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"We don't know where we are going, but we're on the way," runs a light-hearted, popular saying. "Heaven or Hell—which?" the evangelists ask in one breath. No national answer will be given to the query, but if some one replies "Hell," no one will be greatly shocked, whereas, if some one replies "Heaven," his neighbor will turn upon him with a smile and a rude handshake and a "I'm with you, so glad that you're on our side."
If you say, "Roses spring up in the footsteps of America," Americans will believe you. But if you say, "Curses follow the Gringo in his march of destiny," the American interest in your opinion will rapidly grow less. America's faith in that America is doing right, that she has a divinely appointed mission, is short of nothing save the faith of the Catholic Church. Naturally such a faith is the main vital current of her existence. The saying, "I believe, therefore I am," may be changed for America into "I believe, therefore I do."
This faith, however, reacts badly upon critical literature. Many books on America are written for an American public which demands praise. The rest of the world is profoundly affected by what America does, and will be even more so by what she will do. For as she plunges forward along her way of destiny, be it blindly or with open eyes, she not only achieves for herself but makes way and changes the way of other peoples and other nations.
Some study in a scientific spirit seems necessary at this hour, not one tinged with the spleen of France, or the self-conscious spirit of comparison of England; not a pro-Latin study, nor a study conceived in parti pris from a socialistic or capitalistic end—but a dead level dispassionate facing of things as they are and as to honest eyes they tend to be.