The White Man's Burden Is Sentimentalism - Felix Adler
I am in favor of implanting civilization in the East, and I believe in the necessity of emancipating the Filipinos from the bonds of ignorance. But civilization that is forced down from above on a people seldom lasts. It is not wise, it is not right, that Western ideas, unadapted, should be carried to the East. Probably no man has done more to arouse public sentiment in this respect than Rudyard Kipling. With his grip on words whose roots smell of the earth from which he has dug them, he believes the whole white race to be the chosen instrument of God to carry Western ideas to enlighten the East.
Excerpt from a lecture on "The First Fruits of Imperialism" before the Society for Ethical Culture, New York, March 12, 1899.
Read the rest of the article here.
Posted by Jone Johnson Lewis on November 26, 2002