http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=130270396...
The February 1915 edition of The Crisis (vol 9, number 4) contains a piece about the War in its opinions section. It contains quotiations from The Chicago Post, The Washington Times, and A.P.O. of South Africa, all about the resistance of white people to let Colored troops join the fight. The section from The Chicago Post discusses a bomb that was thrown into a peace meeting hosted by an African American peace group. The director of the meeting, Dr. Hirsch is quoted, explaining why he thinks there is such resistance to the group's activities: "We, whom I represent, cannot be held responsible for the failure of the world's teachings. Nationalism has not failed... Nationalism in this very country has grown to mean racialism. This fallacy of race superiority has brought this harvest of war." (179). Hirsch is suggesting that America's (and presumably Europe's) racialism has caused the war because the white people interpret nationalism as defending their country from the "inferior" races. Not allowing African Americans to train for the Armed Forces is a good example of this.
The section goes on to develop this idea of nationalism as toxic and as a cause of the war using a quotation from The Washington Times. It explains the war from an African American point of view: that Europeans feel a need to control all of the land while knowing that they are outnumbered by other races, so they get very defensive in order to maintain this control, leading to wars. It goes on to quote The A.P.O. in South Africa, which contains an account of European troops denying 13,000 South African men who wanted to fight in the War, saying that "this war is 'a European war,' and Colored troops could not be employed" (179).
From an African American point of view, this War affects most countries in the world and yet whole races of people are being denied when they express the desire to fight for their own countries. Nationalism has led the European powers to feel a strong desire to protect their land, even if it is land that they colonized and is therefore the homeland of different races. Because of the extensive European territories in Africa (especially French), you would think that these European countries would want to employ these countrymen to str'engthen their numbers, but their nationalistic 'racialism' instead hurts them because they do not want Colored" people involved in their "European war".