Banquet given for the members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
With a noteworthy absence of self-consciousness, Chicago assimilates a great deal of music. The symphony orchestra, founded by TheodoreThomas and conducted since his death by Frederic Stock, offers a series of twenty-eight concerts a year. Eight thousand contributors made possible the building of Orchestra Hall, the organization’s permanent home. Boston is not more addicted to symphonies than Chicago. Indeed, on afternoons when concerts are scheduled the agitations of the musically minded in popular refectories, the presence in Michigan Avenue of suburban young women, whom one identifies at sight as devotees of Bach and Brahms, suggest similar scenes that are a part of the life of Boston. The luxury of grand opera is offered for ten weeks every winter by artists of first distinction; and it was Chicago, we shall frequently be reminded, that called New York’s attention to the merits of Mme. Galli-Curci. Literature too is much to the fore in Chicago, but I shall escape from the task of enumerating its many practitioners by pleading that only a volume would do justice to the subject. The contributors to Mr. Bert Leston Taylor’s “Line o’ Type” column in theTribunetestify daily to the prevalence of the poetic impulse within the city and of an alert, mustang, critical spirit.
With all its claims to cosmopolitanism one is nevertheless conscious that Chicago is only a prairie county-seat that is continually outgrowingits bounds, but is striving to maintain its early fundamental devotion to decency and order, and develop among its millions the respect for those things that are more excellent that is so distinguishing a trait of the Folks throughout the West. Chicago’s strength is the strength of the soil that was won for civilization and democracy by a great and valorous body of pioneer freemen; and the Chicago spirit is that of the men and women who plunged into the West bearing in their hearts that “something pretty fine” (in Lincoln’s phrase), which was the ideal of the founders of the republic. “The children of the light” are numerous enough to make the materialists and the philistines uncomfortable if not heartily ashamed of themselves; for it is rather necessary in Chicago to have “interests,” to manifest some degree of curiosity touching the best that has been thought and done in the world, and to hold a commission to help and to serve the community and the nation, to win the highest esteem.
Every weakness and every element of strength in democracy, as we are experimenting with it, has definite and concrete presentment in Chicago. In the trying months preceding and following the declaration of war with Germany the city repeatedly asserted its intense patriotism.The predominating foreign-born population is German, yet once the die was cast these citizens were found, except in negligible instances, supporting the American cause as loyally as their neighbors of old American stock. The city’s patriotic ardor was expressed repeatedly in popular demonstrations—beginning with a preparedness parade in June, 1916, in which 150,000 persons participated; in public gatherings designed to unify sentiment, not least noteworthy of these being the meeting in the stock-yards pavilion in May, of last year, when 12,000 people greeted Colonel Roosevelt. The visit of M. Viviani and Field-Marshal Joffre afforded the city another opportunity to manifest its devotion to the cause of democracy. Every responsibility entailed by America’s entrance into the war was met immediately with an enthusiasm so hearty that the Chicago press was to be pardoned for indulging in ironic flings at the East, which had been gloomily apprehensive as to the attitude of the Middle West.
The flag flies no more blithely or securely anywhere in America than in the great city that lies at the northern edge of the prairies that gave Lincoln to be the savior of the nation. Those continuing experiments and that struggle for perfection that are the task of democracyhave here their fullest manifestation, and the knowledge that these processes and undertakings are nobly guided must be a stimulus and an inspiration to all who have at heart the best that may be sought and won for America.