the form of editing and publishing newspapers, of uttering speeches, or of intrigue and conspiracy. ONE FLAG, ONE LANGUAGE. We must have but one flag. We must also have but one language. That must be the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's Farewell Address, of Linclon's Gettysburg Speech and Second Inaugural. We cannot tolerate any attempt to oppose or supplant the language and culture that has come down to us from the builders of this Republic with the language and culture of any European country. The greatness of this nation depends on the swift assimilation of the aliens she welcomes to her shores. Any force which attempts to retard that assimilative process is a force hostile to the highest interests of our country. It is a force, which, if allowed to develop, will, for the benefit of this group or that, undermine our national institutions and pervert our national ideals. Whatever may have been our judgment in normal times, we are convinced that today our most dangerous foe is the foreign language press and every similar agency such as the German-American Alliance, which holds the alien to his former associations and through them to his former allegiance. We call upon all loyal and unadulterated Americans to man the trenches against the enemy within our gates. ENEMIES EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL. We ask that good Americans uphold the hands of the Government at every point efficiently and resolutely against our foreign and domestic foes, and that they constantly spur the Government to speedier and more effective action. Furthermore, we ask that where governmental action cannot be taken, they arouse an effective and indignant public opinion against the enemies of our country, whether these enemies masquerade as pacifists, or proclaim themselves the enemies of our Allies, or act through organizations such as the I. W. W. and the Socialist party machine, or appear nakedly as the champions of Germany. Above all, we ask that they teach our people to spurn any peace save the peace of overwhelming victory in the war to which we have set our hands. Of us who sign some are Protestants, some are Catholics, some are Jews. Most of us were born in this country of parents born in various countries of the old world-in Germany, France, England, Ireland, Italy, the Slavonic and the Scandinavian lands; some of us were born abroad; some of us are of Revolutionary stock. All of us are Americans, and nothing but Americans. (Vigilantes Special Service.) (d) [$299] Evils of Adherence to the German Language. BY PROFESSOR JOHN WILLIAM SCHOLL (August 12, 1917). President Wilson, as head of the nation, has taken pains on various occasions to express his belief in the loyalty of the great mass of our citizenship of German extraction. This is not $8298-299] RETAINING THE GERMAN LANGUAGE 317 merely politic, but just, and those who are loyal in every sense of the word should not be confused with those who have a string to their loyalty. INSTANCES OF UNAMALGAMATED GERMANS. But there is a minority among our citizens of German extraction who deserve all the condemnation heaped on them by their fellow-citizens. This fact must not be blinked, and the President's words must not be taken as a blanket indorsement of their activities, or be allowed for one moment to check the efforts of good citizens to help the nation clean house. This derelict minority may amount to some hundreds of thousands of our population, and it is aggregated into hundreds of bunches or communities, with more or less close unity. It is not much worth while to deal in generalities. We have talked too long about the American melting pot. We should face the facts. A realization of the facts may indicate a remedy for the evils of our present state. Let us look at a community such as I have in mind. It is made up of Germans, mostly from Württemberg and other southern districts, but with scattering families from the northern regions of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Posen and Silesia. Almost all of them came here before the founding of the present German Empire, and have no sentimental attachment to it except such as has been bred in them by propaganda since their arrival in America. They were mostly wretchedly poor anad came here to mend their fortunes. All of them owe everything they have any enjoy to the opportunity America afforded them. Not many of them were political refugees, though some were infected with a hatred of absolutism and were glad of a haven of refuge in free America. STICKING TO THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. They settled together here, associated with one another rather than with English-speaking neighbors, maintained German as the language of the home, and forced the business men of the community to use German in their trade. They established churches in which only the German language was used, and secured pastors who fostered in every way the maintenance of this separatism. The pastor was frequently drawn from abroad, and felt himself a member of the great German famility temporarily residing in foreign parts, and his ministering was unAmerican, to say the least. Even the American pastor was generally steeped in foreign culture. Sometimes the pastor kept a parochial school in connection, and worked against the leveling influence of the American common school. The people subscribed for the local German newspaper and read it and no other. In this fashion a group of men who become in the course of time naturalized citizens of the United States wilfully cut themselves off from proper connection with the great currents of national life. There can be no question at all that community of language is the great bond of unity in all national life. Reading with ease daily, habitually, year in and year out, the master thoughts of English literature, the words of great American leaders like Eliot, Root and hundreds of other men of eminence in public life, the editorials of our great dailies, the thoughtful essays of our serious reviews and magazines, even the news articles in our better journals, is the one most potent cause of unity of sentiment and judgment among the masses of a nation. The leaders think aloud and in print, and the masses think their thoughts after them; or the masses think and the leaders give voice to their thoughts; it matters little how this solidarity of opinion is conceived of. Its one condition is community of tongue. And when we talk glibly of blood being "thicker than water," and of blood "telling," etc., we are merely using symbolic terms to say that a common language creates a community of national aims and ideals. How can persons become good American citizens when they refuse to employ the only means to that end, the English language? NEED OF AMERICANIZATION. Becoming well-to-do landowners and paying taxes is a commendable thing as far as it goes, but it is a very narrow and selfish kind of citizenship that is content with that. There ought to be a desire to understand how this great Anglo-Saxon empire of America grew to be a land of freemen, to know what sacrifices of blood and treasure Americans, and Englishmen before them, have made for centuries to establish and maintain those forms of free government which they so thoughtlessly enjoy today. These newcomers should learn to feel a jealous regard for those liberties under law, and have a sense of responsibility for their maintenance for generations to come. But all the agencies of this closed community have been working quite contrariwise. An idealized Germany has been held before their view for years. Since the war began three years ago they have been presented a picture of an innocent Germany, land of super-efficiency and success, land of all the domestic virtues, guileless but prosperous, the envy of the greedy Entente Allies, suddenly pounced upon with the thunderbolts of war while all unprepared and unsuspecting, and now heroically struggling in a victorious defense against the whole world. It makes no difference that the whole world judges differently, or that established facts and German admissions prove this picture a diabolic distortion and inversion of the truth. This community, served by its German-language newspaper, knows no better, for its editor intentionally befuddles their intellects by his lies and poisons their judgment with his own malevolent venom. J. [$300] TIME FOR NATIONAL GRIT. 1. Specific References on the Section. Anon. "American Poet's Vision of the Spiritual Glory of War," in Porter, L. S. "The Bright Side of War," in No. Am. Review, vol. §§299-301] NATIONAL GRIT 319 Clark, B. "Cowards and Fools-Fall In!" in Survey, XXXVI, 325326 (June 24, 1916). Anon. "Effect of War on National Vitality," in Scientific American, vol. 115, p. 256 (Sept. 16, 1916). 2. In Furnishing the Necessary Men and Preparing Them for Their Work. 3. Industry. (a) Organizing our whole economic and industrial system so as to be sure that we provide the necessary arms, munitions, food and supplies all the time. 4. Labor. (a) Rearranging our labor system so as to spare the men who go to the front and avoid strikes and lockouts. 5. Purpose of War. (a) Holding consistently to the course upon which we have entered of making war not on Germans but on the things that Germany is trying to do in the world. United States is the champion of free government against despotism. 6. Documents and Extracts on the Section. (a) [§301] Fighting for the Flag. BY JOHN F. HARRIS. PROTECTION BY THE FLAG. The bushman, the Hottentot, the cannibal have no commerce and no civilization. A nation that trades only within its own borders, limits its horizon. It degenerates almost as much as a community that brings in no fresh blood, that inbreeds, which results in degeneracy and decay. We can only have an extensive commerce if Americans, acting within their lawful rights, are protected not only when within the confines of the United States, but also when without them. I take it that you stand when the national hymn is played, that you uncover your head when the flag is carried past, as it symbolizes to your mind that all the treasure and all the blood of this country would be expended in the restoration or maintenance of the rights of any one individual whoever he may be, when he is within those rights. If the flag does not mean that, it is a rag. If the hymn does not mean that, it is something at which any man may scoff; and if a nation does not protect its citizens, it does not and ought not to long endure. I have touched upon this aspect of the case because I feel deeply upon it, and I feel that everyone may do something toward awakening such a spirit in this country that we would be so prepared, that we could so resist invasion, spoliation, or interference with our rights that no nation would attempt it. . PROTECTION OF ORGANIZED DEFENSE. At the termination of this war it is a certainty that some power will possess a fleet which has gone successfully through the ordeal of battle, an army disciplined, hardened, and enthused by victory. Great commanders will have been developed. That country will have enormous power and enormous debts. We possess enormous wealth without the power of protection. The least we should do is to get in a position as rapidly as possible to defend ourselves, if necessary, from the possible, and to my mind probable, encroachments of foreign powers. It is impossible to understand how anyone with any pride of ancestry, any regard for the traditions and honor of the country, or any love for their children, cannot be heartily in favor of the national defense program. There are many subjects that might involve us in war with those who are prepared, and we are unprepared. War today is a complicated and involved science, and to be prepared requires years of thought and greatest effort. I have four sons, and a very strong feeling with me upon the entire subject is the one that I want to speak and act now and do everything that is within my power so that these children may not say to me when they do respond to their country's callas they would if such a call became necessary—that the country is unprepared, that they are untrained, and that they will go forth not to an equal war but to a practical slaughter. The millenium is not here, and however much individuals may deplore war, it has vestated the earth since recorded time and will continue long after those who declare it will not come again, are dead, and their descendants likewise. ORGANIZE DEFENSE. Of what avail is a tariff system, a currency bill, or a system of jurisprudence if it cannot be enforced? Belgium had all these, but they were set aside and Germany's various systems substituted. We are rich and unprepared. Other countries at the termination of the war will be poor but prepared for war, and as selfishness frequently dominates nations as it does individuals, there is great danger that this country, standing supinely by and living in a fools' paradise, will be devastated by war, and ransoms and penalties imposed so much greater than the cost of preparation and defense that there will be absolutely no comparison. We today have certainly a paramount issue. The country is alive to it. I believe and hope it will demand such action that our present hopelessly defenseless position will be changed to one of proper defense, which is the best possible guarantee against war. (Commerce and Finance, March 29, 1916.) (b) [$302] Bywords of the War. BY JAMES LANE ALLEN. STATUS OF GERMANY. That the framer of criminal deeds and the doer of those criminal deds are criminals together in those deeds. That the government of a nation can be a criminal. That the people of a nation can be a criminal. That the Imperial German Government is powerless as a criminal aggressor without the power of the German people. That the German people is powerless as a criminal aggressor without direction by the Imperial German Government, |