But they would not have to see the garden to know that God is.
We broke bread with the Angels and looked into their joyously weary faces, and then we talked about the very thing I wanted my guests to know, namely: That underneath all our religious or rather credal chaos, we have a national creed if not a national religion.
The Herr Director suggested that the fundamental doctrine of our creed is “in gold we trust,” and then he began a dissertation upon our national materialism.
Perhaps so, I conceded; but I doubted that we are more materialistic than the people of the older world, in fact I was inclined to believe that we are less so; which of course the Herr Director stoutly denied, and I as stoutly affirmed. In justice to myself I must say that when my country’s honor is not at stake I am less dogmatic.
“Perhaps we are equally materialistic,” I continued, “but we are certainly more generous. We make money faster than the people of the Old World, but we also give it away faster, and I believe that there is no country in which there is such a contempt for the merely rich man.”
“I suppose the second article in your national creed,” the Herr Director interrupted, “is that you are the biggest country and the best people under the Sun.
“If I were suggesting a motto for a new coinage I would put on one side of it ‘In Gold We Trust,’ and on the other ‘The Biggest and The Best.’”
Ignoring this somewhat merited slur I said: “The first and only doctrine of our national creed which we have as yet formulated is that we have a great national destiny.”
At that the Herr Director jumped excitedly from his seat, and said somewhat sneeringly, “Oh, you mean you have a place under the Sun. All nations have such a creed, but when we Germans try to realize it, you call us a menace to civilization.”
It was a tense moment in my relationship to my guests, but I ventured to say: “We have a better reason for the faith which is in us than most other nations, for we are trying to realize it without killing off other people. In fact we are trying to realize it at a greater hazard than that of being conquered by an alien enemy. We are keeping open these doors which have swung both ways freely, for nearly three hundred years, and your Old World weary ones have been coming; bringing their traditions, their ideals, their worn out faiths and their heaped up wrath. We did not forbid them; they have come to our towns, our schools, our homes, they are here for better for worse, and we cannot divorce them, or drive them away.
“Yes,” I continued, much to the discomfiture of the Herr Director, “we have a meaning to the Old World, a larger meaning than you think. We have a place under the Sun, not to satisfy national ambitions; but to keep alive faith in humanity.”
The Angels around the table were disquieted by our vehemence, the Frau Directorin urged that it was growing late, and we left that center of quiet which we had so disturbed, to return to our hotel. We entered a street car crowded beyond its capacity by burly Irishmen the worse for liquor, good-natured Slavs none the better for it, aggressive looking Russian Jews and sleek Chinamen. There were mothers with their crying babies, and thoughtless boys and girls chewing gum most viciously. After the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had been jostled unmercifully, we left the uncomfortable car, and when we were again breathing unpolluted air the Herr Director asked quizzically:
“Do you still believe in humanity?”
Boldly and bravely I answered: “Yes, I believe,” and lifting my face to the stars I whispered: “Lord, help my unbelief.”
MUCH to my regret the Herr Director did not sleep well that second night in the United States. His nerves had suffered from those first thronging impressions, he looked pale and was decidedly irritable; “for how could a man sleep or be expected to sleep in this business canyon, loud from the thunder of the elevated, and bright from the flashing of illuminated signs?” Together they had the effect of an electric storm upon him.
When he did fall asleep he dreamed that the Metropolitan Tower, the Woolworth Building and St. Patrick’s Cathedral were dancing Tango upon his chest.
This nightmare may have been due to the fact that just before retiring we witnessed an exhibition of this modern madness, which seemed to be indulged in everywhere except in the churches and possibly the barber shops. Partly also, perhaps, because the Herr Director insisted upon eating lobster shortly before midnight, in spite of the fact that I warned him against that indulgence. It was one of those generous, United States lobsters, and not the diminutive shell-fish with which cultured Europeans merely tickle their palates.
The Herr Director had repeatedly pointed out our bad habit of leaving a great deal of food on our plates, and to impress upon me his better manners, he had eaten the entire lobster.
I had not slept well that night either, in spite of the fact that I had eaten sparingly. I think it was the Herr Director himself who had “got on my nerves,” and I was finding this task of “showing off” my beloved United States difficult and exacting.
That morning we were to leave New York and I would introduce my guests to the great American out-of-doors, and the prospect added to my already uncomfortable frame of mind.
If only we might start from that marvellous Central Station in the heart of the city; but in order to reach our destination, which was Lake Mohonk, we had to cross the West Side where it is irredeemably tawdry and ugly, and take one of the ferry-boats to Weehawken. This somewhat inconvenient procedure made the Herr Director doubly critical.
The Fates were against us, for it was a hot, humid day, the car was crowded, and the start from Weehawken anything but auspicious.
In Europe the Herr Director travels second class when he travels officially (the first, as is well known, being reserved for Americans and fools), and third when he travels incognito, for he is a thrifty soul. Nevertheless, he did not like our cars, they were “obtrusively decorated,” and privacy was impossible. Why should he have to look at a hundred or more human heads variously “frisired”?
I suggested that we take seats in front, which we succeeded in doing, and then he found that if he wished to take off his collar, he would have to do it with two hundred or more human eyes fastened upon him, when the hundred people possessing them had no business to see what he was doing.
I have already confessed how sensitive I am to criticism of anything American, no matter how just the criticism may be. So sensitive am I, that had he reflected upon the good looks of my wife, he could scarcely have hurt me more than when he reflected upon the beauty and arrangement of an American railway car.
And yet I have often wondered why our American genius seems to have exhausted itself when it evolved the present type of car, having done nothing to it except adding or taking away some of its “gingerbread.” Nevertheless I lost my patience and told him that if he liked to travel cooped in with seven other passengers, four of whom he must face and two of whom might at any moment poke their elbows into his ribs; if he preferred to breathe air polluted by seven other people, and have a fresh supply of ozone only at periods and in quantities regulated by law, I did not admire his taste. As far as I was concerned I preferred to travel in this big room on wheels, rather than in a jail-like box to which the conductor alone had the key. Anyway this represented American democracy with its unpartitioned space; but if he really wanted it, I could get him a stateroom in the Pullman, and he could ride in isolated splendor and be aristocratically stuffy and uncomfortable.
When the Frau Directorin in typical German phraseology complained about the draft: “Um Gottes Willen ein Zug!” I decided to save the day, and we retreated to the Pullman stateroom.
There they rested themselves back and looked tolerably happy while I, silently but fervently, prayed that this particular train would not disgrace itself by “committing” an accident.
The big, American out-of-doors, even where it is old and its waste spaces are cultivated and hedged about, has something which is characteristically American. Of course nature knows no political boundary; the grass is green everywhere, the sky is blue, cattle and sheep, like man, have a long and honorable ancestry. Yet there is a difference which may not be due to what nature is, but to man’s attitude towards her and his treatment of her.
I have noticed this in passing through Europe; how unerringly one knows where Germanic boundaries end and those of the Slav begin. German fields and forests are trim and orderly; Slavic territory so ill kept and ill used that when one has a glimpse of a village even from the swift moving train, the difference is obvious.
Sometimes I am inclined to believe that this attitude of man affects his environment as much as we know the environment affects him. I wonder just how much of the American out-of-doors, with its generous but not gentle aspect, its subdued but untamed spirit, is due to those valiant men who came from across the sea, and in so doing restored a bit of their long-lost courage, and made masters of men who so long had been serfs and knaves.
I had hoped that the sudden burst of the Hudson upon my guests’ vision would thrill them; but if they were thrilled, they were careful to conceal it. When I suggested the likeness of the Hudson to the Rhine, the Herr Director took it as a personal affront and said you might as well compare St. Patrick’s Cathedral and that of Cologne. They are both churches and Gothic; the Hudson and the Rhine are two rivers, and both are big.
Nevertheless I insisted that there is an evident resemblance which would be complete if the Hudson had a ruined castle here and there, or a picturesquely cramped village huddling against the hillside.
“Yes, and beside castles and picturesque villages,” the Herr Director replied tartly, “you need a thousand years of culture and the same traditions which make the shores of the Rhine sacred to us; you also need generations of patiently plodding peasants who have made a sacrament of their toil. One glance at your rotting boats lying along the shore, at the untilled, gaping spaces and glaring, inartistic sign-boards which disfigure it, is sufficient to distinguish the two rivers or perhaps even the two countries.”
Having thus forcefully delivered himself, he scornfully pointed out the waste places and the unkempt-looking fields, asking me whether I still dared compare anything in this out-of-doors with the fine economy and splendid supervision of the natural resources of his own country.
Shamefacedly I acknowledged my country’s guilt, and the guilt which was evident on the majestic shores of the Hudson. We are wasteful, extravagant and reckless—great defects in our national spirit, and most in evidence in our treatment of nature’s beauty and wealth. We shall have to remedy that, in fact we are just beginning to do it; if not from any sense of guilt, from the same sheer necessity which makes the nations of the Old World careful of their national wealth.
“The Conservation of our National Resources” is a fine phrase; it represents not only an economic, but a spiritual gain—this feeling of responsibility for the next generation. It is a new and most valuable asset of our national spirit; yet I must confess that I fear the coming of a day when we, too, shall have to practice the sordid little economies of the Old World and think with anxiety about the to-morrow.
It has always seemed to me that here the miracle of the loaves and fishes might be performed indefinitely, and that there always would be left over the baskets full of fragments. Somehow, in common with the rest of mankind, I have associated generous plenty with the American spirit, and I trust we shall never have just our dole and no more.
I recall walking one evening with the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin through the well-regulated, officially trimmed and “Streng Verboten” forest which encircles his native city. My children were with us—young, vigorous, American savages, who have a superabundance of the American spirit although they have not a drop of American blood in their veins. We passed a small mound of freshly mown hay and they promptly jumped into it, tossing a few handfuls as an offering to their aboriginal deity, the wind. If they had dashed into the plateglass window of a jeweler’s shop or had desecrated the most holy shrine, they could not have caused greater consternation.
“Um Gottes Himmels Willen die Polizei!” cried the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin echoed: “Die Polizei!”
Although this happened about ten years ago, my children have not forgotten their fright.
I suppose we still lack this virtue of economy, and yet I hope we may not lose that certain largeness of nature and that generosity of spirit which have characterized us.
I love the generous spaces, the unfenced lawns, which make of the whole village one common park; the grass and clover free to the touch of our children’s feet, the fragrant flowers wasting their bloom, and berries and cherries enough for the wild things of the woods. May the future not bring more high walls and narrow lanes, big game preserves for the rich, and scant patches of soil for the poor; castles for capital and tenements for labor. And may we never see written over every blade of grass: “Streng Verboten.”
I realized that the Herr Director spoke truly when he said that what we lack over here is a healthy class spirit, which the German farmer has. A sort of pride in his calling which makes him care for the soil and nourish it with a lover’s passion. To him robbing the soil is as great a crime as it would be to rob his children. It is not only the Emperor who regards himself as a partner with God, and sometimes the senior partner; the commonest, poorest peasant is apt to say as he drenches his field with the accumulated compost: “Ich und Gott.”
Speaking of the farmer, the Herr Director admitted that in Germany as elsewhere there is a trend to the city; but the tide is held back by the pride of the German farmer, who glories in having his traditions, his folksongs, and, above all, this sense of partnership with God.
We scarcely have such a thing as a farmer class; we have merely merchandizers in dirt who sell not only the products of the soil, but unhesitatingly the soil itself.
The land which we see from the car window, which the pioneers won from this boundless space, these houses and sheltering groves, the homesteads in which a great race was cradled, are all for sale, now that the soil is robbed of its fertility and the robbers have moved on to repeat the process elsewhere. We are doing something, he admitted, to stem the tide to the cities; we are introducing agricultural training into our public schools and are making the raising of corn and wheat a science, but not as yet a sacrament.
We stayed over night in one of the half-asleep towns on the shores of the river, a town whose history is written upon the headstones in the cemetery, in the center of which the stately meeting-house stands. We met the descendants of those who sleep there, whose pride lies in the fact that their forefathers were the pioneers who fought the Indians, the fevers and each other. Their houses are full of old furniture shipped from England and Holland, and we ate their food and drank their tea from costly silver and exquisite china which they have inherited.
We looked upon the portraits of their ancestors and were told of their virtues and their fame; we saw fine memorials to the past in churches and town halls and rode in their automobiles, to see the farms bequeathed to them. One thing, alas! they have not and never will have—descendants.
On one of the farms we saw a swarthy Italian with a bright red rose behind his ear. His wife and children were working with him in the field, and they were doing this strange thing as they pulled weeds from the onion beds—they were singing. The Herr Director said significantly, “These are the heirs to all this,” and I think he was a true prophet.
It is a wonderful thing to invent agricultural machinery and to discover new methods by which two blades of grass can be made to grow where but one grew; yet if only some one could tune our dull American ears, so that our farmers might catch the melody of the singing land and sing with it; if our boys and girls would love wild roses well enough to wear them—if, and that is a very big if—some one could teach us Americans to be proud of having descendants, we might add a new note to the great American out-of-doors, and keep it American.
That night we sat upon a wide verandah, overlooking a valley through which the Hudson rolled majestically; we saw populous cities, picturesque villages and bounteous farms; we looked into the heart of the out-of-doors and I was proud of it and of its free people, who ought to be a grateful people. There was deep silence everywhere; no sound except that of the birds, and they did not sing jubilantly as birds ought to sing in so blessed a place and on so glorious an evening. No one sang except the same Italian who was coming home with his wife and numerous progeny. He still wore the rose behind his ear, although it had faded. Those who sat with us had every luxury and more money than they knew how to spend; but they could not sing, for they were old, children there were none, and if there had been, they would not have been singing—they would have had a victrola.
After the Italian had eaten his frugal but pungent fare he came to the big verandah to get his orders for the next day, and the Herr Director spoke Italian to him and he replied in that language which in itself is almost a song. His mistress asked him to bring his wife and children to sing for us. His wife did not come but the children came. They would not sing an Italian song, it is true—that was just for themselves, in the fields where only God heard. They sang some sentimental thing they had heard in the “movies”—chewing gum the while. I asked them to sing something their teacher taught them but they knew nothing except “My Country ’tis of Thee” and the “Star Spangled Banner,” both of which they sang joylessly and not understandingly. How and why should they understand when the Americans did not?
It was a day full of dismal failure in my attempt to impress upon my guests the American spirit, and the failure of it was “rubbed” in by the Herr Director, who, as he bade me good-night, quoted as a parting shot this bit of German verse:
The rub was in his inference that we have no song because we have no noble spirit.
MANY years ago the Herr Director and I were tramping through the Hartz Mountains in northern Germany. He had not yet achieved portliness and fame; while to me, America was still the land of Indians and buffaloes, and I had never dreamed of going there. We were climbing the Brocken, and that which thrilled me more than its granite steeps and deeply mysterious pines was, the hundreds of school-boys and girls we met, singing as they climbed, and who, when they rested, listened to their teachers who stimulated their imagination and their patriotism by telling them the stories which had woven themselves around those mountains.
The Catskills are not unlike the Hartz, and I remarked upon it as the Herr Director and I were climbing the Walkill Range. Our destination was Lake Mohonk, the scene of the Conference for International Arbitration, organized and supported by that noble Quaker, Albert K. Smiley; and now after his death continued by his able and generous brother Daniel Smiley, and his gracious wife.
The Frau Directorin, with hundreds of other guests, had been met at the railroad station by carriages, this being one of the few places left upon earth where the automobile is excluded.
The Herr Director was not climbing as easily as he climbed thirty years ago, and neither was I, although I made a brave show and led the way, frequently leaving him in the rear, much to his disgust.
“Yes,” he said, mopping his brow and looking about critically, “this is somewhat like the Hartz,” and my heart gave a joyous leap at his admission; “but several things are missing: Good company, merry songs and, above all, places of refreshment.”
Of course I could offer him no better company than I was, as there are not many people in America who climb when they can ride for nothing; and the only refreshment available was clear water from a shaded spring. As we drank he recalled laughingly how, when we stopped at one of those nature’s fountains in the Hartz, a man who had watched us, came running out of his house and warned us that we might catch cold in our stomachs, at the same time politely offering to guide us to a place where we would get something not so dangerously cold, and with tempting foam at the top.
I have long ago been weaned from the German custom of mixing refreshments and scenery; but one does miss the boys and girls, the merry, happy throngs, their sentimental songs and their fervent, poetic patriotism. Involuntarily my mind reverted to a scene the Herr Director and I witnessed after we had finally reached the summit of our mountain in the Hartz. It was nearly evening, and we could look far and wide above the forest into the happy and beautiful country. On the very topmost peak stood a corpulent German, surrounded by his genial group. He was reciting with fervor and genuine passion, in the broadest Berlinese dialect, one of their treasured poems which begins with these lines:
If this should happen over here, of which there is no danger, he would be laughed at, if noticed at all; over there he was treated like a high priest who called the faithful to prayer.
As a people we lack not only poetic imagination, we lack also this identification of our country with the best in nature. Our youth may be to blame for that, or perhaps we have so much of nature and so much which is beautiful that we have not been able to encompass it. Yet there must be something very important lacking in such Americans as the one whom I met very recently. He had just returned from a “Seeing America First” tour, and had seen everything from Niagara to the Big Tree groves of California. When I asked him what he thought of it all he said, coolly, “Oh! it’s a big country.” Naturally I did not tell this nor the following to the Herr Director.
A few years ago I went with a group of Americans to see one of the famous ice caves in the Alps. The accommodating guides had lighted candles in the labyrinth and the sight was enchanting. One of my party, a dry-goods dealer, said with genuine enthusiasm: “My! I wish I could get such a shade of silk in New York.” The other said: “Too bad; so much perfectly good ice going to waste.” He belonged to the much maligned tribe of ice-men. The rest of the men said nothing, although one of them did remark when we reached our hotel: “This only shows how slow they are over here. In the good old United States we would light that show with electricity.” He belongs to the tribe whose name is legion.
The Herr Director, as my readers have found, was very chary of his praise, in fact thus far I had not heard a good word from him for my United States; but that evening as we looked from the Mountain House down upon the dark, deep lake, the rock gardens and the quaint bowers on every promontory, granite walls broken and scattered, and the rich valley between us and the Catskills, he did say: “This is the most beautiful spot I have ever seen!”
Of course his generous mood was partially gendered by the unequalled hospitality of our host and hostess and by the sight of his fellow guests, who represented not only the entire United States, but the United States at its best. Moreover, he and his wife had received a more than cordial welcome because they were representative foreigners and spoke English with a “cute accent.”
I almost felt a slight touch of jealousy upon that point although I am not of a jealous nature. But I have noticed this: to the degree that my English has improved, to that degree I have become less interesting to my American friends, so that I have sometimes been tempted to wish that I too might speak English with a “cute accent.”
The happy day was almost spoiled for me by the discovery that our trunks had not arrived. The Herr Director worked himself into a frenzy and the Frau Directorin had dire forebodings of having to spend the three days in the same shirt-waist. Telegrams were sent in all directions, while the Herr Director called our much boasted of baggage system hard names; my “best laid schemes” seemed about to “gang agley” when much to my relief the trunks arrived, and I felt once more assured of the divine favor in my most strenuous efforts to “boost” my United States.
The Herr Director had come to this country to take part in the Mohonk Conference, and being a prudent man, he submitted his address to me. It was written with Teutonic thoroughness and as void of places of refreshment as the Sahara Desert or the Walkill Range we had climbed.
I suggested a thorough revision, the cutting out of many statistics and resting his case, not upon pure business, but upon the higher plane of pure justice. He insisted upon retaining his statistics and also his appeal to the selfish and materialistic side of his audience; for he knew “something about Americans” and still doubted their idealism.
The next morning after breakfast we attended prayers, which is a part of the daily program of this hostelry, and presided over by the host, who usually reads the Scriptures, announces a hymn and then leads in prayer. It is as impressive as it is simple and dignified, and the Herr Director and his wife did their first singing in America when they joined in a hymn whose tune is an old German folk-song.
The program which followed the prayer service was dominated by specialists in International Law and they were dry and concise enough to suit even the Herr Director; while the dreamers and agitators, whom he expected to hear, were almost altogether unrepresented. In fact they have grown less in this assembly each year, largely because it is thought that the whole subject has reached the point when it is a practical question to be discussed by men of affairs. No one knew better than the Herr Director how inevitable was the next great war and how far we were from the practical Court of International Arbitration.
The epilogue to that great world drama had been spoken in the Balkan, and spoken with vehemence, passion and fierce cruelty, and he knew its bearing upon the whole tense situation in Europe. Yet I am sure that even he did not know how many nations would be involved, nor how costly and deadly would be the conflict. He did foreshadow in his own condemnation of England and of England’s foreign policy the element of hate between the two related nations, which was to play so important a part in the present war.
The afternoon is playtime at Lake Mohonk, and most generous are the provisions for recreation; but the Herr Director did not ride or drive, nor play golf or tennis. He stayed in his room rewriting his paper, having sensed something of the Spirit of Lake Mohonk.
It is a very dignified room in which the problem of International Arbitration is discussed, and although it never loses its hospitable, home-like air, one always has the feeling of being before a high tribunal, where anything but the most serious mood seems out of place; although a jest sometimes relieves the discussion.
An audience of about four hundred people gathered that evening, men and women in varied walks of life, coming from all the states in the Union and from many foreign countries.
There were captains of industry and of infantry, admirals of fleets and presidents of colleges, statesmen and politicians, ministers, lawyers and journalists. Their views ranged from those who believe that war is an unavoidable event in human history, and that a little blood letting now and then is necessary for the best of men, to those who teach that war is a curse and that a certain warrior who compared it to the worst place which human imagination can conceive, might be sued for libelling his Satanic Majesty who presides over that place or state. On the whole, they represented the men of action and men without illusions although with high ideals. The Herr Director’s paper, minus its statistics, and keenly critical rather than laudatory, was received with applause, and he stepped from the platform in the best humor in which I had seen him since he reached the United States.
The real joy of the Lake Mohonk Conference, and of all conferences, is the human touch, and after the long evening session the Herr Director became the center of an interesting group of men who, while smoking their cigars, lost some of their American reserve and became sufficiently animated to hear and tell stories; so it was long past midnight when the informal session ended.
Frequently the Herr Director asked questions about things which he could not understand, and it was at such times that I sought to enlighten him, or have him enlightened by others; for he had become sceptical as to my own ability to inform him regarding anything American.
He could not understand, for instance, that all this lavish entertainment was free, and suggested that it must be a sort of gigantic American advertising scheme, carefully concealed. When he was told that to secure a room during the season one must apply long in advance, and most likely have fair credentials before being accepted as a guest, he merely shook his head and murmured something about these “inexplicable Americans.”
He also did not see how an hotel could flourish in any civilized country without permitting the accepted social diversions, such as card playing, dancing, and drinking something stronger than the mild beverages served at the soda fountain.
He wanted to know how it was that three or four hundred Americans would take three days of their time to discuss a theme which had little or nothing to do with profits. All the Americans he had known about were void of ideals, and had no time for anything but business or poker. In fact he was astonished not to see poker chips littering the sidewalks.
I told him that while it is true that the average American business man is always in a hurry, and gives little time to wholesome recreation, it is also true that in no country with which I am familiar do men of business give their time so generously to the consideration of the common welfare as here. They do this, not having the incentive constantly held out to the European business man, namely: Recognition by the state and the reward which sovereigns may bestow, in much coveted titles and decorations. The average well-inclined American business man is incredibly patient, sitting through tedious meetings, listening to reports of various philanthropies, and earns a martyr’s crown attending those interminably long banquets with their assault upon his digestion and their appeal to his sympathies.
At Lake Mohonk the Herr Director met business men employing thousands of clerks to whom they grant vacations and holidays without legal compulsion, and for whom they have inaugurated welfare plans of far-reaching importance. It was certainly a revelation to him that the number of Americans who are something more than animated money bags is growing larger every day.
The still more difficult thing to explain to him was the frank and open discussions of national policies and the evident international view-point of those who took part in them. In all the discussions the most striking note was: “The United States wants not territory, not unfair advantage over other nations nor aggrandizement at the expense of lesser peoples, nor war, certainly not for conquest.”
The Herr Director intimated that in the exalted mood induced by being members of this conference, we could afford to be generous; but that at a time of national excitement we are no better than other people, taking what we can get and asking no questions.
“Uncle Sam was not wholly disinterested in Cuba, was he? and as far as Mexico is concerned, who fermented the trouble there but this same Uncle Sam, that you might have an excuse to swallow as much of Mexico as you wanted?”
Instantly my mind travelled to the time of the Spanish-American war, when I was in Europe, and the Herr Director was editing an influential German newspaper. He wrote an editorial, accusing the United States of beginning the war with Spain for the sole purpose of annexing the “Pearl of the Antilles,” and when I disputed his theory we nearly severed our “diplomatic relations.”
I now again vigorously pressed my point, to the great amusement of my friends and the chagrin of the Herr Director, who could not easily refute my statements; for while I acknowledged being an “Unausstehlicher Americaner,” I happen to know the Old World policies as well as he does.
I mentioned Austria-Hungary, and its taking over of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without so much as “by your leave”—and Germany which, to salve its hurt, sent a fleet of warships to China and helped the German eagle bury its beak in the Yellow Dragon’s tail. I mentioned France in Algeria, and England everywhere—“and Uncle Sam in the Philippines,” he interrupted.
I took full advantage of that interruption to remind him that Uncle Sam is the only power which ever paid for anything gained by that right which in Europe seems to be the only right;—the right of might.
It was a difficult task which I had undertaken, to convince the Herr Director that the American Spirit is different from that of the Old World, and in spite of me he insisted that we are not a bit better than other people, but only so situated that we can afford to be generous. I assured him that I preferred to boast of our fair dealing with lesser peoples than of our victorious battles, and that I am never so loyally and enthusiastically American as when I think of our being just, rather than mighty.
I have since been at Lake Mohonk at a time when national passions were aroused, and when those who had prophesied the early passing of the battle fever were discredited prophets. While there, a letter reached me from the Herr Director, in which he sent greetings to his host and hostess and the members of the conference, and in which he recalled his former accusation that we are no better than other people; for “are you not pro-Ally and filling your pockets with the proceeds from the sale of war munitions? Where now is your boasted fairness?”
My reply was that I in common with many others wish we could wash our hands of this bloody business of selling ammunition, and that I still firmly believe that the American people will retain their poise during this dreadful upheaval.
Yes, even to-day I can say with no less pride than usual that I believe in the American Spirit, in its sense of fairness and its love of justice, and while I trust that this country may be kept from so great a catastrophe as war, and I be kept from so severe a trial of my loyalty as having to choose on which side to fight, I know I would freely and unhesitatingly be on the side of my country, the United States of America.
Three glorious days had passed at Lake Mohonk and when the guests left that mountain top no one went more reluctantly than the Herr Director and his wife, and all the way back to the great city they felicitated upon their delightful experiences, while I rejoiced in my country and its spirit. When the Herr Director wrote his book I found that he acknowledged having discovered four things at Lake Mohonk. First, an unparallelled hospitality. Secondly, that the leading men of America are soberly practical, unemotional, somewhat self-centered; but, at the same time, men of high ideals. Thirdly, that its military men attend conferences for international arbitration, that they do not rattle their sabers, and in appearance cannot be distinguished from mere civilians. Finally, that the American man boasts most and loudest of his sense of fairness; and while I write these lines, I am hoping and praying that this may indeed be not an empty boast, but an integral part of the American Spirit.
IF I were gastronomically inclined I would study New York’s cosmopolitan population and its progress towards Americanization from the standpoint of its restaurants; for the appetite is most loyally patriotic. A man may cease to speak his mother tongue and have forsworn allegiance to Kaiser and to King, but still cling to his ancestral bill of fare.
If I were an absolute monarch and wished my alien people quickly assimilated, I would permit them to speak their native tongue and cling to the faith of their fathers; but I would close all foreign restaurants, and as speedily as possible obliterate from their memory the taste of viands “like mother used to make.”
I fear that it is neither Goethe nor Schiller, nor Bismarck nor Kaiser Wilhelm who has kept the memory of the Fatherland alive in the minds and hearts of many German people in America. Dare I say that possibly much of their patriotism and loyalty is due to the taste of rye bread and sweet butter, Rindsbrust and Pell Cartoffel, not to mention a certain frothy amber fluid?
Be that as it may, when I discovered that the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin were homesick, I took them to a German restaurant to assuage their pangs; just as if, did I detect the same symptoms in an American whom I wished to make thoroughly at home in a foreign country, I would take him where a meal could be properly concluded with apple pie and cheese or ice-cream.
The restaurant I selected lent itself particularly well to my purpose, for everything was imported, from the Bavarian architecture to the Frankfurter sausages. The menu card was adorned by illuminated, medieval lettering, and on the smoked rafters were painted pious and impious verses, which gave the room a literary atmosphere.
It was as crowded and full of tobacco smoke and the odors of savory meats as the most loyal German could desire, and my guests were thoroughly at home. They ate their food happily, praised it discriminatingly, and studied the familiar environment carefully. As usual, certain things were lacking; for the Herr Director is a keen critic and never accepts anything as perfect.
I agreed with him that the orchestra was too noisy and on the whole superfluous, and that the native American dining there could be easily recognized by the indifference with which he ate. We heard no loud complaining, and little or no quarrelling with the waiters. The food was accepted in a humble sort of way whether it was satisfactory or not; bills were paid, tips were given in the spirit of meekness, and accepted in the opposite way, and the guests left without any ceremony except that of paying their toll to the keepers of their hats and coats, a form of extortion quite unparallelled abroad.
In striking contrast to our mere eating was my guests’ enjoyment of every morsel of the food which they had selected, not simply because it was food, but because it was a note fitting into the gastronomic harmony. The head waiter and all his minions hovered about them with due reverence, and woe to him who by pose or gesture disturbed the perfect accord.
A friend from Nebraska who was staying at our hotel had joined us at dinner. When the waiter handed him the bewildering bill of fare, he waved it aside saying: “Just bring me a big lobster stewed in milk, with a dish of pickles and a mince pie.”
The waiter turned pale, the Herr Director gasped, almost strangling on the salad he was eating, and the Frau Directorin looked at me despairingly. The waiter was the first to recover his composure, and cautiously suggested that the gentleman might like some Lobster à la Newburgh.
“Nix,” said the Nebraskan, “I want lobster à la Milkburgh, and don’t forget the pickles.”
The waiter retreated and after a long conference with his superior, informed the gentleman that he could have his lobster stewed in milk, but that it would cost him one dollar and fifty cents.
“Hustle it along,” was the curt reply, and in about fifteen minutes he was deep in his bowl of lobster stew, flanked on either side by pickles and mince pie, while the rest of us were eating our way leisurely and artistically through a menu which began with caviar and ended with Camambert and demitasse.
After dinner, American men, manners and ideals became the subject of a discussion into which my Western friend good-naturedly entered, although he was made a horrible example of the fact that we are ill-mannered. The Herr Director insisted that our nation is too young to have any except bad manners, and while no doubt we had improved in the years since he first made our acquaintance, the improvement had not yet permeated the masses.
That which I called the American Spirit was the spirit of the few cultured, academic persons I knew, but the majority of the people was as alien to it as was our Nebraska friend’s lobster and mince pie to our delicious and dietetically correct dinner.
“I don’t give a hang for your ‘dietetically correct dinner.’ I want what I want, when I want it!” the Nebraskan said, smiting the table with his fist, and evidently suppressing stronger language with an apologetic glance at the ladies of our party.
“That is exactly it; you want what you want, when you want it,” the Herr Director repeated, “whether or not it is on the bill of fare, or in the statute book, or among the laws of the Universe. In that I suppose you Americans all agree; that is your American Spirit.” He uttered the last phrase with special emphasis, and with no attempt to hide the sneer.
I admitted that my friend’s demand for the thing he wanted, regardless of the bill of fare and in defiance of a dietary law (of which he was not as yet conscious), was a manifestation of our individualism, a rather wide-spread characteristic. I was fain also to admit that our individualism is not always as harmless to others as in the case under discussion. It is an attitude of mind which has developed into a system to which we are committed for better or worse, and is in striking contrast to the German ideal of submission to an accepted order.
“Yes,” from the Herr Director with evident pride. “That which makes Germany great and strong is our willing submission to authority; but remember it must be intelligent authority, and at the same time it must be efficient. To be sure,” he acknowledged, “we are often chagrined by the ‘Streng Verboten’ to the right of us and the ‘Nicht Erlaubt’ to the left of us. We are much governed but we are well governed, and you, too, will some day discover that the common weal has to be above the individual’s caprice. Your evident disrespect of laws and conventions results from the lack of intelligence back of them, and you have no respect for your lawmakers because they do not deserve it.”
At this point the Nebraskan astonished us by saying that he had recently been in Europe on business, selling grindstones, that he knew something about Germany, and he never was gladder to get back to God’s country than when he finally set foot upon his native soil. He had many adventures, and as an example of what he had to suffer from one of Germany’s well enforced laws, he told a story which proved his sense of humor, though the “laugh was on him.”
“When I was in Berlin I made out a small bill for some goods I had sold, and the man told me that I must affix to it some revenue stamps. I didn’t want to bother with it, and told him so. The thing was too trifling anyway.
“I never thought of that bill again till I was forcibly reminded of it in Hamburg as I was about to sail for home. I was haled before the court, and the judge fined me fifty marks. Of course I knew I had to pay it, so I handed him the money and told him in good English to take it and go to the hot place with it. I didn’t dream that he understood, but he replied in as good English as I gave him: ‘Officials of my rank travel first-class. I must therefore have fifty marks more.’ That little joke cost me a lot of money. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where I couldn’t tell anybody I pleased what I felt like telling him.”
The Herr Director doubted the accuracy of the story because “no German official would show so little dignity.” I, too, doubted it; but on the ground that no German official would have so keen a sense of humor.
There followed an animated argument between the Nebraskan and the Herr Director as to which is of more importance, the individual or the state. The Nebraskan insisted that the state being the creation of individuals, they are of supreme importance, while the Herr Director persisted in his theory that the state is supreme and that it is the business of the individual to make it dominant and powerful, to which end the state must make him effective.
“An ineffective individual is a menace to the state, and a state which cannot impress its will upon the individual and make him submissive and effective will be vanquished in the great competitive struggle constantly going on.”
“I suppose you’re effective enough, but you’re as slow as molasses in January.”
“Oh, yes, we are slow, but we are thorough; we take our time to do a thing well, while your hurry is as wearing as it is useless. When we came down here this evening we were in a hurry. We were rushed to your crowded subway to take a certain train, although the next one would have done as well. In about three minutes we were pushed out of that train into another, because it went faster, and we reached here breathless. We saved time, but for what purpose? To see you eat your lobster and mince pie?” And he looked contemptuously at the Nebraskan.
“What are we going to do now with the two or three minutes we saved?”
This was a question I could not answer, for I did not know why I had hurried. Perhaps because of the excess of ozone in the air, or possibly because every one else was hurrying.
“You see,” he continued, “we Germans never make the mistake of confounding hurry with efficiency. We hurry, too, when we must, or when we have a rational purpose. We know that great things cannot be accomplished in a hurry. We lay our foundations not only patiently, but thoroughly and cheerfully.
“You work like slaves who are eager to finish the job, as you call it. We cherish towards our job a sentiment of love and loyalty which we call ‘Pflichttreue,’ a word for which you have no equivalent, proving of course that you have not the thing itself.”
I translated the word as loyalty to duty.
“Yes, that may be correct, but it does not ring true. Pflichttreue has an ethical significance which your translation does not convey.
“I have noticed that your conductors shed their uniforms the instant they leave their trains, as if they were ashamed of their job. With us, any uniform, whether a railroad conductor’s or a general’s, is gloried in, and honored because of the work it represents.”
The Nebraskan thought us too democratic for uniforms, which is the reason we do not value them more than we do.
“It is not the uniform, it is our work in which we glory. A shoemaker with us is as proud of his job as the Emperor is of his. He is Emperor by the grace of God, because he believes it is a God-given task to which he must be faithful, and we once had a shoemaker who called himself with equal pride, ‘Shoemaker by the grace of God.’
“This pride spiritualizes the simplest and commonest work by making every man a conscious part of the state, and he works for its glory and power. It is a glory shared by his wife and family,” and the Herr Director pulled from his pocket a German newspaper. “Look at this funeral notice. The widow signs herself not only as the widow of a particular man, but as the widow of a man who did something of which she is still proud. While she remains a widow she will sign herself Amalia Henrietta Schmidt Koenigliche Hof Opern Obo Spieler’s Wittwe.”
“How can we be proud of our jobs,” queried the Nebraskan, after his hearty laugh at Amalia Henrietta Schmidt, “when we never have a job which we expect to hold permanently? I started out with school teaching, then I got hold of a good thing in the way of Carborundum and made grindstones. That’s what took me to Europe. When that business went bad, I bought out the livery stable in my town, and now I am in the moving picture business. If I could sell out at a good price I’d do it and take up any old thing as long as there is money in it.”
He was right. Our work is not sacred to us, for too often it is only the means to an end, and frequently a very selfish end. Because Germany has had centuries of carpenters and tinkers and shoemakers who planed boards and mended pots and shoes “by the grace of God,” and swung the hammer as if it were a sword, they are now wielding the sword as if it were a hammer.
In some way we must get this spiritual appeal of the job, which means not only that we shall have to dedicate ourselves to our task in a manner worthy of its significance, but that the state must have this spiritual attitude towards the worker, and treat him as though worthy of his place in the economy of the nation. It is this wise provision for the workers’ efficient education, the state’s recognition that the well-being of the individual is its concern, which has given to Germany the unfailing devotion of all her people.
I was roused from these meditations by hearing the Nebraskan’s voice.
“You see I never had a chance to learn just one thing. I can do many things tolerably well, for I had to do them. I can splice a rope, repair a machine, shingle a house and if necessary build a barn. I can play ragtime on the piano, throw a steer or ride a bucking broncho. I can even make soda biscuits. I am the child of the pioneers, and in order to survive, they had to be jacks of all trades.
“I bought a tool in a department store the other day,” and he drew it from his pocket. “It can do sixteen things tolerably well, but it isn’t worth shucks for any one job, if you want to do it right. That’s me.”
The Herr Director wanted to know what “shucks” meant, and after I laboriously explained it to him and he had handled the patent tool he said:
“Your travelling men have come over to Germany and tried to sell us this kind of thing, but they found no market. When we want a gimlet, or a saw, or a coat-hanger we want that one thing and want it as good as it can be made. We marvel at your adaptability, but we are too thorough to be adaptable, and we do not need to be. You Americans will never be able to compete with us until you learn to specialize and do one thing well.”
We sat long into the night comparing the German and the American Spirit, but there was one phase of the former which the Herr Director clearly demonstrated. There was a religious fervor in his patriotism which the average American lacks. To him his country was not only above himself but beyond everything else on Earth or in Heaven. There often seems something sordid about our patriotism, something connected solely with the individual’s well-being. I glory in our sense of liberty, in the opportunity to live unmolested, and in every man’s chance to be himself; but I fear we have as yet not learned to value our duty to this country as much as we do our privilege.
I am sure there will be no lack of fighters if the country is in danger; but shall we be able to fight the long, exhausting battle which presupposes discipline and subordination?
The United States gives much to the individual, more, I think, than any other country; but she has not given intelligently, she has nearly pauperized us all by her beneficence, and has demanded nothing in return, nor even taught us common gratitude.
Our children are told that they must love their country, but what that means beyond fighting when it is in danger they know not. That it means to do their work thoroughly, that they must learn to do things well, and exalt the nation by becoming efficient workmen that they may help win their country’s battles in the factory, or behind the counter, they do not yet know; and what we have not learned, we cannot teach.
This questioning mood of mine is never gendered as I contemplate the mob, the many who are driven to revolt either by their unbridled passions or by the unbearable conditions under which they have to labor; my fear is strongest when I look into the schools and when I face our youth which comes out of them, inefficient, but above all, undisciplined. They do not lack physical courage, nor yet devotion to the country, in a sort of abstract way; they do lack the submission to intelligent authority.
In this latter-day test of different ideals of the state, through the cruel, undecisive test of war, we may learn from Germany to instill this “Pflichttreue,” this loyalty to the job. We may also learn the more difficult lesson for us individualists—submission to authority which we must make intelligent, as well as conscientious.
Necessity will soon teach us to be thorough, and thoroughness presupposes patience. Add these qualities and this discipline to the enterprise, the love of fair play, the courage, the faith in God and man, which we possess, and we too may ultimately develop a patriotism which will stand the test of adversity, and emerge from it purified and strengthened.
When we stepped out of the restaurant and its German atmosphere into the unmistakably American Broadway, my German guests felt that my rampant Americanism had been thoroughly subdued. However they had literally “reckoned without their host.” My protracted silence had misled them, but I could contain myself no longer.
“We are now walking in the streets of the second largest city in the world, its population thrown together and blown together from every quarter of the globe, and the most of these people, if not the worst of them, have come here in the last thirty-five years. They brought neither love of their new country nor knowledge of its language and institutions; they all came to make money, and to-morrow morning four millions of people will begin again the competitive battle from which they are resting to-night.
“The laws which govern them are illy made, but they have made them, or at least had a chance to select those who did make them. They have not always chosen well; the officers who govern them are often not good men; frequently they are only the most cunning politicians and one has but scant respect for them. Yet in spite of it all, this is a fairly well governed city and it is quite remarkable that these four million people live together in comparative peace and order. Neither is there any ill from which this great city or any group of its individuals suffers for which there is not some help or healing or some attempt to heal.
“If I were an absolute stranger without money, knowing neither the language of the people nor their ways, I would rather be on the streets of the city of New York than anywhere else.”
“How do you account for it?” the Frau Directorin ventured to ask, although the Herr Director had been violently expressing his dissent.
“We have several things to count on here, even when conditions seem intolerable. Let me name them.
“We are all human beings; some of us have inherited the Old Testament righteousness and the passion for justice, and many of us have the New Testament desire for service. These together make a very effective combination, and go a great way towards the glorious results we shall ultimately achieve.”
For once the Herr Director was silent, and as we had reached our hotel, I think I might have slept peacefully that night had not the Nebraskan triumphantly remarked as we were being shot up to the topmost floor: “Say, I did get that lobster à la Milkburgh with pickles and mince pie, didn’t I? I always get what I want when I want it.”
THE anteroom of the editor’s office was crowded when the Herr Director and I arrived to meet the men of the staff at luncheon.
The Herr Director is a publicist himself, and has edited one of the best known German newspapers. Having called on him when he was trying to mould an already moulded public opinion I made some interesting comparisons which he did not approve. I could not forbear reminding him how, when I once called on him in his office, I had to wait in a similar anteroom over an hour, that I had to pass through a number of other rooms with a longer or shorter period of waiting in each, and was finally admitted to his august presence as if he were a king on his throne.
As editor in chief, he was a more or less cloistered mystery, and not the man of affairs one is likely to be over here. Whatever comparisons I made in spite of the Herr Director’s protest, were not entirely fair; for editors are scarcely a species anywhere, and the particular one upon whom we were calling was an uncommon editor of an uncommon journal. Neither he nor it has a counterpart in Germany if anywhere in the world; they are both products of our Spirit and have had no small share in shaping it and giving it expression.
While I was explaining to the Herr Director the functions of this journal and how intelligently it interprets current events, and was extolling the virtues of its editors who, in spite of being persons of national reputation and great importance, have retained their simple, democratic ways, they emerged from the inner sanctum.
After a vigorous hand-shake all around to which the Herr Director visibly braced himself, the first contact was made, and we were taken to a handsomely appointed dining-room in the same building, where luncheon was served.
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.