The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-08-19
WHAT IS A TRUE AMERICAN,

up to the present time, is strong op-
ponent of the Philippine policy of Will
lam Mckinley and his adherents. In a
recent issue it asks, What is an Amer
ican-a true American? and answers its
own interrogatory in the following in
teresting style:
1t is to be first of all, we conceive, a
friend of liberty and self-government at
home and abroad. Lowell has depicted
for us "the first American"-no in
point of time, but foremost of Amer
leans of all time, the type and embodi-
ment OF Americanism:
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing
man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading 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, everywhere. The inn
petuous. forceful young governor 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
alist is often of larger proportions and
more elastic than any other kind of
wrong" "The first American" was a
sentimentalist. He talked liberty when
the whole power OF the established order
was enlisted to preserve slavery, that
divine institution" sanctioned by the
old testament and defended by the pull
pit-freedom for an inferior race" al
ready Christianized and cared for under
the time-honored and revered patriarch
al system. He was an impractical SEN
timentalist. Powerful disturbers of the
peace were the advocates of freedom in
the Cos and before; shameful irnitators
OF their folly are these Americans to-day
who find even in EARNED savagery" in
the Philippines man and brother, en-
titled to his share of liberty.
Anti-imperialism is misnomer. The
fight OF to-day, like the battle of long
ago, is not negative, but positive. The
real Americans do not represent mega
ton, but stand for an idea and belief;
they are the heritors of the fathers, the
defenders of the national faith and in
their keeping is the ark of the covenant.
1t is time to insist upon this, to press
it and to fight for it through every ave-
nue. Of effort. There is not only open
and brazen remuneration OF the funda-
mental doctrines which make republic,
but there is the assertion, no longer
thinly disguised, that Our democracy is
called of God to police the world-and
that in order to do this we must doff
the garments of peaceful republicanism,
put on an old-world uniform and, in the
graphic language of Governor Roose-
welt, see that the 'outburst OF savagery'
Chat we have stirred up by outraging
the spirit of liberty is repressed once
for all" 1t is relentless program and
one impossible of execution, as repres-
sion OF that sort 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-Americanism,
ard there is not room here for both.
We shall stick to the new-world type.
AS it was in 1875 it must be now, else
we shall recant and fall away from the
simple yet prophetic and sufficient faith
OF Washington and Lincoln. Shall we
exalt nilitarism more than struggling
freedom, power more than principle,
and hold physical dominion higher than
the moral sway and helpfulness that has
made liberty, as we have practiced it
with all our imperfections, the light of
the world?
The issue has been joined; soon it will
stand in clear outline for the popular
consideration and choice. We hold it
to be self-evident proposition, made so
by the national premises, that it is not
for US to impose governments upon
other people, but to protect republican
ism, to develop it and to stand by it.
1t is for us to throw aside "old-world
molds" and not to take them up as
something better and more desirable
than our proved ideals of liberty; to
have the "brave old wisdom of SINGER
ity" and live UP to the stalwart measure
of our own unsurpassed national life.
Their bitterest critics admit that the
Filipinos are wonderfully imitative-so
much so, indeed, that they had set up,
developed and established a govern
ment. Its model-God forgive u.s.
what would we have?-was the great re-
public Of the world, the United States.
bubble as we may, such is the accus-
ing fact!
We OF the most favored republic are
engaged in overturning a rude altar of
liberty. That is the deep damnation of
it. What are those words of Lincoln?
Our defense is the spirit which prizes
liberty as the heritage of all men, in all
lands, everywhere"-in the orient not