Chapter III: Part 3

Beneath all the outer simplicity and democratic demeanor of our host, beneath his smoothly shaven, well groomed, correctly tailored exterior, the Herr Director recognized a dignified reserve and consciousness of power, which made him whisper to me, "His Majesty and suite," at the same time soothing with his left hand his aching right hand, just released from the vise-like grip of the editor.

Although I assured him that to me they were all just the editors of my favorite journal and after that plain, American citizens, I too am often impressed by that sense of dominance and power emanating from these men and others in similar positions. The feeling is not unrelated to that I have experienced the few times I have been in the presence of royalty.

In our public men of exalted position there may be lacking the mystical element by which monarchs are surrounded; but the sovereign American has more physical energy and force.

Should the thrones of Europe suddenly become vacant, I know dozens of our men who could occupy them, without their subjects becoming conscious of much change; and as far as queens are concerned we could easily furnish a surplus.

The Herr Director and I had been chosen to sit in the places of honor, and we (or at least I) forgot to eat, and spent my time studying these superb types of Americans.

The Herr Director, being more sophisticated, absorbed both the food and the company, and in his lectures on "_Die Leitenden Maenner in Den Vereinigten Staaten_," which he has delivered since returning to Germany, there are evidences that he remembered the minutest details of the _menu_, as well as every word which fell from the lips of the editor in chief.

Of course we spoke of many, if not all, the perplexing problems which vex this problem-ridden age, and each of us had a proprietary interest in one or more of them which we hoped to solve. The editor as a man of affairs knew our particular problems as well as we knew them, and had read all that any of us had written; so the conversation was animated enough, and certainly illuminating.

My specialty being immigration, and having just returned from the Pacific coast where I had studied the problem as it concerns the Oriental, the conversation was finally dominated by that interesting and somewhat delicate theme.

Can we assimilate all these varied elements which come to us? Can we make of them one people, and eliminate all those ethnic, national and religious inheritances which are frequently at variance with our own?

The editor believed we can assimilate all or most of them with the exception of the Oriental, "Who, having separated from the ethnic root in the Pleistocene period, represents too varied a physical and mental type to be assimilated by the Occidental." I think I am quoting him correctly, although not word for word.

As I did not quite agree with him, I expressed my views, and so did the Herr Director. I said I thought I noticed among the Chinese and even among the Japanese the influence of this new environment, and could tell of conversations with groups of graduates of our colleges, in which not only the influence of this country was noticeable, but the influence of the particular institution from which they graduated. Anecdotes are not easily accepted as scientific proof; but this being an informal luncheon, I ventured a few of them which every one seemed to relish except the Herr Director, and he is not to blame for that, as anecdotes are rarely international. I do blame him, however, for telling me that he had never heard stupider jokes in his life. One of these ethnic anecdotes I told upon the authority of the Bishop of the Yangtsze district. Perhaps like all anecdotes it may have grown in the telling.

The Bishop had picked out an unusually bright Chinese lad to have educated in the United States and then become his curate. When he returned to China, after having attended both a college and a theological seminary, he was assisting the Bishop. Evidently he had not thoroughly mastered the ritual of the church; for this Oriental, who had "separated himself from the ethnic root," moved close to the Bishop, poked his elbow into the ecclesiastical ribs of his superior and asked: "Say, Bishop, where do I butt in?"

Our host wanted to know whether I was sure that he did not say: "Bish"; I thought to reach the point of being able to express himself so briefly and directly the Oriental would need at least another geologic period.

One of the staff asked whether that anecdote was not my invention; to which I took the liberty of replying that if I could invent such good stories he might offer me an editorship. How imperfectly, after all, the Oriental may absorb the spirit of our language, I told in the story which is supposed to have its origin at the University of Michigan; although like all such stories it may be claimed by innumerable birthplaces.

A Hindoo student, who had not quite finished his academic career and had to return home on account of illness in his family, wrote back to his faculty adviser, notifying him of the death of his mother-in-law, in this characteristic, brief, Occidental way: "Alas! the hand which rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket."

The Herr Director thought this anecdote funny enough, but it proved the opposite from that for which I was contending. "Who but an Oriental could invent such highly picturesque figures of speech?"

The conversation drifted into soberer channels when our host took up the question as to what constitutes the American, who after all is hybrid and frequently so mixed that he does not know just how he is ethnically constituted.

"For instance," he said, "I am part German, part revolutionary Yankee stock" (it seemed to me that he put the emphasis upon the revolutionary), "part French, part Scandinavian, part Irish."

I have forgotten just how many racial strains he said were running in his veins, but a variety large enough to be exceedingly useful to him in claiming kinship with all sorts of folk, and in making political speeches. That the ancestors of the average American belong to the great fighting stocks of humanity may explain if not excuse his love for physical combat. Each guest around the table followed the editor's example and accounted for his ancestry, showing that all but two of the Americans were mixtures, ranging from three to eight more or less greatly differentiated races, using that term in its broadest sense.

One of these unmixed Americans gave the outlines of his family tree, all of it growing out of the rugged New England soil; but every one of his daughters had married a man of foreign birth, or of foreign parentage. His sons-in-law are German, Polish, French and Jewish. He added: "My German and French sons-in-law are great chums."

The other pure American was myself, although of course my ancestors did not come over in the _Mayflower_, and I have never been in New England long enough for my family tree to take root in its historic soil.

After all, though, the best thing a nation or race has to bequeath to its children is not always handed down upon the racial channel. I think it is the Apostle Paul who discovered this long ago, and his missionary propaganda among the Gentiles is based upon his belief that they are not all Israelites who are of the circumcision. His converts became Israelites through adoption, through their appreciation of the Jewish Spirit which came to its full fruitage in Jesus of Nazareth.

I once heard Max Nordeau say: "_Es gibt zweierlei Juden: auch Juden und Bauch Juden;_" which freely translated means: "There are two kinds of Jews: those of the spirit and those of the stomach." The taste for _Kosher Wurst_ and _Gefülte Brust_ is inheritable to the tenth generation; but one is not always born with the passion for righteousness, the love of justice and the thirst for God. To these one must rather be born again, and the same thing is true of the American. There are Americans who have thrown overboard their spiritual inheritance, who have expatriated themselves because they could not live in the Puritan atmosphere of New England; but to whom a Sunday in the _Riviera_ is not fully radiant, unless upon the rose-laden atmosphere there comes wafted the fragrance of codfish balls.

The Herr Director reminded the company of the fact that I was the most "_Unausstehlicher Americaner_" he had ever met; to which the editor responded that he knew one who was if anything worse than myself--a newspaper man, Jacob Riis.

"Can a nation feel secure, having to put the keeping of its Spirit into the hands of aliens?" some one asked; and what would happen in case of a conflict between the United States of America and the native country of even such thorough Americans as Jacob Riis and myself? At that time the answer was not as difficult as it is now, since there has been the possibility of such a conflict, and slumbering love of native country has been awakened by the roar of cannon and the noisier and deadlier war carried on by the press.

It has been a very trying time for those of us who have been called "hyphenated Americans"; but I doubt that the German or Austrian hyphen has been more in evidence than that which we are pleased to call Anglo-Saxon.

I can say that in spite of the fact that my native country precipitated the conflict, I felt no thrill of patriotism when Austrian troops invaded Serbia, and frequently wonder whether I have not suffered some moral deterioration, because through all these stirring times I have remained fairly rational. I have never condoned Austria's treatment of the Slavs, nor Germany's invasion of Belgium; I have not gloried in their victories, but I have suffered alike for all my fellow mortals who are involved in this most disastrous conflict. I know myself always human first, and a loyal American next. In fact, never before have I loved my adopted country as much as now, never did I have for it so profound a respect, nor a deeper realization of the blessing of our democracy, imperfect as it is.

The Herr Director insisted that we could not count on the loyalty of our immigrated citizens in case of war with their respective countries, especially as they are so frequently dealt with unjustly by our courts and exploited by our industries. The editor thought that the danger to the United States did not lie in the lack of loyalty in our new citizens, but rather in the general smugness of the average American, and in our unpreparedness for war.

The conversation drifted into a discussion of militarism, a subject which has become painfully familiar since, and he said that although the American is a fighter he is not a militarist, nor in danger of becoming one; and that personally, he, in common with all sane Americans, believed that the country ought to be prepared to protect itself and defend its national honor.

"That's what we all say," the Herr Director remarked. When the whole company laughed, he felt hurt, and it took me a long time to explain to him that he had accidentally stumbled onto a bit of American slang, which he had used most innocently, but aptly.

I wanted to know just what the editor meant by preparedness for war and just when a nation's honor was so damaged that nothing but war would restore it. There seemed to be no time left to have this question answered, and as there was some danger that we would separate with this important subject upon our minds and perhaps interfering with our digestion, I asked whether in conclusion I might tell another ethnological anecdote, which would illustrate my need of light upon that question of preparedness for war. To this they all assented if I could vouch for its being as good as the others. I thought it was better because I was sure it was true, and the joke was on me. Every one settled down expectantly except the Herr Director who never relishes my stories, having a fine collection of his own which he tells remarkably well.

I had to wait at a small station in the West for one of those periodically late trains, and was reading the only fiction available, the railroad time-table. A train which came from the opposite direction brought a gang of working men who had been shovelling the snow which had blocked the road. As they were all immigrants I had no further use for my time-table and went among them, guessing at their nationality, sorting them according to the shape of their heads, delighting my soul by talking to them as much as I could of their native country, and quizzing them about their experience in the United States.

I had succeeded splendidly with all of them and there was but one man left. As soon as I saw him I said to myself, "He is a Russian, not a common Russian, but of the Velko Russ variety which is still rare or comparatively rare among our immigrant population." I walked up to him and saluted him with the pious greeting of his class. There wasn't the slightest indication that he understood me, so I concluded that I was mistaken; but knowing that he was a Slav, I tried a greeting in Polish, and again the great, shaggy Slav seemed not to understand. When Bohemian failed, I decided that my error was merely geographical and this was a Southern, not a Northern Slav. I used all the Serbic I knew without getting anything but a stare from my victim, and then decided that he might be an Albanian. Knowing only two words of that language I tried them with the same negative result. Finally, disgusted with myself I resorted to English. Feeling sure that he would not understand, I shouted at him, "Are you a Greek?" Then a ray of intelligence passed over his stolid face. Deliberately taking his pipe out of his mouth, he laconically replied: "No, I am from Missoury."

A shout of laughter followed my story; but the Herr Director's face grew darker and darker. When we were in our taxicab going back to the hotel, he said: "One of the most remarkable things I have learned to-day about the American people is that they are very young, almost childlike."

"Why, how did you learn that?" I asked.

"Oh," he answered, "who but a childlike, _naïve_ people would laugh over such a stupid joke as yours? Anyway, how did you dare bring such a silly story into so serious a conversation?"

"Yes," I replied; "that is as you say a sign of our youth. The more complex and seasoned jokes belong to the older civilizations, and the love of a simple story and the ready response to it, even though it be a poor story, are a sign of our youthful health; but you know," I added, "that story I told was not so _mal apropos_ after all." And the rest of the day I struggled mightily to convince the Herr Director that being "from Missoury" is one of the most hopeful things about the American Spirit.

VII

_The Herr Director and the College Spirit_

"Take us out of New York," the Herr Director said after a wearing day of sightseeing, "or we will go home on the next steamer. My neck aches from looking at the sky-scrapers, my nerves are all on edge, and," glancing at the Frau Directorin who had hugely enjoyed every moment and showed no sign of weariness, "we must have rest."

I was reluctant to leave New York, because, after all, it holds those great thrills with which we like to startle our foreign friends. I feared the change from those daily surprises which thus far I had been able to give them. Lake Mohonk, the only place outside of New York City which we had visited, is unique in many ways and its experiences were not likely to be duplicated; so it was somewhat heavy heartedly that I started them on a new adventure, praying to Him who "holds the nations in the hollow of His Hand" to aid me in my praiseworthy endeavors.

I was not very sanguine that my prayer would be answered, for we were beginning a tour of the Eastern educational institutions, than which there is nothing more difficult to interpret. This, not only because they have no counterpart anywhere in Europe, and the line between our university and college is so indistinct, but because I hoped to reveal their Spirit, which no mere outsider can comprehend, and which even the man on the inside finds it difficult to understand.

I drew into the conspiracy dear friends, _alumni_ of the different institutions, who knew every blade of grass on each respective campus, over which they walked proudly and reverently. To find one university tucked away in a village, another defying the grime and noise of a growing city which crowded upon it; one still retaining its air of exclusive dignity in spite of its garish surroundings, while a fourth was nearly swamped by the culture-hungry children of immigrants, yet remained triumphantly American, was new enough and startling enough to keep my guests on the heights.

The pleasant walks, shaded by tall, graceful elms, and the presence of distinguished Americans, acted soothingly upon the Herr Director; while the gracious attention paid to the ladies convinced the Frau Directorin that she had reached the feminine paradise. She could not understand, however, why, when the ladies were permitted to go everywhere, and were even allowed to gaze at American students in athletic undress, they were barred from sharing with us the rare privilege of seeing a thousand or more of them being fed in one of those Gothic dining halls. There, surely, one might expect nothing worse than medieval piety tempering the appetite. Probably this tradition of no ladies in the galleries is the only thing beside the architecture which is left us from that hoary age.

There are certain definite points which the enthusiastic _alumnus_ always tries to impress upon visitors, and one of them is the past, in which every college glories, and as youth seems to be unpardonable, history begins when as yet it "was not."

In most of the places we visited, no such historic license was necessary, for many of them were respectably old, one of them being contemporaneous with the history of our country, and others belonging to that eminently respectable period, "before the Revolution."

Some have important battles named after them, and several were "Washington's headquarters," a distinction freely bestowed upon many places by that ubiquitous and much beloved "Father of our Country." At present the most important thing seems to be the buildings; dormitories, laboratories, libraries and usually most prominent of all, the gymnasium and the athletic field.

The president of one of the lesser universities, having such a million dollar plaything, became our _cicerone_, and while he took us hastily through everything else, lingered fondly there, showing us in detail the expensive apparatus. With classic pride he stood upon the athletic field, looking as some Cæsar must have looked when he showed visitors to Rome his arena, the "largest," and at that time the "costliest in the world."

It was interesting to find that the buildings which pleased the Herr Director most were neither new nor Gothic, a fact easily explained by his dislike for everything which is English. He marvelled that we had chosen to imitate English college architecture, with its heaviness and gloom, its hideous gargoyles, its useless, and here meaningless, cloisters, rather than to continue our fine inheritance, with its severely classic lines, its wide windows inviting the light, and its generous, broad doors, so much in harmony with our educational ideals.

Of course no one had an answer ready; yet personally while I do not "_hasse_" England nor the things which are English, I vastly prefer, let us say Nassau Hall at Princeton, to anything which that glorious campus holds, not even excepting the graduate college with its massive and impressive Cleveland Memorial Tower.

The Herr Director shook his head many a time at the external glory of our universities and even more at the comfort and luxuries of the dormitories and fraternity houses. We were the guests of one fraternity at dinner. About twenty young men were living under one roof, having chosen each other by some mysterious, selective process, and I was tempted to think that it was their negative rather than their positive qualities which drew them together. We were shown the house from cellar to garret, much to the dismay of the Herr Director who does not like climbing stairs, but to the joy of the Frau Directorin who, woman-like, not only loves to peep into closets, and see pretty rooms, but having discovered the American standard for feminine grace, wanted to lose some of her "meat" as she expressed it in her quaint English.

Each of these young men occupied a suite of three rooms. The hangings were heavy and not in the best taste, the chairs all invited to leisure, and the most conspicuous piece of furniture was a smoking set with a big brass tobacco bowl in the center; while innumerable pipes hung from a gaudily painted rack. In keeping with the furniture were the pictures which were decently vulgar, and of books there were no more than necessary.

The Herr Director was asked regarding student life in Germany, and he contrasted their surroundings with his own cold, inhospitable _Gymnasium_, the relentless examinations, and the freer but responsible life in his university. He described the rooms of the present Emperor of Germany when he was a student at the University of Bonn, remarking that they looked like barracks in comparison with these. "How can you study in such luxurious rooms?" he asked, and naïvely and frankly came the answer: "We don't."

On the whole, the Herr Director liked the looks of the boys he saw, and the Frau Directorin quite fell in love with them. They were so frank, so clean looking, and what above all amazed them most, so altruistic in their outlook upon life; they looked so healthy and well groomed and were so altogether wholesome. But that boys could graduate from colleges and not have studied--that was beyond their comprehension.

The German student's social standing and his future depend upon his "exams." There is only one prime thing, and that is study. When the Herr Director learned the multiplicity of our outside activities which divide the attention of the students, he knew why they do not study. He was aghast at the scant reverence paid members of the faculty. When walking with the president of one of these universities, we met groups of students who did not salute the head of their institution and barely made way for him to pass, he grew quite wrathy, and it took the combined efforts of the president and myself to keep him from telling the young men what boors they were. I think he discovered later that it was mere thoughtlessness, and that there is something really fine about the average American student; that he is usually a gentleman at heart, but that he has not yet learned to value the grace which comes from that sacrament of the common life--lifting his hat to his superiors.

When I told him that one of my students came to me one morning in haste, with "Say, Prof, where is Prexy?" he did not laugh as I expected; but when I remembered that I did not laugh either, when it happened, I forgave him his lack of perception.

It is of course true, that the average college professor would rather be called Jimmy or Jack or some other pet name than to have his academic degrees pronounced every time a student speaks to him; but there still remains the fact that the ordinary American youth lacks this sense of respect for personality, and that an education, even a college education, does not remedy the defect.

It is a very exciting moment in the life of the undergraduates of at least one university when they try to discover if the preacher can make himself heard above their coughs, which is their way of challenging his message; but it does not help him to believe that he is in the presence of men who know what reverence means.

I do not deny that the undergraduate honors achievement, but even in that he lacks proper discrimination. How much education can do to instill this common and deplorable lack of reverence for personality I do not know; for it lies far back, too far back to be reached by mere academic training.

During our tour, the Herr Director had a chance to see one university come out of its incoherence and inexplicable confusion into unity. He heard it roar like the "Bulls of Bashan," fling its flaring colors to the wind, hoot its defiance to the enemy, dance, dervish-like, around the battle flames; he saw ten thousands of young men suffering the war fever, and an equal number of young women shrieking in wild delirium; he saw embankments of automobiles struggling to reach the seat of the conflict, armies of men trying to storm the ramparts, and newspaper correspondents mad from haste; while in the center of it all, twenty-two disguised men struggled for a chalk-line. Unfortunately, no friendly guide was near us to explain it all, and as I am still an un-Americanized alien to a football game, its meaning was lost to my guests.

When two men were carried from the field limp, and seemingly lifeless, the Frau Directorin promptly fainted. The Herr Director was beside himself, for there was no way to extricate ourselves from the maddened mass of humanity; but while he was wildly and vainly calling for water, she revived, and we stayed to the finish. I wished I had not brought them, for to appreciate a football game one must be born in America, and no explanation I offered could convince the Herr Director that we are not more cruel than the Spaniards, whose opponents in their deadly games are bulls, not men. The Frau Directorin still sheds tears at the remembrance of how badly we use our "perfectly nice young men."

The fierceness back of this conflict, the vast amount of money spent upon properly playing the game, the primary place it occupies in the imagination of the American youth, its deadening influence upon scholarship, and all the multitudinous pros and cons, are over-shadowed by the fact that, as far as the community at large is concerned, it expects this Roman holiday, and a college or university is considered good or poor, to the degree that it caters to this desire. One thing I can say for it: it is thoroughly American, bringing into the lime-light some of our virtues and most of our faults.

"In Germany," again the Herr Director, "where things are not permitted to grow merely because they grow elsewhere, it was found that for military preparedness your sports are of little or no value, especially if engaged in vicariously; and that teaching men to dig trenches and serve cannon, to obey implicitly a command and carry it out effectively, is of more use, not only to the individual's well-being, but also for the great, collective purpose of national defense."

It seems very strange to me that nearly all foreigners whom I have helped introduce to our academic life have been so gratified by its evident democracy, and that their satisfaction was greatest when their own aristocratic lineage was highest. That a man's career in our institutions of learning is not made impossible because he does manual labor to help him through, and that he may do such femininely menial tasks as waiting on table or washing dishes, while taxing their credulity, is always unstintingly praised.

I have, however, good reason to believe that while our foreign visitors find the democracy of our colleges interesting and praiseworthy, we are losing the thing itself to a large degree, and my conscience has not always been at ease when I finished a panegyric on college democracy. In fact what I fear is its defeat just there, where it is most needed, where we are supposed to train the leaders who, whether they become leaders or not, are the men who will give tone to our national life and will control its expression.

In travelling from one of the universities to the other, we came upon a group of college men in the train. The Herr Director recognized them at once, whether instinctively or because he had discovered the type, I do not know. I knew them because of the fit of their garments, or the lack of it, and by the fact that they smoked cigarettes incessantly.

The Herr Director, as a distinguished foreigner, had no difficulty in opening a conversation with them, and I think he got much illuminating amusement out of them. They had just finished their semester "exams," and one of them said that the question upon which he flunked was a comparison between the two English authors, Dickens and DeQuincy. Though he did not know the difference between these two, he showed his classic training by differentiating between a Rameses II and an Egyptian Deity cigarette merely by the color of the smoke.

I was not drawn into the conversation until the Herr Director needed me to interpret some campus English. One of the lads undertook to inform us regarding the social life of his university and more especially the fraternities, with particular emphasis upon his own, which excluded not only certain well-defined races, but also put a ban upon certain classes. "We don't admit anybody into our fraternity whose people are not somebody in their communities."

I asked him his name and he gave it to me with a French pronunciation.

I thought he was Bohemian, and recognized the name as such, in spite of its French disguise. I told him so, and pronounced it for him in the hard, Slavic way, all gutturals and consonants. I also told him its meaning: "A very common hoe such as the peasants use, and it means that your ancestors in Bohemia earned their living honestly, which I am sorry to say cannot always be said about 'people who are somebody' in our communities."

The Herr Director thought I was very hard upon the poor fellow, and later I had a good talk with him. I tried to show him that his Bohemian, peasant origin ought to be a source of pride to him. That the very fact that he and his people had come out of the steerage, and by virtue of our democratic institutions could rise to the point where they could send him to college, should make him a guardian of the American Spirit and not its foe. I do not know that he profited by what I said; for I often find myself talking to the wind and the tide, and they are both against me.

I have only pity for the gilded youth who go to an American college with its vast opportunities of human contact, yet fail to see any one outside their own social boundaries. After all, the chief glory of our educational institutions is that their best things are still democratic. No man is kept from the Holy of Holies, from sound learning, from the contact with scholarly minds, from good books, and enough of rich fellowship to make going to college worth while.

We heard one delightful story which is so typically American and so reveals the American Spirit at its best, that the Herr Director embodied it in his book. The president of a Quaker college told us that just as he found there was some danger that the men who had to work their way through, were losing caste, one of the upper classmen opened a boot and shoe mending and cleaning shop. As he was a man of means, whose standing in his group was unquestioned, his action took from common labor its ever renewing curse.

In many of the colleges we met groups of men so full of this spirit, so concerned with fostering it, that all the snobberies of which we had heard seemed even smaller than they were in their own right. We met those who gave their leisure hours to that most difficult and worthy task of Americanizing the immigrants who, in many instances, almost encroached upon the campus. The students visited them in the box-cars where they lived, or in the hovels where they reared children; they taught them English and the elements of good citizenship, and every one of them had some particular Antonio to whom he was devoted, and whom he was trying to lift to his level.

Although the general testimony was that the students had gained more from the contact than the immigrants had, I know how immeasurably much it means to these strangers to have leaning up against their own lonely souls men of culture, and sweet, clean breath, and brotherly heart.

It is this idealism in our college youth which is so precious an asset that to lose it would mean bankruptcy to our educational institutions.

Although the Herr Director did not tell me, I knew that this excursion into the universities of the East had been a success; for thus far he seemed to have enjoyed everything; at least he did not complain about anything. He seemed in an especially happy mood when we were talking it over in the home of one of the presidents, whose guests we had become. "Yes, I like your colleges very much, and if I should want my boy to have four years of more or less organized happiness, I would send him to an American college. He would have a good time, I think his morals would be safe," and he added with a smile, "his intellect would be safe also."

VIII

_The Russian Soul and the American Spirit_

New York is geographically misplaced for such a purpose as mine. It ought to lie somewhere west of Niagara Falls, so that one might be able to take strangers to that wonderful cataract without their having previously exhausted all the emotions which they are capable of expressing.

The day journey between New York and Buffalo is never commonplace, especially when it furnishes such euphonious names as Susquehanna, Wilkes Barre, Mauch Chunk, etc. From the hilltops we had glimpses of great valleys below, valleys which are mined and furrowed and channelled by a great industrial host whose crowded dwellings resemble the hives of bees and are as monotonously alike.

I could make these glimpses interesting enough, for I could tell by the shape of the church steeples and by the style of cross which crowned them, what faiths were there contending with each other. With equal certainty, and by the same signs, I knew the nationality of the people who worked there, and had faith enough to build steeples in the shadow of mine shafts and coal breakers. It was an atmosphere tense from the labor of seven unbroken days, and heavy from noxious gases in which trees languish and die, fish perish in the murky rivers, birds fear to nest, and man alone, immigrant man, lives and works and worships.

The Herr Director, like all Germans, has a natural contempt for the Slavs, and when I proposed that before we visited Niagara Falls we should see some of the Slavic settlements, he demurred; but when the Frau Directorin added her plea to mine, he reluctantly yielded. I was able to promise them an interesting meeting with an idealistic, young Russian priest, who had voluntarily taken a mission among these miners. He was earnestly striving to guard their souls, and also that which seems quite as precious to their church, their Russian nationality.

The Greek Orthodox Church is the most nationalistic church in existence, and where-ever those bulbous towers with their slanting crosspieces dominate the sky, it is equivalent to the raising of the national flag. The Slavic soul is thoroughly Christian in its quality of patient endurance, in which it has had long and hard tutelage. At the same time it is tenacious and unyielding of its particular dogma, having been taught from its earliest consciousness that its salvation lies in strict adherence to the national faith.

The city where we tarried is one of the best in which to study the Slavic Soul, and its relation to the American Spirit, being large enough to express that Spirit in its varied manifestations; yet not so large that the articles it manufactures hide or crush the articles of its faith.

I knew my guests would like the place, for while it is a busy town in the very heart of Pennsylvania's industrial region, it has retained a sort of homelike atmosphere. Situated midway between the large cities and the small towns which we had thus far visited, it has all the usual bustle, and is full of vigorous rivalry with other like cities in the same valley. Whatever one city does, whether building ambitious sky-scrapers or a commodious Y. M. C. A., promoting a revival, or bringing in new industries, this little city endeavors to duplicate upon a still larger scale.

My guide for the day was the town's chief "hustler," the secretary of the Y. M. C. A., who is an embodiment of the American Spirit, being both body and spirit. He made a splendid foil to the Russian priest who is all soul, Russian soul and as little at home in the United States as the Czar's double eagle would be, floating from the city's court-house which stood in typical court-house fashion in the center of the town square.

The Y. M. C. A. secretary met us at the station, needless to say, in an automobile, as there is nothing the average American would rather do than "show off" his town. He gave his time unstintingly for that purpose, beginning the process by taking us through his institution which is American enough to have challenged the Herr Director's attention. In great good humor he, with the rest of us, followed the secretary from the bowling alley to the roof garden, looked into the dormitories and class rooms, and protested only when our zealous guide gave us long statistics as to how many people took baths, how many men were converted, and how much of the mortgage had been paid off during his incumbency.

I had to explain to the Herr Director the meaning of mortgage and its relation to our religious institutions; for the two seemed related in some mysterious way.

He was duly impressed; for this practical side of religion, this combination of saving souls and giving baths was new to him. Newer and more interesting still was the clerical machinery with its card indices, its numerous secretaries, stenographers, and its clock-like regularity and efficiency.

The secretary is undoubtedly a religious man; but he is a business man first, and his soul has had no small struggle in an atmosphere which demands that he attract new members, raise a generous budget, pay off a mortgage and at odd moments look after his own business; for besides being secretary of this great institution, he dabbles in Western lands, has an interest in a canning factory, and helps "boom" the town.

I could assure the Herr Director that, nevertheless, his soul survives; for the average American is remarkably adaptable, and while this secretary may permit his religion to suffer before his business, I know he does not "lose his own soul"; although in that respect as in everything else he does run frightful risks.

When we left the palatial lobby of the Y. M. C. A., having had bestowed upon us its annual report, souvenir postal cards, and incidentally a prospectus of the Western Land Co., the secretary insisted upon accompanying us. As he put his automobile at our disposal, and the Slavic settlements were out of reach by the ordinary means of locomotion, we reluctantly accepted his kind offer, the Herr Director having previously confided to me that he did not like the secretary's "hustle," and that his "efficiency" made him nervous.

There were two things which the Frau Directorin found everywhere and in which her soul delighted: marked and courteous attention to the ladies--and automobiles. We took just one street car ride in New York City, having been fairly showered by offers of automobile rides, one form of hospitality of which we have grown quite prodigal.

It was well that we had both the secretary and the automobile; for although I thought I knew where the Russian parish was located I did not reckon with the fact that it was three years since I had last visited it. During that interval the town had so altered that the landscape was quite unrecognizable.

It is the peculiarity of this and neighboring towns that they change their topography over night. What was a hill becomes a hollow, and the reverse process also takes place though more slowly, because of the huge culm piles which accumulate.

The mining of coal being carried on under the town has been so thorough in later years that intervening coal props have been removed, and houses and churches which formerly were above the level are now below it.

We finally found the Russian church and its adjoining parsonage in as uninviting an environment as I have ever seen. The three years since I visited them had not only let them down from their eminence, but had developed a stagnant pool on one side, while refuse from the mines had encroached upon the other. All the glory of red and yellow paint had departed, leaving only a drab dinginess, the prevailing tone of the landscape.

The priest received us in his study, which, besides the _Icons_ and a _Samovar_ had no ornaments. The musty air was full of cigarette smoke, and most diminutive stumps of these "_Papirosy_" were lying about, adding to the general untidiness. A parish register lay upon the desk. It contained the names of more than a thousand souls with the chronicle of their coming into this world and their going out of it, and also that most important item, when they had attended Holy Communion, the one visible sign of their allegiance to the true faith.

The Holy Father had a strange history. The son of a priest, he naturally was destined for the same calling. Caught by the ever moving tide of revolt he had "sown his wild oats," which consisted of disseminating revolutionary literature. He was imprisoned, then like many good Russians repented, and, as a penance, came to Pennsylvania.

In desolation and distance from home his parish was not unlike Siberia. It was even worse, for it was an exile from like-minded men, and his suffering on that score was acute. I have watched the manifestation of national or racial characteristics in individuals, and I feel certain that the Russian reflects those characteristics most intensely, whether he be peasant, priest or noble.

Not without reason does he call his country "Mother Russia." He has for her just that kind of affection, and it is as different from the violent love of the Herr Director for his Fatherland as is the matter-of-fact sentiment of the American for his.

The Russian completely reflects his country, and as both her virtues and her faults are feminine, there is in him something gentle and yielding towards external authority, and yet something unconquerable and defiant. There is a capacity for suffering and sacrifice of which no other people seem to be capable. There is also a confidence in the goodness of humanity, no matter how bad it may seem, which reminds me of the confidence of the woman who is beaten by her drunken husband, yet knows that in his sober moments he is not a bad man.

The predominance of the spiritual quality may or may not be feminine, but it certainly is Russian, and one may indeed speak of the soul of a people in relation to the Slavs in general, and the Russians in particular.

The priest possessed all these characteristics; he was the Russian Soul, and this soul quality became even more apparent in contrast with the complex spirit of the American secretary, in whom Teuton and Celt were blended, and with the Herr Director, whose soul had hardened under the discipline which Germany had given him.

He lost no time in beginning an argument with the priest as to the relations of their respective countries, and when it threatened to become acrimonious, the secretary, hoping to create a diversion, asked the priest why he did not encourage his parishioners to come to the Y. M. C. A. At that point I threw myself into the breach, and with considerable difficulty directed the conversation into safer channels.

I asked the priest to show us his mission, and he took us into the church, much poorer than any I have ever seen in Russia, and then into the schoolroom, where the children of the miners received their religious instruction and as much of secular education as they craved. The teacher was a lean youth who looked as if he had suffered moral, spiritual and physical bankruptcy before coming to America. He and the whole equipment seemed hopelessly inadequate and out of place.

The secretary did not know that hundreds of children were growing up in an American community, yet completely isolated from it, and the Herr Director remarked that in Germany this would be regarded as treason to the state. The priest declared that it was his mission in America not only to keep his people and their children loyal to the national church, but to inject into our Westernized materialism this true Slavic faith and its leaven.

He believed that in America we lack soul. We worship science and money and business. The Russian alone lives in intimacy with God and regards that relation of the supremest importance. "The American," he continued, "believes in developing natural resources, the German develops the mind, the Russian alone develops the soul."

I have always had the greatest reverence for the Russian Soul. I have learned something the Herr Director could not see, on account of the natural, political antagonism between his own country and Russia; something the secretary could not comprehend on account of his provincialism, and the priest would not admit because of his official position, namely: that neither the Russian State nor the Russian Church represents the Russian Soul. Its common people, although nearly crushed by the one and confused by the other, are still Christian souls and as such have a mission to America; but I could not see how that mission would be fulfilled by locking up a few hundred children in a filthy schoolroom and teaching them their national catechism.

The Spiritual Russia, as it is incorporated in its common people and as it is interpreted by Tolstoy and Dostoyewsky, has reached us and taught us the greatest lesson which we self-righteous Americans needed to learn: the impossibility to judge our peers or to be judged by them.

It was Tolstoy and Dostoyewsky who compelled some of us to see our own guilt, and they, not the Russian Church, united our voices with those of the Russian people in the chief note of their Mass, "Lord have mercy! O Lord have mercy!" The Russian peasant always knew that men are stricken by crime as by a disease; and when he passed those consigned to prison, he cried out incessantly: "Lord have mercy! O Lord have mercy!" And for the man who escaped, he never hunted with the bloodhound's passion, as we do; he put a crust of bread upon the window, to help him on his way.

It was news to the secretary that Judge Lindsay, the "Kid's Judge," as he is affectionately called, received his inspiration from Tolstoy, and that the tendency to change our prisons into Social Clinics was originally suggested by Dostoyewsky, a name quite unfamiliar to him.

The Herr Director spoke of the inadequacy of these same Russians when they try to put their theories into practice, and what prosaic, impossible preachers they make. To which I replied that their failures are due to their preponderance of soul and their lack of the practical spirit with which we are so super-abundantly endowed.

The secretary could scarcely believe that his practical, matter-of-fact, card-indexed, efficient-from-top-to-bottom, result-bringing, tabulated, report-making, American Y. M. C. A. might be benefited by an infusion of Russian Soul. He almost doubted that the delving miners whom we saw coming home from the mines, sooty and begrimed, possessed that soul. Nor did the Herr Director realize that all his Germanic searching and classifying, all his minute, painstaking investigation into the innermost of everything, left him where the Russian had long ago preceded him: in the holy presence of the unknowable, unsearchable wisdom of God.

The American has great reverence for results, and it is hard for him to be patient with failure. The German respects authority, and has scant respect for the individual. The Russian respects man and knows what it means to love him in his weakness, and to be humble in the presence of another's failure.

I had a long, intimate talk with my friend the priest, who has never spent a happy day since he has been in America which he hates, or rather, despises, and so hurts me more than he knows.

Throwing open the well-thumbed, poorly kept register, in such striking contrast to the Y. M. C. A. secretary's card index, he said: "Look how many I have buried this month," and he counted them, and there were eighteen, "all of them slain in that dreadful mine, and no one in the Company or in the town cares how they were buried. These Americans have no souls. They send an undertaker who wants to bury them like dogs, and the quicker the thing is done the better. They sent me notice shortly after I came here that the funerals lasted too long and kept the men from work. Look how those men walk! My _mujiks_, who walked like princes, now bend their backs before your dirty coal, and walk like slaves."

His complaint was not altogether unreasonable. In some things he was right, in many things he was wrong; but to argue with a Russian is as hopeless as to try to argue with Niagara Falls. I did tell him that while the Russian here must bend his back over his work, he does not have to bend it at every corner before the _icon_ or before every policeman he meets; that here, by virtue of the American Spirit, his soul may be freed from superstition and his mind from darkness.

When in parting the priest embraced and kissed me, he said: "No, even you don't understand the Russian Soul."

The Herr Director suffered his embrace with good grace, but when the secretary's turn came he fled. To be kissed by a man is a sentimentality which the American cannot endure.

"We don't understand the Russian Soul," I said to him, "neither you nor I, but one thing I do know. When the coal has been dug out of these hills and these cities shall have gone the way of Sodom and Gomorrah, and your churches and Y. M. C. A. may have vanished because it did not pay to keep them going, this Russian Soul will endure; and the sooner we learn to understand it the better for us and for them and for our country."

When we left the Russian church and its faithful priest, the Frau Directorin told us that the children were incredibly filthy, and that she had spent the time we wasted in argument cleaning them up, good _hausfrau_ that she is. The secretary was thinking deeply, and when he deposited us at the hotel, he thanked me for revealing something which, although so near, he would never have discovered. The Herr Director kept me up until midnight talking about the Slavic menace to Germany, and the intellectual poison of its modern literature.

We reached Niagara Falls the next afternoon, and, as I had feared, neither of my guests showed any surprise nor felt any thrill. I could understand the Herr Director's coolness towards our natural wonder, for he had seen it thirty years before; but his wife's attitude was inexplicable, until she told me what I had all along anticipated. Her capacity for receiving impressions had been exhausted by the city of New York, and after seeing the "high-scraps" nothing astonished her.

As we stood at the bottom of the American Falls, watching the Maid of the Mist making her journeys into their very spray and returning, only to begin her journey again, I suggested that it was like the American Spirit in its daring; but the Herr Director, with truer insight, said that it was "like the Russian Soul, mystical, elusive, on the verge of destruction always, but of little practical service."