Which strikes the keynote to the future of America?
“We cannot in this country hope for the compelling devotion which has animated Germany, still less for the supreme moral and intellectual force which is the staying power of France,” says Miss Repplier in a recent statement.
What then can we hope for? Granted our geographical difficulties, granted our youth, our size, and the consequent imperfect control of our material resources, granted the complexity of our problem caused by the rapid immigration of the past years, granted that we are still a body of states—does this mean that we cannot acquire the spirit of France and the efficiency of Germany?
I believe Miss Repplier’s attitude (a typical native American one) shows an entirely mistaken conception of the situation. No nation ever had a more vigorous birth than ours. This country was founded upon a body of conviction, clarified by a white heat of passion, but representing the judgment of deliberate men and great statesmen, men who saw into the future, and built the ship of state by that vision.
I believe the foundation stones of Americanism are exactly what they were 140 years ago,—liberty, opportunity, and obligation. We have lost sight of the third. The conception of liberty upon which this country was founded was a chastened and a disciplined conception. It was chastened by a menace to rights as dear as life itself. It was disciplined by the immediate duty of defending these by life itself, if need be. That chastened and disciplined conception of liberty is Americanism. We have now the sacred tradition. We have now the liberty. We have now the opportunity. Our task is to restore to it the austerity and the discipline of obligation.
A combination of rights and duties, of obligations and privileges, is the determining idea in those first vehicles of Americanism, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. But in interpreting and reaffirming these in state constitutions, laws, and municipal ordinances,—in which for very natural reasons sectional and provincial points of view have often entered,—we have drifted away from the true balance between these fundamental rights and duties, a balance which is at once the delicate spring and the solid rock of our existence. Prosperity, unusual freedom of choice in vocations, varying and broad opportunities to control the vast material resources of the country, have made us complacent about accepting the privileges of a democracy. We have argued among ourselves endlessly as to just what these privileges are and whether perhaps any of them are being infringed. But we have rarely investigated whether we ourselves are giving to the democracy the respect and service that alone can keep it secure. Americanism has become for the great mass of Americans a point of view accompanied by a lukewarm sentiment. The rigor of duty and the ardor of a passionate belief have entered but little.
Through all our defense discussions and legislation, one amazing thing has stood out very clearly—that the great majority of private citizens in America recognize no compelling obligation to place themselves, their time, or their resources at the disposal of the nation. They regard this as a voluntary matter. They frequently question whether the point of national service ought to be raised at all with respect to the law-abiding citizen who earns his living, provides decently for his family, and treats his neighbor with respect. The time and energy outside the office or the job and the necessary duty to home belong to the moving picture or to the pool room, or to any other pleasure to which the freeman wishes to devote them. We have made a fetish of our industrial freedom and we have tied our Americanism to it. The everyday citizen has ceased to balance national opportunities with national duties.
In all the long years of our progress and prosperity no clearer concept or statement of Americanism than this has been made:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
But to these words, clear and solemn, this pledge was added: