In contrast with the equivocal loyalty of Germans who have sought to perpetuate and accentuate the hyphen, it is a pleasure to testify to the admirable spirit with which the Jewish people in these Western States have repeatedly manifested their devotion to America. Many of these are of German birth or the children of German immigrants, and yet I am aware of no instance of a German Jew in the region most familiar to me who has not warmly supported the American cause. They have not only given generously to the Red Cross and to funds for French and Belgian relief, quite independently of their efforts in behalf of people of their own race in other countries, but they have rendered most important aid in all other branches of war activities. No finer declaration of whole-hearted Americanism has been made by any American of German birth than that expressed (significantly at Milwaukee) by Mr. Otto H. Kahn, of New York, last January:
Until the outbreak of the war, in 1914, I maintained close and active personal and business relations in Germany. I was well acquainted with a number of the leading personages of the country. I served in the German army thirty years ago. I took an active interest in furthering German art in America. I do not apologize for, nor am I ashamed of, my German birth. But I am ashamed—bitterly and grievously ashamed—of the Germany which stands convicted before the high tribunal of the world’s public opinion of having planned and willed war, of the revolting deeds committed in Belgium and northern France, of the infamy of the Lusitania murders, of innumerable violations of The Hague conventions and the law of nations, of abominable and perfidious plotting in friendly countries, and shameless abuse of their hospitality, of crime heaped upon crime in hideous defiance of the laws of God and man.
A curious phase of this whole situation is the fact that so many thousands of Germans who found the conditions in their own empire intolerable and sought homes in America, should have fostered a sentimental attachment for the fatherland as a land of comfort and happiness, and of its ruler as a glorious Lohengrin afloat upon the river of time in a swan-boat, in an atmosphere of charm and mystery, to the accompaniment of enchanting music. In their clubs and homes they so dreamed of this Germany and talked of it in the language of the land of their illusion that the sudden transformation of their knight of the swan-boat into a war lord of frightfulness and terror, seeking to plant his iron feet upon an outraged world, has only slowly penetrated to their comprehension. It is clear that there has been on America’s part a failure, that cannot be minimized or scouted, to communicate to many of the most intelligent and desirable of all our adopted citizens, the spirit of that America founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln, and all the great host who in their train—
“spread from sea to sea
A thousand leagues the zone of liberty,
And gave to man this refuge from his past,
Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.”
IV
In closing these papers it seems ungenerous to ignore the criticisms with which they were favored during their serial publication. To a gentleman in Colorado who insists that my definition and use of Folks and “folksiness” leave him in the dark as to my meaning, I can only suggest that a visit to certain communities which I shall be glad to choose for him, in the States of our central basin, will do much for his illumination. An intimation from another quarter that those terms as I have employed them originated in Kentucky does not distress me a particle, for are not we of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois first cousins of the people across the Ohio? At once some one will rise to declare that all that is truly noble in the Middle West was derived from the Eastern States or from New England, and on this question I might with a good conscience write a fair brief on either side. With one Revolutionary great-grandfather, a native of Delaware, buried in Ohio, and another, a Carolinian, reposing in the soil of Kentucky, I should be content no matter where fell the judgment of the court.
To the complaint of the Chicago lady who assailed the editor for his provincialism in permitting an Easterner to abuse her city, I demur that I was born and have spent most of the years of my life within a few hours of Chicago, a city dear to me from long and rather intimate acquaintance and hallowed by most agreeable associations. The Evening Post of Chicago, having found the fruits of my note-book “dull” as to that metropolis, must permit me to plead that in these stirring times the significant things about a city are not its clubs, its cabarets, or its galloping “loop-hounds,” but the efforts of serious-minded citizens of courage and vision to make it a better place to live in. The cynicism of those to whom the contemplation of such efforts is fatiguing, lacks novelty and is only tolerable in so far as it is a stimulus to the faithful workers in the vineyard.