6
The Woes of a 100% American
THE NEW BARBARIANS, by Wilbur C. Abbott. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. [The American Mercury, May, 1925.]
It would be easy to poke fun at this disorderly and indignant tract; even, perhaps, to denounce the learned author, in a lofty manner, as a mere jackass. His argument, at more than one place, is so shaky that it tempts ribaldry with a powerful lure, almost a suction. His premisses are often gratuitous and absurd; his conclusions are often fantastic. Worse, he argues in circles, and it is frequently hard to make out what he is advocating, and why. Worst of all, the urbanity suitable to a learned gentleman resident in Sparks street, Cambridge, Mass., sometimes yields to a libido far more suitable to an auctioneer, a Federal district attorney or a Methodist bishop, and he rants dreadfully. But against all this there is yet something to be said, and that something, I think, is sufficient to stay the impulse to have at him brutally, either with cackles or with invective. It is, in brief, this: that what he inveighs against, given his natural and laudable prejudices, is plentifully sufficient to excuse all his indignation, and all his incoherence, and even his occasional departures from the strict letter of the record—that it is a merit in any man, facing what he deems to be incubi and succubi, to belabor them in a hearty and vociferous manner, and without too pedantic a respect for the rules of evidence. That merit has nothing to do, at bottom, with his rightness or wrongness; it lies in his mere sincerity. Dr. Abbott is obviously full of sincerity; no fair reader can doubt it for an instant. But he has something more: he has under him a respectable body of facts, sound ones as well as shaky ones. The deductions he draws from them are often extravagant, and now and then he mingles them with assumptions that seems to me to do violence to the most elemental common sense. Nevertheless, his basic facts remain, and if I were an Anglo-Saxon as he is I suspect that they would fever me as they fever him.
What he complains of, in a few words, is the assault that has been made of late upon the old American tradition and the fundamental canons of American idealism, i. e., upon the body of ideas that Americans cherish as peculiarly their own, and believe in with a romantic devotion. What he complains of, especially, is that this assault has been made, in the main, by men who are not “Anglo-Saxons” (the professor himself quotes the term: a touching concession to ethnological exactness)—that it has been largely led by men whose very Americanism, when they claim to be Americans at all, is open to question. When I say open to question, I mean, of course, by “Anglo-Saxon” Americans. Dr. Abbott seems to be firmly convinced that these are the only ones entitled to the name. They are the pure stock; their ancestors conquered the continent unaided. They alone partake of the true national spirit, and may be trusted to guard the national hearth. All other Americans are in the position of visitors, interlopers, relatives-in-law. They may become in time, if they are good, creditable assistant Americans, but they can no more enter into the full national heritage, as free equals, than they can lift themselves by their boot-straps. The American tradition, it appears, must forever remain a bit strange to them; they are the children, not of heroes, but of serfs. Thus it is no wonder that their political notions, when they make bold to state them, are exotic and subversive. They can imagine government only as a power above and beyond the citizen. If they are not in favor of kaiserism, then they are in favor of communism, which is simply kaiserism imposed from below. Their politics is essentially a slave politics. They stand opposed eternally to that self-reliant and somewhat pugnacious individualism which is the mark of the true “Anglo-Saxon.” If they ever come into power the Constitution will be destroyed and freedom will perish.
Dr. Abbott’s book, as I have said, is somewhat difficult; perhaps I misrepresent him in a few details. But in the main, I believe, I gather his doctrine correctly; it is, indeed, a doctrine that has grown very familiar. The Ku Klux has carried it into every hamlet in the land, and bolstered it with the authority of Holy Writ. I could, if I would, amuse myself by exhibiting the holes in it. Is it a fact, then, that the “Anglo-Saxons” conquered the continent unaided? What of the Spaniards and French? What of the Dutch and Germans? What of the Scotch-Irish? Is it a fact that they invented the American scheme of government? What of Rousseau? Is it a fact that all assaults upon that scheme have been made by assistant Americans? What of Jefferson, Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jeff Davis, Bryan? Is it a fact that all the enemies of the Constitution came from below the salt? What of the Eighteenth Amendment: does it damage the Bill of Rights more or less than the late Dr. La Follette’s vaporous schemes? Such questions suggest themselves in great variety. I could roll them off until you stood agape. But I have no desire to press a professor of history unduly; his authority, in the last analysis, cannot be upset by facts. And in the present case, whatever his errors in detail, it seems to me to be quite clear that the fundamental facts are on his side. There is unquestionably a difference between the “Anglo-Saxon” American and the non-“Anglo-Saxon”—a difference in their primary instincts, in their reactions to common stimuli, in their ways of looking at the world. And that difference, of late years, has come to the estate of a conflict, with the “Anglo-Saxon” striving to keep what he has—his point of view, his cultural leadership, his political hegemony—and the non-“Anglo-Saxon” trying to take it away from him. To deny that conflict is to fall into an absurdity far worse than any Dr. Abbott is guilty of. To admit it is to admit his clear right, nay, his bounden duty, to do battle for his side, passionately, desperately, and with any weapon at hand.
This he does in his book, and up to the limit of his forensic skill, which, I regret to have to add, is not noticeably great. If, at times, he grows a bit muddled, and even maudlin, then let us not hold the fact against him, for a man performing a pas seul upon a red-hot stove cannot be expected to achieve an impeccable step. It seems to me that this red-hot stove, at the moment, is under every conscious “Anglo-Saxon” in our great Republic—that he must be an insensate clod, indeed, if he does not feel the heat. The cultural leadership of the country is passing out of his hands, and he is beginning to lose even his political hegemony. I sat in the Democratic National Convention in 1924 as the Hon. Al Smith rolled up his votes, and watched the Ku Kluxers on the floor. They were transfixed with horror: if it was a comedy, then pulling tonsils is also a comedy. Dr. Abbott mentions Dreiser. The influence of Dreiser upon the literature of to-morrow in this land—upon all the youngsters who are now coming to maturity in the universities, and turning away from their ordained professors—will be a hundred times as potent as that of any New Englander now alive. Who is Dreiser? When the grandfathers of the Republic were hanging witches at Salem his forbears were raising grapes on the Rhine. Dr. Abbott professes history at Harvard. During the past ten years but one professor at that great university has materially colored the stream of ideas in America. He has since escaped abroad—and is a Spaniard. Every day a new Catholic church goes up; every day another Methodist or Presbyterian church is turned into a garage. But there is no need to labor the point. The fact is too obvious that the old easy dominance of the “Anglo-Saxon” is passing, that he must be up and doing if he would fasten his notions upon the generations to come. And the fact is equally obvious that his success in that emprise, so far, has been extremely indifferent—that, despite the great advantages that he enjoys, of position, of authority, of ancient right, he is making very heavy weather of it, and not even holding his own. I am frankly against him, and believe, as I have often made known, that he is doomed—that his opponents will turn out, in the long run, to be better men than he is. But I confess that I’d enjoy the combat more if he showed less indignation and more skill.
Dr. Abbott himself reveals many characteristic “Anglo-Saxon” weaknesses. His incoherence I have mentioned. There is also a downright inconsistency, often glaring. On one page he denounces all non-“Anglo-Saxons” as opponents of democracy; on another (for example, page 242) he denounces the fundamental tenets of democracy himself. This inconsistency is visible in nine “Anglo-Saxon” gladiators out of ten. What ails them all is that they have to defend democracy, and yet do not believe in it. Has any good “Anglo-Saxon” ever believed in it? I sometimes doubt it. Did Washington? Did John Adams? Jefferson did, but wasn’t there a Celtic strain in him—wasn’t he, after all, somewhat dubious, a sort of assistant American? In any case, the surviving Fathers were all apparently against him. In our own time how many “Anglo-Saxons” of the educated class actually believe in democracy? I know of none, and have heard of none. The late war revealed their true faith very brilliantly and even humorously. It was a crusade for democracy, and yet one of the shining partners was the late Czar of Russia! The assault upon the Kaiser was led by Roosevelt! The chief official enemy of absolutism was Wilson! No wonder the whole thing collapsed into absurdity. Dr. Abbott falls into a similar absurdity more than once. His book would be vastly more effective if he took all the idle prattle about democracy out of it, and grounded it upon the forthright doctrine that the “Anglo-Saxons,” having got here first, own the country, and have a clear right to impose political disabilities upon later comers—in other words, if he advocated the setting up of an “Anglo-Saxon” aristocracy, with high privileges and prerogatives, eternally beyond the reach of the mongrel commonalty. This, in point of fact, is what he advocates, however much he may cloud his advocacy in democratic terms. I call upon him with all solemnity to throw off his false-face and come out with the bald, harsh doctrine. There is more logic in it than in his present nonsense; he could preach it more powerfully and beautifully. More, he would get help from unexpected quarters. I can speak, of course, only for one spear. I might quibble and protest, but I’d certainly be sorely tempted.
7
Yazoo’s Favorite
AN OLD-FASHIONED SENATOR, by Harris Dickson. New York: The Frederick A. Stokes Company. [The Nation, October 14, 1925.]
Some time ago, essaying a literary survey of the Republic, I animadverted sadly upon the dreadful barrenness of the great State of Mississippi. Speaking as a magazine editor, I said that I had never heard of a printable manuscript coming out of it. Speaking as a frequenter of the Athenian grove, I said that I had never heard of it hatching an idea. Instantly there was an uproar from Iuka to Pascagoula. The vernacular press had at me with appalling yells; there were demands from the Ku Klux that I come down to Jackson and say it again; Kiwanis joined the Baptist Young People’s Society in denouncing me as one debauched by Russian gold. Worse, the Mississippi intelligentsia also had at me. Emerging heroically from the crypts and spring-houses where they were fugitive from Rotary, they bawled me out as ignorant and infamous. Had I never heard, they demanded, of Harris Dickson, the Mississippi Balzac? Had I never heard of John Sharp Williams, the Mississippi Gladstone?