At least twenty millions of people have come full grown into our national life from the steerage, the womb out of which so many of us were born into this newer life. Most of us came to build and not to destroy; we came as helpers and not exploiters; we brought virtues and vices, much good and ill, and that, not because we belonged to this or the other national or racial group, but because we were human.
It is as easy to prove that our coming meant the ill of the nation as that it meant its well-being. To appraise this fully is much too early; it is a task which must be left to our children’s children, who will be as far removed from to-day’s scant sympathies as from its overwhelming prejudices.
The great war has swung us into the current of world events, and it ought to bring us a larger vision of the forces and processes which shape the nations and make their peoples. As yet we are thinking hysterically rather than historically, and the indications are that we may not learn anything, nor yet unlearn, of which we have perhaps the greater need.
Thus far we have become narrower rather than broader, for the feeling towards our alien population is growing daily less generous, and our treatment of it less wise.
Nor am I sure in what wisdom consists; the situation is complex; for we are the Balkan with its national, racial and religious contentions. We are Russia with its Ghetto, its Polish and Finnish problem. We are Austria and Hungary with their linguistic and dynastic difficulties. We are Africa and Asia; we are Jew and Gentile; we are Protestant and Greek, and Roman Catholic. We are everything out of which to shape the one thing, the one nation, the one people.
Yet I am sure that we cannot teach these strangers the history of their adopted country, and make it their own, unless we teach them that our history is theirs as well as ours, and that their traditions are ours, at least as far as they touch humanity generally, and convey to all men the blessings which come from the struggle against oppression and superstition.
In their inherited, national prejudices, in their racial hates, in their tribal quarrels, we wish to have no share, except as we hope to help them forget the old world hates in the new world’s love.
None of us who have caught a vision of what America may mean to the world wish to perpetuate here any one phase of Europe’s civilization or any one national ideal.
Although our institutions are rooted in English history, though we speak England’s language and share her rich heritage of spiritual and cultural wealth, we do not desire to be again a part of England, or nourish here her ideals of an aristocratic society.
In spite of the fact that for nearly three hundred years a large part of our population has been German, and that our richest cultural values have come from Germany, in spite of her marvellous resources in science, commerce and government, we do not care to become German, and I am sure that Americans of German blood or birth would be the first to repudiate it, should Germany’s civilization threaten to fasten itself upon us.