I AM sure the Herr Director will not object if I have the last word; for while he was with me that privilege was seldom mine and obtained only by dint of strategy.

Since his departure, the great war which he prophesied has moved over Europe and hides every bit of fair and peaceful sky like a storm-cloud; its thunder and destructive lightning fill the air, leaving scarcely a place safe and undisturbed.

Not a soul is unafraid, not a heart is without pain and sorrow, and the Herr Director himself, although past middle age, has volunteered to serve in the trenches, slippery from oozing blood and foul from the spattered brains of men. The “fiddling, twiddling diplomats, the haggling, calculating merchants of Babylon, the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs” have had their way, and the poor, blind, ignorant millions, made mad by hate, do their brutal bidding.

We, on this safer side, who as yet have not loosed the dogs of war, have calculated the loss to Europe in the fratricidal slaughter of its most virile men, in the loss of its arts and trades, in the wreck and ruin to houses and homes and in the age-long poverty which awaits. Much counting has been done as to what we shall make out of this sure bankruptcy that is to come to the nations which are our competitors for the world’s trade, and what glory shall be ours when New York, and not London shall be the new Babylon, with power to make the “Epha small and the Shekel great.”

With the incalculable loss to the European nations there has come to some of them a gain in national unity upon which under no circumstances we may count.

It has been with no small sense of pride that I have demonstrated to the Herr Director and to others the fact that, in spite of our youth as a nation, and the varied national, linguistic and religious rootage of our population even in the Colonial period, we have grown to be one people. Even the constant inflow of new and more varied human material has not weakened us but indeed the sense of national unity has grown stronger. I have watched with joy the processes by which this alien element was becoming one with us, the fading away of animosities and inherited prejudices, and the making of a new people out of the world’s conglomerate.

The war has brought about a retardation of this process, and we shall have great cause for gratitude if no permanent damage is done to our nation’s spirit, a loss for which no possible gain in any direction could compensate. The term “Hyphenated American,” which has now come into use, if it indicates anything more than the place of a man’s national or racial origin, and the very natural sympathies arising therefrom, is an insult to the man to whom it is applied, and a confession of divided allegiance, if voluntarily assumed.

It may be interesting to note that it was His Majesty, the Emperor of Germany, who repudiated the hyphen when a German-American delegation called on him on the occasion of some royal anniversary.

When the delegation was introduced in this hyphenated manner, he said: “Germans I know, Americans I know, but German-Americans I do not know.”

Although the hyphen has always existed, it has assumed new meaning in these troubled days and is applied as a term of opprobrium, largely to Americans of German birth; people who have always been loyal to the country of their adoption, and, I think, are no less loyal now.

If there has been wavering in their devotion, if the process of yielding themselves to the ideals and interests of this country has been arrested, they are not altogether to blame, and we ourselves are not altogether blameless.

It was thoroughly in harmony with the American Spirit that our sympathies should go out to brave little Belgium, and turn from the ruthless conqueror who was much nearer to us culturally and in greater harmony with us spiritually. It was also natural for the German people in this country to challenge the evident bias of the press, and the resultant prejudices arising in the minds of their friends and neighbors. Being German they knew what a German soldier is capable of doing, and of what atrocities he is guiltless; although in the attempt to defend their people they in turn became as unfair as we, condoning every act of the Germans and besmirching their enemies.

How far this bias can carry one is illustrated by the German pastor in a neighboring town, one of the gentlest souls I know, who, when told of the destruction of the Lusitania, said: “Thanks be to God, let the good work go on.” He will not have to live very long to repent of this.

To match him I may quote a most lovable Quaker lady nearly ninety years of age, who, with a violence in striking contrast to the Quaker character, expressed as her dearest wish that she might be permitted to kill the Emperor of Germany, and I am almost sure she was not alone in that pious desire, even among the members of her family.

The German press and the German pulpit have fanned this reawakened Germanic spirit, not always from lofty motives, and many an editor and pastor have found this antagonism a source of revenue and a hope of perpetuating their influence.

If the American press both in its news and editorial columns has been painful reading to any one who loves fair play, it did not help him to turn to the German press, whose utterances were made more distressing by the fact that not infrequently they contained expressions bordering on treason. Had their editors lived in Germany and spoken of the Emperor in the same words which they applied to their President, their terms of imprisonment, if combined, would reach into eternity.

Even after the war the attempt will be made to keep alive this antagonism, and if possible to widen the breach. It will be a serious challenge to our national spirit, for I doubt that we can maintain a vital unity unless it represents one country, one people, and one language.

I know of no way in which to meet this danger effectively; but I do know that it is not through reprisals or punishments. Perhaps it is best to hope that at the close of the war we shall all recover our sanity. Certain it is that the American people have in the Germans in this country too valuable and powerful an element to alienate, and the German people who have made this country their home have too great a sense of the value of it and its institutions, to them and their children, to be willing to jeopardize the American Spirit, because of that which must be but a passing phase in the history of our poor, misguided, human race.

Besides the threatened break in unity, the American Spirit is being challenged by a call to arms, not merely to avert any momentary, threatened danger, but to be permanently safeguarded, prepared against its predatory neighbors all around the globe. Whether those who join in this call know it or not, or wish it or not, it means militarism. When just such arguments were used for Germany’s preparedness, when that gospel was being preached with all possible fervor, one of the wisest Germans said: “Wehrkraft wird immer Mehrkraft” (“Defensive power always becomes offensive power”), and I am sure that the average American will say that, in the case of Germany, this has proved true.

If I were arguing for military preparedness, I would not be so insistent upon the building of new fortresses, or the accumulation of ammunition. I would insist upon training our children in obedience and reverence. I would give them schoolmasters who know what they teach and who would demand strict application to the curriculum. I would oppose the growing pedagogic idea that the schoolroom is a playground, and that knowledge may be acquired without hard work. I would restore the rod and banish the coddler. I would call in our high school boys from the side lines, from their vicarious athletics and their slavish imitation of college customs, and teach them how to dig trenches and serve cannon, which seem to be the chief need in modern military operations.

It is folly to believe that the fiasco of the Russian armies was due to the lack of ammunition or of sufficient fortresses; it was due to the lack of good schools and to the lack of discipline among its educated classes.

With the decay of our pioneer spirit, which is inevitable, with the growth of a leisure class, with groups of men and women who know no other way to justify their existence than to play bridge or go to Tango teas; with a large class of people less unfortunately situated, who have to work for their living, but from whom the state asks nothing in the way of service except the payment of taxes which are easily evaded, it is a great question how to keep our virility and how to foster a patriotism which may be counted upon in the time of national danger. I am fairly sure that some other way than the militaristic way ought to be found. I am not sure that we shall find it; because only those who seek shall find.

There are some things we may profitably learn from Germany, and one is the maintenance of a state which by its very nature will compel devotion. A state deeply concerned with the well-being of every individual; a state which sees to it that impartial judgment shall be meted out, and that the scales do not tip to those who weight them with gold.

A state which eliminates graft and is able to train an efficient army of public servants is more likely to gain and keep the loyalty of its citizens than one which, although technically free, is shackled by corruption and graft, and which, while giving each man the power to become a king, places the major emphasis upon property rather than upon person. Yes, we have a great deal to do to be properly prepared, besides authorizing congress to spend millions for “reeking tube and iron shard.”

What I most fear for the American Spirit is the loss of that which makes it really American and truly Spirit, the loss of its democracy. I am confident that the form of our government is not endangered, and whatever military success may come to monarchic governments we shall not envy them their kings nor put ourselves in bondage to them. If this republic is still an experiment then we shall see the experiment through to the end as a republic.

I am also sure that we shall work out the problem which confronts us in the relationship between capital and labor, and that we shall create here an industrial democracy. The dissatisfaction with the present system is growing daily, even among the so-called privileged classes, and many a man, well favored by circumstances, is crying out with Walt Whitman, “By God! I will not have anything which others cannot have on the same terms.”

What I most dread is, that we shall be increasingly unable to be democratic in our spirit, in our relation to those who are in any marked way differentiated from us racially. Our caste system is daily growing in strength, the social taboos are increasing in number, the spirit is barred from moving freely among all classes and races, and thus is bound to perish.

The social boycott practiced against the Jews, and which is even more thorough here than it is in Russia, may be followed by an economic boycott, and what has but recently happened in Georgia makes such occurrences on a larger scale not impossible. The attitude of the American people both South and North towards the Negro is not growing better, and it will take more than all the brave optimism of Booker T. Washington to convince me that this is not true.

It is anything but the American Spirit which greets the Japanese and Chinese at the Pacific Coast, and the decadence of that spirit is daily creating for itself new victims for its prejudices and hates.

It seems to be a growing conviction that in order to foster our racial integrity and self-respect we need to have contempt for other people and make of them a sort of mental cuspidore.

I know the difficulty involved in this problem. I believe it is the most serious challenge which the American Spirit has to meet, and here and here alone I confess my doubt as to its ability to meet it.

This is no time, though, to turn doubt into despair, nor is it the time for the calling of conventions and the organization of societies. It is a time, however, for the strengthening of our faith in one another, for renewed allegiance to humanity no matter how it is encased, for a patriotism based upon something bigger than identity of race. It is a time for mutual forbearance, for the divine gift to see ourselves as others see us; for a supreme loyalty to our country, and a determination stronger than death to make this country capable of winning the loyalty of all its citizens.

It is a time to glory in being an American and to become desperately sure we have something in which to glory. Now as never before should there be serious self-examination to see whether we have not sinned against the Spirit.

This is the time to accept the Challenge of the American Spirit and prove that we are loyal enough to follow its guidance.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA