It is impossible to have the spirit of Americanism prevail in this land when at least a quarter of its people do not understand it, or have been disillusioned in their dream of it, or have been despoiled in their search for it. I do not minimize the value of hardship of obstacles to be overcome. They make for the strength of a nation just as they do for the strength of a human being. But I like to see the obstacles set up in a fair field with no favor--where a man can see them and meet them intelligently. This is what Americanism stands for, but it is not what it means to the average immigrant. We point with pride to the immigrant who succeeds in spite of it, but I suspect that often we judge by his clothes and his house and his speech rather than by his outlook upon life and his inlook upon himself. We satisfy ourselves by comparing his lot here with what it was in his home country--often without real knowledge of either. We fail to see that we have lost the dream of what America may be and with the dream the ability to achieve it, when we become content that America should merely be better than Russia or freer than Austria instead of being the very best of which America is capable. This country is full of so-called un-American types. Some of them are native born and some are foreign born. Immigrant men and women in this rank of life or that, who have been in this country for years, have found themselves isolated from and ignored by Americans. American customs and standards have therefore failed to alter them. The result is the perpetuation of foreign types or the creation of distinct types which we refuse to accept as ours, but in the making of which we have certainly had a controlling hand. Take the typical foreign-born journalist and publicist. There are hundreds of them to-day fighting the battle of Americanization for their fellow countrymen here against fearful odds because they are so far from being Americanized themselves. Many of them are philosophers, students, zealots; many of them are all-American in aspiration. But they are not themselves in possession of the very Americanism they seek to interpret. And their efforts at Americanizing their fellow countrymen fall as far short as would a piece of philosophy with a man in need of a pick to earn his living, bread to eat, or a tongue with which to speak. Medical quacks, shyster lawyers, saloon-politicians, chronically bankrupt factory owners or lessees of foreign birth are continually pointed out to us as the types that are being inflicted upon a long-suffering America. They are in fact the types that a negligent America is inflicting upon itself.