MAX YERGAN

But it is the New Africa which renders our situation acute. You of the West are part of your present; it has grown out of your past, and you have developed or are developing a means of controlling more or less the systems of life you have built up. But we in Africa are in a situation of which we are not so fully a part. Your ideas, your methods, your beliefs and desires have steadily engulfed us. We find ourselves compelled to drive a fiery steed or at least be in the road where he is driven. We did not have the steed as a colt; he has come upon us in the strength and strangeness of his maturity. In order that we may not be thrown off or trampled under the feet of this steed which has been set loose among us, we call upon you to join hands with us in a common effort to understand and direct the forces he represents in Western civilization.

-Max Yergan, "Youth's Challenge To Youth", in Thinking with Africa (New York: 1927), (ed.) Milton Stauffer.