The Unpopular Review

No. 19

JULY-SEPTEMBER

Vol. X

NATURALIZATION IN THE SPOTLIGHT OF WAR

Amid the manifold uncertainties into which the war has plunged us, one fact stands out with increased definiteness—that in our midst, and even voting on our policies, of life or death,—we have had for many years large numbers of people who at best give only a divided allegiance to this country, and at worst are devoted and violent partisans of some foreign state. The evidence of this truth has been of the most diversified character, including the destruction of warehouses, docks, and munitions factories, the burning of immense quantities of food, the manufacture of ineffective torpedoes, the attempted blowing up of war ships, and the dissemination of disease germs among children, soldiers, and cattle. The uniform object of all these activities has been the decrease of the war efficiency of the United States. The indications seem conclusive that the perpetrators have been, not special German spies or agents sent over here after our entry into the war or in anticipation of it, but among the candidates for Mr. Gerard’s five thousand lampposts—persons who have lived in our midst for long periods, and have been accepted as belonging to us.

So suddenly overwhelming has been the demonstration since the war began, and particularly since the United States entered the war, that there is great danger that the impression will become established that the war created the situation, that the danger is a war danger, and that the problem will automatically solve itself when the war is over. Nothing could be more prejudicial to a correct understanding of the situation, and to a sound solution of the national problems which will confront us when the war is over. The war has not created the danger from alien-hearted members of the body politic, it has merely revealed it. The situation is the creation of our traditional policy toward foreigners, and the menace inherent in the situation existed, and was discerned by many close students of political affairs, long before the war was dreamed of. Although then the manifestations of this danger were less spectacular, the danger itself was no less persistent, pervasive, and insidious. When Carl Petersen is triumphantly inducted into municipal office, not because he is a Republican or a Democrat, not because he stands thus and so on important public questions, but because he is a Swede; when Patrick O’Donnell is made detective sergeant, not because he has the highest qualifications of all the men available, but because he belongs to the same Irish lodge as the chief of police; when Salvini, and Goldberg, and Trcka receive political preferment or judicial favor because of the race from which they spring or the nation from which they come, the essence of the peril is exactly the same as when Hans Ahlberg tries to sink an American merchantman because its cargo of wheat is destined for England instead of Germany.