The idea has been seriously advanced that the oath of allegiance, accompanied by a dignified and beautiful ceremony, might be administered to groups of boys and girls as they reach twenty-one years of age, in a manner to impress on the public mind the value of citizenship. The “citizen receptions” which have been given monthly in Cleveland and Los Angeles, to the new citizens of that period, have done this. After a patriotic program, with the judge of the court presiding, each successful applicant is very proud when he receives his naturalization papers like a diploma, awarded before his family and friends. Such a ceremonial cannot fail to carry home the conviction of the value of the citizenship so conferred, and the importance of living up to the responsibility imposed by it.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The study of citizenship in the public schools may be made a vigorous aid to Americanization. Many foreign parents depend on their children for their knowledge of the customs of the new country. What the children learn in the public schools has its influence on the life of the family at home. If the children are taught orderliness, consideration for others, and respect for authority, they carry those qualities home. If they are undisciplined, they take home disregard for parental authority, and a lack of consideration for the rights of others, that will stand in the way of their comprehending the first principles of good citizenship.
XXIII
PATRIOTISM AND CITIZENSHIP
From the beginning of history there have always been individuals who have chosen death rather than slavery. As intelligence has grown and has displaced ignorance, their number has increased, but it is only within the last century and a half that people have demanded liberty in sufficient numbers to make it the fundamental principle in the forming of great nations.
We, in the United States, are the inheritors of the most courageous and forward thinking of the men and women of all nations who cared enough for human liberty to break all ties of home and country in order that they might “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty” for themselves and for us.
These phrases from the Constitution of the United States have usually been only words to us. We have been safe, our homes have been secure, our loved ones have been protected. Most of us have not personally been conscious of any overwhelming injustices, and those that we have heard of have been far enough away not to be disturbing. We have come and gone as we chose; we have thought and spoken as we pleased; we have worshiped as we would; our property has been safe; we have damned the government or any man in any public office without thought of danger to ourselves; we have feared no man. Why should we have talked about liberty or human freedom—it has been secure enough. So the call to defend liberty to some has fallen on dull ears, and the demand for an awakened patriotism in some places has gone unheeded. As a people, we have forgotten about the long centuries of fighting for freedom, the tremendous cost that has been paid, and the blood that has been shed.
Think what those words, “safety, defense, tranquillity, justice,” must have meant throughout the centuries when no man’s life was safe, when not only his welfare, but that of his family, was subject to the whim of the government, when he could be thrown into prison without knowing the reason why, when the honor of his wife or daughter could be taken without his being able to protest. Read your history again, of the middle ages, of England in the seventeenth century, of France before the Revolution, of Germany in the eighteenth century. Then read of the early struggles in America. It was nature and the Indians that man was fighting then. For personal safety he fought to make war and raiding unprofitable; he had to meet brute force with brute force, to prove his mastery over nature and savagery, and to gain peace and safety for himself and his home.
It is the untold sacrifices of countless men and women that have made liberty possible. That it shall be maintained, and that the world shall not be allowed to slip back, is a debt that every man and woman owes to the past.
Those who inherit the fruits of this age-long struggle must be ready to pay their part, for themselves and for the sake of those they love, for the sake of those who won it for them, and for those who shall come after them. The duty which rests on them is as great as the duty that was on the men of the Revolution, and on those who won the Magna Charta. If they do not, they are weakening the forces of civilization.