12
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
tion in plant and animal life takes place. It should be very
easy to compromise on a fixed date so that all humanity could
participate, the world over, in celebrating Pascha, Pesachh or
the Anglo-Saxon Easter, on the same day, each one putting
into the festival the religious concept of his own particular
choice and preference. A common Easter day for all should
prove a valuable contribution to the world creed of tolerance,
which is in the making, as a means by which the human family
might be extricated from the mire of illusion, superstition,
animosity and hate.
The numerous district associations that have been
promoted among the foreign born within their nationality
groups, where they represent distinct and separate organiza
tions, are rendering very valuable service to the group cause,
because they have a special appeal, which in many instances is
more effective than the general nationality group appeal. Those
from your home district will generally get your attention
where others fail and having joined the district association the
nationality group has been enriched by one more member. If
you haven’t had any interest in foreign language papers before
you will of course subscribe to the papers espousing the cause
of the district association of which you are a member. Inci
dentally these editors and group leaders have paved the road
of contact, the rest they figure is easy unless you have suc
cumbed to the American patriotism malady of being interested
in your adopted country to the exclusion of any working in
terest in foreign countries, foreign languages and foreign
people. There may not be any harm in some of these group
divisions, but those who are taking active interest in these
associations, somehow seem to find very little time to develop
their minds along the lines of citizenship. Instead of center
ing their intellectual forces behind the common cause and help
first to make America a better place to live in, they are in
variably too busy with their associations’ social and business
affairs to give even a part of their time for intelligent work
in the interest of their adopted country. It is not necessary
to forget one’s birthplace, the language there spoken or the
better things that grew in the soil of native origin, in order to
be a good American. But, on the other hand, the good Ameri
can will not permit these treasures of childhood and youth to
interfere in any way with his obligations to his adopted coun
try or allow them to hinder his progress toward intelligent
citizenship.
Some of the “sins” of the planters’ plantations of
early America are taking many novel forms of-reactions here
and there in our country, among the rankling forces we have
with us today, particularly noticable among those who are
singling themselves out as the only bona fide tribe of “white
folk,” and who are busily engaged in setting up new and novel
claims of ownership of all America, vehemently repudiating the
validity of all other kinds of right and title. They claim the
“marsa’s” right to deal out to all others such doles or punish
ments as they deem expedient to satisfy their animal passions.
The question is not an idle one when thoughtful citizens are
making the query whether some of the rapacious and violent
acts that have been committed, the outrageous forms of speech
and vituperative writings, now commonly welling forth from
these chaotic brain centers, are not as a whole or in part the
reactions of foreign racial blood substances, with a chocolate
tint, running riot in the veins of some of these blatant “white
folks?” There is one thing sure, they are minus the true
characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon or Nordic white folks,
whose achievements in their early stages in America form the
nucleus to our nobler American heritage.
The Balkan states may be properly designated the
troublesome corner of Europe. These dark complexioned
neighbors are apparently in no mood to cease warring on one
another with an intensity of purpose that leaves little room
for doubt that they have come to regard warfare in much the
same light as their ancient forbears did who made warfare
their business and the confiscation of land and property their
only visiblè means of support, taking especial delight in dis
patching the rightful owners into another world or making
JUNE, 1923
slaves of them. The Turks and the Greeks have many old
scores as well as new ones that remain unsettled and it seems
as no amount of rational world opinion will ever be able to
prevail as a staying force in the Balkans. Revolution is threat
ening in Rumania where the autocratic power of government
is finding it necessary to keep an immense military army busy
to preserve outwardly peace and tranquility in its domestic
household. Upheavals in Bulgaria this month have resulted
in the overthrow of the peasant power in government under
Stambouliski, who was incidentally killed. The newly formed
government represent the old regime and autocracy will
again hold the reins in that troubled and impoverished country.
Russia is making the most of the situation in the Balkans
converting the people to bolshevism while they are ripe for
some sort of independence. Meanwhile the question is to
what extent an international world court could remedy the
situation unless the people themselves should be willing to let
the high court of the nations settle their disputes for them.
To all appearances the complications that arose out of the
world war have not been lessened but have rather increased.
Ford’s activities in dispensing Jew hatred are now
being enlarged upon. America has been in no frame of mind to
accept Ford’s doctrines of racial hatred to any great extent,
in spite of his anti-Semitic work “The International Jew,”
which has been distributed by the hundreds of thousands of
copies throughout the entire country. This book, from Ford’s
literary laboratory, from which also issues the Dearborn Inde
pendent, has now been translated into foreign languages and
introduced in some foreign countries where anti-Semitic propa
ganda is a welcome morsel, always the instigating source to
violence against innocent people, the cause of diabolical deeds
and eventual pogroms. Ford is neither an author nor an editor,
by his own admission. His wealth brings to his aid men of
these qualifications. He pays them generously for the produc
tions he wants. He may not anticipate any pogroms as a result
of marketing his Jew hatred in Europe, but he stands a good
chance of promoting further racial eruptions, crowned by po
groms, in the European craters of hate.
America’s real “treasure” spots of our very own
making may not be of as ancient a vintage as the Egyptian
treasure spots in the famous Valley of the Kings, where mod
ern civilization has been busily engaged prying into the
secrets tucked away with King Pharaoh Tutenkhamen in his
burial chambers, sealed and forgotten for over three thousand
years, but patriotic Americans are going to find as much of
interest, and possibly some historical treasures of which we
know little or nothing, in the ruins of the Revolutionary
camps near West Point, that are now being excavated by a
commission of the New York Historical Society. Some inter
esting historical information has been promised shortly by the
society and there are neither ill omens nor ancient poison to
fear for those who are engaged in excavating on historically
hallowed ground in America in an effort to inrich the present
generation of Americans with some more minute details of the
struggles of our revolutionary forefathers.
Among the fourteen candidates in the senatorial
nomination election, recently held in the State of Minnesota
to select a successor to the late Knute Nelson, all but one
were citizens of foreign birth or descent. Governor J. A. 0.
Preus and Halvor Stenerson are of Norwegian origin, Magnus
Johnson, Lindberg and Lundeen of Swedish, Sydney Anderson of
Norwegian-Swedish, Schall and Fritche of German and Power,
Martin, Carley and Cary of Irish origin. Oscar Hallam is
said to be on one side of English and on the other of old Amer
ican stock. Governor Preus received the nomination and it is
to be hoped that he will be a worthy successor to the venerable
statesman whose long career of commendable public service is
in itself a vindication of the standard of quality in citizenship
that has come to America through her adopted citizens.
There are iby far many more parochial minds in
America than there are parochial schools and they have not
originated from the latter either.