Fourth, the money which is spent by Americans in Paris, Dresden, Nice and Carlsbad, does not so immediately return to the United States as does the money which is spent in Kottowin or Breczowa or in Oswicczim. That flows into the trade channels whose golden stream runs directly back to the United States; for more money in those villages means more money for Southern cotton, Chicago lard, and Connecticut clocks and sewing machines.
I doubt that even the minutest investigation will prove that the money sent annually to Italy or Hungary means a loss to the United States, or that as yet the immigrant is a serious economic menace.
XXII
RELIGION AND POLITICS
ON a recent trip through Germany there fell into my hands a little book about America which bears the modest title, “Americana.” It was written by Professor Karl Lamprecht of the University of Leipzig, and is a note-book in which he records his impressions about us. Being a Professor of History and especially conversant with that part of it which deals with our country, his conclusions have large value.
That which impressed him most about our life was the prevalence of the religious atmosphere and the genuineness of our piety. The sentence which seemed to me to stand out above every other which he has written is this: “My conviction that this people is destined to great things bases itself above all else upon the fact, that it is capable of religious impressions.” I have felt this by virtue of a sort of vague faith, and have always regarded the religious problem which the immigrant presents, as the crucial one. We shall soon be of one blood—sooner yet of one speech; but how soon we shall have one faith, and common religious ideals, or how long we shall be able to preserve those religious ideals which are the guarantee of our greatness, as well as of our permanence as a republic, are very large and very serious questions.
It is not easy to deny that certain phases of our religious life in America are to a great degree unknown in Southern and Eastern Europe, and cannot be readily understood by the average immigrant:—the entire separation of Church and State, yet the complete union of religion and national life; the large place of the individual as a religious functionary, and yet the absolute equality of priest and people; the prevalence of forms and the permanence of the ethical and spiritual.
The immigrant comes to us, largely from countries in which the Church and the State, the cross and the sword, are one. In fact to the large majority of those who come, nationality or race, and the Church, are one and the same. The Russian and the Southern Slav who are not pravo Slavs, adherents of the Greek Church, are regarded very much in the light of traitors to their nations. The Pole is a Catholic by national instinct; Poland and Roman Catholicism are to him one and the same; while the Jew is a Jew by race and faith, regarding as a profligate, him who betrays his people by becoming a Christian.
Roughly speaking, nearly eighty per cent. of our present immigration is made up of Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Jews. More or less, usually more rather than less, they bring with them and foster these ideas. This is undoubtedly true of nearly all the Slavs whom the Church divides racially and who are enemies; remaining so a long time on this side of the Atlantic. The Church, cognizant of this fact, fosters it in no small degree, because it can hold its children more loyally to itself by giving the national idea a large place. Polish, Bohemian and Slovak church societies of a semi-military character exist in large numbers, and many of their members carry arms. Although in itself this may be a harmless way of keeping men loyal to the Church, it does seem to clash with one of our religious ideals, which is fundamental in maintaining religious liberty. I am judging only as an outsider and am telling only what seems to me to be the case; but I am speaking also for a large number of Catholic priests who see in this no small menace and who have tacitly admitted it.
The sooner the Catholic Church can get rid of Polish and Italian priests who have been trained in Europe, to whom religion is a sort of politics,—and a certain kind of politics is religion,—the better for the Church and of course the better for the State.
The immigrants free themselves from the autocracy of the Church and of the priest more quickly than from the national idea, and they easily breathe in the liberating atmosphere and sometimes manifest it in a very disagreeable way. The close supervision which the priest exercises over his parishioners, the respect they pay to him, the awe in which he is held, are helpful rather than detrimental phases of their religious life, where the priest is a true priest. There are, however, too many who are not, and I am sure that the authorities of the Church concerned are perhaps more anxious about this than are we, who are simply looking over the fence at our neighbours’ affairs.