who fought on one side. Of the others, part went back to their homes in
England, the rest, our old neighbors and friends, we despoiled of their
lands and drove across our northern border with execrations, to make new
homes in a new land and view us with a hatred that has not yet passed
away. If you doubt it, discuss the American Revolution for fifteen minutes
with one of the United Empire Loyalists of Toronto. It will surprise you
to know that your patriot ancestors were thieves, blacklegs and
scoundrels. I do not believe that they were; but possibly they were not
the impossible archangels of the school histories.
Of one thing I am sure; that if the descendants of those who fought
against us in '76 had been left to mingle with our own people, the
historical recollections of the struggle would have been surer and truer
on both sides than they are today. Here is a case where ancestry has
perverted history, but simply because there has been an unnatural
segregation of descendants. Let me note another where we have absolutely
forgotten our ancestral predilections and have gone over to the other
side, simply because the other side made the records. When we read a Roman
account of encounters between the legions and the northern tribes, where
do we place ourselves in imagination, as readers? Always with the Roman
legions. But our place is not there; it is with our hardy and brave
forefathers, fighting to defend their country and their firesides against
the southern intruders. How many teachers of history try to utilize
race-consciousness in their pupils to make them attain a clearer knowledge
of what it all meant? Should we not be proud that we are of the blood of
men who withstood the self-styled rulers of the world and won their
freedom and their right to shape their own personal and civic development?
I should like to see a book tracing the history and development of an
imaginary Anglo-Saxon American line of ancestry, taking it from the
forests of Northern Germany across to Britain, through the Norman conquest
and down the stream of subsequent English history across seas to
America--through savage wars and Revolution, perhaps across the
Alleghenies, to settle finally in the great West. I would try to make the
reader realize that here was no fairy tale--no tale of countries and races
with which we have naught to do, but the story of our own fathers, whose
features and whose characteristics, physical and mental, have been
transmitted by heredity to us, their sons and daughters of the year 1913.
It is unfortunate perhaps, for our perceptions of racial continuity, that
we are rovers by disposition. Who runs across the sea, says the Latin
poet, changes his sky but not his mind. True enough, but it is difficult
for some of us to realize it. It is hard for some of us to realize that
our emigrant ancestors were the same men and women when they set foot on
these shores as when they left the other side some weeks before. Our
trans-Atlantic cousins labor under the same difficulties, for they assure
us continually that we are a "new" country. We have, they say, the faults
and the advantages of "youth." It would be interesting to know at just
what point in the passage the education and the habits and the prejudices
of the incoming Englishman dropped off. Change of environment works
wonders with habits and even with character; we must of course recognize
that; but it certainly does not make of the mind a _tabula rasa_, on which
the fresh surroundings may absolutely work their will.
I must say that our migrations within the limits of our own continent have
not been productive of so much forgetfulness. I have been struck, for
instance, since I came to St. Louis, with what I may call the
source-consciousness of our western population. Everyone, whether he is
particularly interested in genealogy or not, knows that his people came
from Vermont or Virginia or Pennsylvania. He may not be able to trace his
ancestry, or even to name his great-grandfather; but with the source of
that ancestry he is always acquainted. I believe this to be the case
throughout the Middle West. From this point of view the population is not
so well mixed as it is in the East. No one in Massachusetts or Connecticut
can point out to you, offhand, the families that came from particular
counties in England. And yet in England, a migration from one county to
another is always recognized and remembered. A cousin of mine, visiting on
an English estate, was casually informed by his host, "Our family are
newcomers in this county. We moved in only about 300 years ago." From this
point of view we are all newcomers in America. It is to be hoped that as
the years go on, the elements of our western population will not so
thoroughly lose sight of their sources as have the Easterners. It is not
likely that they will, for those sources are more accessible. We have
Virginia families who still keep up friendly intercourse with the old
stock; Vermont families who spend each summer on the old homestead; and so
on. The New Englander did not and could not keep up similar relations with
Old England. Even the Southerner, who did it for a time, had to drop it.
Our inter-communication with Europe has grown enormously in volume, but
little of it, if any, is due to continuous ancestral interest, although a
revived general interest has sprung up and is to be commended.
I fear, however, that the greater part of this interest in sources, where
it exists, is very far from an intelligent connection with the body of
historical fact. When a man is proud of the fact that an ancestor took
part in the famous Boston Tea Party, has he taken any pains to ascertain
what actually took place on that occasion? If he claims descent from
Pocahontas, can he tell us just how much of what we currently believe of
her is fact and how much is myth? If he knows that his family came from
Cheshire, England, and was established and well-known there for centuries,
what does he know of the history of Cheshire and of the connection of his
ancestors with it? Our interest, when it exists, is concentrated too much
on trivial happenings. We know and boast that an ancestor came over in the
Mayflower without knowing of the family doings before and after that
event. Of course, connection with some one picturesque event serves to
stimulate the imagination and focus the interest, but these events should
serve as starting points for investigation rather than resting points
where interest begins and ends. Historical students are beginning to
realize that it is not enough to know about the battle of Hastings without
understanding the causes and forces that led to it and proceeded from it,
and the daily lives and thoughts of those who took part in it, from
captain to spearman.
This failure to link up family history with general history is responsible
for many sad losses of historical material. Many persons do not understand
the value of old letters and diaries; many who do, keep them closely in
the family archives where they are unknown and unappreciated. Old letters
containing material that bears in any way on the events, customs or life
of the time, should be turned over to the local historical society. If
they contain private matter, seal up the packet and require that it shall
remain sealed for a century, if you wish; but do not burn it. The feeling
that destroys such documents is simply evidence that we are historically
valuing the individual and the family above the community, just as we
still are in so many other fields of thought. I cannot tolerate the idea
that we shall ultimately think only in terms of the common good; the
smaller units, the man, the family must not lose their influence, but the
connection between them and the general welfare must be better understood
and more generally recognized; and this must be done, in the first place,
in all that relates to their historical records and to our historical
consciousness.
Ancestral feeling should, in this way, always be historical, not
individual. A man is right to be personally proud of his own achievements,
but it is difficult to see how he can properly take the same kind of pride
in that of others, whether related to him by blood or not. But there are
other kinds of legitimate pride--family pride, racial pride, group pride
of all sorts, where the feeling is not personal. If any member of a
family, a profession or any association, has so conducted himself that
credit is gained for the whole body, it is proper that this kind of group
pride should be felt by each member of the body, and in the case of a
family, where the bond is one of blood, the group feeling should be
stronger and the group pride, if it is proper to feel it at all, may be of
peculiar strength, provided it be carefully distinguished from the pride
due to personal achievement. And when the member of the family in whom one
takes pride is an ancestor, this means, as I have said, that feeling
should be historical, not individual. And anything that tends to lift our
interest from the individual to the historical plane--to make us cease
from congratulating ourselves personally on some connection with the good
and great and substitute a feeling of group pride shared in common by some
body to which we all belong, is acting toward this desirable end. The body
may be a family; it may be the community or the state; it may be as broad
as humanity itself, for we may all be proud of the world's greatest. Or it
may be a body like our own, formed to cherish the memories of forebears in
some particular line of endeavor, in some particular place or at some
particular era. Our ancestry is part of our history; so long as our regard
for it is properly interwoven with our historical sense, no one can
properly charge us with laying the foundation for aristocracy. We are
rather making true democracy possible, for such is the case only when the
elements of a community are closely united by ties of blood, interest and
knowledge--by pride in those who have gone before and by determination
that the standard set by these men and women of old shall be worthily
upheld.
WHAT THE FLAG STANDS FOR[9]
[9] An address on Flag Day made in St. Peter's Church, St. Louis.
The most important things in the world are ideas. We are so familiar with
the things that are the material embodiment of ideas--buildings, roads,
vehicles and machines--that we are prone to forget that without the ideas
that gave them birth all these would be impossible. A house is a mass of
wood, stone and metal, but all these substances, collected in a pile, do
not suffice to make a house.
A locomotive is made of steel and brass, but although the ancient Romans
had both the metal and the alloy, they had no locomotives.
The vital thing about the house--the thing that differentiates it from
other masses of the same materials--is the idea--the plan--that was in the
architect's mind while wood and stone and iron were still in forest,
quarry and mine. The vital thing about the locomotive is the builder's
idea or plan, which he derived, in turn, from the inventor.
The reason why there were no locomotives in ancient Rome is that in those
days the locomotive had not yet been invented, and when we say this we
refer not to the materials, which the Romans had in abundance, but to the
idea or plan of the locomotive. So it is with the whole material world
about us. The things that result, not from man's activities, but from the
operations of nature, are no exceptions; for, if we are Christians, we
believe that the idea or plan of a man, or a horse, or a tree, was in the
mind of the great architect, the great machinist, before the world began,
and that this idea is the important thing about each.
A man, a house, an engine--these are ideas that lead to things that we can
feel, and see and hear. But there are other ideas that have nothing of the
kind to correspond to them--I mean such ideas as charity, manliness,
religion and patriotism--what sometimes are called abstract qualities.
These are real things and their ideas are even more important than the
others, but we cannot see nor feel them.
Now, man likes to use his senses, and it is for this reason that he is
fond of using for these abstract ideas, symbols that he can see and feel.
We of St. Louis should appreciate this to the full just now, for we have
just set before the world the greatest assemblage of symbolic images and
acts, portraying our pride in the past and our hope and confidence for the
future, that any city on this earth ever has been privileged to present or
to witness.[10] Whether we were actors or spectators; whether we camped
with the Indians, marched with De Soto or La Salle and felled the forests
of early St. Louis with Laclede and Chouteau, or whether we were part of
that great host on the hillside, we can say no longer that we do not
understand the importance of the idea, or the value and cogency of the
visible symbols that fix it in the memory and grip it to the heart.
[10] The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis, 1915.
The Church of Christ always has understood and used this property of the
visible and tangible symbol to enforce the claims of the abstract idea.
We revere the cross, not because there is anything in its shape or
substance to make us venerate it, but because it is the symbol of the
Christian religion--of all that it has done for the world in the past and
all that it may do in the future. That is why we love and honor the
flag--not because it is a piece of cloth bearing certain figures and
colors, but because it is to us the symbol of all that our country has
meant to our fathers; all it means to us and all that it may mean to our
children, generation after generation.
A nation's flag did not always mean all this to those who gazed upon it.
In very old times the flag was for the soldier alone and had no more
meaning for the ordinary citizen than a helmet or a spear. When the
soldier saw it uplifted in the thick of the battle he rallied to it. Then
the flag became the personal emblem of a king or a prince, whether in
battle or not; then it was used to mark what belonged to the government of
a country. It is still so used in many parts of Europe, where the display
of a flag on a building marks it as government property, as our flag does
when it is used on a post office or a custom-house. Nowhere but in our own
country is the flag used as the general symbol of patriotic feeling and
displayed alike by soldier and citizen, by Government office and private
dwelling. So it comes about that the stars and stripes means to us all
that his eagles did to the Roman soldier; all that the great Oriflamme did
to the medieval Frenchman; all that the Union Jack now means to the Briton
or the tri-color to the Frenchman--and more, very much more, beside.
What ideas, then, does the flag stand for? First, it stands for union. It
was conceived in union, it was dipped in blood to preserve union, and for
union it still stands. Its thirteen stripes remind us of that gallant
little strip of united colonies along the Atlantic shore that threw down
the gage of battle to Britain a century and a half ago. Its stars are
symbols of the wider union that now is. Both may be held to signify the
great truth that in singleness of purpose among many there is effective
strength that no one by himself can hope to achieve. Our union of States
was formed in fear of foreign aggression; we have need of it still though
our foes be of our own household. If we are ever to govern our cities
properly, hold the balance evenly betwixt capital and labor, develop our
great natural resources without undue generosity on the one hand or
parsimony on the other--solve the thousand and one problems that rise to
confront us on every hand--we shall never accomplish these things by
struggling singly--one man at a time or even one State at a time, but by
concerted, united effort, the perfect union of which our flag is a symbol,
and which we need to-day even more than we did in 1776 or 1861.
We stand on the threshold of an effort to alter our city government.
Whether that effort should or should not succeed, every citizen must
decide for himself, with the aid of such intelligence and judgment as it
has pleased God to give him. But if he should decide in its favor, be
certain that his individual vote at the polls will go a very little way
toward bringing his desires to pass. We are governed by majorities, and a
majority is a union of many. He who would win must not only vote, but
work. Our flag, with its assemblages of stripes and stars, is a perpetual
reminder that by the union of the many, and not merely by the rectitude of
the individual, are policies altered and charters changed.
Again, our flag stands for love. It is a beautiful flag and it stands for
a beautiful land. We all love what is our own, if we are normal men and
women--our families, our city, our country. They are all beautiful to us,
and it is right that they should be.
I confess that the movement that has for its motto "See America First" has
my hearty sympathy. Not that the Rockies or the Sierras are necessarily
more beautiful than the Alps or the Missouri fairer than the Danube; we
should have no more to do here with comparisons than the man who loves his
children. He does not, before deciding that he will love them, compare
them critically with his neighbors'. If we do not love the Grand Canyon
and the Northern Rockies, the wild Sierras and the more peaceful beauties
of the Alleghenies or the Adirondacks, simply because leaving these all
unseen we prefer the lakes and mountains of foreign lands, we are like a
man who should desert his own children, whom he had never seen, to pass
his time at a moving-picture show, because he believed that he saw there
faces and forms more fair than those of his own little ones. When we sing
in our hymn of "America"
I love thy rocks and rills
Thy woods and templed hills,
we should be able to do it from the heart.
It is indeed fitting that we should love our country, and thrill when we
gaze at the old flag that symbolizes that love. Does this mean that when
our country makes an error we are to shut our eyes to it? Does it require
us to call wrong right and black white?
There is a sentiment with which you are all familiar, "My country, may she
ever be right; but, right or wrong, my country!"
Understood aright, these are the noblest and truest of words, but they are
commonly misinterpreted, and they have done much harm. To love and stand
by a friend who has done wrong is a fine thing; but it would be very
different to abet him in his wrong-doing and assure him that he had done
right. We may dearly love a son or a brother who is the worst of sinners,
without joining him in sin or persuading him that he is righteous.
So we may say, "Our country, right or wrong" without forfeiting the due
exercise of our judgment in deciding whether she is right or wrong, or the
privilege of exerting our utmost power to make her do right.
If she is fighting for an unrighteous cause, we should not go over to the
enemy, but we should do our best to make her cease and to make amends for
the wrong she has done.
Another thing for which the flag stands is freedom or liberty. We all are
familiar with the word. It means different things to different persons.
When hampering conditions press hard upon a man, all that he thinks of for
the moment is to be rid of them. Without them he deems that he will be
free. The freedom of which our fathers thought, for which they fought and
which they won, was freedom from government by what had become to them a
foreign power. The freedom that the black man longed for in the sixties
was freedom from slavery.
To-day men and women living in intolerable industrial conditions are
panting for freedom--the freedom that seems to them just now more
desirable than aught else in the world. All this the flag stands for, but
it stands for much more. Under its folds we are entitled to live our own
lives in the fullest way compatible with the exercise of the same
privilege by others. This includes political freedom, industrial freedom,
social freedom and all the rest. Despite much grumbling and some denials,
I believe that it is all summed up under political freedom, and that we
have it all, though we may not always take advantage of it. The people who
groan under an industrial yoke do so because they do not choose to exert
the power given them by law, under the flag, to throw it off. The
boss-ridden city is boss-ridden only because it is satisfied to be so. The
generation that is throttled by trusts and monopolies may at any time
effect a peaceful revolution. The flag gives us freedom, but even a man's
eternal salvation cannot be forced upon him against his will.
Another thing for which the flag stands is justice--the "square deal," as
it is called by one of our Presidents. To every man shall come sooner or
later, under its folds, that which he deserves. This means largely "hands
off," and is but one of the aspects of freedom, or liberty, since if we do
not interfere with a man, what happens to him is a consequence of what he
is and what he does. If we oppress him, or interfere with him, he gets
less than he merits; and if, on the contrary we coddle him and give him
privileges, he may get more than his due.
Give a man opportunity and a free path and he will achieve what is before
him in the measure of his strength. That the American Flag stands for all
this, thousands will testify who have left their native shores to live
under its folds and who have contributed here to the world's progress what
the restraints and injustice of the old world forbade then to give.
This sense of the removal of bonds, of sudden release and the entry into
free space, is well put by a poet of our own, Henry Van Dyke, when he
sings,
So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack:
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back,
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free--
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.
Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
Finally, the flag stands for the use of physical force where it becomes
necessary.
This simple statement of facts will grieve many good people, but to omit
it would be false to the truth and dishonorable to the flag that we honor
today.
Its origin, as we have seen, was in its service as a rallying point in
battle. We are still battling, and we still need it. And at times our
contests still inevitably take the physical form. One may earnestly pray
for peace; one may even pay his dues to the Peace Society and still
realize that to preserve peace we may have to use the sword.
Northward, across the Canadian border, good men[11] are striving even now
to keep us in peace and to assure peace to a neighbor severely torn by
internal conflict. Can any of us doubt that our good friend and
fellow-citizen--nay, can anyone doubt that our neighbors of the Southern
Continent--are doing their best to save human lives, to preserve our young
men and the young men of Mexico to build and operate machines, to raise
crops and to rebuild and beautify cities, instead of sending them to fill
soldiers' graves, as our bravest and best did in the "sixties?" And yet,
should they succeed, as God grant they may, who can doubt that what will
give strength and effect to their decisions will be the possibility of
force, exerted in a righteous cause, symbolized by the flag? Who can be
sorry that back of the flag there are earnest men; nay, that there are
ships there, and guns? One need not be a Jingo; one can hate war and love
peace with all one's heart and yet rejoice that the flag symbolizes
authority--the ability to back up a decision without which the mind itself
cannot decide in calmness and impartiality.
[11] United States and "A-B-C" Commissions on the State of Mexico.