The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-03
AMERICAN PARTIES AND FOREIGN
PASSIONS.

From the N. Y. World.
1t seems to be impossible for a certain
class of our German fellow-citizens to under
stand that the condemnation VIII ich American
public sentiment bestows upon the agitation
now carrying on all over the. country by such
politicians as Mr.. Carl Schurz has no refer
ence whatever to the merits or dement's of the
German cause in Europe. 1t has as little
to do, also, with the politics of America.
American Democrats and American Republi-
cans unite in expressing it; and it is uttered
not less heartily by Americans who believe
Bismarck and King William to be the pre-
destined apostles of German freedom than
by Americans who put their faith for the
future of Europe in the radical propaganda
ism of French ideas and in the political in
sight of the Emperor Napoleon. The fun
damental objection to such demonstrations
as those which are now for the moment
advancing, only hereafter to recoil in ruin
upon, the political fortunes of Mr.. Schurz
and his emulators, consists in the simple
fact that these demonstrations tend to arrest
the fusion into a homogeneous democratic
people of our heterogeneous population,
drawn from all quarters of monarchical
Europe. In doing this they furthermore
lower the tone of our national character and
bate the breath of the nation before the world.
For nearly a generation after the recognition
by Europe of American independence this
country was dragged this way and that; ham,
pered, heated, and harassed by precisely such
influences as the inconsiderate Teutonism of
the moment tends to inflict upon us once
more. Hardly emerged from our colonial
estate, we had not yet acquired anything like
a distinct consciousness of our new mission
and place in the world when the French revo-
luton of 'S9 broke forth in all its awful mag
n~ifcence. Ties of blood unbroken by war, and
the countless traditions of our society and
our institutions, led one great section of the
American people to sympathize intensely with
the indignation aroused in England and
throughout monarchical Europe by the ex-
cesses of the men of September and of the
Jacobin Government. Ties of gratitude for
inestimable services rendered to the national
cause, and the influences of French thought
and of French philosophy widely dissent
mated throughout the land, drew another
great section of the people into an ardent
devotion to the cause of revolutionary
France. Our domestic parties lost their local
color. We were divided into Anglo-men and
Gallo-men. We wore the cockades of 'Pitt
and Coburg" or the tri-colored ribbons of the
new republic. All this belittled and retarded
our proper national development. The re-
membrance of all this makes us shrink to-day
from the revival, though on q smaller
scale and within the limitations of a special
class, of the mistakes and the condescen-
sions of that elder time. The Germans
of America to-day are more nearly colonial in
their mood of mind and in their sympathies
than any other body of immigrants among
us. For this there are simple and obvious
causes. In the first place, the Germans are
the latest corners into the national fold. Be-
fore the revolutions of 1S4S, suppressed in
the blood of the people by the princes of
Prussia, of Saxony, and of Hesse, set adrift
to the westward great foes of the Teutonic
race, the German immigration into the
United States had been but q thin and
almost imperceptible stream. The very
dream of emigration from Germany at
all had only risen upon the German mind
with the emancipation of the people during,
and after, and in consequence of the Napo-
leonic propaganda. Serfdom, which was
abolished in Prussia by the French in 1910,
after jena, was abolished in Wurtemberg by
the prince whom the French had raised to a
kingly throne, in 1918. With 1919 the Ger
man tide fairly began to flow out of the Old
World and in upon the New. The first gene
ration born of the immigrants of 1S49 are
but now coming to maturity; and out of the
two millions, more or less, of Germans now
living as citizens in America, the enormous
majority Of men capable of political opinions