Back | Next
Contents

Editor's Introduction To:
Chain Reaction

Algis Budrys

 

Just before the turn of the century, the United States shouldered aside the doddering Spanish Empire, and liberated Spain's colonies. There was strong sentiment for the immediate annexation of Cuba, but unlike Puerto Rico, Cuba became a sovereign nation.

We also inherited the Philippine Islands; which caused Rudyard Kipling to write:

 

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

 
Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen people,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden—
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple.
An hundred times made plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden—
The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden—
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper—
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White Man's burden—
Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden—
Have done with childish ways—
The lightly offered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

 

That poem as much as any other has caused Kipling to be charged with racism. He self-evidently was guilty, although he was much less so than most people of his time. Today, of course, we have eliminated racism. (There is a Black Caucus in the U.S. Congress, and a Black Social Worker's Association; there are Black Student Unions in most universities. If their white counterparts existed they would, of course, be racist. Meanwhile, Mack Reynolds wrote tellingly of the Black Man's Burden: the obligation of blacks in the United States and Britain to take civilization to Africa. These are all surely anomalies.)

One presumes that in centuries to come, racial differences on Earth will vanish. What, though, will we find between the stars?

Back | Next
Framed