America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.

See, my friends, what that means. It means that

Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We can not exempt you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We can not exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the day- that is common to mankind everywhere; we can not exempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make them light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice.

THE FOREIGNER IN A DEMOCRACY 1

-

CARL SCHURZ (1829-1906)

One of the most interesting experiences of life in those young Western communities with not a few of which I became well acquainted, was the observation of the educational influence exercised by active local self-government. I met there a great many foreign-born persons who in their native countries had been accustomed to look up to the government as a superior power which, in the order of the universe, was ordained to do everything - or nearly everything for them, and to whose superhuman wisdom and indisputable authority they had to submit. Such people, of course, brought no conception of the working of democratic institutions with them, and there is sometimes much speculation on the part of our political philosophers as to how the newcomers can safely be intrusted here with any rights or privileges permitting them to participate in the functions of the government. In point of fact, there will be very little, if any, serious trouble whenever such people are placed in a situation in which they will actually be obliged to take an active and re

1 Carl Schurz was a distinguished American soldier, statesman, and liberal political leader. He was born in Germany in 1829. He engaged in the revolutionary movement in 1848, in consequence of which he was forced to flee from his native land, and he emigrated to the United States in 1852. He became a general in the Civil War, served as ambassador to several European countries, as member of the Cabinet of President Hayes, as senator, and always as a leader of liberal political and progressive social movements. Schurz represents the best contributions of the immigrant citizen to the country of his free choice.

From "The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz," Vol. II. Copyright, 1907, by the McClure Company. Used by permission of the publishers and of Carl L. Schurz, Esq.

sponsible part in the government respecting those affairs which immediately concern them - things in which they are intimately interested. Plant such persons in communities which are still in an inchoate formative state, where the management of the public business in the directest possible way, visibly touches the home of every inhabitant, and where everybody feels himself imperatively called upon to give attention to it for the protection or promotion of his own interests, and people ever so little used to that sort of thing will take to democratic selfgovernment as a duck takes to water. They may do so somewhat clumsily at first and make grievous mistakes, but those very mistakes with their disagreeable consequences will serve to sharpen the wits of those who desire to learn which every person of average intelligence, who feels himself responsible for his own interests, desires to do. In other words, practice upon one's own responsibility is the best if not the only school of self-government. What is sometimes called the "art of self-government" is not learned by masses of people theoretically, nor even by the mere presentation of other people's experiences by way of instructive example. Practice is the only really effective teacher. Other methods of instruction will rather retard, if not altogether prevent, the development of the self-governing capacity, because they will serve to weaken the sense of responsibility and self-reliance.

In discussing the merits of self-government we are apt to commit the error of claiming that self-government furnishes the best possible - that is, the wisest and at the same time most economical kind of government as to the practical administration of public affairs, for it does not. There is no doubt that a despot, if he were supremely wise, absolutely just, benevolent, and unselfish, might

furnish a community, as far as the practical working of the administrative machinery goes, better government than the majority of the citizens subject to changeable currents of public opinion—in all things except one. But this one thing is of the highest importance. Selfgovernment as an administrator is subject to criticism for many failures. But it is impossible to overestimate self-government as an educator. The foreign observer in America is at once struck by the fact that the average of intelligence, as the intelligence manifests itself in the spirit of inquiry, in the interest taken in a great variety of things, and in alertness and judgment, is much higher among the masses here than anywhere else. This is certainly not owing to any superiority of the public school system in this country - or, if such superiority exists, not to that alone - but rather to the fact that here the individual is constantly brought into interested contact with a greater variety of things, and is admitted to active participation in the exercise of functions which in other countries are left to the care of a superior authority. I have frequently been struck by the remarkable expansion of the horizon effected by a few years of American life, in the minds of immigrants who had come from somewhat benighted regions, and by the mental enterprise and keen discernment with which they took hold of problems which, in their comparatively torpid condition in their native countries, they had never thought of. It is true that, in our large cities with congested population, self-government as an educator does not always bring forth the most desirable results, partly owing to the circumstance that government, in its various branches, is there further removed from the individual, so that he comes into contact with it and exercises his influence upon it only through

variable, and sometimes questionable, intermediary agencies, which frequently exert a very demoralizing influence. But my observations and experiences in the young West, although no doubt I saw not a few things to be regretted, on the whole greatly strengthened my faith in the democratic principle. It was with a feeling of religious devotion that I took part in Fourth of July celebrations, the principal feature of which then consisted in the solemn reading of the Declaration of Independence before the assembled multitude; and the principal charm the anti-slavery cause had for me consisted in its purpose to make the principles proclaimed by that Declaration as true in the universality of practical application as they were true in theory. And there was the realization of the ideal I had brought with me from the luckless struggles for free government in my native land.

THE LOYALTY OF THE FOREIGN BORN 1

M. E. RAVAGE (1884- )

What does America mean to me, to the immigrant generally, with his manifold attachments, his double culture, his composite point of view as an outsider and an insider at one and the same time?

I am glad the question has at last been raised. For a whole century you have been seeking and listening attentively to the conflicting opinions of foreign travelers and critics on your institutions and character. But there was a foreigner right here who had come to America not

1 An extract from an article published under this title in the Century Magazine for June, 1917. Used by permission of the publishers and the author.