Page Ten
THE UNITED AMERICAN
EDITORIAL
RENEGADES TO THE HIGHEST IDEALS
«LIE IS A RENEGADE to the highest idea’s we
have.”
So spoke Chaplain John W. Beard at the Public
Reception to naturalized citizens o’f 1926, held at the
Portland Auditorium on the evening of Washington’s
birthday, in referring to those American citizens who
organize and trade the nationality strength as polit­
ical voting units in American elections.
Whether Chaplain Beard had the group of hyphen­
ated American-Scandinavians in mind who carried out
a similar scheme in Portland during the last primary
and general elections in Oregon, we do not know, but
when he said “Scandinavians or any other group” in
connection with his statement of denunciation, the
inference was plain enough.
Whether he spoke specifically of those who at­
tempted, and, to all intents and purposes, did deliver
the “Scandinavian” vote in those stated elections in
Oregon, or spoke generally of those who had com-
mited such acts anywhere in America, is immaterial,
for the perpetrators are all very much of the same
treasonable gender — a gentry who have no scruples
in the matter of trading principles for paltry reward,
reward that is measured in patronage and gold.
Renegades! Webster defines them as “turncoats,
traitors, deserters of or from a cause, principle, party
or allegiance to another, especially a hostile one.”
Renegades! Could anyone think of a better and
more suitable title for citizens who are guilty of such
an offense?
Renegades! It is the very definition of those who
are so void of anything American in their make-up
that they are not alone proud of their ability to put
such a scheme over, boastfully acclaiming it as an
achievement, but who are ever ready to use it as a
leverage for business patronage, in the belief that it
creates prestige in the minds of most people.
Renegades! It typifies precisely the men who at­
tempt to cover up their own civic delinquency by the
broad innuendo that the “biggest and most influential”
citizens don’t care a rap so long as you “deliver the
goods,” and who are rather promiscuous in their in­
timations that the influential citizens will always “play
ball” with the fellow who can “swing” the nationality
vote, or at least a goodly portion of it.
Renegades! A most suitable cognomen for those
to bear who put the poison sting of political distrust
of all Americans in suavely styled appeals for national­
ity solidarity, sending these appeals as eleventh-hour
first class mail messengers to their nationals, to create
the impression that an emergency exists.
Renegades! What a perfectly justifiable denomi­
nator! How well it characterizes those who play the
magic strain of “the old song“Let us stick together
and vote for our own nationality boys and for those
who have promised us recognition when we need
them.”
Renegades! The very description .of those who
February 1927.
plan and execute ingenious schemes to create enough
suspicion and distrust in the hearts and minds of
those who, socially and politically, are living more or
less on the borderline between their old allegiance and
the new, to make them amenable to almost any kind
of leadership through which the idea is advanced that
nationality solidarity is the only means to political
recognition of the foreign born citizen.
Renegades, or not, the men who attached their
signatures and names to letters containing political
deception and fraud, causing them to be circularized
among American citizens of their nationality in Mult­
nomah County, just prior to the primary and general
election days of 1926, have in a measure gained their
ends, for there are those among them who have al­
ready commenced to “cash in” in patronage and polit­
ical recognition, rewards readily granted by those who
possess neither civic nor political principles.
Renegades! The appellation contains charges
which cannot be dismissed until the citizens of
Scandinavian birth and extraction take steps to re­
pudiate those who perpetrated the hoax referred to
and committed a fine type of immigrant people to
the ignominy of civic contempt.
The Americans in business and political life who
recognize hyphenated citizens of a type that may be
publicly branded as “renegades to the highest ideals”
which we share in common as Americans, cannot hope
to escape eventual penalization for connivancy, unless
they openly evince a resentment tantamount to re­
pudiation of the guilty individuals and discontinue
fraternizing with them in business and in party
councils.
It is time for the honorable citizens of foreign
birth to act in common for the protection of their
most priceless possession in America—the honor of
their citizenship, lest they shall share in the public
resentment that is growing in volume against those
who barter civic virtues for gain and stand branded
as — Renegades!
MASS FORMATION AGAINST INTOLERANCE
PIVE THOUSAND delegates will present credentials
*
to the next general meeting of The World Feder­
ation of Education Associations when that body con­
venes for its third session in Toronto, Canada, the
week of August 7th to 13th.
The paramount issue for this meeting is to be a
further discussion of the Herman-Jordan plan for the
purpose of arranging a definite program of what may
be done through education to allay national jealousies
and racial and religious hatreds.
When those who style themselves our friends
chide us for our persistence in preaching the gospel
of tolerance, and insist that it is not conducive to
obtaining the commercial patronage, in this section of
the country, which they otherwise think this publica­
tion deserves for its consistent and wholesome
Americanization work, then, at times, we feel weary
and inclined to assume a less belligerant attitude
towards intolerance, when those who keep it alive
are so considerate and solicitous for our well-being.
Yet, when we observe that the next meeting of
five thousand delegates to The World Federation of
I