The essential quality of manhood in America was tested in all this business, and gave the lie direct alike to those Americans who were wont to sneer at the alien among us, and to the German autocracy which counted upon those of German descent in this country to prove disloyal to America. “The cosmopolitan composition of our population was never more strikingly disclosed,” says the Provost Marshal General, “than by the recent events of the World War. Then the melting pot stood in the fierce fires of the national emergency; and its contents, heated in the flames, either fused into the compact mass or floated off as dross.” And he goes on to say:[143]
The great and inspiring revelation here has been that men of foreign and of native origin alike responded to the call to arms with a patriotic devotion that confounded the cynical plans of our archenemy, and surpassed our own highest expectations. No man can peruse the muster roll of one of our camps, or the casualty list from a battlefield in France, without realizing that America has fulfilled one of its highest missions in breeding a spirit of common loyalty among all those who have shared the blessings of life on its free soil. No need to speculate how it has come about; the great fact is demonstrated that America makes Americans.
It is no part of the province of this volume to multiply words about the way in which these adopted citizens of every racial blood gave account of themselves in the thousand ways of war service under their new-pledged flag. That is history, which, as General Crowder said, can be read broad upon the face of every list of those who fell—foreign and native born side by side, their intermingling blood poured forth for “America.” The diary of a German officer, found on the battlefield,[144] tells what the common enemy found:
Only a few of the troops are of pure American origin.... But these semi-Americans fully feel themselves to be the true born sons of their country.
AN OLD PRACTICE WITH A NEW SIGNIFICANCE
Who shall forecast the effect of this wholesale admission of aliens to full citizenship and potential political power in the United States? How many of these men were among those whom, in earlier proceedings, the rigorous precautions of the past had kept at arm’s length? They came up in courts far from their home jurisdiction; no longer was the esteem of neighbor a prerequisite; no longer was it necessary to have lived even one year in any particular vicinage—or, indeed, to have any residence at all! There can be no checking up, even now, to see whether even a criminal record should have debarred the applicant; the Bureau of Naturalization was more than 500,000 behind in the examination of naturalization certificates even before this flood of new ones was poured in upon its overworked force!
In the old days, before the establishment of the Naturalization Service, there was hurried admission of thousands of aliens, regardless of qualifications, within short periods, and it was deemed a dreadful menace to our institutions. Of course this was very different from every point of view; but was the difference sufficient to guarantee real assimilation into the spirit that we like to believe characterizes sound American citizenship?
WHAT SOME JUDGES THOUGHT OF IT
The questions addressed by the Americanization Study in the summer of 1919 to the naturalizing judges throughout the country included this question:
Do you believe that the admission of large numbers of aliens under the Act of May 9, 1918, solely on the ground of military or naval service, without the usual requirements of residence, etc., operated on the whole to the advantage of the United States?