Introducing the American Spirit

by Edward Alfred Steiner

I was asked to respond, and, under the circumstances, my remarks were brief. The clever interpreter made a good deal of them, judging by the length of time it took him, and the tumultuous applause with which every sentence was greeted.

The Herr Director told me it was the poorest speech he ever heard; but I am inclined to believe that he was a little jealous because he was not asked to speak; or perhaps he was merely trying to keep me humble, a course which he had consistently pursued from the day I met him in New York.

The reception closed with the benediction, and the dignitaries and guests proceeded to a Chinese restaurant which was genuinely Oriental; not one of those nondescript Chop Suey places which serve such varied and often objectionable purposes. The entire establishment was reserved for us. It was gayly decorated with the banners of the Youngest Republic, an orchestra played vigorously and so unmelodiously that the Herr Director was reminded of the ultra modern German compositions.

The menu was the most mysterious thing of the evening, ranging from tea to broiled seaweed, and eggs which looked their age and were not ashamed of it. There was fowl which was made unrecognizable to both the eye and the palate, something which tasted like glue flavored with onion, and something else which to my perverted Occidental palate seemed like stewed Turkish towels. There were sweetmeats before and after and between courses. Beside the mystery, the variety and novelty of the banquet, it had one other virtue; it was not followed by after dinner speeches, that common American practice which is an assault upon one’s digestion, and, not infrequently, upon good taste.

While there were no after dinner speeches, we had a chance to discuss the problem of the Chinese in California, and their brave attempts to become Americanized in thought and feeling, in spite of the unyielding race prejudice they have had to meet; thus renewing our faith in our common origin and destiny, regardless of our apparent differences. Never before had I realized how gentle these Chinese are nor how altogether likeable, and it was no surprise to find that some of the Californians have made the same discovery, and are treating them accordingly.

We visited the Immigrant Station at San Francisco and I wished we had not; for our treatment of the incoming Orientals lacks all those elements of which I had boasted. We are neither humane, nor fair, neither wise, nor decent. We found young Chinese women who had been detained for more than a year, and were left without occupation or suitable companionship or even a hope of early release. There were Chinese boys who were herded with hardened, vicious-looking men, and the station, although ideally situated, was little better than a prison. What was done or was allowed to be done to make the lot of these people more bearable was accomplished by outsiders. Conditions may have changed since that time, and if they have, it is a cause for profound gratitude.

We also had an unusual opportunity to come in touch with the Japanese all along the coast. In one city we met a young Japanese, a graduate of my own college. He is now serving his countrymen there as a Buddhist priest. He has brought to his sacred calling much of the practical religion which he absorbed through his contact with the college Y. M. C. A., and it is his ambition to make Buddhism efficient and serviceable. He has put into the work all his patrimony and is eager to build up an institution patterned after the Young Men’s Christian Association.

We had many a confidential talk, and if the soul of the Oriental is not altogether inscrutable I have had a glimpse of it; although I cannot say that I have fathomed his soul any more than he has mine. He seemed to me to typify his race in a remarkable degree. His is a strong, unyielding, definite kind of ethnos, and while we liked each other and tried to understand one another, there seemed to be a place just before we reached our Holy of Holies where we stood before a barred gate.

When he told me that the American soul is absolutely unemotional in comparison with the Japanese, I knew he did not understand us; even as I did not understand the Japanese when I told him that his people are cold and unemotional in comparison with us.

He took us to his temple in the basement of a shabby looking American tenement. He showed us his Sunday-school room, picture cards with Golden Texts, club and class rooms, and many devices borrowed from us, applied and perhaps improved upon by his Japanese genius. The day we left the city he brought us an invitation to luncheon at the home of the most prominent Japanese merchant in the place. Our hostess was a delightful woman educated in a Methodist school in her native country, and of course spoke English. Her husband, a conservative Buddhist, although he had been in this country for twenty years, was still Japanese to the core and spoke little or no English. There were several notables present, whose English was more or less Japanned. They were keen, well educated, and had absorbed enough of American culture to be baseball “fans.”