6
MAY, 1923
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
alone read an item or two, but they should scan every
news story and every editorial, with a critical eye,
divest themselves of all prejudices, read and weigh
the matter presented as news and opinion from the
standpoint of a fair American, having in mind the
best interest of his adopted country and all its people.
At the same time they should keep in mind that
longed for goal of American national unity— an
America where strife, intolerance, hatred; nationality
pitted against nationality, race against race, creed
against creed and native against foreign born,- IS
NO MORE.
We guarantee that any one giving the foreign lan
guage press a fair test today will have his “implicit
faith” somewhat shaken and will be forced to revise
his opinion as to its assimilative qualities. The un-
American and objectionable expressions that have
caused many foreign born in America a lot of grief,
may be traced to that fountain of unfair interpreta
tion; the foreign language press.
Throughout the entire country, in almost every
state of the Union, legislation of some sort, direct and
through the legislature, aimed at the foreign language
press, has lately been introduced and seriously dealt
with. These legislative efforts, some successful oth
ers unsuccessful, some constitutional others uncon
stitutional, have all been designed to curb the free
dom of the foreign language newspaper expression.
The reason for this too, may be traced to the same
source—the result of the unAmerican actions and
attitude of a large number of foreign language editors.
That the irritating and aggravating expressions,
foreign in thought and substance, permeating the
foreign language press, is largely responsible for the
unwholesome “uprising” among certain native born,
whose organized strength is bidding fair to overcome
the foreign language newspaper influence in politics
and legislation, of that there is no doubt.
All this is proving very forcefully, that in spite of
our philosophizing and contending for free press
rights in America, the people are seemingly deter
mined that that prerogative has no meaning beyond
the press in the language of the land.
On the other hand, the stark hopelessness and ob
vious futility of the efforts put forth by several million
people, sectionalized and divided into more than forty
language groups, trying in so many tongues to voice
their sentiments as citizens of America, ought to be
sufficiently clear to the thinking citizens of foreign
birth to make them inclined strongly to discourage
the practice and urge a gradual but far more rapid
progress in the direction of the American one-lan
guage standard. Hasten the day when these millions
of citizens shall be able to transmit their thoughts
and communicate with one another, and with fellow
Americans of native origin, in the one common lan
guage of America, and there shall be less cause for
irritation, misunderstanding, suspicion and hatred
among the people of this land. In no wise does this
course suggest to the foreign born that he must for
get the land of his birth, its language and many fine
attributes of culture and character.
This has largely been the construction placed by
the foreign language press upon the Americanization
movement, the call for American unity and the one
language standard. The latter has particularly been
branded a new edition of American ‘knownothingism.’
The argument that the call for a one-language
standard among the people of America is a call to
the foreign born to throw overboard the knowledge of
the language in which his mother sang her lullabies,
the language through which was nurtured that first
great love of the human heart, is as preposterous,
sinister and designing an argument as this foreign
host, living largely by their wits in America, can pos
sibly advance.
There are two elements of people in America that
have very much in common from a standpoint of lim
ited or mediocre intellectuality. The one is the na
tive born who is “chesty” because of his native Amer
ican birth, who claims himself a 100 per center be
cause of that fact and who publicly proclaims that he
thanks God that he speaks but one language, the
American language. The other is the foreign born
who is so “proud” of being of one or another nation
ality that he takes any amount of pain in being noisy
about his nationality preference, speaking loudly
his foreign tongue, in public places, on public con
veyances and on public streets and considers his for
eign language so superior to the language of America
that he frankly confesses that he would lose his in
tellectual cultural and religious bearings if he should
have to resort to speak the American language which
he can only regard in the light of a “necessary evil”
of which one has abundantly enough when able to
“get along” on the job or when out shopping.
Those of the foreign born in America who have suf
fered the most, due to the viciousness of a goodly part
of the press which claims to speak for that national
ity in America, are the Germans. No fairminded citi
zen will minimize the trying position of that national
ity in America during the war. Yet, the great mass of
the Germans were staunch in their loyalty to the new
homeland, contributing a large contingent of Amer
ica’s man power and aided with millions in substance. I
Had the foreignminded German language editors seen
the thing in the right light and applied less of the
inflammatory type of speech, few Germans who gave
their all to the land of adoption should have had cause
to feel the pang of the injustice manifest in public
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