The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., June 01, 1925, Image 5

THE
UNITED
rican
A MAGAZINE OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP
Devoted to the Cause of
Americanization, Assimilation and Group Elimination; Pointing the way to a Constitutional
Americanism, to Equality in Citizenship, and a better understanding
between Native bom and Foreign bom.
Vol. 3 Sgi1™'"" 21
June, 1925
Number 9
THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY
R ests O n T he E ducation O f T he U ntrained A dult
“There is the moral of all human tales;
’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last;
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page.”
T F WE believe that Lord Byron’s poetic recital of the
1 past contains a philosophical gist of an unavoidable
recurrence, then we have incidentally admitted that fate
and predestination are forces over which we have no
control and that we too, as a nation, are going through
the inevitable stages of a glorious creation, a period of
struggling adolescence, a season of material accomplish­
ments to be followed by another of vice and corruption,
and at last a recrudescence of barbarism, synonymous
to the closing of the cycle.
The satire of Britain’s madcap poet is in part appli­
cable, but we repudiate the application of his philosophy
of the inevitable. Only the nation that sacrifices its soul
can go down to ultimate destruction. The magic wand
of material well-being in America may for a time have
had a stifling effect upon the spiritual life of the indi­
vidual, resulting in much disintegration. But through­
out this land today there is a widespread manifestation
of a spiritual awakening, as men and women are going
out to heal the wounds of strife and interpret anew the
principles of human brotherhood, of equality and toler­
ance—cardinal virtues in the national creed of America
since the God that led the oppressed of the old world
into this new Cannan gave it the power to defend these
principles and caused its gates to swing open for the
oppressed of the world.
’Tis the soul of America that is speaking today.
From far and near they have come, from every
land across the sea. Here they have found a snug har­
bor of liberty, freedom and opportunity. Here they
have won material independence and helped to build
the monumental material structure which has lent so
much greatness and glory to America—the world
power.
But the spiritual America, that has made the
material America possible, has meanwhile been cheated
out of its share of the spiritual values brought by all
those who have come. The result is that our America
of today is materially very closely knit, but spiritually
a conglomerate of many nations, camping together
under one flag, sharing little or nothing in common of
the spiritual concepts that are written into the charter
by virtue of which America came into being.
America, the nation, has been less in the making
than America, the world power. Fear from without
and within may sustain the sceptre of the material
power, but it nurses such potential enemies as jealousy
and envy—and these are not conducive to respect
and love.
'Hie making of AMERICA, THE NATION, the
spiritual entity to which the forefathers laid the foun­
dation, is the business of greatest importance of all in
America today. To it will come from within and with­
out that to which the material America never can lay
claim—respect that is born out of love, spiritual
elements which kindle that fealty that knows no faith
but one—the faith that constitutes the rock upon
which rests the one nation indivisible.
The chief business in a nation with a government
created and sustained through common suffrage is ade­
quate training of its every voting unit. Where intel­
ligence in citizenship, under such form of government
is given little or no consideration, where the door to
the balloting booth is wide open to the untrained and
uneducated individual, the drift is in the wrong direc­
tion and its cherished institutions are seriously
threatened.
The American institutions in government represent
the most nearly ideal principles conceived by man in
all the ages and laid down as a foundation for a national
structure. The sustaining force that makes govern­
ment upon these principles possible is a broad intelli­
gence in citizenship without , which no individual, rich
or poor, native or foreign-born, should be permitted to
(Continued on Page Fifty)