The efforts of American missionaries and educators have proven futile. And repeated military incursions have also failed. Three times in this century U.S. Marines were sent to bring "democracy" to Haiti. The first mission began in 1915. Marines remained for 19 years, building hospitals, power stations, schools, and modern telephone exchanges, and more than 200 bridges and 1,000 miles of paved roads. Upon their leaving the island reverted back to complete ruin and despotism. In 1958 Marines returned and began the whole process over again, with the same results.

In 1994 Americans again returned to Haiti, this time with 23,000 troops as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force. At least 500 troops are expected to remain until at least the end of the century to prevent Haiti from reverting to its old ways. Even with this modern force and accompanying massive U.S. and U.N. aid, Haiti is politically corrupt, wracked by AIDS and other diseases, and chronically criminal. As Haiti approaches the end of the 20th century, the capital, Port-au-Prince reeks of human waste and rotting garbage.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a British member of the Royal Geographic Society, Hesketh Prichard, traveled to Haiti to study the effects of an entirely Black-ruled country. Upon his arrival he had strong sympathies with the natives, and he wanted to see how they fared in response to the introduction of White civilization, but without Whites ruling over them. He found that although Haiti had French laws and the workings of a civilization on paper, it was all an illusion of style without substance. The Haitian army, for instance, had 6,500 privates but the same number of generals, all with pompously adorned uniforms. They had hospitals with mud floors, train stations and tracks but no working trains, power-generating plants that generated no power, courts and laws and constitutional rights but only corruption and despotism. There were Catholic churches, but they were encumbered with primitive voodoo and animal sacrifices. Although Prichard regarded the natives as generally jovial, he found them prone to the cruelest human tortures and atrocities.

Prichard concluded that to Haitians the veneer of civilization is as important as its substance. If they could dress and speak like a European and have institutions that in form seemed like that of the European, then they viewed themselves as equal to the European.

In asking the fundamental question "Can the Haitian rule himself?" Prichard writes the following:

The present condition of Haiti gives the best possible answer to the question, and, considering the experiment has lasted for a century, perhaps also a conclusive one. For a century the answer has been working itself out there in flesh and blood. The Negro has had his chance, a fair field, and no favor. He has had the most beautiful and fertile of the Caribees for his own; he has had the advantage of excellent French laws; he inherited a made country, with Cap Haitien [A once beautiful town on the north coast of Haiti] for its Paris. . . . Here was a wide land sown with prosperity, a land of wood, water, towns and plantations, and in the midst of it the Black man was turned loose to work out his own salvation. What has he made of the chances that were given to him? . . .¹

At the end of a hundred years of trial how does the Black man govern himself? What progress has he made? Absolutely none.

Iceland, on the other hand, even with all her disadvantages, is one of the best places to live on Earth. The nation publishes more books and journals per head of population than any other country in the world. It has some of the highest literacy rates and lowest infant mortality rates, lowest crime and drug rates, highest standards of living, best medical care, and the longest standing freely elected Parliament in the world: the Althing.

Suppose that by some incredible act, all the Icelanders were taken to Haiti and all the Haitians taken to Iceland. In five years the Icelanders in Haiti would be living in a paradise they would have built, while in Iceland. . .I suspect that most Haitians would be dead.