Introducing the American SpiritSteiner, Edward Alfred
General
Introducing the American Spirit
Steiner, Edward Alfred
National characteristics, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
Not a soul is unafraid, not a heart is without pain and sorrow, and the
Herr Director himself, although past middle age, has volunteered to
serve in the trenches, slippery from oozing blood and foul from the
spattered brains of men. The "fiddling, twiddling diplomats, the
haggling, calculating merchants of Babylon, the sleek lords with their
plumes and spurs" have had their way, and the poor, blind, ignorant
millions, made mad by hate, do their brutal bidding.
We, on this safer side, who as yet have not loosed the dogs of war, have
calculated the loss to Europe in the fratricidal slaughter of its most
virile men, in the loss of its arts and trades, in the wreck and ruin to
houses and homes and in the age-long poverty which awaits. Much counting
has been done as to what we shall make out of this sure bankruptcy that
is to come to the nations which are our competitors for the world's
trade, and what glory shall be ours when New York, and not London shall
be the new Babylon, with power to make the "Epha small and the Shekel
great."
With the incalculable loss to the European nations there has come to
some of them a gain in national unity upon which under no circumstances
we may count.
It has been with no small sense of pride that I have demonstrated to the
Herr Director and to others the fact that, in spite of our youth as a
nation, and the varied national, linguistic and religious rootage of
our population even in the Colonial period, we have grown to be one
people. Even the constant inflow of new and more varied human material
has not weakened us but indeed the sense of national unity has grown
stronger. I have watched with joy the processes by which this alien
element was becoming one with us, the fading away of animosities and
inherited prejudices, and the making of a new people out of the world's
conglomerate.
The war has brought about a retardation of this process, and we shall
have great cause for gratitude if no permanent damage is done to our
nation's spirit, a loss for which no possible gain in any direction
could compensate. The term "Hyphenated American," which has now come
into use, if it indicates anything more than the place of a man's
national or racial origin, and the very natural sympathies arising
therefrom, is an insult to the man to whom it is applied, and a
confession of divided allegiance, if voluntarily assumed.
It may be interesting to note that it was His Majesty, the Emperor of
Germany, who repudiated the hyphen when a German-American delegation
called on him on the occasion of some royal anniversary.
When the delegation was introduced in this hyphenated manner, he said:
"Germans I know, Americans I know, but German-Americans I do not know."
Although the hyphen has always existed, it has assumed new meaning in
these troubled days and is applied as a term of opprobrium, largely to
Americans of German birth; people who have always been loyal to the
country of their adoption, and, I think, are no less loyal now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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