AMERICAN PEOPLE AMERICANISM
of descent, as Americans and nothing else; and, above
all, we must do this as regards moral issues. The great
issues with which we must now deal are moral even
more than material; and on these issues every good
American should be with us, without the slightest regard
to the land from which his forefathers came. (1916.)
Mem. Ed. XX, 250; Nat. Ed. XVIII, 216.
____________. We are all of us Americans, and nothing
else; we all have equal rights and equal obligations; we
form part of one people, in the face of all other nations,
paying allegiance only to one flag; and a wrong to any
one of us is a wrong to all the rest of us. (New York
Times, September 10, 1917.) Mem. Ed. XXI, 43; Nat.
Ed. XIX, 37.
____________. There is one point upon which I wish
to lay especial stress; that is, the necessity for a feeling
of broad, radical, and intense Americanism, if good
work is to be done in any direction. Above all, the one
essential for success in every political movement
which is to do lasting good, is that our citizens should
act as Americans. . . . It is an outrage for a man to drag
foreign politics into our contests, and vote as an
Irishman or German or other foreigner, as the case
may be. . . . But it is no less an outrage to discriminate
against one who has become an American in good
faith, merely because of his creed or birthplace. Every
man who has gone into practical politics knows well
enough that if he joins good men and fights those who
are evil, he can pay no heed to lines of division drawn
according to race and religion. (1890.) Mem. Ed. IX,
217; Nat. Ed. X, 360.
____________. Americanism means many things. It
means equality of rights and, therefore, equality of
duty and of obligation. It means service to our
common country. It means loyalty to one flag, to our
flag, the flag of all of us. It means on the part of each
of us respect for the rights of the rest of us. It means
that all of us guarantee the rights of each of us. It
means free education, genuinely representative
government, freedom of speech and thought, equality
before the law for all men, genuine political and
religious freedom and the democratizing of industry so
as to give at least a measurable equality of opportunity
for all, and so as to place before us as our ideal in all
industries where this ideal is possible of attainment,
the system of co-operative ownership and
management, in order that the tool users may, so far as
possible, become the tool owners. Everything is un-
American that tends either to government by a
plutocracy or government by a mob. To divide along
the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.
All privileges based on wealth, and all enmity to
honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-
American—both of them equally so. Americanism
means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth,
sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made
America. The things that will destroy America are
prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first
instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-
rich-quick theory of life. (To S. S. Menken, January
10, 1917; read before National Security League,
Washington, January 26, 1917.) Proceedings of the
Congress of Constructive Patriotism. (New York,
1917), p. 172.
AMERICAN POSSESSIONS. See also ALASKA;
HAWAII, INSULAR POSSESSIONS; PHILIPPINES; PORTO
RICO.
AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION. See
RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION.
AMERICAN SYSTEM. See DEMOCRACY.
AMERICANISM. There is no room in this country for
fifty-fifty Americanism. (March 2, 1918.) Roosevelt in
the Kansas City Star, III.
____________. I cannot be with you, and so all I can do
is to wish you Godspeed. There must be no sagging back
in the fight for Americanism merely because the war is
over. There are plenty of persons who have already made
the assertion that they believe the American people have
a short memory and that they intend to revive all the
foreign associations which most directly interfere with
the complete Americanization of our people. . . .
Any man who says he is an American, but
something else also, isn't an American at all. We have
room for but one flag, the American flag, and this
excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against
liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any
foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. (To
President of the American Defense Society, January 3,
1919; last message, read at meeting in New York,
January 5, 1919.) Mem. Ed. XXIV, 554-555; Bishop II,
474.
____________. Americanism is a question of principle,
of purpose, of idealism, of character; . . . not a matter of
birthplace, or creed, or line of descent. (At unveiling of
monument to Gen. Phil Sheridan, Washington,
November 25, 1908.) Mem. Ed. XII, 478; Nat. Ed. XI,
222.
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