A great many persons are disposed to compare the present state of central and eastern Europe with the conditions in France at the time of the French Revolution. I, for one, am not at all impressed by this easy explanation. The French Revolutionists represented and advocated a movement toward democracy for all Europe. Both the Germans and Russians have burst out upon us shouting that, in their peculiar system of tyranny and slavery, they had something better than democracy to proffer us. The average reading American throws up his hands and cries, "What in Heaven's name, will China next urge upon us, or Africa?"
What has happened to us is, after all, upon reflection, quite simple. We are placed on the defensive for democracy. And we have wisely given over trying to urge our point of view and our peculiar system upon those who not only reject it but openly despise it. No doubt this has been a severe shock to our ancient national conceit. Let me again emphasize that democracy seems to be, for the present, limited to the boundaries of certain peculiar nations. Other peoples may evolve into democracy later. But their steps will be slow. Their experience will be gained gradually. We can not help them much, if at all, by urging them merely to follow our example. Meanwhile, if there be anything precious in democracy for us, we had better bestir ourselves to save what we have left of it.
Foreign Outposts in the United States
Four distinct national elements in the United States showed, in lesser or greater part, disloyalty and pro-Germanism during the War. These were the Germans, the Jewish Bolsheviki, the Sinn-Feiners, and the French-Canadians. Of course these four were no different from most other foreign-speaking elements. Only their standpoints and loyalties were clearly brought out by the war—that was all. Italian or Portuguese, Greek or Slav, in case their home country had been lined up against the United States, would have acted in just the same way.
Here we must touch upon a fact which is pretty widely known or taken for granted. There is a fundamental difference between this later immigration and that of the middle portion of the nineteenth century. The Germans, Hungarians, and Italians of 1848-70, for instance, came to America for the same reason as most of the original British and Irish. They were seeking freedom and democracy. Their purposes were idealistic. They sought in the new country not only economic opportunity but political liberty which were denied them in the old. They were Americans at heart before they left their old home.
The new immigration is totally different. This later swarm has come mostly to get jobs and money. Among them, no doubt, there are a few who are gifted with qualities of mind and character which make this description inapplicable. I am referring to the many, not the few. In Southern and Eastern Europe they form the lowest grade of the working class and include a large percentage of beggars and peddlers, of thieves and criminals. The average immigrant of this sort has been accustomed to a condition of poverty unknown to, and almost unimaginable to, the average American. His physical standards of living are such as to make his competition with the original American worker unfair and deadly. Great masses of them have come without the slightest intention of remaining with us and adopting American standards. Herded together under the most unsanitary conditions, hoarding up their wages with a greed incomprehensible to an American, crowds of them rush back to the country of their origin as soon as their savings are sufficient for their purposes. Meanwhile they are replaced by others until the standards of living of the American-born wage-earners are hopelessly undermined. Each immigrant who comes to us under these conditions prevents the founding of an American home and the birth of American children. Let us hasten to add that their coming and going can not in any way be held as an accusation against themselves. Responsibility lies entirely with us. Employers who bring them over, or prevent their rejection, under the conditions stated, are guilty of a monstrous crime against civilization. This crime is comparable to only one other in our history—the African slave-trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
