Sometime between January and February 2024, all unrevealed Humble keys for Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter disappeared from bundles and purchases in store.

This must be due to conflict between the developer Frogwares and the publisher Nacon. They had legal disputes over ownership of IP and unpaid royalties.

Quote from Humble support:

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter keys have been temporarily pulled across all bundles/products as we have identified a significant number of > issues with our current key pool. As such, we have returned all of the keys to our partner and are working with them to obtain more. I apologize that I > don't have any estimated time for when we expect to receive more keys, and I am sincerely sorry for the delay.

Once we have more keys available, the product should re-appear on your download page or library.

If you already revealed the keys, they will not work anymore. Steam is giving a duplicate message so be careful when creating giveaways.

Keys from Fanatical are affected as well, probably ALL keys do not work anymore.


Also, can someone confirm if other digital stores and physical releases are affected?
I will ask Frogwares for a statement.

2 months ago*

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I tried to activate me key and steam says its a duplicate, cool.

2 months ago
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2 months ago
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Can you name a source of the key?

2 months ago
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Oh sorry, its probably from humble choice

1 month ago
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Humble sells more keys than they have in Bundles, while still having key purchases in store. One bundle key took months before I could get it.
Learned the hard way not to trust Humble.

2 months ago
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In light of this it is strange that they would do things like this proactively and not only when someone complains about keys not working anymore.

2 months ago
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They probably did this BECAUSE they got a couple of complaints.

2 months ago
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Possibly :))

2 months ago
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Had no idea, Have been using Humble Bundle for a decade and never had an issue.
Not doubting (user baised), but in case it happens to be counting on it.

2 months ago
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I had no idea either until I went to reveal a key and it said it was out of stock, yet their store was selling the key. Other SG users have told me they immediately reveal all their keys rather be last in line.

2 months ago
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Yeah, I always reveal too, so taht's likely why it never happened. But it's good to keep in mind to keep doing it.

2 months ago
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They have different pools of keys between the store and the bundles. A game from one of my bundles ran out of keys while they had the same game on the store at full price. Support did not give me a key from the store as a replacement and never restored it, they gave me store credit instead, but not enough to buy the key with that credit.

2 months ago
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my record is 3 years before i got a key they sold me and i immediately tired to use it only to be told they were out well still selling the key in stores the entire time

2 months ago
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Personally I've only had to wait to get a key from them if I waited a few months before choosing my games from the monthly bundle thing. It's quite possible in that case they had returned unclaimed keys after a month or two and had to request and pay for more to meet the demand from slackers like me. I didn't mind too much in those circumstances, but it'd be seriously annoying if it was for some recent/current.

It is a mystery why they don't keep a key for every person who bought the bundle, though. That seems only logical and should be a legal requirement. They sold that person a key and didn't specify a redeem by date. (Doesn't apply to keys that do have one, I've seen them do that a few times recently.)

2 months ago
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Because it is dangerous to hold key. They hold a right to assign. Because when you generate the key, there is time stamp. And after that, everyone with steam key generator can generate your key to and add it. How you can prove it was not you? And how complicated it is, when you want to use your key after years and someone else it activated? Therefor right to assign a key is better practice. Because it is about you to generate key, when you need it. But publisher, or studio or other party can cancel that right from thier internal position. There are plenty of games that arent sold, because nobody holds right to sell them. Sudio and publisher shut down and it isnt possible to sell that game. For example you cant buy Future Cop L.A.P.D.. There is lot of problems between companies that prevent selling games anymore. And therefor they can cancel right to assign key. Best practice is buy game and active it as sonn as possible.

2 months ago
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Because when you generate the key, there is time stamp.

You don't generate the keys, you reveal them (and a key is assigned at that time from a pool of already generated keys).

And after that, everyone with steam key generator can generate your key to and add it. How you can prove it was not you?

Anyone with a Steam key generator can generate an existing key from the Humble pool of unrevealed keys. Yes, you could "prove" that the key was redeemed by someone else before you unrevealed it but I doubt Humble would go those lengths when they can just say "sorry, 30 days warranty for our keys".

Therefor right to assign a key is better practice.

No, they should assign a key to every purchase, and keep it hidden until the person who bought it wants to use it. Like Fanatical does. Right now on Humble we have "unrevealed keys" that might, or might not, exist, because they are/were from a pool of keys (probably shared between bundles and -who knows- their store) that might be already empty.

And therefor they can cancel right to assign key.

They can (should?) not "unassign" purchased keys. Like when you bought a physical copy of a game and they gave a Steam key inside (or a license key). Revoking such keys should be a big no-no, like it should be now with keys distributed digitally (once they are sold and purchased by someone). I can't see the difference between a key printed on a manual and a key you bought digitally.

Best practice is buy game and active it as sonn as possible.

I agree with you here.

1 month ago
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Those keys are between three and six years old. It's kinda crazy that there are still some copies unredeemed sitting out there.

2 months ago
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On barter alone 149 users are still advertising it for trade, so yea lots of unredeemed keys out there.

2 months ago
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Wild.

2 months ago
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It's been in seven bundles, obviously some buyers will have a duplicate in their collection.

2 months ago
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Steam Gifts giveaways to the rescue. ;)

2 months ago
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I didn't use to redeem all my keys right away for various reason (it taking a while to do manually being one), so I have a bunch of unredeemed keys sitting around on Humble, Fanatical and even IndieGala. I started redeeming all the new ones a couple of years ago. ASF makes it so much easier and I started worrying about keys vanishing.

Most of those old keys are for games I'd probably never play, so it's not too big a deal. I do really need to go through and do something with them, though.

2 months ago
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I used to reset during the holidays and clear them out every year, either give them away here (with my previous SG account) or if someone on my FL had it on their WL.Through the year, I'd also see if I could trade any. Having an end of year reset was always nice IMO. Kept the bookkeeping requirements low. I'm a tad overdue on clearing a couple keys still though.

2 months ago
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I get stressed out when the keys are six months old! Lol I don't know how people can keep keys for years. My rule of thumb is one year. The holidays are perfect to do a clear out of older keys as there are many community trains occuring.

2 months ago
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Agreed.

2 months ago
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This a debate that always shows up when this kind of problem arises. And it's a good debate (I no longer leave unrevealed keys anymore but I have a huge backlog to process 😓).

What I don't understand is why Humble has to be this shady, totally removing any trace of a game from our purchase pages (and it's not the first time, they even have done that for DRM downloads and source code assets). I'd prefer them to either leave the (according to them) non-working key there, or to replace it with a warning of what the heck happened.

However, that's what they did with Domina (with a stupid excuse) and the keys were perfectly valid and working (both revealed and unrevealed), they just removed them from our purchases because why not. I know there was some kind of lash out against the developer because of his behavior in COVID times but that had nothing to do with either his game or our past purchases.

2 months ago
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I don't think you can say it had nothing to do with his game. He was adding his politics into his patch notes. And went on a campaign against Steam while also creating alt account after alt account. Steam was in the process of invalidating all the codes sent out to places like Humble as a result. So I don't really see how Humble could've done anything different. Domina is a unique situation though. I can't think of another dev that had a personal meltdown quite like that. I mean, he literally got banned from his own forum due to his behavior.

But yeah, in general, it's a good idea to reveal and use codes ASAP. I've long thought the industry would switch to timed keys to combat the grey market and trading. I think we're seeing that little by little.

1 month ago*
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Steam invalidated all the codes sent out to places like Humble as a result.

Not true. All Steam keys worked fine. I know it because mine was BLOCKED on my purchase page by Humble and I got a new one via trading on Barter. The trader confirmed that the source was the same Humble Bundle where I had purchased my (then removed) copy of the game (it was bundled only once there, AFAIR), and I could redeem it fine. So no, Steam didn't invalidate any Steam codes, nor did the developer (who also didn't contact Humble to have his unused keys returned to him, as some people also speculated).

Domina was only sold on Steam and Itch.io so I don't think there were other places like Humble that ever had Steam keys for the game to begin with (keys from gray market sites came from the Humble Bundle -ironically, they worked as fine as the ones traded on Barter or the ones Humble take away from their customers-).

So I don't really see how Humble could've done anything different.

They should have left our purchases alone. End of story.

Domina is a unique situation though.

Also not true. Some people would disagree when they found out that Humble had SILENTLY removed DRM downloads from their purchases, one of them was the source code for one particular game, can't remember which one now.

Also, not an unique situation. In many cases where Humble couldn't get ahold of more keys they simply removed (again, silently and without any warning or notice) content from our libraries/purchase pages like it never was there.Peppy's Adventure, macdows 95 or the infamous Easy-going Games: Whitethorn Showcase Bundle come to mind right now.

Oh, and the WB bundles, where running out of keys in a recent bundle also "exhausted" all keys for all PAST bundles. That's what happens when you share a single pool of (not enough) keys for a game featured in multiple bundles.

1 month ago
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The circumstances surrounding Domina are definitely unique. I can't think of another scenario where a dev used patch notes to spread propaganda, nor where Steam went out of their way to make sure a game couldn't be sold anywhere again to play on Steam. A few lucky key redemptions notwithstanding. Those are almost definitely from an earlier batch of keys.

Keys being exhausted is a separate issue, although I do agree that not assigning a key to a purchase is the root problem there.

To me though, the solution is simple. Use the keys. Don't sit on them.

1 month ago
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I had a key for Devil's daughter from Fanatical. Put it in a givieaway last night and the recipiant is telling me it's a duplicate. Great timing on this post. Does anyonhe know if I can request a new one from them?

2 months ago
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Okay so I'm on Fanatical and according to their support section if the key is older than 30 days, they are less likely able to replace the dup key. I'm going to open a support ticket anyway.

2 months ago
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Its a 50/50 It really depends who gets your ticket.

First person gave me a new key which was also a dupe, which I reported again.
Person responding to that was someone different and refused to replace.

2 months ago
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Okay, well I sent a support ticket, so hopefully they get back to me in a timely manner. Really. they should be honoring the keys. And if keys have a redemption time limit, that should be stated clearly.

2 months ago
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True, one of the reasons I will think three times before ordering on fanatical again.

2 months ago
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probably shouldn't mention that you gave the key to somebody else, that's a reason for them to refuse to give you a new key

2 months ago
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I didn't. I said it was for myself, but because it's beyond a 30 day window from purchase (2020), and also they stated they were unable to obtain new keys.

2 months ago
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I had a unredeemed key from the Fanatical Killer bundle 12. And yeah, it says it's a dupie, though I revealed it a long time ago and saved it in a spare spreadsheet and I never redeemed or traded this...

Sent a support ticket to fanatical and here's their response

I am sorry you have a duplicate key.

I can see the order in question is very old (17 Feb 2020) and as such it appears the keys have been removed from Steam by the developers of the game. Because of this the game is no longer redeemable.

We provide a warranty on our keys of 30 days. A key is valid unless somebody else redeems it, or the developers of the game remove the key from Steam, both will result in a 'duplicate key' message from Steam.

If we had replacement keys available then even after this period of time we would have swapped then for you, but our spare keys have also been removed from Steam.

I am sorry but we are not able to help with this problem.

Please ensure you redeem any other older keys you may have - You might find that different developers haven't removed the keys from Steam and the games will still activate.

2 months ago*
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This is exactly the response to my own ticket.

2 months ago
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Classic Frogwares.

2 months ago
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What else have they done? I'm not familiar with them.

2 months ago
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Are we sure this isn't a Nacon thing?

2 months ago
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Weren't Namco the guys behind the scandal of The Sinking City?

2 months ago
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... Nacon, yes.

1 month ago
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"Infected" (note: Infection is the invasion and growth of a foreign organism) would indicate the keys would have a negative duplicative effect when used (as per a contagious disease or computer malware). For example, if you use an invalid key, if that key is infectious it might perhaps somehow also make another license in your library deactivate, or corrupt any unused keys on the site the key is on. Consider "affected" instead. :P

2 months ago*
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Remember, kids, the next pandemic was started by Frog(ware)s...

2 months ago
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The Frogware Flu has a nice ring to it phonetically at least. What will the symptoms be?

2 months ago
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Vanishing property, for one.

2 months ago
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You got me :P

2 months ago
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2 months ago
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At least they haven't revoked activated keys

2 months ago
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That's exactly what I was worried, since I won this game here in SG, and played for some time.... It's still in my library, phew... Do we have to worry?

2 months ago
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If they planned to do that then all the Frogwares games sold by Nacon that they were never paid for would be at risk.

They're probably leaving old activated purchases alone.

1 month ago*
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"Not yet", this must be the next step if things don't go smoothly between the developer and publisher.

1 month ago
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I can confirm that the game is GONE from the Humble Nacon Publisher Bundle purchase page but it's still present on the July 2017 Humble Monthly #21(I had revealed that key). I can't say for the Humble Plug In Digital & Dear Villagers Bundle because I didn't buy Tier 3 for that one.

For Fanatical, I do have the game on both the Killer Bundle 12 and Reaper Bundle 7 purchase pages (both unrevealed), I would guess that it's the same for the other bundles (Killer Bundle 12 Redux, a BYO Bundle and a couple of Mystery Bundles).

2 months ago
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yeah, it's like it never existed in the Humble Nacon Bundle. I don't know if I had revealed it or not. :(

1 month ago
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They are complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that
toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me
more than the Souls of White Folk.
Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through
them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a
foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of
their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the
knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear
memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that
which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist
of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the
back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their
thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes
them now embarrassed, now furious! They deny my right to
live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere
bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach
and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at
rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go
twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever
stripped,-ugly, human.
The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's
peoples is a very modern thing,-a nineteenth and twentieth
century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have
laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age regarded skin
color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth
century we were hammering our national manikins into one,
great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color
and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all
that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has
discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!
This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone to curious acts;
even the sweeter souls of the dominant world
as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually
playing above their actual words an obligation of tune.

"My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too
well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is
not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly
sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where
all is love, you may, one day, be born-white!"
I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:
"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire
it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I
am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of
the earth forever and ever, Amen!
Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes
passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this?
That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave
on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new
religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects
are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the
Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously
leads your mob. Next it appears dampening generous
enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious; to free the
slave is discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his
master! Do we sense somnolent writhings in black Africa or
angry groans in India or triumphant banzais in Japan? "To
your tents, 0 Israel!" These nations are not white

Such sense of duty assumes two things: a real possession
of the heritage and its frank appreciation by the humbleborn.
So long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with
thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous
whites, there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction.
But when the black man begins to dispute the white man's
title to certain alleged bequests of the Fathers in wage and
position, authority and training; and when his attitude toward
charity is sullen anger rather than humble jollity; when
he insists on his human right to swagger and swear and
waste,-then the spell is suddenly broken and the philanthropist
is ready to believe that Blacks are impudent, that
the South is right, and that Japan wants to fight America.
After this the descent to Hell is easy. On the pale, white
faces which the great billows whirl upward to my tower I see
again and again, often and still more often, a writing of human
hatred, a deep and passionate hatred, vast by the very
vagueness of its expressions. Down through the green waters,
on the bottom of the world, where men move to and fro, I
have seen a man-an educated gentleman-grow livid with
anger because a little, silent, black woman was sitting by herself
in a Pullman car. He was a white man. I have seen a
great, grown man curse a little child, who had wandered into
the wrong waiting-room, searching for its mother: "Here,
you damned black--" He was white. In Central Park I have
seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a
tigerish snarl of rage because black folk rode by in a motor
car. He was a white man. We have seen, you and I, city after
city drunk and furious with ungovernable lust of blood; mad
with murder, destroying, killing, and cursing; torturing human
victims because somebody accused of crime happened to
be of the same color as the mob's innocent victims and because
that color was not white! We have seen,-Merciful
God! in these wild days and in the name of Civilization, Justice,
and Motherhood,-what have we not seen, right here in
America, of orgy, cruelty, barbarism, and murder done to
men and women of African descent.

war,-it is but the beginning!
We see Europe's greatest sin precisely where we found Africa's
and Asia's,-in human hatred, the despising of men;
with this difference, however: Europe has the awful lesson of
the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas
of tolerance, sympathy, and love among men, and she faces a
greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than any preceding
civilization ever faced.
It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on
herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral
protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for
this role. For two or more centuries America has marched
proudly in the van of human hatred,-making bonfires of human
flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the
insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,-rather a
great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down black; to
your tents, 0 white folk, and world war with black and particolored
mongrel beasts!
Instead of standing as a great example of the success of
democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood America
has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and
failures, so far as black and brown and yellow peoples are
concerned. And this, too, in spite of the fact that there has
been no actual failure; the Indian is not dying out, the Japanese
and Chinese have not menaced the land, and the experiment
of the African ethnicity has resulted in the uplift of twelve
million people at a rate probably unparalleled in history. But
what of this? America, Land of Democracy, wanted to believe
in the failure of democracy so far as darker peoples were concerned.
Absolutely without excuse she established a caste system,
rushed into preparation for war, and conquered tropical
colonies. She stands today shoulder to shoulder with Europe
in Europe's worst sin against civilization. She aspires to sit
among the great nations who arbitrate the fate of "lesser
breeds without the law" and she is at times heartily ashamed
even of the large number of "new" white people whom her
democracy has admitted to place and power. Against this
surging forward of Irish and German, of Russian Jew, Slav
and "dago" her social bars have not availed against them
she can and does take her unflinching and immovable
stand, backed by this new public policy of Europe. She
trains her immigrants to this despising of "niggers" from the
day of their landing, and they carry and send the news back
to the submerged classes in the fatherlands.
All this I see and hear up in my tower, above the thunder
of the seven seas. From my narrowed windows I stare into
the night that looms beneath the cloud-swept stars. Eastward
and westward storms are breaking,-great, ugly whirlwinds
of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable.
I will not believe that all that was must be, that all
the shameful drama of the past must be done again today
before the sunlight sweeps the silver seas.
If I cry amid this roar of elemental forces, must my cry be
in vain, because it is but a cry,-a small and human cry amid
Promethean gloom?
Back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white
faces of the awful dead, why will this Soul of White Folk,this
modem Prometheus,-hang bound by his own binding,
tethered by a fable of the past? I hear his mighty cry reverberating
through the world, "I am white!" Well and good, 0
Prometheus, divine thief! Is not the world wide enough for
two colors, for many little shinings of the sun? Why, then,
devour your own vitals if I answer even as proudly, "I am
black!"

1 month ago
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