Prejudices, second seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, second series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
Where he failed most miserably was in his remedies. A remarkably
penetrating diagnostician, well-read, unprejudiced and with a touch
of genuine scientific passion, he always stooped to quackery when he
prescribed a course of treatment. For all his sensational attacks upon
the trusts, he never managed to devise a scheme to curb them--and
even when he sought to apply the schemes of other men he invariably
corrupted the business with timorousness and insincerity. So with
his campaign for national preparedness. He displayed the disease
magnificently, but the course of medication that he proposed was
vague and unconvincing; it was not, indeed, without justification
that the plain people mistook his advocacy of an adequate army for
a mere secret yearning to prance upon a charger at the head of huge
hordes. So, again, with his eloquent plea for national solidarity
and an end of hyphenism. The dangers that he pointed out were very
real and very menacing, but his plan for abating them only made them
worse. His objurgations against the Germans surely accomplished
nothing; the hyphenate of 1915 is still a hyphenate in his heart--with
bitter and unforgettable grievances to support him. Roosevelt, very
characteristically, swung too far. In denouncing German hyphenism so
extravagantly he contrived to give an enormous impetus to English
hyphenism, a far older and more perilous malady. It has already gone
so far that a large and influential party endeavors almost openly
to convert the United States into a mere vassal state of England's.
Instead of national solidarity following the war, we have only a
revival of Know-Nothingism; one faction of hyphenates tries to
exterminate another faction. Roosevelt's error here was one that he
was always making. Carried away by the ease with which he could heat
up the mob, he tried to accomplish instantly and by _force majeure_
what could only be accomplished by a long and complex process, with
more good will on both sides than ever so opinionated and melodramatic
a pseudo-Junker was capable of. But though he thus made a mess of the
cure, he was undoubtedly right about the disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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