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, clotheswrapped
 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