Chapter V: Part 5

For the first nine months of the war, when Italy’s neutrality swayed in the conflicting currents of national pride and national precaution, and no one could foretell what the end would be, a young Italian gardener, employed near Philadelphia, suffered dismal doubts concerning the expediency of naturalization. He was a frugal person, devoid of high political instincts. He did not covet a vote to sell, and he did not want to pay the modest cost of becoming an American citizen. He preferred keeping his money and staying what he was, provided always that Italy remained at peace. But the prospect of Italy’s going to war disposed him to look favourably upon the safeguard of a foreign allegiance. Being unable to decipher the newspapers, he made anxious inquiries every morning. If the headlines read, “Italy unlikely to abandon attitude of neutrality,” he settled down contentedly to his day’s work. If the headlines read, “Austria refuses guarantee. Italy sending troops to northern frontier,” he became once more a prey to indecision. Then came the May days when doubt was turned to certainty. Italy, long straining at the leash, plunged into the conflict. Thousands of Italians in the United States stood ready to fight for their country, to give back to her, if need be, the lives which they might have held safe. But one peace-loving gardener hurried to Philadelphia, applied for his naturalization papers, failed utterly to pass the casual tests which would have secured them, grew frightened and demoralized by failure, appealed desperately to his employer, and, with a little timely aid, was pitched shivering into citizenship.

If ever there comes a cloud between the United States and Italy, this doughty “Italian-American” will, I am sure, be found fighting with “weapons of the spirit” for the welfare of his adored and endangered “Fatherland.”

Waiting

In the most esteemed of his advisory poems, Mr. Longfellow recommends his readers to be “up and doing,” and at the same time learn “to labour and to wait.” Having, all of us, imbibed these sentiments in their harmonious setting when we were at school, we have, all of us, endeavoured for many months to put such conflicting precepts into practice. Mr. Longfellow, it will be remembered, gave precedence to his “up and doing” line; but this may have been due to the exigencies of verse. We began by waiting, and we waited long. Our deliberation has seemed to border on paralysis. But back of this superhuman patience--rewarded by repeated insult and repeated injury--was a toughening resolution which snatched from insult and injury the bitter fruit of knowledge. We are emerging from this period of suspense a sadder and a wiser people, keenly aware of dangers which, a year ago, seemed negligible, fully determined to front such dangers with courage and with understanding.

When Germany struck her first blow at Belgium, the neutral nations silently acquiesced in this breach of good faith. The burning of Louvain, the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims, were but the first fruits of this sinister silence. The sinking of the Lusitania followed in the orderly sequence of events. It was a deliberate expression of defiance and contempt, a gauntlet thrown to the world. The lives it cost, the innocence and helplessness of the drowned passengers, their number and their nationalities, all combined to make this novelty in warfare exactly what Germany meant it to be. We Americans had tried (and it had been hard work) to bear tranquilly the misfortunes of others. Now let us apply our philosophy to ourselves. Herr Erich von Salzmann voiced the sentiment of his countrymen when he said in the Berlin “Lokal Anzeiger”:--

“The Lusitania is no more. Only those who have travelled by sea can appreciate the extraordinary impression which this news will make all over the world.... The fact that it was we Germans who destroyed this ship must make us proud of ourselves. The Lusitania case will obtain for us more respect than a hundred battles won on land.”

The severing of fear from respect is a subtlety which has not penetrated the mind of the Prussian. He recognizes no such distinction, because his doctrine of efficiency embraces the doctrine of frightfulness. His Kultur is free from any ethical bias. The fact that we may greatly fear lust, cruelty, and other forms of violence, without in the least respecting these qualities, has no significance for him. He frankly does not care. If he can teach the French, the English, or the Americans to fear him in 1916, as he taught the Chinese to fear him in 1900, and by the same methods, he will be well content.

But was it fear which paralyzed us when we heard that American women and children had been sacrificed as ruthlessly as were the Chinese women and children sixteen years ago? The fashion in which American gentlemen died on the Lusitania, as on the Titanic, may well acquit us of any charge of cowardice. Whatever “respect” ensued from that pitiless massacre was won by the victims, not by the perpetrators thereof. Why, then, when the news was brought, did we feverishly urge one another to “keep calm”? Why did we chatter day after day about “rocking the boat,” as though unaware that the blow which sent us reeling and quivering was struck by a foreign hand? Why did we let pass the supreme moment of action, and settle down to months of controversy? And what have we gained by delay?

All these questions have been answered many times to the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the querists. If we had severed diplomatic and commercial relations with Germany, she might have declared war, and we did not want to fight; not, at least, on such provocation as she had given us, and with such ships and munitions as we could command. There was a well-founded conviction that no step involving the safety of the nation should be taken impetuously, or under the influence of resentment, or without discreet calculation of ways and means. There was also a rational hope that Germany might be induced to disavow the savage slaughter of noncombatants, and promise redress. And always in the background of our consciousness was a lurking hope that the pen would prove mightier than the sword. The copy-books say that it is mightier, and where shall we look for wisdom, if not to the counsels of the copy-book!

The correspondence which ensued between the Administration in Washington and the Imperial Government in Berlin was so remarkable that it may well serve as a model for generations yet unborn. If the Polite Letter-Writer ever broadens its sphere to embrace diplomatic relations, it could not do better than reprint these admirable specimens of what was thought to be a lost art. The urbanity and firmness of each American note filled us with justifiable pride. Also with a less justifiable elation, which was always dissipated by the arrival of a German note, equally urbane and equally firm. Germany was more than willing to state at length and at leisure her reasons for sinking merchant ships, provided she could safely and uninterruptedly continue the practice. Such warfare she defined in her note of July 9 as a “sacred duty.” “If the Imperial Government were derelict in these duties, it would be guilty before God and history of the violation of those principles of highest humanity which are the foundation of every national existence.”

The German is certainly at home in Zion. If his god be a trifle exacting in the matter of human sacrifice, he is otherwise the most pliant and accommodating of deities. It is one of our many disadvantages that we have no American god. Only the Divinity, whose awful name is, by comment consent, omitted from diplomatic correspondence.

When our hopes sank lowest and our hearts burned hottest, the note of September 1, 1915, brought its welcome message of concession. It is as little worth while to analyze the motives which prompted this change of front as it is worth while to speculate upon its sincerity. In the light of subsequent events, we are painfully aware that our satisfaction was excessive, our self-congratulations unwarranted, our jubilant editorials a trifle overcharged. But at the time we believed what we wanted to believe, we joyfully assumed that Germany had been converted to the ways of humanity, and that she stood ready to anger her own people for the sake of conciliating ours.

Why the submarine warfare should have so endeared itself to the Teuton heart is a problem for psychologists to elucidate. There is little about it to evoke a generous enthusiasm. It lacks heroic qualities. The singularly loathsome song which celebrated the sinking of the Lusitania is as remote in spirit from such brave verse as “Admirals All,” as those old sea-dogs were remote in spirit from the foul work of Von Tirpitz. No flight of fancy can conceive of Nelson counting up the women and children he had drowned. And because the whole wretched business sickened as well as affronted us, we hailed with unutterable relief any modification of its violence. For the first time in many months our souls were lightened of their load. We felt calm enough to review the summer of suspense, and to ask ourselves sincerely and soberly what were the lessons that it had taught us.

The agitation produced in this country by a terrible--and to us unexpected--European war was intensified in the spring of 1915 by the discovery that we were not so immune as we thought ourselves. It dawned slowly on men’s minds that the sacrifice of the nation’s honour might not after all secure the nation’s safety; and this disagreeable doubt impelled us to the still more disagreeable consideration of our inadequate coast defences. Then and then only were we made aware of the chaotic confusion which reigned in the minds of our vast and unassimilated population. Then and then only did we understand that perils from without--remote and ascertainable--were brought close and rendered hideously obscure by shameful coöperation from within.

Ten years ago, two years ago, we should have laughed to scorn the suggestion that any body of American citizens--no matter what their lineage--would be disloyal to the State. A belief in the integrity of citizenship was the first article of our faith. To-day, the German-American openly disavows all pretence of loyalty, and says as plainly and as publicly as he can that he will be betrayed into no conflict with his “mother country,” unless the United States be actually invaded,--by which time the rest of us would feel ourselves a trifle insecure. It is strange that the men who, had they remained in their mother country (a choice which was always open to them), would never have ventured a protest against Germany’s aggressive warfare, should here be so stoutly contumacious. What would have happened to the president of the New York State German-American Alliance, had he lived in Berlin instead of in Brooklyn, and had he spoken of the Kaiser as he dared to speak of Mr. Wilson! The license which the German (muzzled tightly in Germany) permits himself in the United States, is not unlike the license which the newly emancipated slaves in the South mistook for liberty when the Civil War was ended. It takes as many generations to make a freeman as it does to make a gentleman.

The inevitable result of this outspoken disloyalty at home was a determined and very hurtful pressure from abroad. A big, careless, self-confident nation is an easy prey; and while we waited, not very watchfully, Germany seized many chances to hit us below the belt, and hit us hard. The fomenting of strikes and labour agitation; the threatening of German workmen employed in American factories; the misuse of the radio service at Sayville, and the continued sending of code messages; the affidavits of Gustav Stahl before the Federal Grand Jury, and his assisted flight from the authorities; the forged American passports with which German spies wander over England and the Continent; the diplomatic indiscretions--to put it mildly--of German and Austrian ambassadors; the mysterious activities of German officials, which we were too inexperienced to understand;--all these things filled us with anger and alarm. We could not resort to the simple measures of Italians, who in Philadelphia stoned the agents whom they found trying to hold back reservists about to sail for Italy. We bore each fresh affront as though inured to provocation; but we bore it understandingly, and with deep resentment. If ever our temper snaps beneath the strain, the anger so slow to ignite will be equally hard to extinguish.

Playing consciously or unconsciously into the hands of Germany are the pacifists,--a compact body of men and women, visibly strengthened by months of indecision. Their methods may at times be laughable, but we cannot afford to laugh. I do not class under this head any of the so-called “Neutrality Leagues,” and “National Peace Councils,” which aim at securing a German victory by withholding munitions from the Allies. Such “neutrals” are all partisans parading under a borrowed name, which they have rendered meaningless. They have a great deal of money to spend on advertisements, and posters, and mass meetings. They can any day, in any town, fill a hall with German sympathizers who are all of one mind concerning the duty of noncombatants. Their leaders are well aware that law and usage permit, and have long permitted, to neutral nations the sale of munitions to belligerents. Their followers for the most part know this too. But it seems worth while to profess ignorance. Something can always be accomplished by agitation, were it only a murderous attack on a financier, or the smuggling of dynamite into the hold of a cargo boat.

But in reckoning up our perils, it is the fanatic, not the hypocrite, who must be taken into account. Sincerity is a terrible weapon in the hands of the ill-advised. There can be no contagion of folly, unless that folly be sincere. And what gives the uncompromising, because uncomprehending, pacifist his dangerous force is the fact that he is psychologically as inevitable as were the Iconoclasts, or the Thebaid anchorites, or any other historic instance of recoil. He is the abnormal product of abnormal conditions. The fury of war has bred this child of peace. The fumes of battle have stupefied him. Aggression and defence, brutality and heroism, the might of conquest and the right of resistance, have for him no separate significance. He is one who cannot master--as every sane man must learn to master--the deadly sickness of his soul.

To call the pacifist a coward is simple, but not enlightening. Cowardice is a natural and pervasive attribute of humanity. Few of us can flatly disavow it. There are women opposed to all war because their sons might be shot. A popular song--now employed to raise the spirits of school-children--expresses this sentiment. There are men opposed to all war because they might themselves be shot. So far, no music-hall ditty has exalted them. But this normal human cowardice is not infectious, save in the heat of battle, where, happily, it is seldom displayed. Infectious pacificism is a revolt from war, irrespective of abstract considerations like justice or injustice, and of personal considerations like loss or gain.

History is full of similar revolts, and they have always overstepped the limits of sanity. Because the pagan sensualist tended his body with loathsome solicitude, the Christian ascetic subjected his to loathsome indignities. The excesses of the Roman baths sanctified the uncleanliness of the early monasteries. Just as inevitable is the reaction from a ravenous war to non-resistance. Because Germany’s armaments are powerful enough to terrorize Europe, we are bidden to weaken our defences. Because France and Belgium have been attacked and devastated, we are implored to take no steps for self-protection. The appeal sent out by Quaker citizens of Philadelphia--good men, ready, no doubt, to die as honourably as they have lived--was at once a confession of faith and a denial of duty. They asked that the money of the taxpayer should be spent in making “more homes happy,” and they were content to leave the security of these happy homes to the unassisted care of Providence. To keep our powder dry implied mistrust of God.

That the authorities of Iowa should strip the American flag of a white border, neatly stitched around it by the pacifists of Fort Dodge, was perhaps to be expected. The action seems peremptory; but if every society were permitted to trim and patch our national emblem, we should soon have as many flags as we have disputants in the field. For months the patient post-office officials passed on without a murmur envelopes ornamented with huge stamps, bearing pictures of a cannon partly metamorphosed into a ploughshare, a bloated child, and a pouncing dove; and inscribed with these soul-subduing lines:--

“I am in favour of world-wide peace,
Spread this idea, and war will cease.”

The decoration of envelopes with strange devices has long afforded a vent for pent-up feelings. The peace-stamp was nobly seconded by the “peace-pin,” a white enamelled dove, carrying the motto, “World-Peace,” and destined--so its wearers assured us--to prove itself “one of the greatest factors in eliminating prejudices and division lines.”

Are these puerilities unworthy of consideration and comment? They are not so preposterous as was Mr. Wanamaker’s suggestion that we should recompense Germany for the trouble and expense she had incurred in seizing Belgium by paying her $100,000,000,000 for her spoils. They are not so demoralizing as the teaching of American school-children to calculate how many bicycles they could buy for the money spent on the battleship Oregon, or how many tickets for a ball-game could be provided at the price of the American navy. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is to be congratulated on having devised a scheme by which boys and girls can be taught arithmetically to place pleasure above patriotism. If Germans teach their children to deny themselves some portion of their mid-day meal for the needs of Germany, and Americans teach their children to hold ball-games and bicycles more sacred than the needs of America, what chance have the men we rear against men reared to discipline and self-sacrifice!

When an anti-enlistment league can be formed in a country which may possibly be called to war, and anti-enlistment pledges can be signed by young men who promise never to enroll themselves for their nation’s defence, we have cause for apprehension. When college students can be found petitioning for peace at any price, we have cause for wonder. When women who have suffered nothing fling scorn at men who have suffered all things, we have cause in plenty for resentment.

Cause, too, for sorrow that such evil words should be so lightly spoken. It was but a dreary laugh that was provoked by Miss Addams’s picture of intoxicated regiments bayoneting one another under the stimulating influence of drink. Laughter is hard to come by in these dark days; but Heaven knows we should gladly have foregone the mirth to have been spared a slander so unworthy. The snatching of honour from the soldier in the hour of his utmost trial is possible only to the pacifist, who, sick with pity for pain, has lost all understanding of the things which ennoble pain: of fidelity, and courage, and the love of one’s country, which, next to the love of God, is the purest of all emotions which winnow the souls of men.

The mad turmoil of folly and disaffection was kept at high pressure by the adroitness of the Imperial Government in juggling with technicalities. While we fed, like Hamlet, on the chameleon’s dish, and, “promise-crammed,” debated windily over words, ship after ship was sunk, and fresh exonerations and pledges were served up for our entertainment. It became difficult even for German-Americans to know just where they stood, and how far they might fittingly express their contempt for the United States, without out-distancing the Fatherland. When the “Friends of Peace” in Chicago cheered the sinking of the Hesperian,--an exploit naturally gratifying to peaceful souls,--they were silenced by more prudent members of the convention, who bethought themselves that this illustration of good faith might in turn be politely regretted. All that was left for these enthusiasts was to praise Germany’s “magnanimity,” to brag of her “historic friendship” for America (apparently under the impression that Lafayette was a Prussian officer), to regret the “hysteria” of Americans over the drowning of their countrymen, and to ascribe the whole war to the machinations of “Grey and Asquith, and Delcassé, and Poincaré,”--“demons whom we should hiss and howl into the abyss of Hell.”

There was plenty of disaffection in 1776, plenty in 1861; but we fought our two great wars without dishonour. If the Germans, well aware of our unpreparedness and of our internal dissensions, have flouted us unsparingly, it is because they are, as they have always been, densely incapable of reading the souls of men. Let us not add to our own peril by misreading the soul of Germany. We lack her discipline, we lack her unity, we lack her efficiency, the splendid result of thirty years’ devotion to a single purpose. It avails us very little to analyze the “falling sickness” which has made her so mighty. Dr. Lightner Witmer, in a profoundly thoughtful and dispassionate paper on “The Relation of Intelligence to Efficiency,” diagnoses her disease as “primitivism,”--“meaning thereby a reversion in manners, customs, and principles to what is characteristic of a lower level of civilization.” Mr. Owen Wister, who is as poignantly eloquent as Dr. Witmer is logical and chill, reaches in “The Pentecost of Calamity” a somewhat similar conclusion. “The case of Germany is a hospital case, a case for the alienist; the mania of grandeur complemented by the mania of persecution.” Even Mr. Bryan (always a past-master of infelicitous argument) tells us that a war with Germany is impossible, because it would be like “challenging an insane asylum;”--as if an insane asylum which failed to restrain its inmates could be left unchallenged by the world.

It is unwise to minimize our danger on the score of our saner judgment or higher morality. These qualities may win out in the future, but we are living now. Germany is none the less terrible because she is obsessed, and we are not a whit safer because we recognize her obsession. The German war-maps of Paris, cut into sections and directing which sections were to be burned, are grim warnings to the world. It is disturbing to think how insensitive Paris was to her peril when those maps were prepared. It is disturbing to think that a fool’s paradise is always the most popular playground of humanity. In the “Atlantic Monthly” for August, 1915, an Englishman explained lucidly to American readers (the only audience patient enough to hear him) that non-resistance is the road to security. Mr. Russell, “a mathematician and a philosopher,” is confident that if England would submit passively to invasion, and refuse passively to obey the invader, she would suffer no great wrong. Had he read “Sandford and Merton” when he was a little boy, it might possibly occur to him that Germany would treat the non-resisting strikers as Mr. Barlow treated Tommy, when that misguided child refused to dig and hoe. Had he read the “Bryce report,”--which is not pleasant reading,--he might feel less sure that English homes and English women would be safe from assault because they lacked protectors.

The same happy confidence in our receptivity and in our limitless good nature was shown by Professor Kraus, who, in the “Atlantic Monthly” for September, 1915, conveyed to us in the plainest possible language his unfavourable opinion of the Monroe Doctrine and of its supporters. No German could be less “nice” in concealing his contempt than was this ingenuous contributor; and nothing could be better for us than to hear such words spoken at such a time. The threat of a “general accounting” was not even presented suavely to our ears, but it left us no room for doubt.

That two such arguments from two such sources should have enlivened our term of waiting is worthy of note. The Englishman, seeing us beset by irrationalities, added one more phantasy to our load. The German, seeing us beset by alarms, added one more menace to affright us. Our patience is impervious to folly and to intimidation. We have plenty of both at home. Only an American can understand the cumulative anger in his countryman’s heart as affront is added to affront, and the slow lapse of time brings us neither redress nor redemption. However sanguine and however peace-loving we may be, we cannot well base our hopes of future security on the tenderness shown us in the past. If long months of painful suspense, of hope alternating with despondency, and pride with shame, have wrought no other good, they have at least revealed to us where our danger lies. They have bared disloyalty, and have put good citizens on their guard.

Somewhere in the mind of the nation is a saving sanity. Somewhere in the heart of the nation is a saving grace. A day may come when these two harmonious qualities will find expression in the simple words of Cardinal Newman: “The best prudence is to have no fear.”

Americanism

Whenever we stand in need of intricate knowledge, balanced judgment, or delicate analysis, it is our comfortable habit to question our neighbours. They may be no wiser and no better informed than we are; but a collective opinion has its value, or at least its satisfying qualities. For one thing, there is so much of it. For another, it seldom lacks variety. Two years ago the “American Journal of Sociology” asked two hundred and fifty “representative” men and women “upon what ideals, policies, programmes, or specific purposes should Americans place most stress in the immediate future,” and published the answers that were returned in a Symposium entitled, “What is Americanism?” The candid reader, following this symposium, received much counsel, but little enlightenment. There were some good practical suggestions; but nowhere any cohesion, nowhere any sense of solidarity, nowhere any concern for national honour or authority.

It was perhaps to be expected that Mr. Burghardt Du Bois’s conception of true Americanism would be the abolishment of the colour line, and that Mr. Eugene Debs would see salvation in the sweeping away of “privately owned industries, and production for individual profit.” These answers might have been foreseen when the questions were asked. But it was disconcerting to find that all, or almost all, of the “representative” citizens represented one line of civic policy, or civic reform, and refused to look beyond it. The prohibitionist discerned Americanism in prohibition, the equal suffragist in votes for women, the biologist in applied science, the physician in the extirpation of microbes, the philanthropist in playgrounds, the sociologist in eugenism and old-age pensions, and the manufacturer in the revision of taxes. It was refreshing when an author unexpectedly demanded the extinction of inherited capital. Authorship seldom concerns itself with anything so inconceivably remote.

The quality of miscellaneousness is least serviceable when we leave the world of affairs, and seek admission into the world of ideals. There must be an interpretation of Americanism which will express for all of us a patriotism at once practical and emotional, an understanding of our place in the world, and of the work we are best fitted to do in it, a sentiment which we can hold--as we hold nothing else--in common, and which will be forever remote from personal solicitude and resentment. Those of us whose memories stretch back over half a century recall too plainly a certain uneasiness which for years pervaded American politics and American letters, which made us unduly apprehensive, and, as a consequence, unduly sensitive and arrogant. It found expression in Mr. William Cullen Bryant’s well-known poem, “America,” made familiar to my generation by school readers and manuals of elocution, and impressed by frequent recitations upon our memories.

“O mother of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years;
With words of shame
And taunts of scorn they join thy name.”

There are eight verses, and four of them repeat Mr. Bryant’s conviction that the nations of Europe united in envying and insulting us. To be hated because we were young, and strong, and good, and beautiful, seemed, to my childish heart, a noble fate; and when a closer acquaintance with history dispelled this pleasant illusion, I parted from it with regret. France was our ally in the Revolutionary War. Russia was friendly in the Civil War. England was friendly in the Spanish War. If the repudiation of state debts left a bad taste in the mouths of foreign investors, they might be pardoned for making a wry face. Most of them were subsequently paid; but the phrase “American revoke” dates from the period of suspense. By the time we celebrated our hundredth birthday with a world’s fair, we were on very easy terms with our neighbours. Far from taunting us with shameful words, our “haughty peers” showed on this memorable occasion unanimous good temper and good will; and “Punch’s” congratulatory verses were among the most pleasant birthday letters we received.

The expansion of national life, fed by the great emotions of the Civil War, and revealed to the world by the Centennial Exhibition, found expression in education, art, and letters. Then it was that Americanism took a new and disconcerting turn. Pleased with our progress, stunned by finding that we had poets, and painters, and novelists, and magazines, and a history, all of our own, we began to say, and say very loudly, that we had no need of the poets, and painters, and novelists, and magazines, and histories of other lands. Our attitude was not unlike that of George Borrow, who, annoyed by the potency of Italian art, adjured Englishmen to stay at home and contemplate the greatness of England. England, he said, had pictures of her own. She had her own “minstrel strain.” She had all her sons could ask for. “England against the world.”

In the same exclusive spirit, American school boards proposed that American school-children should begin the study of history with the colonization of America, ignoring the trivial episodes which preceded this great event. Patriotic protectionists heaped duties on foreign art, and bade us buy American pictures. Enthusiastic editors confided to us that “the world has never known such storehouses of well-selected mental food as are furnished by our American magazines.” Complacent critics rejoiced that American poets did not sing like Tennyson, “nor like Keats, nor Shelley, nor Wordsworth”; but that, as became a new race of men, they “reverberated a synthesis of all the poetic minds of the century.” Finally, American novelists assured us that in their hands the art of fiction had grown so fine and rare that we could no longer stand the “mannerisms” of Dickens, or the “confidential attitude” of Thackeray. We had scaled the empyrean heights.

There is a brief paragraph in Mr. Thayer’s “Life and Letters of John Hay,” which vividly recalls this peculiar phase of Americanism. Mr. Hay writes to Mr. Howells in 1882: “The worst thing in our time about American taste is the way it treats James. I believe he would not be read in America at all if it were not for his European vogue. If he lived in Cambridge, he could write what he likes; but because he finds London more agreeable, he is the prey of all the patriotisms. Of all vices, I hold patriotism the worst, when it meddles with matters of taste.”

So far had American patriotism encroached upon matters of taste, that by 1892 there was a critical embargo placed upon foreign literature. “Every nation,” we were told, “ought to supply its own second-rate books,”--like domestic sheeting and ginghams. An acquaintance with English authors was held to be a misdemeanour. Why quote Mr. Matthew Arnold, when you might quote Mr. Lowell? Why write about Becky Sharp, when you might write about Hester Prynne? Why laugh over Dickens, when you might laugh over Mark Twain? Why eat artichokes, when you might eat corn? American school-boys, we were told, must be guarded from the feudalism of Scott. American speech must be guarded from the “insularities” of England’s English. “That failure in good sense which comes from too warm a self-satisfaction” (Mr. Arnold does sometimes say a thing very well) robbed us for years of mental poise, of adjusted standards, of an unencumbered outlook upon life.

It is strange to glance back upon a day when we had so little to trouble us that we could vex our souls over feudalism and fiction; when--in the absence of serious problems--we could raise pronunciation or spelling into a national issue. Americanism has done with trivialities, patriotism with matters of taste. Love for one’s country is not a shallow sentiment, based upon self-esteem. It is a profound and primitive passion. It may lie dormant in our souls when all goes well. It may be thwarted and frustrated by the exigencies of party government. It may be dissevered from pride or pleasure. But it is part of ourselves, wholly beyond analysis, fed upon hope and fear, joy and sorrow, glory and shame. If, after the fashion of the world, we drowsed in our day of security, we have been rudely and permanently awakened. The shadow of mighty events has fallen across our path. We have witnessed a great national crime. We have beheld the utmost heights of heroism. And when we asked of what concern to us were this crime and this heroism, the answer came unexpectedly, and with blinding force. The sea was strewn with our dead, our honour was undermined by conspiracies, our factories were fired, our cargoes dynamited. We were a neutral nation at peace with the world. The attack made upon our industries and upon our good name was secret, malignant, and pitiless. It was organized warfare, without the courage and candour of war.

The unavowed enemy who strikes in the dark is hard to reach, but he is outside the pale of charity. There was something in the cold fury of Mr. Wilson’s words, when, in his message to Congress, he denounced the traitors “who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life,” which turned that unexpansive state-paper into a human document, and drove it straight to the human hearts of an injured and insulted people. Under the menace of disloyalty, Americanism has taken new form and substance; and our just resentment, like the potter’s wheel, has moulded this force into lines of strength and resistance. We have seen all we want to see of “frightfulness” in Europe, all we want to see of injustice, supported by violence. We are not prepared to welcome any scheme of terrorization in the interests of a foreign power, or any interference of a foreign power with our legitimate fields of industry. Such schemes and such interference constitute an inconceivable affront to the nation. Their stern and open disavowal is the shibboleth by which our elections may be purged of treachery, and our well-being confided to good citizenship.

Of all the countries in the world, we and we only have any need to create artificially the patriotism which is the birthright of other nations. Into the hearts of six millions of foreign-born men--less than half of them naturalized--we must infuse that quality of devotion which will make them place the good of the state above their personal good, and the safety of the state above their personal safety. It is like pumping oxygen into six million pairs of lungs for which the common air is not sufficiently stimulating. We must also keep a watchful eye upon these men’s wives,--when they are so blessed,--and concentrate our supreme energy on uncounted millions of children, whose first step toward patriotism is the acquirement of a common tongue.

We are trying fitfully, but in good faith, to work this civic miracle. Americanization Day is but one expression of the nation-wide endeavour. When Cleveland invited all her citizens who had been naturalized within a twelve-month to assemble and receive a public welcome, to sit on a platform and be made much of, to listen to national songs and patriotic speeches, and to take home, every man, a flag and a seal of the city, she set a good example which will be widely followed. The celebrations at Riverside, California, and New York City’s Pageant of the Nations had in view the same admirable end. Sentiment is not a substitute for duty and discipline; but it has its uses and its field of efficacy. Such ceremonies perseveringly repeated for twenty years might work a change in the immigrant population of to-day, were we secure from the fresh millions which threaten us to-morrow. That the Fourth of July should be often selected for these rites is perhaps inevitable; it is a time when patriotism assumes a vivid and popular aspect; but Heaven forbid that we should rechristen Independence Day, Americanization Day! However ready we may be to welcome our new citizens, however confident we may be of their value to the Republic, we are not yet prepared to give them the place of honour hitherto held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The name which perpetuates the memory of that deed is a sacred name, and should be preserved no less sacredly than the national life which was then committed to our keeping.

It is no insult to the immigrant to say that he constitutes one of the perils of Americanism. How can it be otherwise? Assume that he is a law-abiding citizen, that he knows nothing of the conspiracies which have imperilled our safety, that he does not propose to use his vote in the interests of a foreign power, and that the field of hyphenated politics has no existence for him. For all these boons we are sufficiently grateful. But how far does he understand the responsibilities he assumes with the franchise, how far does he realize that he has become part of the machinery of the state, and how far can we depend upon him in our hour of need? He knows, or at least he has been told, that he may not return home to fight for his own country, if he seeks American citizenship. He must resist a natural and a noble impulse as the price of his coveted “papers.” But will there spring in his heart a noble, though not very natural, impulse to fight for us if we call our sons to arms? Can we hope that his native intelligence, unshackled by any working knowledge of our language, will grasp our national policy and our national obligations; and that--free from conscription--he will voluntarily risk his life in behalf of a government for which he has no inheritance of fidelity?

We have opened our doors to unrestricted immigration, partly because capitalists want plenty of cheap labour, which is not a good reason; and partly because the immigrants want to come, which is not a sufficient reason. They also--despite the heart-rending conditions depicted by Miss Frances Kellor--want to stay. Those who return to the higher standards of Europe do not materially affect the situation. They stay, and either surmount their difficulties, or, succumbing to them, fill our asylums, hospitals, and almshouses. For many years, foreign economists must have looked with relief at the countless thousands of derelicts who were supported by the United States instead of by their own governments. But even the satisfaction we have thus afforded does not wholly justify our course. Is it worth our while to fill the air with clamour over eugenics and birth-control, to build barriers around a marriage license, and to dramatize impassioned pleas for sterility, when the birthrate of the Republic is nobody’s concern? If the survival of the fittest means as much to the commonwealth as to the family, why should we fiddle over pathology while the nation burns?

Miss Kellor is not the only kind-hearted American who holds her countrymen to blame for the deficiencies of the immigrant. Her point of view is a common one, and has some foundation in fact. She censures us even for his dirt, though if she had ever listened to the vitriolic comments of the police, she might revise her judgment on that score. “Can’t you _do_ anything?” I once asked a disconsolate guardian of the peace, who stood on a fine hot day contemplating the forth-flung garbage of the Israelite. To which he made answer: “Did ye iver thry to clane out a sthable wid a toothpick?” And as this had not been one of my life’s endeavours, I offered no further comment. But Miss Kellor touches a vital truth when she says that Americans will never weld a mass of heterogeneous humanity into a nation, until they are able to say what they want that nation to be, and until they are prepared to follow a policy intelligently outlined. In other words, Americanism is not a medley of individual theories, partial philanthropies, and fluid sentiment. A consistent nationalism is essential to civic life, and we are not dispensed from achieving consistent nationalism by the difficulties in our way. No multiplication of difficulties makes an impossibility. Upon what props did the Venetians build the fairest city of the world?

We cannot in this country hope for the compelling devotion which has animated Germany; still less for the supreme moral and intellectual force which is the staying power of France. Mrs. Wharton has best described the intelligence with which Frenchmen translate their ideals into doctrine. They know for what they stand in the civilized world, and the first “white heat of dedication” has hardened into steel-like endurance. To the simple emotions of men who are defending their homes from assault have been added the emotions of men who are defending the world’s noblest inheritance from degradation. “It is the reasoned recognition of this peril which is making the most intelligent people in the world the most sublime.”

The problems of England are so closely akin to our own problems, and her perplexities are so closely akin to our own perplexities, that we should regard them with insight and with sympathy. We too must pause in every keen emergency to cajole, to persuade, to placate, to reconcile conflicting interests, to humour conflicting opinions,--termed by those who hold them, “principles.” We too must forever bear in mind the political party which is in power, and the political party which waits to get into power; and we must pick our way as best we can by the cross-lights of their abiding hostility. We too must face and overcome the dough-like resistance of apathy.

I have been told--though I refuse to believe it on hearsay--that British labourers have asked what difference it would make to them whether they worked for British or for German masters. It is quite true that British pacifists and British radicals have not only put this question, but have answered it, greatly to their own satisfaction, in American periodicals; but American periodicals are not mouth-pieces of the British workmen. I make no doubt that if we were fighting for our lives, there would be found American pacifists and American radicals writing in British periodicals that no great harm would come to America if she submitted passively to invasion; and that, whether their country’s cause were right or wrong, the slaughter of her sons was a crime, and the wealth of her capitalists was a sufficient reason for refusing to do battle for her liberty. The painful certainty that we should never be free from the babbling of treason, any more than England is free from it now, makes Americanism (the Americanism which means civic loyalty founded on civic intelligence) shine like a far-off star on a very dim horizon.

At present, disloyalty founded upon ignorance meets with more attention than it deserves. Why, after all, should two thousand people assemble in New York to hear Miss Helen Keller say that, in the event of invasion, the American workman “has nothing to lose but his chains”? He has his manhood to lose, and it should mean as much to him as to any millionaire in the land. What new and debilitating doctrine is this which holds that personal honour is the exclusive attribute of wealth, and that a labourer has no more business with it than has a dog! The fact that Miss Keller has overcome the heavy disabilities which nature placed in her path, lends interest to her person, but no weight to her opinions, which give evidence of having been adopted wholesale, and of having never filtered through any reasoning process of her own. It is always agreeable to hear her speak about good and simple things. When she said in Philadelphia that happiness does not lie in pleasure, and that, although she did not expect to be always pleased, she did expect to be always happy, by doing what she could to make those about her happy, we gave our hearty concurrence to sentiments so unexceptionable. It was the way we ourselves should have liked to feel, and we knew it was our own fault that we did not. But when in New York she adjured workingmen never to enter the United States Army, and informed us that all we needed for adequate defence were shooting-galleries “within reach of every family,” so that we could all learn--like the old ladies in “Punch”--to fire a gun, there was something profoundly sad in words so ill-judged and so fatuous. It cannot be a matter of no moment that, in the hour of our danger and indecision, thousands of people stand ready to applaud the disloyal utterances which should affront every honourable man or woman who hears them.

The “Yale Review” quotes the remark of a “foreigner” that Americans are always saying, “I don’t care.” The phrase is popular, and sounds disheartening; but if we spare ourselves concern over trivial things (if, for example, we were not excited or inflamed by Captain von Papen’s calling us “idiotic Yankees”), it does not follow that big issues leave us unmoved. If they did, if they ever should, the word Americanism might as well be obliterated from the language. The consistent nationalism for which it stands admits of no indifference. It is true that the possible peril of New York--as defenceless as a soft-shell crab, and as succulent--is not an ever-present care to San Francisco. It is true that San Francisco’s deep anxiety over Japanese immigration and land-ownership was lightly treated by New York. And it is true that Denver, sitting in the safety zone, looks down from her lofty heights without any pressing solicitude about either of her sister cities. But just as the San Francisco earthquake wrung the heart of New York, so the first gun fired at New York would arm the citizens of San Francisco. Only it might then be too late.

The Christmas cartoon of Uncle Sam holding a package marked “Peace and Prosperity,” and saying with a broad smile, “Just what I wanted!” was complacent rather than comprehensive. We want peace and we want prosperity, but they are not all we want; partly because their permanency depends upon certain props which seem to many of us a bit unsteady, and partly because we do not, any more than other men, live by bread alone. The things of the spirit are for us, even as for heroic and suffering France, of vital worth and import. If we could say with certainty, “All is gained but honour,” there are still some of us who would feel our blessings incomplete; but, as it chances, the contempt meted out to us has taken the palpable form of encroachment upon our common rights. Until we can protect our industries from assault and our citizens from butchery, until we can couple disavowal of past injuries with real assurance of safety in the future, peace limps, and prosperity is shadowed. With every fresh shock we have received, with every fresh sorrow we have endured, there has come to us more and more clearly the vision of a noble nationalism, purged of “comfort-mongering,” and of perverted sentiment.

Cynical newspaper writers have begun to say that the best way to make Americans forget one injury is to inflict on them another. This is hardly a half-truth. The sinking of the Ancona did not obliterate from our minds the names of the Falaba, the Gulflight, the Frye, the Hesperian, the Arabic, and the Lusitania. Neither has the sinking of the Persia buried the Ancona in oblivion. And it is not simple humanity which has burned these names into the tablets of our memories. The loss of American lives through the savage torpedoing of liners and merchant ships might be doubled and trebled any summer day by the sinking of an excursion steamer, and we should soon forget. A country which reports eight thousand murders in a single year is not wont to be deeply stirred by the perils which beset our munition-workers. But when Americans have gone to their deaths through the violence of another government, or in the interests of another government, then the wrong done them is elevated to the importance of a national calamity, and redress becomes a national obligation. Because we do not wearily reiterate this patent truth does not mean that we have forgotten it. If words could save, if words could heal, we should have no fear, nor shame, nor sorrow. Nothing is less worth while than to go on prattling about a consistent foreign policy. The corner-stone of civilization is man’s dependence for protection on the state which he has reared for his own safety and support.

The concern of Americans for America (I use the word to symbolize the United States) must be the deep and loyal sentiment which brooks no injustice and no insult. We have need of many things, but first and foremost of fidelity. It is a matter of pride and pleasure that some of our foreign-born citizens should excel in art and letters; that, under our tutelage, they should learn to design posters, model statuary, write poems, and make speeches. These things have their admitted place and value. The encouragement which is given them, the opportunities which are made for them, the praise which is lavished upon them, are proofs of our good-will, and of our genuine delight in fostering ability. But the real significance of the “Americanization” movement, the summoning of conferences, the promoting of exhibitions, the bestowing of prizes, is the need we all feel of unification, the hope we all cherish that, through the influence of congenial work, immigrants and the children of immigrants will become one in spirit with the native born. We could make shift to do without the posters and the symbolic statuary; we could read fewer poems and listen to fewer speeches; but we cannot possibly do without the loyalty which we have a right to demand, and which is needful to the safety of the Republic.

For the main thing to be borne in mind is that Americanization does not mean only an increase of opportunity for the alien, an effort toward his permanent well-being. It means also service and sacrifice on his part. This is what citizenship entails, although voters and those who clamour for the vote seldom take into account such an inexorable truth. The process of assimilation must go deeper than the polling booth and the trade union can carry it. Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements. But it is our appointed road, and the stones over which we perpetually stumble deny us the drowsy perils of content. When we read Dr. Eliot’s noble words in praise of free government and equal opportunities, we know that his amazing buoyancy does not imply ignorance of primaries, of party methods, and of graft. With these things he has been familiar all his life; but the creaking machinery of democracy has never dimmed his faith in its holiness. Remediable disorders, however grievous and deep-seated, afford us the comfort of hope, and the privilege of unending exertion.

To no one ignorant of history can the right of citizenship assume any real significance. In our country the ballot is so carelessly guarded, so shamefully misused, that it has become to some men a subject of derision; to many, an unconsidered trifle; to all, or almost all, an expression of personal opinion, which, at its best, reflects a popular newspaper, and, at its worst, stands for nothing less hurtful than stupidity. A recent contributor to the “Unpopular Review” reminds us soberly that, as the democratic state cannot rise above the level of its voters, and as nationality means for us merely the will of the people, it might not be amiss to guard the franchise with reasonable solicitude, and to ask something more than unlimited ignorance, and the absence of a criminal record, as its price. If every man--alien or native-born--who casts his ballot could be made to know and to feel that “all the political forces of his country were mainly occupied for a hundred years in making that act possible,” and that the United States is, and has always been, the nation of those “who willed to be Americans,” citizenship might become for us what it was to Rome, what it is to France,--the exponent of honour, the symbol of self-sacrifice.