CHAPTER VITHE SPIRIT OF THE WEST

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.—Emerson.

MUCH water has flowed under the bridge since these papers were undertaken, and I cheerfully confess that in the course of the year I have learned a great deal about the West. My observations began at Denver when the land was still at peace, and continued through the hour of the momentous decision and the subsequent months of preparation. The West is a place of moods and its changes of spirit are sometimes puzzling. The violence has gone out of us; we went upon a war footing with a minimum amount of noise and gesticulation. Deeply preoccupied with other matters, the West was annoyed that the Kaiser should so stupidly make it necessary for the American Republic to give him a thrashing,but as the thing had to be done the West addressed itself to the job with a grim determination to do it thoroughly.

We heard, after the election of 1916, that the result was an indication of the West’s indifference to the national danger; that the Middle Western people could not be interested in a war on the farther side of the Atlantic and would suffer any indignities rather than send their sons to fight in Europe. It was charged in some quarters that the West had lost its “pep”; that the fibre had softened; that the children and the grandchildren of “Lincoln’s men” were insensible to the national danger; and that thoughts of a bombardment of New York or San Francisco were not disturbing to a people remote from the sea. I am moved to remark that we of the West are less disposed to encourage the idea that we are a people apart than our friends to the eastward who often seem anxious to force this attitude upon us. We like our West and may boast and strut a little, but any intimation that we are not loyal citizens of the American Republic, jealous of its honor and security and responsive to its every call upon our patriotism and generosity, arouses our indignation.

Many of us were favored in the first years ofthe war with letters from Eastern friends anxious to enlighten us as to America’s danger and her duty with respect to the needs of the sufferers in the wake of battle. On a day when I received a communication from New York asking “whether nothing could be done in Indiana to rouse the people to the sore need of France,” a committee for French relief had just closed a week’s campaign with a fund of $17,000, collected over the State in small sums and contributed very largely by school children. The Millers’ Belgian Relief movement, initiated in the fall of 1914 by Mr. William C. Edgar, of Minneapolis, publisher ofThe Northwestern Miller, affords a noteworthy instance of the West’s response to appeals in behalf of the people in the trampled kingdom. A call was issued November 4 for 45,000 barrels of flour, but 70,000 barrels were contributed; and this cargo was augmented by substantial gifts of blankets, clothing for women and children, and condensed milk. These supplies were distributed in Belgium under Mr. Edgar’s personal direction, in co-operation with Mr. Herbert C. Hoover, chairman of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium.

Many Westerners were fighting under the British and French flags, or were serving in theFrench ambulance service before our entrance into the war, and the opening of the officers’ training-camps in 1917 found young Westerners of the best type clamoring for admission. The Western colleges and universities cannot be too strongly praised for the patriotic fervor with which they met the crisis. One president said that if necessary he would nail up the doors of his college until the war was over. The eagerness to serve is indicated in the Regular Army enlistments for the period from June to December, 1917, in which practically all of the Middle Western States doubled and tripled the quota fixed by the War Department; and any assumption that patriotism diminishes the farther we penetrate into the interior falls before the showing of Colorado, whose response to a call for 1,598 men was answered by 3,793; and Utah multiplied her quota by 5 and Montana by 7. This takes no account of men who, in the period indicated, entered training-camps, or of naval and marine enlistments, or of the National Guard or the selective draft. More completely than ever before the West is merged into the nation. The situation when war was declared is comparable to that of householders, long engrossed with their domestic affairs and heeding little the needs of the community,who are brought to the street by a common peril and confer soberly as to ways and means of meeting it.

“The West,” an Eastern critic complains, “appears always to be demanding something!” The idea of the West as an Oliver Twist with a plate insistently extended pleases me and I am unable to meet it with any plausible refutation. The West has always wanted and it will continue to want and to ask for a great many things; we may only pray that it will more and more hammer upon the federal counter, not for appropriations but for things of value for the whole. “We will try anything once!” This for long was more or less the Western attitude in politics, but we seem to have escaped from it; and the war, with its enormous demands upon our resources, its revelation of national weaknesses, caused a prompt cleaning of the slate of old, unfinished business to await the outcome.

It is an element of strength in a democracy that its political and social necessities are continuing; there is no point of rest. Obstacles, differences, criticism are all a necessary part of the eternal struggle toward perfection. What was impossible yesterday is achieved to-day and may be abandoned to-morrow. Democracy, aswe have thus far practised it, is a series of experiments, a quest.

The enormous industrial development of the Middle West was a thing undreamed of by the pioneers, whose chief concern was with the soil; there was no way of anticipating the economic changes that have been forced upon attention by the growth of cities and States. Minnesota had been a State thirteen years when in 1871 Proctor Knott, in a speech in Congress, ridiculed the then unknown name of Duluth: “The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft, sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence.” And yet Duluth has become indeed a zenith city of the saltless seas, and the manufactured products of Minnesota have an annual value approximating $500,000,000.

The first artisans, the blacksmiths and wagon-makers, and the women weaving cloth and fashioning the garments for their families in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, never dreamed that the manufactures of these Statesalone would attain a value of $5,500,000,000, approximately a fifth of the nation’s total. The original social and economic structure was not prepared for this mighty growth. States in which the soil was tilled almost wholly by the owners of the land were unexpectedly confronted with social and economic questions foreign to all their experience. Rural legislators were called upon to deal with questions of which they had only the most imperfect understanding. They were bewildered to find the towns nearest them, which had been only trading centres for the farmer, asking for legislation touching working hours, housing, and child labor, and for modifications of local government made necessary by growth and radical changes in social conditions. I remember my surprise to find not long ago that a small town I had known all my life had become an industrial centre where the citizens were gravely discussing their responsibilities to the laborers who had suddenly been added to the population.

The preponderating element in the original occupation of the Middle Western States was American, derived from the older States; and the precipitation into the Mississippi valley industrial centres of great bodies of foreigners, many of them only vaguely aware of the purposesand methods of democracy, added an element of confusion and peril to State and national politics. The perplexities and dangers of municipal government were multiplied in the larger cities by the injection into the electorate of the hordes from overseas that poured into States whose government and laws had been fashioned to meet the needs of a homogeneous people who lived close to the soil.

The war that has emphasized so many needs and dangers has sharply accentuated the growing power of labor. Certain manifestations of this may no longer be viewed in the light of local disturbances and agitations but with an eye upon impending world changes. Whatever the questions of social and economic reconstruction that Europe must face, they will be hardly less acutely presented in America; and these matters are being discussed in the West with a reassuring sobriety. The Industrial Workers of the World has widely advertised itself by its lawlessness, in recent years, and its obstructive tactics with respect to America’s preparations for war have focussed attention upon it as an organization utterly inconsonant with American institutions. An arresting incident of recent years was the trial, in 1912, in the United States Court for the District ofIndiana, of forty-two officers and members of the International Association of Structural Iron Workers for the dynamiting of buildings and bridges throughout the country. The trial lasted three months, and the disclosures, pointing to a thoroughly organized conspiracy of destruction, were of the most startling character. Thirty-eight of the defendants were convicted. The influence of labor in the great industrial States of the West is very great, and not a negligible factor in the politics of the immediate future. What industrial labor has gained has been through constant pressure of its organizations; and yet the changes of the past fifty years have been so gradual as to present, in the retrospect, the appearance of an evolution.

There is little to support an assumption that the West in these critical hours will not take counsel of reason; and it is an interesting circumstance that the West has just now no one who may be pointed to as its spokesman. No one is speaking for the West; the West has learned to think and to speak for itself. “Organized emotion” (I believe the phrase is President Lowell’s) may again become a power for mischief in these plains that lend so amiable an ear to the orator; but the new seriousness of which I have attempted to give some hint inthe progress of these papers, and the increasing political independence of the Western people, encourage the belief that whatever lies before us in the way of momentous change, the West will not be led or driven to ill-considered action.

In spite of many signs of a drift toward social democracy, individualism is still the dominant “note” in these Middle Western States, apart from the industrial centres where socialism has indisputably made great headway. It may be that American political and social phenomena are best observed in States whose earliest settlement is so recent as to form a background for contrast. We have still markedly in the Mississippi valley the individualistic point of view of the pioneer who thought out his problems alone and was restrained by pride from confessing his needs to his neighbors. In a region where capital has been most bitterly assaulted it has been more particularly in the pursuit of redress for local grievances. The agrarian attacks upon railroads are an instance of this. The farmer wants quick and cheap access to markets, and he favors co-operative elevators because he has felt for years that the middleman poured too many grains out of the bushel for his services. In so far as the farmer’s relations with the State are concerned, he has received from the governmenta great many things for which, broadly speaking, he has not asked, notably in the development of a greater efficiency of method and a widening of social horizons.

When the New Englander, the Southeasterner, and the Pennsylvanian met in the Ohio valley they spoke a common language and were animated by common aims. Their differences were readily reconcilable; Southern sentiment caused tension in the Civil War period and was recognizable in politics through reconstruction and later, but it was possible for one to be classed as a Southern sympathizer or even to bear the opprobrious epithet of copperhead without having his fundamental Americanism questioned. Counties through this belt of States were named for American heroes and statesmen—Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Marion, Clark, Perry—varied by French and Indian names that tinkle musically along lakes and rivers.

There was never any doubt in the early days that all who came were quickly assimilated into the body of the republic, and certainly there was no fear that any conceivable situation couldever cause the loyalty of the newly adopted citizen to be questioned. The soil was too young in the days of Knownothingism and the body of the population too soundly American for the West to be greatly roused by that movement. Nevertheless we have had in the West as elsewhere the political recognition of the race group—a particular consideration for the Irish vote or the German vote, and in the Northwestern States for the Scandinavian. The political “bosses” were not slow to throw their lines around the increasing race groups with a view to control and manipulation. Our political platforms frequently expressed “sympathy with the Irish people in their struggle for home rule,” and it had always been considered “good politics” to recognize the Irish and the Germans in party nominations.

Following Germany’s first hostile acts against American life and property, through the long months of waiting in which America hoped for a continuation of neutrality, we became conscious that the point of view held by citizens of American stock differed greatly from that of many—of, indeed, the greater number—of our citizens of German birth or ancestry. Until America became directly concerned it was perfectly explicable that they should sympathize with thepeople, if not with the government, of the German Empire. TheLusitaniatragedy, defended in many cases openly by German sympathizers; the disclosure of the duplicity of the German ambassador, and revelations of the insidious activity and ingenious propaganda that had been in progress under the guise of pacifism—all condoned by great numbers of German-Americans—brought us to a realization of the fact that even unto the third and fourth generation the fatherland still exercised its spell upon those we had accepted unquestioningly as fellow citizens. And yet, viewed in the retrospect, the phenomenon is not so remarkable. More than any other people who have enjoyed free access to the “unguarded gates,” of which Aldrich complained many years ago, the Germans have settled themselves in both town and country in colonies. Intermarriage has been very general among them, and their social fife has been circumscribed by ancestral tastes and preferences. As they prospered they made frequent visits to Germany, strengthening ties never wholly broken.

It was borne in upon us in the months following close upon the declaration of war against Germany, that many citizens of German birth, long enjoying the freedom and the opportunitiesof the Valley of Democracy, had not really been incorporated into the body of American citizenship, but were still, in varying degrees, loyal to the German autocracy. That in States we had proudly pointed to as typically American there should be open disloyalty or only a surly acceptance of the American Government’s position with reference to a hostile foreign Power was profoundly disturbing. That amid the perils of war Americanism should become the issue in a political campaign, as in Wisconsin last April, brought us face to face with the problem of a more thorough assimilation of those we have welcomed from the Old World—a problem which when the urgent business of winning the war has been disposed of, we shall not neglect if we are wise. Wisconsin nobly asserted her loyalty, and it should be noted further that her response in enlistments, in loan subscriptions, in contributions to the Red Cross and other war benevolences have been commensurate with her wealth and in keeping with her honorable record as one of the sturdiest of American commonwealths. The rest of America should know that as soon as Wisconsin realized that she had a problem with reference to pro-Germanism, disguised or open, her greatly preponderating number of loyal citizens at once set to work to deal with thesituation. It was met promptly and aggressively, and in the wide-spread campaign of education the University of Wisconsin took an important part. A series of pamphlets, straight-forward and unequivocal, written by members of the faculty and published by the State, set forth very clearly America’s position and the menace to civilization of Germany’s programme of frightfulness.

Governor Philipp, in a patriotic address at Sheboygan in May, on the seventieth anniversary of Wisconsin’s admission to the Union, after reviewing the State’s war preparations, evoked great applause by these utterances:

“There is a great deal said by some people about peace. Don’t you permit yourselves to be led astray by men who come to you with some form of peace that they advocate that would be an everlasting disgrace to the American people. We cannot subscribe to any peace treaty, my friends, that does not include within its provisions an absolute and complete annihilation of the military autocracy that we have said to the world we are going to destroy. We have enlisted our soldiers with that understanding. We have asked our boys to go to France to do that, and if we quit short of fulfilling that contract with our own soldiers, thoseboys on the battlefield will have given their lives in vain.”

In the present state of feeling it is impossible to weigh from available data the question of how far there was some sort of “understanding” between the government at Berlin and persons of German sympathies in the United States that whenDer Tagdawned for the precipitation of the great scheme of world domination they would stand ready to assist by various processes of resistance and interference. For the many German-Americans who stood steadfastly for the American cause at all times it is unfortunate that much testimony points to some such arrangement. At this time it is difficult to be just about this, and it is far from my purpose to support an indictment that is an affront to the intelligence and honor of the many for the offenses of scattered groups and individuals; and yet through fifty years German organizations, a German-language press, the teaching of German in public schools fostered the German spirit, and the efforts made to preserve the solidarity of the German people lend color to the charge. It cannot be denied that systematic German propaganda, either open or in pacifist guise, was at work energetically throughout the West from the beginningof the war to arouse sentiment against American resistance to German encroachments.

Americans of German birth have been controlled very largely by leaders, often men of wealth, who directed them in their affairs great and small. This “system” took root in times when the immigrant, finding himself in a strange land and unfamiliar with its language, naturally sought counsel of his fellow countrymen who had already learned the ways of America. This form of leadership has established a curious habit of dependence, and makes against freedom of thought and action in the humble while augmenting the power of the strong. It has been a common thing for German parents to encourage in their children the idea of German superiority and Germany’s destiny to rule the world. A gentleman whose parents, born in Germany, came to the Middle West fifty years ago told me recently that his father, who left Germany to escape military service, had sought to inculcate these ideas in the minds of his children from their earliest youth. The sneer at American institutions has been very common among Germans of this type. Another young man of German ancestry complained bitterly of this contemptuous attitude toward things American. There was, he said, a groupof men who met constantly in a German clubhouse to belittle America and exalt the joys of the fatherland. Their attitude toward their adopted country was condensed into an oft-repeated formula: “What shall we think of a people whose language does not contain an equivalent forGemütlichkeit!”

As part of the year’s record I may speak from direct knowledge of a situation with which we were brought face to face in Indianapolis, a city of three hundred thousand people, in a State in which the centre of population for the United States has been fixed by the federal census for two decades. Indiana’s capital, we like to believe, is a typical American city. Here the two tides of migration from the East and the Southeast met in the first settlement. A majestic shaft in the heart of the town testifies to the participation of Indiana in all the American wars from the Revolution; in no other State perhaps is political activity so vigorous as here. It would seem that if there exists anywhere a healthy American spirit it might be sought here with confidence. The phrase “He’s an honest German” nowhere conveyed a deeper sense of rectitude and probity. Men of German birth or ancestry have repeatedly held responsible municipal and county offices. Andyet this city affords a striking instance of the deleterious effect of the preservation of the race group. It must be said that the community’s spirit toward these citizens was the friendliest in the world; that in the first years of the European War allowances were generously made for family ties that still bound many to the fatherland and for pride and prejudice of race. There had never been any question as to the thorough assimilation of the greater number into the body of American democracy until the beginning of the war in 1914.

When America joined with the Allies a silence fell upon those who had been supporting the German cause. The most outspoken of the German sympathizers yielded what in many cases was a grudging and reluctant assent to America’s preparations for war. Others made no sign one way or the other. There were those who wished to quibble—who said that they were for America, of course, but that they were not for England; that England had begun the war to crush Germany; that the stories of atrocities were untrue. As to theLusitania, Americans had no business to disregard the warning of the Imperial German Government; and America “had no right” to ship munitions to Germany’s enemies. Reportsof disloyal speech or of active sedition on the part of well-known citizens were freely circulated.

German influence in the public schools had been marked for years, and the president of the school board was a German, active in the affairs of the National German-American Alliance. The teaching of German in the grade schools was forbidden by the Indianapolis school commissioners last year, though it is compulsory under a State law where the parents of twenty-five children request it. It was learned that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung in German in at least one public school as part of the instruction in the German language, and this was defended by German-Americans on the ground that knowledge of their national anthem in two languages broadened the children’s appreciation of its beauties. One might wonder just how long the singing of “Die Wacht am Rhein” in a foreign language would be tolerated in Germany!

We witnessed what in many cases was a gradual and not too hearty yielding to the American position, and what in others was a refusal to discuss the matter with a protest that any question of loyalty was an insult. Suggestions that a public demonstration byGerman-Americans, at a time when loyalty meetings were being held by American citizens everywhere, would satisfy public clamor and protect innocent sufferers from business boycott and other manifestations of disapproval were met with indignation. The situation became acute upon the disclosure that the Independent Turnverein, a club with a handsome house that enrolled many Americans in its membership, had on New Year’s Eve violated the government food regulations. The president, who had been outspoken against Germany long before America was drawn into the war, made public apology, and as a result of the flurry steps were taken immediately to change the name of the organization to the Independent Athletic Club. On Lincoln’s Birthday a patriotic celebration was held in the club. On Washington’s BirthdayDas Deutsche Haus, the most important German social centre in the State, announced a change of its name to the Athenæum. In his address on this occasion Mr. Carl H. Lieber said:

With mighty resolve we have taken up arms to gain recognition for the lofty principles of a free people in unalterable opposition to autocracy and military despotism. Emerging from the mists and smoke of battle, these American principles, like brilliant handwriting in the skies, have been clearly set out by our President for the eyes of theworld to see. Our country stands undivided for their realization. Impartially and unselfishly we are fighting, we feel, for justice in this world and the rights of mankind.

This from a representative citizen of the second generation satisfactorily disposed of the question of loyalty, both as to the renamed organization and the majority of its more influential members. A little later the Männerchor, another German club, changed its name to the Academy of Music.

It is only just to say that, as against many evidences of a failure to assimilate, there is gratifying testimony that a very considerable number of persons of German birth or ancestry in these States have neither encouraged nor have they been affected by attempts to diffuse and perpetuate German ideas. Many German families—I know conspicuous instances in Western cities—are in no way distinguishable from their neighbors of American stock. In one Middle Western city a German mechanic, who before coming to America served in the German army and is without any illusions as to the delights of autocracy, tells me that attachment to the fatherland is confined very largely to the more prosperous element, and that he encountered little hostility among the humbler people of German antecedents whom heattempted to convince of the justice of the American position.

The National German-American Alliance, chartered by special act of Congress in 1901, was one of the most insidious and mischievous agencies for German propaganda in America. It was a device for correlating German societies of every character—turnvereins, music societies, church organizations, and social clubs, and it is said that the Alliance had 2,500,000 members scattered through forty-seven American States. “Our own prestige,” recites one of its publications, “depends upon the prestige of the fatherland, and for that reason we cannot allow any disparagement of Germany to go unpunished.” It was recited in the Alliance’s statement of its aims that one of its purposes was to combat “nativistic encroachments.” I am assured by a German-American that this use of “nativistic” does not refer to the sense in which it was used in America in the Know-Nothing period, but that it means merely resistance to puritanical infringements upon personal freedom, with special reference to prohibition.

The compulsory teaching of German in the public schools was a frank item of the Alliance’s programme. In his book, “Their True Faith and Allegiance” (1916), Mr. Gustavus Ohlinger,of Toledo, whose testimony before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate attracted much attention last February, describes the systematic effort to widen the sphere of the teaching of German in Western States. Ohio and Indiana have laws requiring German to be taught upon the petition of parents. Before the repeal of a similar law in Nebraska last April we find that in Nebraska City the school board had been compelled by the courts to obey the law, though less than one-third of the petitioners really intended to have their children receive instruction in German. Mr. Ohlinger thus describes the operation of the law in Omaha:

In the city of Omaha ... the State organizer of the Nebraska federation of German societies visited the schools recently and was more than pleased with what he found: the children were acquiring a typically Berlin accent, sung a number of German songs to his entire approval, and finally ended by rendering “Die Wacht am Rhein” with an enthusiasm and a gusto which could not be excelled among children of the fatherland. Four years ago Nebraska had only 90 high schools which offered instruction in German. To-day, so the Alliance reports, German is taught in 222 high schools and in the grade schools of nine cities. Omaha alone has 3,500 pupils taking German instruction. In addition to this, the State federation has been successful in obtaining an appropriation for the purchase of German books for the State circulating library. Germans have been urged to call for such books, in order to convince the State librarianthat there is a popular demand and to induce further progress in this direction.

These conditions have, of course, passed, and it is for those of us who would guard jealously our rights, and honestly fulfil our obligations, as American citizens to see to it that they do not recur. The Alliance announced its voluntary dissolution some time before its charter was annulled, but the testimony before the King committee, which the government has published, will be an important source of material for the historian of the war. German propaganda and activity in the Middle West did little for the Kaiser but to make the word “German” an odious term. “German” in business titles and in club names has disappeared and German language newspapers have in many instances changed their names or gone out of business. I question whether the end of the war will witness any manifestations of magnanimity that will make possible a restoration of the teaching of German in primary and high schools.

We of the Middle West, who had thought ourselves the especial guardians of American democracy, found with dismay that the mailed fist of Berlin was clutching our public schools. In Chicago, where so much time, money, and thought are expended in the attempt to Americanizethe foreign accretions, the spelling-book used in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades consisted wholly of word-lists, with the exception of two exercises—one of ten lines, describing the aptness of the natives of Central Australia in identifying the tracks of birds and animals, and another which is here reproduced:

THE KAISER IN THE MAKINGIn thegymnasiumat Cassel the GermanKaiserspent three years of his boyhood, adiligentbut not abrilliantpupil, ranking tenth amongseventeen candidatesfor theuniversity.Many tales are told of thisperiodof his life, and one of them, at least, isilluminating.Aprofessor, it is said, wishing to curry favor with his royal pupil, informed himovernightof the chapter in Greek that was to be made thesubjectof the next day’s lesson.The youngprincedid what many boys would not have done. As soon as the classroom wasopenedon the following morning, he entered and wroteconspicuouslyon the blackboard theinformationthat had been given him.One may sayunhesitatinglythat a boy capable of such an action has the root of a finecharacterin him,possessesthatchivalroussense of fair play which is the nearest thing to areligionthat may be looked for at that age, hatesmeannessandfavoritism, and will,wherever possible, expose them. There is in him afundamentalbent toward what is clean, manly, and aboveboard.

THE KAISER IN THE MAKING

In thegymnasiumat Cassel the GermanKaiserspent three years of his boyhood, adiligentbut not abrilliantpupil, ranking tenth amongseventeen candidatesfor theuniversity.

Many tales are told of thisperiodof his life, and one of them, at least, isilluminating.

Aprofessor, it is said, wishing to curry favor with his royal pupil, informed himovernightof the chapter in Greek that was to be made thesubjectof the next day’s lesson.

The youngprincedid what many boys would not have done. As soon as the classroom wasopenedon the following morning, he entered and wroteconspicuouslyon the blackboard theinformationthat had been given him.

One may sayunhesitatinglythat a boy capable of such an action has the root of a finecharacterin him,possessesthatchivalroussense of fair play which is the nearest thing to areligionthat may be looked for at that age, hatesmeannessandfavoritism, and will,wherever possible, expose them. There is in him afundamentalbent toward what is clean, manly, and aboveboard.

The copy of the book before me bears the imprint, “Board of Education, City of Chicago, 1914.” The Kaiser’s “chivalrous sense of fairplay” has, of course, ceased to be a matter of public instruction in the Western metropolis.

“Im Vaterland,” a German reading-book used in a number of Western schools, states frankly in its preface that it was “made in Germany,” and that “after the manuscript had been completed it was manifolded and copies were criticised by teachers in Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria.”

In contrast with the equivocal loyalty of Germans who have sought to perpetuate and accentuate the hyphen, it is a pleasure to testify to the admirable spirit with which the Jewish people in these Western States have repeatedly manifested their devotion to America. Many of these are of German birth or the children of German immigrants, and yet I am aware of no instance of a German Jew in the region most familiar to me who has not warmly supported the American cause. They have not only given generously to the Red Cross and to funds for French and Belgian relief, quite independently of their efforts in behalf of people of their own race in other countries, but they have rendered most important aid in all other branches of war activities. No finer declaration of whole-hearted Americanism has been made by any American of German birth than that expressed(significantly at Milwaukee) by Mr. Otto H. Kahn, of New York, last January:

Until the outbreak of the war, in 1914, I maintained close and active personal and business relations in Germany. I was well acquainted with a number of the leading personages of the country. I served in the German army thirty years ago. I took an active interest in furthering German art in America. I do not apologize for, nor am I ashamed of, my German birth. But I am ashamed—bitterly and grievously ashamed—of the Germany which stands convicted before the high tribunal of the world’s public opinion of having planned and willed war, of the revolting deeds committed in Belgium and northern France, of the infamy of theLusitaniamurders, of innumerable violations of The Hague conventions and the law of nations, of abominable and perfidious plotting in friendly countries, and shameless abuse of their hospitality, of crime heaped upon crime in hideous defiance of the laws of God and man.

A curious phase of this whole situation is the fact that so many thousands of Germans who found the conditions in their own empire intolerable and sought homes in America, should have fostered a sentimental attachment for the fatherland as a land of comfort and happiness, and of its ruler as a glorious Lohengrin afloat upon the river of time in a swan-boat, in an atmosphere of charm and mystery, to the accompaniment of enchanting music. In their clubs and homes they so dreamed of this Germany and talked of it in the language of theland of their illusion that the sudden transformation of their knight of the swan-boat into a war lord of frightfulness and terror, seeking to plant his iron feet upon an outraged world, has only slowly penetrated to their comprehension. It is clear that there has been on America’s part a failure, that cannot be minimized or scouted, to communicate to many of the most intelligent and desirable of all our adopted citizens, the spirit of that America founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln, and all the great host who in their train—

“spread from sea to seaA thousand leagues the zone of liberty,And gave to man this refuge from his past,Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.”

“spread from sea to sea

A thousand leagues the zone of liberty,

And gave to man this refuge from his past,

Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.”

In closing these papers it seems ungenerous to ignore the criticisms with which they were favored during their serial publication. To a gentleman in Colorado who insists that my definition and use of Folks and “folksiness” leave him in the dark as to my meaning, I can only suggest that a visit to certain communities which I shall be glad to choose for him, in the States of our central basin, will do much for hisillumination. An intimation from another quarter that those terms as I have employed them originated in Kentucky does not distress me a particle, for are not we of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois first cousins of the people across the Ohio? At once some one will rise to declare that all that is truly noble in the Middle West was derived from the Eastern States or from New England, and on this question I might with a good conscience write a fair brief on either side. With one Revolutionary great-grandfather, a native of Delaware, buried in Ohio, and another, a Carolinian, reposing in the soil of Kentucky, I should be content no matter where fell the judgment of the court.

To the complaint of the Chicago lady who assailed the editor for his provincialism in permitting an Easterner to abuse her city, I demur that I was born and have spent most of the years of my life within a few hours of Chicago, a city dear to me from long and rather intimate acquaintance and hallowed by most agreeable associations. TheEvening Postof Chicago, having found the fruits of my note-book “dull” as to that metropolis, must permit me to plead that in these stirring times the significant things about a city are not its clubs, its cabarets, or its galloping “loop-hounds,”but the efforts of serious-minded citizens of courage and vision to make it a better place to live in. The cynicism of those to whom the contemplation of such efforts is fatiguing, lacks novelty and is only tolerable in so far as it is a stimulus to the faithful workers in the vineyard.

I have spoken of The Valley of Democracy as being in itself a romance, and the tale as written upon hill and plain and along lake and river is well-nigh unequalled for variety and interest in the annals of mankind. I must plead that the sketchiness of these papers is due not to any lack of respect for the work of soberer chroniclers, but is attributable rather to the humility with which I have traversed a region laboriously explored by the gallant company of scholars who have established Middle Western history upon so firm a foundation. It is the view of persons whose opinions are entitled to all respect that the winning of the West is the most significant and important phase of American history. Certain it is that the story wherever one dips into it immediately quickens the heart-beat, and it is a pleasure to note the devotion and intelligence with which materials for history have been assembled in all the States embraced in my general title.

The great pioneer collector of historical material was Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, who made the Wisconsin Historical Society the most efficient local organization of its kind in the country. “He was the first,” writes Dr. Clarence W. Alvord, of the University of Illinois, “to unite the State historical agent and the university department of history so that they give each other mutual assistance—a union which some States have brought about only lately with great difficulty, while others are still limping along on two ill-mated crutches.” Dr. Thwaites was an indefatigable laborer in his chosen field, and an inspiring leader. He not only brought to light a prodigious amount of material and made it accessible to other scholars, but he communicated his enthusiasm to a noteworthy school of historians who have specialized in “sections” of the broad fertile field into which he set the first plough. Where the land is so new it is surprising and not a little amusing that there should be debatable points of history, and yet the existence of these adds zest to the labors of the younger school of historical students and writers. State historical societies have in recent years assumed a new dignity and importance, due in great measure to the fine example set by Wisconsin under Dr. Thwaites’s guidance.

Frederick Jackson Turner is another historian whose interest in the West has borne fruit in works of value, and he has established new points of orientation for explorers in this field. He must always be remembered as one of the first to appreciate the significance of the Western frontier in American history, and by his writings and addresses he has done much to arouse respect for the branch in which he has specialized. Nor shall I omit Dr. John H. Finley’s “The French in the Heart of America” as among recent valuable additions to historical literature. There is a charming freshness and an infectious enthusiasm in Dr. Finley’s pages, attributable to his deep poetic feeling for the soil to which he was born. All writers of the history of the Northwest, of course, confess their indebtedness to Parkman, and it should not be forgotten that before Theodore Roosevelt became a distinguished figure in American public life he had written “The Winning of the West,” which established a place for him among American historians.

A historical society was formed in Indiana in 1830, but as no building was ever provided for its collection, many valuable records were lost when the State capitol was torn down thirty years ago. Many documents that should have been kept within the State found their way toWisconsin—an appropriation by the tireless Thwaites of which Indiana can hardly complain in view of the fact that she has never provided for the proper housing of historical material. Still, interest in local history, much of it having an important bearing on the national life, has never wholly died, and in recent years theIndiana Historical Magazineand the labors of Jacob P. Dunn, James A. Woodburn, Logan Esarey, Daniel Waite Howe, Harlow Lindley, and other students and writers have directed attention to the richness of the local field.

Illinois, slipping this year into her second century of statehood, is thoroughly awake to the significance of the Illinois country in Western development. Dr. Alvord, who, by his researches and writings, has illuminated many dark passages of Middle Western history, has taken advantage of the centenary to rouse the State to a new sense of its important share in American development. The investigator in this field is rewarded by the unearthing of treasures as satisfying as any that may fall to the hand of a Greek archæologist. The trustees of the Illinois Historical Library sent Dr. Alvord to “sherlock” an old French document reported to be in the court-house of St. Clair county. Not only was this documentfound but the more important Cahokia papers were discovered, bearing upon the history of the Illinois country during the British occupation and the American Revolution. Illinois has undertaken a systematic survey of county archives, which includes also a report upon manuscript material held by individuals, and the centenary is to have a fitting memorial in a five-volume State history to be produced by authoritative writers.

Iowa, jealous of her history and traditions, has a State-supported historical society with a fine list of publications to its credit. Under the direction of the society’s superintendent, Dr. Benjamin F. Shambaugh, the search for material is thorough and persistent, and over forty volumes of historical material have been published. The Iowa public and college libraries are all branches of the society and depositories of its publications. The Mississippi Valley Historical Association held its eleventh annual meeting this year in St. Paul to mark the dedication of the new building erected by the State for the use of the Minnesota Historical Society.

The wide scope of Western historical inquiry is indicated in the papers of the Mississippi Valley Association, and its admirable quarterlyreview, in which we find monographs by the ethnologist, the specialist in exploration, and the student of political crises, such as the Lincoln-Douglas contest and the Greenback movement. Not only are the older Middle Western States producing historical matter of national importance but Montana and the Dakotas are inserting chapters that bind the Mississippi Valley to the picturesque annals of California in a continuous narrative. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana have established an informal union for the prosecution of their work, one feature of which is the preparation of a “finding list” of documents in Washington. This co-ordination prevents duplication of labor and makes for unity of effort in a field of common interest.

I had hoped that space would permit a review in some detail of municipal government in a number of cities, but I may now emphasize only the weakness of a mere “form,” or “system,” where the electorate manifest too great a confidence in a device without the “follow-up” so essential to its satisfactory employment; and I shall mention Omaha, whose municipalstruggle has been less advertised than that of some other Western cities. Omaha was fortunate in having numbered among its pioneers a group of men of unusual ability and foresight. First a military outpost and a trading centre for adventurous settlements, the building of the Union Pacific made it an important link between East and West, and, from being a market for agricultural products of one of the most fertile regions in the world, its interests have multiplied until it now offers a most interesting study in the interdependence and correlation of economic factors.

Like most other Western cities, Omaha grew so rapidly and was so preoccupied with business that its citizens, save for the group of the faithful who are to be found everywhere, left the matter of local government to the politicians. Bossism became intolerable, and with high hopes the people in 1912 adopted commission government; but the bosses, with their usual adaptability and resourcefulness, immediately captured the newly created offices. It is a fair consensus of local opinion that there has been little if any gain in economy or efficiency. Under the old charter city councilmen were paid $1,800; the commissioners under the new plan receive $4,500, with an extra $500 for the one chosen mayor.Several of the commissioners are equal to their responsibilities, but a citizen who is a close student of such matters says that “while in theory we were to get a much higher grade of public servants, in fact we merely elected men content to work for the lower salary and doubled and tripled their pay. We still have $1,800 men in $4,500 jobs.” However, at the election last spring only one of the city commissioners was re-elected, and Omaha is hoping that the present year will show a distinct improvement in the management of its public business. Local pride is very strong in these Western cities, and from the marked anxiety to show a forward-looking spirit and a praiseworthy sensitiveness to criticism we may look confidently for a steady gain in the field of municipal government.

It is to be hoped that in the general awakening to our imperfections caused by the war, there may be a widening of these groups of patient, earnest citizens, who labor for the rationalization of municipal government. The disposition to say that “as things have been they remain” is strong upon us, but it is worth remembering that Clough also bids us “say not the struggle naught availeth.” The struggle goes on courageously, and the number of those who concern themselves with the business of strengtheningthe national structure by pulling out the rotten timbers in our cities proceeds tirelessly.

Western cities are constantly advertising their advantages and resources, and offering free sites and other inducements to manufacturers to tempt them to move; but it occurs to me that forward-looking cities may present their advantages more alluringly by perfecting their local government and making this the burden of their appeal. We shall get nowhere with commission government or the city-manager plan until cities realize that no matter how attractive and plausible a device, it is worthless unless due consideration is given to the human equation. It is very difficult to find qualified administrators under the city-manager plan. A successful business man or even a trained engineer may fail utterly, and we seem to be at the point of creating a new profession of great opportunities for young men (and women too) in the field of municipal administration. At the University of Kansas and perhaps elsewhere courses are offered for the training of city managers. The mere teaching of municipal finance and engineering will not suffice; the courses should cover social questions and kindred matters and not neglect the psychology involved in the matter of dealing fairly and justly withthe public. By giving professional dignity to positions long conferred upon the incompetent and venal we should at least destroy the cynical criticism that there are no men available for the positions created; and it is conceivable that once the idea of fitness has become implanted in a careless and indifferent public a higher standard will be set for all elective offices.

No Easterner possessed of the slightest delicacy will read what follows, which is merely a memorandum for my friends and neighbors of the great Valley. We of the West have never taken kindly to criticism, chiefly because it has usually been offered in a spirit of condescension, or what in our extreme sensitiveness we have been rather eager to believe to be such. In our comfortable towns and villages we may admit weaknesses the mention of which by our cousinsin partibus infideliumarouses our deepest ire. We shall not meekly suffer the East in its disdainful moods to play upon us with the light lash of its irony; but among ourselves we may confess that at times we have profited by Eastern criticism. After all, there is no spirit of the West that is very different from the spiritof the East. Though I only whisper it, we have, I think, rather more humor. We are friendlier, less snobbish, more sanguine in our outlook upon public matters, and have a greater confidence in democracy than the East. I have indicated with the best heart in the world certain phases and tendencies of our provinces that seem to me admirable, and others beside which I have scratched a question-mark for the contemplation of the sober-minded. I am disposed to say that the most interesting thing about us is our politics, but that, safely though we have ridden the tempest now and again, these be times when it becomes us to ponder with a new gravity the weight we carry in the national scale. Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin wield 145 votes of the total of 531 in the electoral college; and in 1916 Mr. Wilson’s majority was only 23. The political judgment of the nation is likely, far into the future, to be governed by the West. We dare not, if we would, carry our responsibilities lightly. We have of late been taking our politics much more seriously; a flexibility of the vote, apparent in recent contests, is highly encouraging to those of us who see a hope and a safety in the multiplication of the independents. But even withthis we have done little to standardize public service; the ablest men of the West do not govern it, and the fact that this has frequently been true of the country at large can afford us no honest consolation. There is no reason why, if we are the intelligent, proud sons of democracy we imagine ourselves to be, we should not so elevate our political standards as to put other divisions of the republic to shame. There are thousands of us who at every election vote for candidates we know nothing about, or for others we would not think of intrusting with any private affair, and yet because we find their names under a certain party emblem we cheerfully turn over to such persons important public business for the honest and efficient transaction of which they have not the slightest qualification. What I am saying is merely a repetition of what has been said for years without marked effect upon the electorate. But just now, when democracy is fighting for its life in the world, we do well to give serious heed to such warnings. If we have not time or patience to perform the services required of a citizen who would be truly self-governing, then the glory of fighting for free institutions on the battle-fields of Europe is enormously diminished.

The coming of the war found the West ratherhard put for any great cause upon which to expend its energy and enthusiasm. We need a good deal of enthusiasm to keep us “up to pitch,” and I shall not scruple to say that, in spite of our fine showing as to every demand thus far made by the war, the roll of the drums really found us inviting the reproach passed by the prophet upon them “that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall.” Over and over again, as I have travelled through the West in recent years, it has occurred to me that sorely indeed we needed an awakening. Self-satisfaction and self-contemplation are little calculated to promote that clear thinking and vigorous initiative that are essential to triumphant democracy. Yes; this may be just as true of East or South; but it is of the West that we are speaking. I shall go the length of saying that any failure of democracy “to work” here in America is more heavily chargeable upon us of these Middle Western States than upon our fellow Americans in other sections. For here we are young enough to be very conscious of all those processes by which States are formed and political and social order established. Our fathers or our grandfathers were pioneers; andfrom them the tradition is fresh of the toil and aspiration that went to the making of these commonwealths. We cannot deceive ourselves into believing that they did all that was necessary to perpetuate the structure, and that it is not incumbent upon us to defend, strengthen, and renew what they fashioned. We had, like many of those who have come to us from over the sea to share in our blessings, fallen into the error of assuming that America is a huge corporation in which every one participates in the dividends without reference to his part in earning them. Politically speaking, we have too great a number of those who “hang on behind” and are a dead weight upon those who bear the yoke. We must do better about this; and in no way can the West prove its fitness to wield power in the nation than through a quickening of all those forces that tend to make popular government an intelligently directed implement controlled by the fit, and not a weapon caught up and exercised ignorantly by the unfit.

Again, still speaking as one Westerner to another, our entrance into the war found us dangerously close to the point of losing something that was finely spiritual in our forebears. I am aware that an impatient shrug greets this suggestion. The spires and towers of innumerablechurches decorate the Western sky-line, and I accept them for what they represent, without discussing the efficiency of the modern church or its failure or success in meeting the problems of modern life. There was apparent in the first settlers of the Mississippi valley a rugged spirituality that accounted for much in their achievements. The West was a lonesome place and religion—Catholic and Protestant—filled a need and assisted greatly in making wilderness and plain tolerable. The imagination of the pioneer was quickened and brightened by the promise of things that he believed to be eternal; the vast sweep of prairie and woodland deepened his sense of reliance upon the Infinite. This sense so happily interpreted and fittingly expressed by Lincoln is no longer discernible—at least it is not obtrusively manifest—and this seems to me a lamentable loss. Here, again, it may be said that this is not peculiar to the West; that we have only been affected by the eternal movement of the time spirit. And yet this elementary confidence in things of the spirit played an important part in the planting of the democratic ideal in the heart of America, and we can but deplore the passing of what to our immediate ancestors was so satisfying and stimulating. And here, as with otherproblems that I have passed with only the most superficial note, I have no solution, if indeed any be possible. I am fully conscious that I fumble for something intangible and elusive; and it may be that I am only crying vainly for the restoration of something that has gone forever. Perhaps this war came opportunely to break our precipitate rush toward materialism, and the thing we were apparently losing, the old enthusiasm for higher things, the greater leisure for self-examination and self-communion, may come again in the day of peace.

“There is always,” says Woodberry, “an ideality of the human spirit” visible in all the works of democracy, and we need to be reminded of this frequently, for here in the heart of America it is of grave importance that we remain open-minded and open-hearted to that continuing idealism which must be the strength and stay of the nation.

Culture, as we commonly use the term, may properly be allowed to pass as merely another aspect of the idealism “deep in the general heart of man” that we should like to believe to be one of the great assets of the West. Still addressing the Folks, my neighbors, I will temerariously repeat an admission tucked into an earlier chapter, that here is a field where wedo well to carry ourselves modestly. There was an impression common in my youth that culture of the highest order was not only possible in the West but that we Westerners were peculiarly accessible to its benignant influences and very likely to become its special guardians and apostles. Those were times when life was less complex, when the spirituality stirred by the Civil War was still very perceptible, when our enthusiasms were less insistently presented in statistics of crops and manufactures. We children of those times were encouraged to keep Emerson close at hand, for his purifying and elevating influence, and in a college town which I remember very well the professor of Greek was a venerated person and took precedence in any company over the athletic director.

In those days, that seem now so remote, it was quite respectable to speak of the humanities, and people did so without self-consciousness. But culture, the culture of the humanities, never gained that foothold in the West that had been predicted for it. That there are few signs of its permanent establishment anywhere does not conceal our failure either to implant it or to find for it any very worthy substitute. We have valiantly invested millions of dollars in education and other millions in art museumsand in libraries without any resulting diffusion of what we used to be pleased to call culture. We dismiss the whole business quite characteristically by pointing with pride to handsome buildings and generous endowments in much the same spirit that we call attention to a new automobile factory. There are always the few who profit by these investments; but it is not for the few that we design them; it is for the illumination of the great mass that we spend our treasure upon them. The doctrine of the few is the old doctrine of “numbers” and “the remnant,” and even at the cost of reconstructing human nature we promised to show the world that a great body of people in free American States could be made sensitive and responsive to beauty in all its forms. The humanities still struggle manfully, but without making any great headway against adverse currents. The State universities offer an infinite variety of courses in literature and the fine arts, and they are served by capable and zealous instructors, but with no resulting progress against the tide of materialism. “Culture,” as a friend of mine puts it, “is on the blink.” We hear reassuring reports of the State technical schools where the humanities receive a niggardly minimum of attention, and these institutions demand our heartiestadmiration for the splendid work they are doing. But our development is lamentably one-sided; we have merely groups of cultivated people, just as older civilizations had them, not the great communities animated by ideals of nobility and beauty that we were promised.

In the many matters which we of the West shall be obliged to consider with reference to the nation and the rest of the world as soon asKulturand its insolent presumptions have been disposed of, culture, in its ancient and honorable sense, is quite likely to make a poor fight for attention. And yet here are things, already falling into neglect, which we shall do well to scan once and yet again before parting company with them forever. There are balances as between materialism and idealism which it is desirable to maintain if the fineness and vigor of democracy and its higher inspirational values are to be further developed. Our Middle Western idealism has been expending itself in channels of social and political betterment, and it remains to be seen whether we shall be able to divert some part of its energy to the history, the literature, and the art of the past, not for cultural reasons merely but as part of our combat with provincialism and the creation of a broad and informed American spirit.

“Having in mind things true, things elevated, things just, things pure, things amiable, things of good report—having these in mind, studying and loving these, is what saves States,” wrote Matthew Arnold thirty years ago. In the elaboration of a programme for the future of America that shall not ignore what is here connoted there is presented to the Middle West abundant material for new enthusiasms and endeavors, commensurate with its opportunities and obligations not merely as the Valley of Democracy but as the Valley of Decision.

The End.

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