Bonds of Race

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 18, 27 October 1939, Page 16

Bonds of Race

HE strangest contribution to the war discussions so far reported by cable was the remark last week of Colonel Lindbergh that America’s bond with Europe is a bond of race. If the Colonel had said that the bond was the tail-smoke of his own aeroplane his words would have had more meaning. Race means about as much to-day as the colour of our hair or the creases in our trousers. It is almost true to say that there is no such thing. It has been pointed out over and over again-but by no one more effectively than by Julian Huxley in one of the recent Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairsthat there are no pure races anywhere in the world, and that when statesmen talk about the "call of race" they are talking scientific nonsense. It was in fact one of the fundamental blunders of the Treaty of Versailles, which no one to-day defends, that it attempted to draw racial lines in so many corners of Europe. If race means anything at all when applied to people it means bodies and blood; and if there is one fact so clearly established that to question it is impossible it is that there is no "unmixed" blood in any American or European body. There cannot therefore be a British race or even an Anglo-Saxon race, a German or an Aryan race, a French race, or a Latin race. Far less can there be an American race, now or at any time in the future. There is not even a Negro race or a race of Mongolians. What Colonel Lindbergh perhaps meant was that the bond with Europe was cultural. But if he did mean that it is a pity that he did not say it. What is far more likely, however, is that he did not know what he meant or what those people meant who suggested. to him what he should say. He no doubt meant to dissuade his countrymen from saying or doing anything likely to involve them in war — a quite legitimate stand for any American. But bonds of race are beams of moonshine,