XI
THE RISE OF IDEALISM IN AMERICAN SCIENCE
I must make a digression now, to arrange suitable contacts between the preceding parts of my narrative and its concluding chapters. The main object of my narrative has been to describe the rise of idealism in American science, and particularly in physical sciences and the related industries. I witnessed this gradual development; everything I have written so far is an attempt to qualify as a witness whose testimony has competence and weight. But there are many other American scientists whose opinions in this matter have more competence and weight than my opinion has. Why, then, should a scientist who started his career as a Serbian immigrant speak of the idealism in American science, when there are so many native-born American scientists who know more about this subject than I do? Those who have read my narrative so far may answer this question. I shall only point out now that there are certain psychological elements in this question which justify me in the belief that occasionally an immigrant can see things which escape the attention of the native. Seeing is believing; let him speak who has the faith, provided he has a message to deliver.
A foreign-born citizen of the United States has many occasions to sing praises of the virtues of this country which the native-born citizen has not. Such occasions arise whenever the foreign-born citizen revisits his native land and hears opinions about America which are based upon European prejudice born of ignorance. On these occasions he can, if the spirit moves him, say many things with much more grace than a native American could. The spirit will move him if his naturalization means that he knows America’s traditions and embraces their precepts with sincere enthusiasm. Statements which, coming from a native American, might sound as boasts and bragging, may and often do sound different when they are made by a naturalized American citizen. I have had quite a number of experiences of this kind; one of them deserves mention here.
Four years ago, while visiting my native land, I was invited to attend a festive public meeting in a town not far from my native village. It was the town of Panchevo, where in my boyhood days I went to school, and where from my Slovenian teacher, Kos, I had heard for the first time of Benjamin Franklin and of his kite. The earliest parts of this narrative show that many memories of my boyhood days had nourished in my heart an affectionate regard for this historic town. Panchevo reciprocated, and hence the invitation. There was another reason. In March of 1919, the chairman of the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris peace conference invited me to go to Paris, expecting that with my knowledge of the English language and of the Anglo-Saxon mentality I could probably assist the delegation in its work. I spent seven weeks in Paris. The result, I was assured by Premier Pashitch of Serbia, was very satisfactory; and he invited me to go to Belgrade as guest of the government, for the purpose of studying the condition of the war orphans in Serbia. This study resulted in the organization of the Serbian Child Welfare Association of America, whose splendid work is known and appreciated in every part of the Serbian nation. When Panchevo heard that I was in Belgrade it sent me the invitation.
The literary society of Panchevo, called the Academy, had arranged a gala public session, and the occasion was the “Wilson Day,” which the town was celebrating. The orator of the day was a young Slovene, a learned lawyer and man of letters. The subject of his oration was: “President Wilson and his fourteen points.” He wound up his splendid eulogy of President Wilson by exclaiming: “President Wilson is an oasis of idealism in the endless desert of materialism.” The image of my old friend Bilharz, the hermit of Cortlandt Street, suddenly appeared before me, and his favorite phrase “American materialism” rang violently in my ears. I was afraid that the United States of America would be understood to be a part of the endless desert mentioned by the speaker, and the possibility of such an inference I did not like. A most enthusiastic and long-continued applause greeted this oratorical climax, and before the applause was over the chairman, who was the mayor of the town, approached me and asked whether I should like to address a few words to the great assembly of the intellectuals of the town. “I not only like to do it,” said I, “but I insist upon it.” The chairman looked pleased, because he could not help observing that the orator’s concluding figure of speech had stirred me up considerably, and that my response to it might add a few lively notes to the rather monotonous programme of the Academy session.
I repeat here some of the sentiments which I expressed on that occasion:
President Wilson is an idealist, and his idealism commands my deepest respect and admiration. I deny, however, that he represents an “oasis of idealism in an endless desert of materialism,” that is, if the United States of America are understood to be a part of this endless desert. I am sure that in this town, liberated only a few months ago from the Austrian yoke, the expression “materialism” cannot refer to the United States of America. Two million American soldiers were fighting on the Western front when, a few months ago, the armistice was signed; several million more were waiting in America for their turn to join the ranks of the allied armies in France. American industries and American savings made a supreme effort to brace up the allied cause, and the war was won. Go to Paris now and watch the proceedings at the peace conference, as I was doing during the last seven weeks, and you will find that America asks for no territories, for no mandates, and for no onerous compensations. It is the only great power there which preaches moderation, and demands unreservedly full justice for the little nations. Yugoslav Dalmatia, Istria, Goricia, and Fiume had been, in a period of stress, bartered away by some of our allies; America is to-day the only fearless champion of your claims to these Yugoslav lands. American men and women hastened to every front, and there, amid many perils and discomforts, they nursed the sick and the wounded. They fed the hungry and clothed the naked and the destitute. This they did even before America had entered the world war. Need I remind you that it was an American mission which, in 1915, saved Serbia from the destructive ravages of typhus, and that several Americans, victims of these very ravages, are now buried in Serbia’s soil? To-day you will find Americans even in the countries of our former enemies, in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, doing the work of mercy and of charity. The name of Hoover is just as well known and beloved in Vienna and Budapest as it is in Belgium. A country of materialism cannot display that spirit which America has displayed during this war. Let the idealism of President Wilson remind you of American idealism.
The phrase “American materialism” is an invention of ill-informed Europe; but the European who has lived in the United States, and has had the good fortune to catch the spirit of America, revolts whenever he hears the untutored European mind utter that phrase. Read the history of the United States from its earliest beginnings, when the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, three hundred years ago, and you will find that idealism runs through it from beginning to end. The Pilgrim fathers themselves were idealists, who undertook the perilous voyage “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.”
A hundred and fifty years later the Continental Congress of the colonies issued, at Philadelphia, the “Declaration of Colonial Rights,” and this declaration, as well as the documents accompanying it and addressed to the people of the United Kingdom and of British America, breathes the spirit of lofty idealism. The same Congress in 1775 issued another declaration, setting forth causes which forced the American colonies to take up arms; and in 1776 it issued the Declaration of Independence, which announced to the world the ideals for the attainment of which the colonists were ready to sacrifice their lives. No other human documents ever stated so clearly and so definitely the “divine right of man” as these documents did. The men who composed these documents were not ordinary men; they were idealists of the highest type. Read the lives of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jay, Jefferson, and of other leaders of the American Revolutionary period, and you will find what a wonderful power idealism has when the destiny of a young nation hangs in the balance. But when the struggle was over, after the victory had been won, the leader of the new nation, immortal Washington, assumed the supreme executive office of the land and retired from it after two terms of service with a spirit of dignity and of humility which has no equal in human history. His Farewell Address to the American people, advocating the practice of idealism by the cultivation of religion, morality, patriotism, good faith, and justice toward all nations, is an echo of the voice of idealism which was the driving power of the American Revolution.
The idealism of the Revolutionary period was the guiding star of the American patriots of the stormy period preceding the Civil War. One of them, Daniel Webster, was a youth of seventeen when Washington died, and he knew personally some of the great leaders of the Revolutionary period, like Jefferson and Adams. He certainly caught by direct contact the idealism of this period. Read his speeches, as I have read them during my apprenticeship days in America, and you will understand what I mean by American idealism, if this war has not shown it to you better than any words of mine can do it. Webster’s idealism was in the hearts of men of his generation, who, under the great leadership of Lincoln, one of the greatest among American idealists, conducted the Civil War and preserved the American Union. Lincoln’s immortal words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” will forever remind the world of the idealism which was in the hearts of the American people who fought for the preservation of the American Union. President Wilson is one of the best biographers of George Washington, and he also published a splendid study of the constitutional government of the United States. No profound student of these themes can escape becoming an exalted idealist. His speeches, which during the World War he addressed to the American people and to the whole world, are sermons on American idealism, which have guided the people of the United States from the very beginning of their history; but some of you in Europe never understood it. The world war has made you eager to listen to every word which inspires your anxious hearts with new hopes. President Wilson’s words and his acts at the Paris peace conference inspire you with these new hopes, and hence this Wilson Day, an honor to him and a credit to you. In honoring him you are honoring the idealism of the American people, for which act I am most grateful to you.
It was here in Panchevo that I first heard of Benjamin Franklin, nearly fifty years ago; to-day I deliver to you, people of Panchevo, a greeting from Franklin’s native land and a message that the cultivation of American idealism is the most powerful arm for the defense of the destiny of your young nation.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong, our military attaché in Belgrade at that time, was present at the meeting. He did not understand a word of my address, because it was delivered in Serbian, but he assured me that, judging by appearances, it must have been at least as good as my address in Princeton in the beginning of the World War in 1914; he was then a senior at Princeton College. The Princeton address was a eulogy of Serbian idealism, which I had imported into America when I landed at Castle Garden in 1874; the Panchevo address was a eulogy of American idealism, which I had brought back to Panchevo forty-five years later. I must confess, however, that, twenty-five years earlier, the above address was delivered in substance to Protoyeray Zhivkovich, the poet-priest of Panchevo, when after graduating at Columbia in 1883 I returned for the first time to my native village. On that occasion the poet said, and here I quote from an earlier chapter of my narrative: