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AGAINST RACIAL INEQUALITY: Can one seriously contend that an Ash is superior to a Beech, an Oak superior to a Hawthorn, a Beech superior to an Oak, an Oak superior to an Ash, a Sycamore superior to an Elm, a Pine superior to a Yew, a Fir superior to a Rosewood, a Yew superior to an Elm, a Sycamore superior to a Pine, and so on? If so, on what criterion does one base one's contention? Is it enough to base it on the relative number of trees in each species (those with fewest numbers being the most precious because rare), their respective size, leafage, colouring, seed, strength, industrial usefulness, age, etc., or would that ultimately prove somewhat presumptuous?

Admittedly where, for example, two Oaks that had developed unequally in different environments were concerned, where one had become sickly and warped because of a lack of fresh air, moisture, sunshine, space, and official protection against both man and disease, while the other had developed under the best possible conditions and consequently become healthy and strong, one would of course be justified in concluding the latter tree superior to the former. However, what one could not do so confidently would be to set up a scale of merit applicable to the most well-developed trees in each species, to assert a Teak categorically superior to a Rosewood, or an Elm categorically superior to a Hawthorn.

Similarly, in terms of the human kind (and basing one's judgement solely within the confines of each class), can one seriously contend that a Slav is superior to an Indian, a Turk superior to a Teuton, a Latin superior to an Anglo-Saxon, a Celt superior to a Mongol, an Arab superior to a Zulu, a Mongol superior to a Latin, a Teuton superior to a Turk, a Jew superior to a Pict, a Shona superior to an Apache, an Anglo-Saxon superior to a Zulu, a Bantu superior to a Kurd, an Eskimo superior to a Lapp, etc., and then, in going far beyond that, draw-up a definitive scale of racial superiority relative to the total number of races, or presumed races, currently in existence? Can one? Would one ever be in a position to do that? Hasn't almost every race produced great men, attained to outstanding achievements in art, literature, music, philosophy, architecture, medicine, religion, politics, etc., and thus contributed to both the development and decline of the many ingenious civilizations which have appeared throughout the six-thousand years of man's reign on earth?

Surely it would be a gross stupidity to maintain that an intelligent attitude to life ought to incorporate an awareness as to which races one's race (if known) is either inferior or superior to, other than in the relative sense of its being economically, industrially, militarily, philosophically, culturally, politically, spiritually, or socially either ahead of or behind certain other civilized races at any given point in time. Surely it is quite enough, under the prevailing restrictions imposed upon us by the absence of various scientific certainties, to know one's race to be different, the inheritor of particular advantages and disadvantages, and then to live in accordance with those differences, whatever the consequences, for as long as that race exists.