THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL SILK races do not possess. We pity them, but we, wrapped up in our delusion of superiority, do not see that they also pity us. The South Sea islanders were a healthy lot until the missionaries put clothes on them. They were taught to wear shirts and trousers and they died in thousands of tuberculosis. The same fate has happened to the Red Indians of America. They, too, were taught to wrap themselves up like parcels and to live in closed houses. Very few of them have survived. The fact is that the bleached, clothes- wrapped races are physically weaker than the natural-colour races. The dockers of London cannot compare, for strength and endurance, with the coolies of China and the natives of Africa. The law of compensation has made us pay dearly for our comforts and inventions. Everywhere, hospitals follow civilization. The white races are like the white grass that grows underneath a board. Their colour is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. Too many white people are frail and anemic and half alive. We have built up a vast para- 13