A. MESSAGE TO AMERICA1 ROMAIN ROLLAND My faith is great in the high destinies of America. And it is clear to me that the events of today make more urgent than before that these be realized. On our old Continent, civilization is menaced. It becomes America's solemn duty to uphold the wavering torch. You have great advantages over the European nations. You are free of traditions. You are free of that vast load of thought, of sentiment, of secular obsession under which the Old World groans. The intellectual fixed ideas, the dogmas of politics and art that grip us, are unknown to you. You may go forward, unhampered, to your future; while we, in Europe, sacrifice ours, daily, to quarrels and rancors and ambitions that should be dead. Europe has found no better channel for its genius than to revive these quarrels; to submit, over and again, to the tyrannies that they impose. And each time that Europe attempts to solve them, it succeeds merely in strengthening the web that binds it. Where it should strike clear of its shackles, it forges still more iron meshes. Like the Atrides, it works out its tragedy under a curse. And like them, again, it prays for its release in vain, to some indifferent god. In conclusion, writers and thinkers of America, we expect of you two things. We ask that you defend the cause of Liberty; that you defend its conquests; and that you increase them. And by Liberty I mean both political and intellectual liberty. I mean the incessant rebirth 1 From an address delivered in 1917. AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL 237 and replenishment of life that it enfolds. I mean the wide River of Spirit that never stagnates, but flows on forever. an Also, we ask that you so master your lives as to give to the world a new ideal for lack of which it bleedsideal, not of section and tradition, but of Harmony. You must harmonize all of the dreams and liberties and thoughts brought to your shores by all your peoples. You must make of your culture a symphony that shall in a true way express your brotherhood of individuals, of races, of cultures banded together. You must make real the dream of an integrated entire humanity. You are fortunate. Your life is young and abundant. Your land is vast and free for the discovery of your works. You are at the beginning of your journey, at the dawn of your day. There is in you no weariness of the Yesterdays; no clutterings of the Past. Behind you, alone, the elemental Voice of a great pioneer, in whose message you may well find an almost legendary omen of your task to come-your Homer: Walt Whitman. Surge et Age [Rise and Act]. AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL KATHARINE LEE BATES O beautiful for spacious skies, God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine! O beautiful for patriot dream God shed His grace on thee |