It is all very lively and interesting, but where does the American come in? What place is reserved for him in the commonwealth which his heroic toil and heroic sacrifices moulded into what Washington proudly called a “respectable nation”? The truth is contemptuously flung at us by Mary Antin, when she says that the descendants of the men who made America are not numerous enough to “swing a presidential election.” And if a negligible factor now, what depths of insignificance will be their portion in the future? I heard told with glee—the glee which expresses pure American unconcern—a story of a public school in one of our large eastern cities. A visitor of an investigating turn of mind asked the pupils of various nationalities, Germans, Polacks, Russian Jews, Italians, Armenians and Greeks, to stand up in turn. When the long list was seemingly exhausted, he bethought himself of a nation he had overlooked, and said, “Now let the American children arise!” Whereupon one lone, lorn little black boy stood up to represent the native-born.
It is hardly surprising that these foreign children, recognizing the strength of numbers, should take exception to our time-honoured methods of education. Little boys of a socialistic turn of mind refuse to salute the flag, because it is a military emblem. Little boys of a rationalistic turn of mind refuse to read the Bible,—any portion of the Bible,—because its assertions are unscientific. Little Jewish boys and girls refuse to sing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” because of its unguarded allusions to Bethlehem and Calvary. Indeed, any official recognition of the Deity offends the susceptibilities of some of our future citizens; and their perplexed teachers are bidden to eliminate from their programme “any exercises which the pupils consider objectionable.”
A few years ago I was asked to speak to a large class of immigrant working-girls, for whose benefit philanthropic women had planned evening classes, dexterously enlivened by a variety of entertainments. I was not sure whether I ranked as useful or amusing, and the number of topics I was bidden to tactfully avoid, added to my misgivings; when suddenly all doubts were dispelled by the superintendent saying sweetly, “Oh, Miss Repplier, you were asked to speak for forty minutes; but I think your address had better be cut down to twenty-five. The girls are eager for their ice-cream.”
I said I sympathized with so reasonable an impatience. Even at my advanced age, I prefer ice-cream to lectures.
“Moi, je dis que les bonbons
Valent mieux que la raison.”
But what did not flatter me was the clear understanding that my audience listened to me, or at least sat tolerantly for twenty minutes (I curtailed my already cur-tail’d cur), because their reward, in the shape of ice-cream, was near at hand. Just as some manufacturers provide baths for their employees, and then, recognizing the prejudices of the foreign-born, pay the men for taking the baths provided, so the good ladies who had served me up as a mental refreshment for their protégées, paid the girls for being so obliging as to listen to me.
Miss Addams has reproached us most unjustly for our contemptuous disregard of the immigrant; and Mrs. Percy Pennybacker, president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, has been wrought to such a pitch of indignation over what she considers our unwarranted superciliousness, that she writes fervidly in the “Ladies’ Home Journal,” “I love my country; I adore her; but at times I hope that some great shock may cause us to drop the mantle of conceit that we so proudly wrap about us.”
This well-wisher is in a fair way to see her desires realized. We may be left naked and shivering sooner than she anticipates. If concessions to the Irish vote failed to teach us humility,—perhaps because the Irish have a winning way of overriding barriers (“What’s the Constitution between friends?”),—other immigrants are less urbane in stripping us of our pride. “A German,” said Mr. Lowell feelingly, “is not always nice in concealing his contempt”; and if this was his attitude in 1868, to what superb heights of disdain has he risen by 1916! A German ambassador has derided diplomatic conventions, and has addressed his official communication, over the head of the Administration, to German voters in the United States, sparing no pains to make his words offensive. German officials have sought to undermine our neutrality and imperil our safety. In the opening months of the war, a German professor at Harvard, who for years has received courteous and honourable treatment at the hands of Americans, threatened us insolently with the “crushing power” of the German vote; and bade us beware of the punishment which twenty-five millions of citizens, “in whose homes lives the memory of German ancestors,” would inflict upon their fellow citizens of less august and martial stock. The “Frankfurter Zeitung” published a cheering letter from an American Congressman, assuring a German correspondent that his countrymen know how to make themselves heard, and expressing hearty hopes that Germany would triumph over her “perfidious” rival.
Is it any wonder that, stimulated by these brilliant examples, the average “German-American” should wax scornful, and despise his unhyphenated fellow citizens? Is it any wonder that he should turn bully, and threaten us with his vote,—the vote which was confided to his sacred honour for the preservation of our country’s liberty? A circular distributed before the Chicago elections in 1915 stated in the plainest possible words that the German’s first allegiance was to imperial Germany, and not to the Republic he had sworn to serve:—