Part 24 (1/2)

For, look you, our inst.i.tutions invite every man to do his best. There is positively no position which a man of sufficient mind, energy, and character cannot obtain, no reward he cannot win. Everybody, therefore, is literally ”putting in his best licks” in America. In other countries there is in comparison a general atmosphere of ”what's the use?”--a comparative slumberousness of activity and effort.

Then, again, the American people are made up of the world's boldest spirits and the descendants of such. The Puritans, who gave force, direction, and elevation to our national thought and purpose, were the stoutest hearts, the most productive minds of their time. Their characteristics have not disappeared from their children.

The same is true, generally, but of course in an infinitely lesser degree, of most of our immigrants. Usually it is the nervy and imaginative men who go to a new country. Our own pioneers were endowed with daring and vision. They had the courage and initiative to leave the scarcely warmed beds of their new-made homes and push farther on into the wilderness.

The blue-eyed, light-haired Swede who, among all in his little Scandinavian village, decides to come to America, the Irishman who does the like, are, for the most part, the hopeful, venturesome, self-reliant members of their communities across the sea. The German who turns his face from the Fatherland, seeking a new home half across the world, brings us some of the most vigorous blood in the Kaiser's Empire. Such men believe in better things--have the will to try to get those better things.

Thus, the American Republic is an absorbent of the optimism of the world. We attract to ourselves the children of faith and hope among the common people of other nations. And these are the types we are after. They are the most vital, the least exhausted. I should not want ”the flower” of other nations to immigrate to our sh.o.r.es. Nature is through with them, and they must be renewed from below. Do not object to human raw material for our citizens.h.i.+p. One or two generations will produce the finished product.

What says Emerson:

”The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant the lord that shall be.

The lord is hay, the peasant gra.s.s, One dry and one the living tree.”

The purpose of our inst.i.tutions is to manufacture manhood.

Make it impossible for the criminal and diseased, the vicious and the decadent, to come to us; bar out those who seek our country merely because they cannot subsist in their own, and you will find that the remainder of our immigrants are valuable additions to our populations.

Don't despise these common people who come to us from other lands.

Don't despise the common people anywhere on earth. The Master did not go to the ”first citizens” for His followers. He selected the humblest. He chose fishermen. A promoter of a financial enterprise does not do this. But the Saviour was not a promoter; He was teacher, reformer, Redeemer.

Then, too, consider our imperial location on the globe. If all the minds of all the statesmen who ever lived were combined into one vast intellect of world-wisdom, and if this great composite brain should take an eternity to plan, it could not devise a land better located for power and world-dominance than the American Republic.

On the east is Europe, with an ocean between. This ocean is a highway for commerce and a fluid fortress for defense, an open gateway of trade and a bulwark of peace.

On the west is the Orient, with its mult.i.tude of millions. Between Asia and ourselves is again an ocean. And again this ocean is an invitation to effort and a condition of safety.

The Republic is thus enthroned between the two great oceans of the world. Its seat of power commands both Europe and Cathay.

On the north is slowly building a great people, developing a dominion as imperial as our own. The same speech and blood of kins.h.i.+p make certain the ultimate union with our vital brothers across our northern frontier.

To the south is a group of governments over whom the sheer operation of natural forces is already establis.h.i.+ng a sort of American oversight and suzerainty.

Mark, now, our harbors. Behold how cunningly the Master Strategist has placed along our coasts great ports from which communication with the ends of earth naturally radiates.

Consider, too, the sweep of the ocean's currents in relation to this country. Observe the direction and effect of the Gulf Stream, and of the great current of the Pacific seas upon our coasts. Follow on your map the direction of our rivers, and see how nicely Nature has designed the tracery of the Republic's waterways.

In short, ponder over the incomparable position of this America of yours--this home and country of yours--on the surface of the globe.

When you think of it, not only will your mind be uplifted in pride, but you will sink to your knees in prayerful grat.i.tude that the Father has given you such a land, with such opportunities, for your earthly habitation.

Attempt now to estimate our resources. Your mathematics are not equal to it. The available productivity of the Mississippi Valley exceeds the supply of all the fertile regions of fable or history. The country watered by the Columbia or the Oregon surpa.s.ses in wealth-producing power the valleys of the Nile or the Euphrates in ancient times.

Our deposits of coal and iron already under development are equalled nowhere on earth except perhaps by the unopened mines of China; and greater fields of ore and fuel than those which we are now working are known positively to exist within our dominions. The mere indexing of America's material possibilities well-nigh stuns credulity.

But all these are definite and physical things, things you can measure or weigh. More valuable than all of these combined are our American inst.i.tutions and our exalted National ideals.

You can meditate all day on the reasons for pride in your Americanism, and each reason you think of will suggest others. The examples I have given are only hints. Be proud of your Americanism, therefore--earnestly, aggressively, fervently proud of your Americanism.

I like to see patriotism have a religious ardor. It will put you in harmony with the people you are living among, which, I repeat, is the first condition of success.

Also it puts a vigor, manliness, mental productivity into you. Make it a practise, when going to your business or your work each morning, to reflect how blessed a thing it is to be an American, and why it is a blessed thing. Then observe how your backbone stiffens as you think, how your step becomes light and firm, how the very soul of you floods with a kind of sunlight of confidence.