Dreiser’s patriotism is not blind. The future of his country fills him with worry and anxiety. Looking forward as a philosopher, he looks upon American civilization as upon a brilliant phase, though not a final one, in the world’s evolution. Bossuet, in his discourse on universal history, viewed nations and empires as many toys in the hands of a divine Providence. Dreiser considers them as the playthings of Chance. A faithful believer in the law of change, he has little illusion left on the subject of the rights of men, brotherhood, freedom. Life is a dream, and this great American Commonwealth, whose achievements fill him with pride and enthusiasm, may well be also another dream: Happy, happy people! Yet for the dream’s sake, as I told myself at this time, and as against an illimitable background of natural chance and craft, I would like to see this and the other sections with which it is so closely allied, this vast Republic, live on. It is so splendid, so tireless. Its people, in spite of their defects and limitations, sing so at their tasks. There are dark places, but there are splendid points of light, too. One is their innocence, complete and enduring; another is their faith in ideals and the Republic. A third is their optimism and buoyancy of soul, their courage to get up in the morning and go up and down the world, whistling and singing. Oh, the whistling, singing American, with his jest and his sound heart and that light of humorous apprehension in his eyes! How wonderful it all is! It isn’t English, or French, or German, or Spanish, or Russian, or Swedish, or Greek. It’s American, “Good Old United States,”--and for that reason I liked this region and all these other portions of America that I have ever seen. New England is not so kindly, the South not so hopeful, the Far West more so, but they have something of these characteristics which I have been describing. And for these reasons I would have this tremendous, bubbling Republic live on, as a protest perhaps against the apparently too unbreakable rule that democracy, equality, or the illusion of it, is destined to end in disaster. It cannot survive ultimately, I think. In the vast, universal sea of motion, where change and decay are laws, and individual power is almost always uppermost, it must go under--but until then-- We are all such pathetic victims of chance, anyhow. We are born, we struggle, we plan, and chance blows all our dreams away. If, therefore, one country, one State dares to dream the impossible, why cast it down before its ultimate hour? Why not dream with it? It is so gloriously, so truly a poetic land. We were conceived in ecstasy and born in dreams.