January, 1923
any year; and the bars should not be
Bet down until we are reasonably caught
up with the assimilation of the foreign
born already here. But the most vital
part of the process of assimilation is the
cultivation of friendly unity between the
Hountry and the newcomers. Those to
whom we open our doors are entitled to
our welcome and the welfare of the
Republic demands that We bind them to
His by the ties of common aims and
sentiments.
I An American citizen, of all the in­
Habitants of the world, must recognize
the value of mankind as such, and elimi­
nate racial prejudices from his mind
and heart. The most impressive of war
Kosters contained a long list of foreign
and outlandish names—but the list was
Headed “Americans All” and was taken
from the rolls of the United States
army. Frederick Douglass and Booker
T. Washington, born of negro mothers,
were two of the finest Americans in his­
tory. Michael Pupin, world famous
scientist, was born in Slavic Europe, but
we are proud of his genius and of his
loyalty to his adopted land.
■ Let us refuse to join in the shallow
sneers and destructive scorn toward our
new neighbors and citizens-to-be; on
.the contrary, let us remember that the
|Hchness of our national stock and the
abundance of our human resources owe
much to immigrants, mostly poor and
pften unlearned, who came from far-off
Hands.
■ Hold fast your faith in democracy;
that means faith in people, in men and
women. There are too frequent- whis-
pers that all the intelligence is concen­
trated in two per cent or ten per cent
i or thirty per cent of the population.
That has been the traditional theory of
I Autocracy and oligarchy; it is the same
i as the divine right of kings, for certainly
| God would appoint only the wisest to
rule! But alas for the system, for
sometimes the king turned out to be a
fool after all, or advised by fools; and
■ even when he was keen and shrewd his
subjects sometimes suffered the more by
reason of his ambition and unscrupulous-
I Jess. Napoleon was certainly not feeble­
minded, yet France bled at every vein
and agonized in every nerve in penalty
for his measureless greed of conquest.
L No one is so stupid as to deny the im­
mense range of human brain-power; but
if it were ten times as great, it would
not affect the truth expressed so aptly
by Lincoln when he said “No man is
i good enough to govern another man
without that other’s consent.”
I Don’t forget the Declaration of Inde-
. lendence; the constitution can be amend­
ed; not so the Declaration; it is for all
tinm. It contains the basic principle of
i all modern democracy; honestly and
I resolutely applied it will save the Re­
public from both tyranny and anarchy;
it has destroyed the oppression of kings
and alien parliaments; it will avert the
i domination of a class, such as now
seems to prevail in unhappy Russia.
■ But the principles of the Declaration
I ®t deep into the every-day life of peo-
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
IT
ple; we have a nation of over a hun­
dred million human beings, and the Dec­
laration embraces them all; the stupend­
ous task of American politics and eco­
nomics is to make good what the Decla­
ration promises, life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness for the whole hun­
dred millions. The best conditions of the
past show a mere handful of free men,
riding upon the backs of great masses of
slaves, of serfs, of poor and ignorant
laborers, who were the hewers of wood
and drawers of water for the more for-
tnate. Your country is absolutely the
pioneers in even proposing to extend
freedom to all; and therein lies all her
greatness, both now' and forever. Alas
that so many of her people are blind to
this truth, even among the most favored
and cultured classes; so many seem to
see the greatness of America in her in­
dustries, her trade, her wealth of ma­
terial resources, her dominance in the
finances of the world; all these have
been held at other times by other na­
tions, which did not even pretend to be
champions of liberty.
If you are like other educated Ameri­
cans you know little of the true history
of your own country; set to work now and
correct this great fault. First let me
beg you to familarize yourself with the
lives of the greatest of your fellow citi­
zens; read the lives of Washington and
Lincoln, and study their characters, the
details of their political action, the deep
convictions that governed their conduct
and held it true to righteousness even
when they had to sacrifice personal de­
sire and private advantage. Dig out of
its obscurity that personal letter which
the Father of His Country wrote to his
people, and read it as a message to you,
which bears still upon the welfare of the
Republic; note how he then warned his
people against the curse of party spirit,
and look out on America today bound
hand and foot by party spirit, and deliv­
ered over to inefficiency, fraud and the
ravages of fraternal strife.
Above all set up in your hearts a liv­
ing image of the Messiah of American
democracy, Abraham Lincoln, who was
kind to everybody and every living
creature; who hated' oppression and
loved freedom; who was yet keen as a
sword in logic and hard as steel in reso­
lution. Learn thé meaning of those
words of his .biographers, the two men
who lived in his presence throughout his
official career,
“This fastidious, inflexible, and in­
convenient morality was to be of vast
service hereafter to his country and to
the world.”
If any man in history may be -trusted
to define democracy that man is this
same Lincoln; I give you his definition
in. his- own words, and commend it to
your study; take it with you and; reflect
upon it; it will serve as well as any­
thing you can find as'a measuring rod
for Americanism, especially to detect
the existence, if such there be, of the
wonderful essence of 100 per cent Amer­
icanism. Here it is, in Lincoln’s habitual
simple style:
“As I would not be a slave, so I
would not be a master. That is my
idea of democracy. What differs from
this, by the extent of that difference;
is not democracy.”
But let me warn you that if you should
take this seriously, its consequences
might be almost as serious as taking
the. Sermon on the Mount seriously.- It
might turn out to be part of that “fas­
tidious, inflexible, and inconvenient mo­
rality” described toy Nicolay and Hay.
But the man who has never denied his
own desire or ambition, to the end that
some other man might be more free,
does not even know whether he has any
democracy or not. He may merely be a
parasite upon freedom, drawing from its
life-giving currents to feed his own sel­
fish comfort and satisfaction. Beware
of such false citizenship, for it is all
about you and wears fair garments.
Carry with you the spirit of Lin­
coln’s most prophetic words, uttered for
the perilous times over which he ruled
so nobly, but even more fit for our own
momentous -days:
“The. dogmas of a quiet past are in­
adequate to the stormy present. The
occasion is piled high -with difficulty
and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think
anew and act anew. First we must
disenthrall ourselves, and then we
shall save the Republic.”
African natives work in pairs pulling
passenger carts, while a single man pulls
a Japanese jinrikisha
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