CHARLES E. HUGHES 185 maintain truth and fair dealing and will not tolerate cant or sham. This is so largely true that it may be treated as the rule, and regrettable departures from it as the exception. But a larger sympathy and appreciation are needed. The young man who goes out into life favorably disposed toward those who have had much the same environment and opportunity may still be lacking in the broader sympathy which should embrace all his fellow countrymen. He may be tolerant and democratic with respect to those who, despite differences in birth and fortune, he may regard as kindred spirits, and yet in his relation to men at large, to the great majority of his fellow beings, be little better than a snob. Or despite the camaraderie of college intercourse he may have developed a cynical disposition or an intellectual aloofness, which while not marked enough to interfere with success in many vocations, or to disturb his conventional relations, largely disqualifies him from aiding his community as a publicspirited citizen. The primary object of education is to emancipate; to free from superstition, from the tyranny of worn-out notions, from the prejudices, large and small, which enslave the judgment. His study of history and of the institutions of his country has been to little purpose if the college man has not caught the vision of democracy and has not been joined by the troth of heart and conscience to the great human brotherhood which is working out its destiny in this land of opportunity. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. Why do more poor boys go to our state universities than to the large eastern universities? 2. Who is Charles E. Hughes? THE PILGRIMS' RELIGION AS A GUIDE FOR TO-DAY* GUSTAV A. CARSTENSEN Guizot has said that democracy came into Europe in the little boat which brought St. Paul. Even so the charter framed in the cabin of the Mayflower for the government of the Pilgrim Colony has been the cornerstone of American liberty and the inspiration of liberalizing governments all over the world. The fathers are gone; but their children are "princes in all the earth." It is a commonplace of history that the basic principle of our government is that of the New England townmeeting; and it is just as true that the power behind that great Puritan movement which Carlyle called "the last great heroism of the world" was the Bible. The power which shattered the absolutism of the Stuarts was the power which struck Plymouth Rock and made it the American Horeb. Herein lay the inherent strength of the Pilgrim Fathers. A world which is burdened with sin and groaning in misery will not be helped by any system which evaporates in sentiment or crystalizes in selfishness, or caters to human weaknesses. What we admire and need to emulate in the Pilgrim Fathers is their sturdy devotion and singleness of purpose which never encountered obstacles but to conquer them, and their unflinching loyalty to the truth as they understood it. No perilous voyage over a dreary waste of ocean, no struggle with cold and hunger and illness and death, no dangers of marauding savages confront us but we are beset with perils just as real and more insidious: the peril of self *From a sermon preached at Trinity Church, New York, on Sunday, December 21, 1919. GUSTAV A. CARSTENSEN 187 seeking; the peril of cowardly compromise; the peril of easy-going indifference; the peril of a blind optimism without reason and without objective which means complacent idleness. The world is hungry for what real Christianity has to give and what it has a right to expect of us—the reality of human fellowship, the highest and best of human culture, the safest and sanest scheme of human living. That is the "Gospel of the Secular Life." It does not guarantee protection against earthquake, fire and flood; it does not insure success in business, or social standing. It may not raise a crop or even fill a church. It does not promise immunity from hell fire, nor guarantee a blissful self-satisfying heaven. It makes no appeal to men absorbed in money grabbing amusements, politics, socialism, Bolshevism or anything which promises only material gain. The uncompromising cross looms up before men and summons them to self-surrender and sacrifice and service as it never has before. I invoke that spirit which your fathers' bequeathed to you; the spirit of that soldier of Bennington who said, "Boys, we win this battle, or to-night Mollie Stark sleeps a widow." I invoke the spirit of the old Quaker poet who fought to kill black slavery and when his earthly course was nearly done sat in his house at Danvers and wrote: "And so beside the silent sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. "I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air, I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care." QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. Is the author of this selection as specific as he might be? 2. Does he not deal in "glittering generalities"? THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMMIGRANT ON AMERICA* WALTER EDWARD WEYL We must not forget that these men and women who file through the narrow gates at Ellis Island, hopeful, confused, with bundles of misconceptions as heavy as the great sacks upon their backs-we must not forget that these simple, rough-handed people are the ancestors of our descendants, the fathers and mothers of our children. So it has been from the beginning. For a century a swelling human stream has poured across the ocean, fleeing from poverty in Europe to a change in America. Englishman, Welshman, Scotchman, Irishman, German, Swede, Norwegian, Jew, Italian, Bohemian, Serb, Syrian, Hungarian, Pole, Greek-one race after another has knocked at our doors, been given admittance, has married us and begot our children. We could not have told by looking at them whether they were to be good or bad progenitors, for racially the cabin is not above. the steerage, and dirt, like poverty and ignorance, is but skin-deep. A few years, and the stain of travel has left the immigrant's cheek; a few years, and he loses the odor of alien soils; a generation or two, and these outlanders are irrevocably our race, our nation, our stock. That stock, a little over a century ago, was almost pure British. True, Albany was Dutch, and many of the signs in the Philadelphia streets were in the German language. Nevertheless, five-sixths of all the family names collected in 1790 by the census authorities were *By permission of Mrs. Walter E. Weyl. WALTER EDWARD WEYL 189 pure English, and over nine-tenths were British. Despite the presence of Germans, Dutch, French and Negroes, the American was essentially an Englishman once removed, an Englishman stuffed with English traditions, prejudices, and stubbornnesses, reading English books, speaking English dialects, practising English law and English evasions of the law, and hating England with a truly English hatred. In all but a political sense America was still one of "His Majesty's dominions beyond the sea." Even after immigration poured in upon us, the English stock was strong enough to impress upon the immigrating races its language, laws, and customs. Nevertheless, the incoming millions profoundly altered our racial structure. To-day over thirty-two million Americans are either foreign-born or of foreign parentage. No longer an Anglo-Saxon cousin, America has become the most composite of nations. America to-day is in transition. We have moved rapidly from one industrial world to another, and this progress has been aided and stimulated by immigration. The psychological change, however, which should have kept pace with this industrial transition, has been slower and less complete. It has been retarded by the very rapidity of our immigration and by the tremendous educational tasks which that influx placed upon us. The immigrant is a challenge to our highest idealism, but the task of Americanizing the extra millions of newcomers has hindered progress in the task of democratizing America. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. Is there a settlement of foreign-born people near your home? 2. Is your attitude toward them friendly and helpful? 3. What do you believe to be your duty in regard to them? |