The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-22
THE TRUE AMERICAN
AND WHAT He STANDS FOR
From the Springfield CMass) Repub-

From the Springfield CMass) Repub-
lican.
What is an Americana true Ameri-
can? 1t is to be first of all, we conceive,
a friend of liberty and government
at home and abroad. Lowell has de-
picted for us the first American"-n
in point of time, but foremost of Amer
leans of all time, the type and emhodi-
ment of Americanism:
The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing
Sagacious, patient, drcading praise not
blame,
New birth of our new SOIL the first
American.
This true American had his doctrine
of Americanism. and it was grounded
in sentiment-the love of liberty and
the right to it, liberty as the heritage
of all men. in all lands. everyw'1 here.
The impetuous, forceful young govern
or of New York, looking back from the
heights of 1899, has declared that the
whole history Of the world shows that
the wrong done by the mere sentiment
talist is often of larger proportions and
more elastic than any other kind of
wrong The first American" was
sentimentalist. He talked liberty when
the whole power of the established or
der was enlisted to preserve slavery.
that divine institution" sanctioned
by the Old Testament and de-
Tended by the pulpit-freedom for an
inferior race" already Christianized
and cared for under the time-hon bred
and revered patriarchial system. He
was an Impractical sentimentalist.
Powerful disturbers of the peace were
the advocates of freedom in the COS
and before; shameful mitators of their
folly are these Americans to-day who
find even in armed savagery" in the
Philippines man and a brother, en-
titled to his share of liberty.
Anti-imperialism is a misnomer The
fight of to-day. like the battle of long
ago, is not negative, but positive. The
real Americans do not represent mega
tion but stand for an idea and a be-
lief; they are the heritors of the fathers.
the defenders of the national faith and
in their keeping is the ark of the cove
nant. 1t is time to insist upon this, to
press it and to fight for it through ev-
cry avenue of effort. There is not only
open and brazen remuneration of the
fundamental doctrines which make a
republic but there is the assertion, no
longer thinly disguised, that our de-
mocracy is called of God to police the
world-and that in order to do this we
must doff the garments of peaceful re-
publicanism, put on an Oldworld uni
form, and, in the graphic language of
Governor Roosevelt, "see that the cut
burst of savagery' Chat we have stirred
up by outraging the spirit of liberty
is repressed, once for all" 1t is re-
lentless programme and one impossible
of neutrality-suspicious. of that scrt
never represses.
Our firm belief and expectation Is that
the people of the United States will
soon or late, stand where they always
have stood-with Lincoln, and not with
Roosevelt The one is an American and
the other represents Anglo American
ism, and there is not room here for
both. We shall stick to the new world
type. As it was in 1776 it must be now,
else we shall recant and fall away from
the simple yet prophetic and sufficient
faith of Washington ana Lincoln. Shall
We exalt militarism more than strug
Cling freedom, power more than prin-
ciple and hold physical dominion higher
than the moral sway and helpfulness
that has made liberty. as we have prac-
ticed it with all our imperfections, the
light of the world?
The issue has been Joined, soon it
will stand in clear outline for the popu-
lar consideration and choice. We hold
it to be a self-evident proposition, made