AMERICANISM AMERICANIZATION
AMERICANISM AND INTERNATIONALISM. I
believe in nationalism as the absolute prerequisite to
internationalism. I believe in patriotism as the absolute
prerequisite to the larger Americanism. I believe in
Americanism because unless our people are good
Americans first, America can accomplish little or
nothing worth accomplishing for the good of the world
as a whole. (1916.) Mem. Ed. XX, 529; Nat. Ed. XVIII,
the United States as his own, and that he is honestly
desirous to uphold the interests of all other Americans
in whatever sections of the country they may dwell.
(Outlook , September 10, 1910.) Mem. Ed. XVIII, 28;
Nat. Ed. XVI, 25.
AMERICANISM. See also ALLEGIANCE; FLAG;
FOURTH OF JULY; KNOW NOTHING MOVEMENT;
LOYALTY; NATIONALISM; PATRIOTISM.
454.
AMERICANISM AND PEACE. Let ours be true
Americanism, the greater Americanism, and let us
tolerate no other. Let us prepare ourselves for justice
and efficiency within our own border during peace, for
justice in international relations, and for efficiency in
war. Only thus shall we have the peace worth having.
(1916.) Mem. Ed. XX, 260; Nat. Ed. XVIII, 224.
AMERICANISM AS A CLOAK. There are plenty of
scoundrels always ready to try to belittle reform
movements or to bolster up existing iniquities in the
name of Americanism; but this does not alter the fact
that the man who can do most in this country is and
must be the man whose Americanism is most sincere
and intense. Outrageous though it is to use a noble idea
as the cloak for evil, it is still worse to assail the noble
idea itself because it can thus be used. The men who do
iniquity in the name of patriotism, of reform, of
Americanism, are merely one small division of the class
that has always existed and will always exist—the class
of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always
prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and
use them in the interests of evil-doing. (Forum, April
1894.) Mem. Ed. XV, 15; Nat. Ed. XIII, 13.
AMERICANISM VERSUS COSMOPOLITANISM.
Whatever may be the case in an infinitely remote
future, at present no people can render any service to
humanity unless as a people they feel an intense sense
of national cohesion and solidarity. . . . The United
States can accomplish little for mankind, save in so far
as within its borders it develops an intense spirit of
Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, especially if
it expresses itself through a flabby pacifism, is not only
silly, but degrading. It represents national emasculation.
(1916.) Mem. Ed. XX, 233; Nat. Ed. XVIII, 201.
AMERICANISM VERSUS SECTIONALISM. The
great lesson that all of us need to learn and to keep is
the lesson that it is unimportant whether a man lives North
or South, East or West, provided that he is genuinely and
in good faith an American; that he feels every part of
AMERICANIZATION. The process of assimilating,
or as we should now say, of Americanizing, all foreign
and non-English elements was going on almost as
rapidly a hundred years ago as it is at present. A young
Dutchman or Huguenot felt it necessary, then, to learn
English, precisely as a young Scandinavian or German
does now; and the churches of the former at the end of
the last century were obliged to adopt English as the
language for their ritual exactly as the churches of the
latter do at the end of this. The most stirring, energetic,
and progressive life of the colony was English; and all
the young fellows of push and ambition gradually
adopted this as their native language, and then refused
to belong to congregations where the service was
carried on in a less familiar speech. (1888.) Mem. Ed.
VIII, 287; Nat. Ed. VII, 248.
____________. The one overshadowing fact in this
process of complete Americanization, the one side of
the question that should be always borne in mind, is the
enormous benefit it confers upon the person who is
Americanized. The gain to the country is real, but the
gain to the individual himself is everything. Immigrants
who remain aliens, whether in language or in political
thought, are of comparatively little benefit to the
country; but they themselves are the individuals most
damaged. The man who becomes completely
Americanized—who celebrates our Constitutional
Centennial instead of the Queen's Jubilee, or the Fourth
of July rather than Saint Patrick's Day, and who "talks
United States" instead of the dialect of the country
which he has of his own free will abandoned—is not
only doing his plain duty by his adopted land, but is
also rendering to himself a service of immeasurable
value.
This last point is one that cannot be too often
insisted on. The chief interest served by
Americanization is that of the individual himself. A
man who speaks only German or Swedish may
nevertheless be a most useful American citizen; but it is
impossible for him to derive the full
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