Anglo-Saxon Solidarity

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Yes, I know the American of Scotch or English descent is likely to say that this is an Anglo-Saxon country, and that the Germans and Irishmen and other Europeans did not have to come here. When they did come, it was up to them to forget old ties and become assimilated with us. We have the right to justify close ties with Great Britain on the ground of "blood is thicker than water," but they have not that right in regard to their countries of origin. In 1914 this contention was put squarely before Americans of European origin. We forget now that it was never admitted by them, and that the remarkable union of the American nation, after we went into the war, did not mean, among Americans of other than Anglo-Saxon origin, the abandonment of affection for, of pride in, their own ancestors. They refuse to accept the brand of hyphenate, arguing that, until the country of origin became the enemy of the United States, they had as much right to feel sympathetic toward it and even help its cause as did the Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin to sympathize with and help Great Britain. Now that the war is over, these non-Anglo-Saxons say to us, "If in your tercentenary celebrations you insist on blood relationship, do not speak for the United States. We resent that and deny your right. Speak only for your own element in the American population."

We Anglo-Saxons cannot expect to denounce Ireland and even Germany and affirm our affection for and championship of England on the ground of blood relationship, as is being done in almost every tercentenary celebration, and expect our right to speak for the United States not to be contested. Unfortunately, this is not "our country." The United States, from the beginning, contained elements without a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, and Germans, Irishmen, and Hollanders fought in the Revolutionary War. Throughout the nineteenth century the United States relied for her growth and expansion upon European immigration, and the large part of the Irish and German elements came to this country before the Civil War. The United States is not our (Anglo-Saxon) country either because of the great preponderance of people of our unmixed blood or because the Anglo-Saxon element founded it exclusively and made it what it is. The greatness of the United States in the third decade of the twentieth century is due to the combined aid of several different elements of her population, and it is certain that we could not have dispensed with either the German or the Irish element. And these elements are so numerous and so powerful in wealth and political influence that it is inexpedient—to use a mild word—to ignore or affront them in our tercentenary writing and speaking. It does not help the cause of Anglo-Saxon solidarity for a tercentenary orator to denounce the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans. Quite the contrary. Thoughtless speakers who indulge in such diatribes and enthusiastic listeners who beam approval are digging the grave and assisting at the interment of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.

On a Sunday morning in January, 1915, I went to service at an Anglican church in Cairo. After the prayers for the king and the royal family, the minister prayed for the President of the United States. I knew, of course, that this beautiful and graceful custom holds in many Anglican chapels on the Continent which American tourists attend, and I suppose it was introduced in Cairo for the same reason. But in wartime, when we were neutral and when there were no tourists in Cairo, the prayer touched me deeply. It was an evidence of the close relationship between my country and Great Britain, closer than between Great Britain and her allies. I sat through a dull sermon, thinking of what a privilege it was for an American to share in the advantages of the unique position of the British Empire. Travel where I would in the world, I could use my own language and attend my own church and hear my country remembered in prayer. Common language and common faith, common laws and customs and common ideals—does the untraveled American appreciate the wealth of his Anglo-Saxon heritage and the vast privileges it confers upon him?

But on another American correspondent who was not of Anglo-Saxon origin this incident made no impression, and he did not follow me in prizing the heritage. "Language is a lucky convenience," he admitted, "but the English are foreigners to me. I feel nothing in common with them, nothing at all." He went on to say that he regarded the British as a more dangerous enemy than the Germans, and that our next war would be with them. My friend was a high-minded and intelligent American who had been to school in England and also in France. In temperament he was more emotional than I; he loved music and architecture and handled carpets reverently. But his American blood—three or four generations—gave him no feeling of kinship with the English. I realized, when it came to the test of liking for a European country, that his sympathies were instinctively with Germany, while mine were as instinctively with England. Why? The difference in our blood and background of tradition. Later this correspondent rendered splendid service in the A. E.F. But he was fighting for the United States alone, and more than once told me that he would do everything in his power, after the war, to keep the United States from "falling in the orbit," as he put it, of the British Empire.

It will do us no good to discount the importance of our compatriots who are not of Anglo-Saxon blood. If we want to make Anglo-Saxon solidarity a national policy instead of a group cult, we shall have to find an appeal to the American public different from that of the orators and writers who speak in these days of our ancestors, our common blood, our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. Nor is the superiority of Anglo-Saxon culture an argument that impresses many outside of our group. It smacks too much of a discredited political system that sought to replace or dominate other cultures by the Kulture of the Uebermensch. Some of the tercentenary orators come dangerously near plagiarizing the ex-Kaiser.

Culture is a vague word. If it means traditions and customs and mental habits as embodied in our literature and preserved in our family life, we shall find many other American elements than the German unwilling to abandon for our culture what they brought here from the Old World. Thousands of flourishing communities exist in the United States, nurseries of splendid Americans, where the new generation is being brought up with traditions and customs and mental habits very different from those of Anglo-Saxons. From Scandinavians to Italians, elements of continental European origin are not giving up their culture for Anglo-Saxon culture. So strong are atavism, the home circle, and the church that our public-school system does not Anglo-Saxonize the children. I used to believe in this assimilation and to write that it was being accomplished. Experience, especially with officers and soldiers of the A.E.F., has taught me that I was wrong.

If millions upon millions of Americans are ignorant of or indignantly reject the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity lovingly dwelt upon by tercentenary orators and writers, what are we going to do about it? We cannot tell Hans Schmidt, Giuseppe Tommasi, Abram Einstein, Olaf Andersen, Robert Emmet O'Brien, and a dozen others that they are not good Americans because they do not cheerfully accept the supremacy of the Scotch and English among us and the superiority of Scotch and English ways. Nothing could be better fitted to arouse within them a fierce determination to resist assimilation and oppose the policy of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.

Here is our problem. We of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, whose ancestors came to America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have never been accused of hating ourselves and being oblivious to our origin. We have overloaded the Mayflower and over-populated Virginia and given William Penn a host of intimate friends. From the time of Washington Irving we have become more and more reconciled with our British cousins, and have learned to build our traditions from long before the Revolutionary War. We have become aware of our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. At the outbreak of the World War we celebrated a hundred years of peace with Great Britain. Then we entered the war, and fought with the British against a common enemy.

Now, after the victory, we come to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. We are more than ever glad of our blood and traditions. We are immensely proud of the British stock from which we sprang. How the deeds of the British on land and sea quickened our pulses as we read of them! A privileged few of us saw and shared in them. More important still, during the war, there were times when we realized that Anglo-Saxondom was threatened with an eclipse of glory and influence. A thing is never so precious as when you are faced with losing it. Will any reader of this article ever forget the awful sensation that came when he read the first bulletins of the Battle of Jutland? No Anglo-Saxon could be indifferent about the outcome of the war after that experience. The aftermath of the war has not dispelled, but rather confirmed, the instinct of danger felt during the war. We say to ourselves that the British Empire and the United States must face the future together. How are we going to create an irresistible public opinion in the United States in favor of a foreign policy that will embody as one of its cardinal principles the fostering of Anglo-Saxon solidarity? What are the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity?

I think I have proved that the elements of our population which are not Anglo-Saxon do not take much stock in Anglo-American community of blood and culture and history because they are not bases to them. Their blood is not ours, their culture is different, and American history gives them ground for antagonism to the British rather than sympathy with the British. The earlier English history they did not share. Other grounds must be sought to convince the American nation that it is a part of Anglo-Saxondom and should work for the union and prosperity of Anglo-Saxondom. The only cultural basis that has a wider appeal than simply to one of several American groups is the question of common language.