Author of "From Alien to Citizen," "The
Immigrant Tide," etc._
[Illustration]
_New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh_
Copyright, 1915, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
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Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
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_To
Professor Richard Hochdoerfer, Ph. D.
erudite scholar and most lovable
friend, this book is dedicated_
_Introducing the Introduction_
"_Das ist ganz Americanish_." Whenever a German says this, he means that
it is something which is practical, lavish, daringly reckless or
lawless.
It means a short cut to achievement, a disregard of convention, an
absence of those qualities which have given to the older nations of the
world that fine, distinguishing flavor which is a fruit of the spirit.
Many attempts have been made to enlighten the Old World upon that point;
but in spite of exchange-professorships and some notable, interpretative
books upon the subject, we are still only the "Land of the Dollar."
We are not loved as a nation, largely because we are not understood, and
we are not understood because we do not understand ourselves, and we do
not understand ourselves because we have not studied ourselves in the
light of the spirit of other nations.
Coming to this country a product of Germanic civilization, knowing
intimately the Slavic, Semitic, and Latin spirit, the writer was
compelled to compare and to choose. Yet he would never have dared write
upon this subject; not only because it was a difficult task, but because
he had been so completely weaned from the Old World spirit that he had
lost the proper perspective. Moreover, of formal books upon this subject
there was no dearth.
During the last ten years, however, he has had the advantage of being
the _cicerone_ of distinguished Europeans who came to study various
phases of our institutional life, and they brought the opportunity of
fresh comparisons and also of new view-points in this realm of the
national spirit.
These unconventional studies, most of which received their inspiration
through the visit of the Herr Director and his charming wife, are here
offered as an Introduction to the American Spirit, not only to the Herr
Director and the Frau Directorin, but to those Americans who do not
realize that a nation, as well as man, "cannot live by bread alone;"
that its most precious asset, its greatest element of strength, is its
Spirit, and that the elements out of which the Spirit is made, are so
rare, so delicate, that when once wasted they cannot readily be
replaced.
As the sin against the Holy Spirit is the one sin for which the Gospel
holds out no forgiveness for the individual, so there seems to be no
hope for the nation which transgresses against this most vital element
of its higher life.
Inasmuch also as the Spirit is something which guides and cannot be
guided, these informal introductions appear in no geographic or historic
sequence, but are necessarily left to the leading of the spirit, of
which "no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth."