominate the majority for quite a long time , on the strength of the temporary lead that it has gained in technological progress .sx But the bleached race has halved or quartered its potential strength by expending this on domestic national rivalries , and this makes it unlikely that the present division of the world between two ideological camps will ever be matched by a world-wide racial division between the bleached and the tanned .sx Try to imagine a race-war between Russia and America lined up together on one side and India and Pakistan lined up together on the other .sx This imaginary alignment of forces seems most unlikely ever to become actual .sx It is true that one can imagine Russia and America getting together against China .sx They did get together against Japan during the Second World War , and China is likely to become more formidable than Japan ever has been or ever could be .sx If China were to acquire the bomb , it seems safe to prophesy that Russia and America would become allies again within the next five years .sx In that situation , a series of half-a-dozen leading articles in the press of either country could effectively change the climate of their ideological relations with each other .sx But , if this did happen , it would be just another instance of the familiar working of the age-old balance of power .sx The coincidence of a power-politics line-up with a race-difference would be accidental .sx And , as a matter of fact , the two opposing alliances would not pan out neatly on racial lines .sx Russia's present East European satellites would be in China's camp , while the South-East Asian peoples would be in Russia's and America's .sx It looks , then , as if the evil of racialism can be localised , thanks to the counteracting effects of the evil of nationalism .sx Probably we need not fear that there will be a world-war raged on racial lines .sx Yet , even if we succeed in localising the evil of race-feeling , it will still be so much tinder ready to flare into flame at the touch of the first spark .sx And , besides being dangerous , race-feeling is odious in itself .sx It is therefore not enough just to localise it .sx We have also to try to eradicate it wherever we find it .sx This will be easier in some continents than in others .sx The segregation of Jews from Gentiles will , it may be hoped , be broken down rather rapidly by intermarriage all over the world except , perhaps , in Israel .sx We may look forward to seeing the Jewish diaspora transform itself from a closed racial community into an open religious community .sx If this were to happen , Judaism would at last have achieved its manifest destiny of becoming one of the world-wide religions .sx Again , we may hope to see the end of the segregation of citizens of different colours in the United States and of citizens of different castes in India .sx In both India and the United States the segregationists seem now to be fighting a losing battle .sx The harder of the two battles is , of course , the one in India , since here the institution of caste has the momentum of three thousand years of history behind it .sx But in India , as in the United States , it looks now as if the victory of integration were in sight .sx If and when racialism has been overcome in these two sub-continents , it will have been more or less confined to Palestine and to those parts of Africa where , as in Palestine , there is an immigrant minority from Europe .sx Here we touch the hard core of the race problem .sx Racial minorities that have been dominant have to reconcile themselves to accepting equality with the majority of their fellow-citizens .sx And emancipated racial majorities that have recently been denied their human rights have to reconcile themselves , on their side , to accepting equality with their former overlords without abusing the power of numbers under a democratic re@2gime .sx These requirements call for almost superhuman self-restraint and magnanimity on both sides , and that will be hard to achieve if the physical segregation of the two races continues .sx The position of being a precariously dominant minority seems to be almost too difficult for human nature to cope with .sx This is illustrated by the present temper of the French colons in Algeria .sx In North America the French have had a better record than the English and the Dutch in their dealings with the pre-Columbian natives of the continent .sx Yet in Africa today they are behaving no better than their English and Dutch opposite numbers .sx If the situation in Africa is to be saved , the geographically intermingled races there will have to follow the example of Latin America and the Islamic World .sx In those two regions , intermarriage has brought with it a happy solution of racial problems .sx 'Bella gerant alii , tu , felix Austria , nube .sx ' This famous line can be made to point a moral for the present-day European colonist in Africa by making a small change of words at the end .sx 'Tu felix nube colone .sx ' For the European colonist in Africa , intermarriage offers a happy way out , and perhaps the only happy way that can be found for him .sx If he replies that he cannot bear the prospect , it can be answered that he is being asked to do no more than has been done already , long ago , by his fellow-European colonist in Latin America .sx He can also be asked to face the alternative .sx 'Intermarry or get out' is probably the ultimate choice that destiny is offering to the European minorities in Africa in our day .sx COMMENT ON CORFIELD .sx F. B. WELBOURN .sx 'We have no proof it was Sammy' , Robin pointed out .sx 'We have no proof of anything .sx In fact truth itself seems to be an exotic .sx ' - Elspeth Huxley , The Flame Trees of Thika .sx =1 :sx IMPARTIALITY .sx Mr. Corfield has a distinguished record in the Sudan Political Service ; and from September 1954 until 1956 he was a member of the Secretariat of the War Council of the Council of Ministers in Kenya- the body which , more than any other , was concerned with direction of the offensive against Mau Mau .sx It is as well to ask from the start whether , in a situation which aroused- and still arouses- such high emotions on both sides , it was wise to appoint , for the purposes of 'an historical survey' , one who was so intimately involved in the opposite camp .sx He criticises government and Europeans in general ; but he manages to imply that , if they made mistakes , 'Kenyatta and his associates' were deliberately bad .sx At certain points his documentary sources are demonstrably wrong , not only in detail but in interpretation , and the reader who spots these faults is bound to ask how many others he has not spotted .sx