16 THE WESTERN AMERICAN name; few people even know that this stalwart patriot denounced “malefactors of great wealth” and put some of them into the penitentiary; that he declared war upon what he called “the gross wrong and injustices of our economic system;” and that he described the chief aim of his presidency as a fight “for the abolition of privilege and for the rights of the workingman.” Even the most ex­ treme of “One hundred per cent Ameri­ cans” can not discredit Roosevelt; but they do not always realize that Roose­ velt’s willingness to admit the evils in our national life and fight them is a necessary element in every true Ameri­ canism. At the other extreme are those who can see no good in the America of today. Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbit” is the might­ iest of modern satires, and should be read by everyone who desires to get a full and true vision of our national weakness and distempers; we owe the author the deepest gratitude for his powerful and incisive portrayal of these evils. But no such gratitude is due to those who picture every phase of our national character in the terms of Bab­ bitt, not as satire but as description. I have just read three essays in a book entitled “Civilization in the United States,” subtitled as “An Inquiry by thirty Americans; these essays really make up a book of sneers at American education and intellectual life, with hardly a suggestion of redeeming vir­ tues, and without a single constructive proposal. As educated men and women you must think about your country; you must widen your vision; you must keep your minds open; you must see all nor be afraid; yo must rejoice. in all the free­ dom and nobility in your country today and in every honorable deed in her his­ tory; no less must you be awake and keenly sensitive to the evils and weak- nesses, great and small, that threaten her future; you must not shut your eyes to the poverty of millions, the ceaseless curse of unemployment, the waste of na­ tural resources, the frequent failure to make abundant crops of food and ample supplies of fuel bring health and com­ fort to the starving and the miserable. You must be neither “calamity howlers” nor “prosperity howlers,” but honest, clear-eyed, loyal to truth as well as to your patriotic duty; and you must put your shoulders to the heavy tasks of the genuine patriot, who puts the com­ mon good above every consideration of private and personal advantage. Above all, remember that only he who has sacrificed for his country’s good may boast of his loyalty; unless you have denied yourself gain, or comfort, or sel­ fish indulgence to serve the Republic you do not even know whether or not you have any patriotism. The greatest enemy of Americanism is selfish individual ambition; the com­ monest form of this is greed for money and the power and prestige that money brings. No man whose chief ambition- is to be wealthy can claim for one mo- ment to be a patriot; sooner or later he will have to choose between the com­ mon good and his own profit. Think of that great corporation which robbed the United States systematically of tariff dues on its imports, by corrupting cus­ toms officials and installing secret springs in the government scales; strange as it seems it is certain that most of the very men who planned and executed this fraud upon their country would have resented the name of traitors and perhaps even, asserted that they really loved the flag and the Republic; so terribly does personal interest blind the eyes to plain truth. The saddest fact in the miserable story is that the men who conceived the scheme and were reaping the main profits already had wealth far beyond the great multi­ tude of their fellow citizens; and yet it was perfectly plain that these poorer fellow citizens would have to pay every cent of the ill-gotten gains. I have stressed this particular case because it is recorded in detail in the proceedings of the federal courts and recited in the memoirs of the man who was then president of the United States, and whose relentless vigor backed up the Department of Justice in prosecuting the case and securing at least "partial resti­ tution and punishment. But it is prac­ tically certain that the four million dol­ lars stolen and returned in this historic case is a mere trifle compared with the immense sums lost to our government during the late war through means sometimes legal in form, but morally crooked, and unspeakably unpatriotic. Another deadly enemy of true Amer­ ican loyalty is the reckless and impudent lawlessness which constitutes so shame­ ful a blot on our national honor. One of the strangest sights imaginable is that of men or groups of men who actually scout and break the laws of the land in the name of patriotism and American­ ism. This has long been a flagrant de­ fect of our country, and the fever and hysteria of the war period intensified it beyond all bounds. Even courts officers sworn to execute law and tice did not escape the infection, have not yet recovered from it. War is the inveterate foe of freedom; the moment an army is mobilized the individual of necessity becomes a pawn in the game. One of the most prenicious aftermaths of the reign of terror in the whole world is the tremendous infringe­ ment upon all sorts of personal rights, and especially in freedom of speech, of assembly and the press. It is not neces­ sary to pass judgment upon the wisdom of necessity of the war measures them­ selves; it is most necessary to set our minds and wills to the task of rebuilding the liberties for which our fathers fought, and to perpetuate which they wrote the bills of rights in our federal and state constitutions. The enthusiasm and devotion of the American people in the Great War were due in no small measure to the confident belief that it was truly a war to end war, a belief which was fostered assidu- January, 1923 ously by the organized propaganda which is so necessary a part of modem war. As we look with horror on the present state of Europe, indeed of the world, we know that it has turned out to have been a war to foster more wars. Would to God that we might also awake to the truth that peace and order may triumph, if only the nations of the world will organize peace and order with half the zeal they have devoted to organizing war. Is it not time even today for the most fortunate nation in the world again to invite the rest of the nations to join in counsels of peace and agreement ? The United States called the Washingtoi Conference on Limitation or Armament, the most momentous peace gathering ii history thus far; was not the success it that conference such as to justify Amer, ica in resuming her leadership in this far more critical and menacing time? The United States has been called the Melting Pot of the races; there is con-j stant danger of its becoming a mixing bowl instead. The poorest remedy fori this evil is for some one strain or group _ to set itself up as the only or true I Americans. Congress has wisely restricted the I number of immigrants who may enter ii I iiiiliiiiliillllliillllllliiillilllllllllliiiiiliiiilliiilliiiiiiiilillliilllliiiiiliDHlliiiiiiiiiiiiiia! H Oregon Marine & Fisheries Supply Co. 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