The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-04-19
LOFTY IDEALS AMONG
 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
BY PHINEAS FLETCHER.

Is America, that is the United States, as compared with Europe without high ideals? Foreign critics of narrow vision, wrapped up in their own petty concerns. and in the still more petty ones of the so-called aristocratic classes to whom they offer incense, have been telling the world during three-quarters of cen- tury that it has not. I have forgotten how many years it is since a snobbish London weekly sneeringly asked: Who reads an American book?' When men who are now in the early "sixties' were born, Charles Dickens visited us and repaid cordial hospitality by writing American Notes" in which he ridiculed his hosts and their institutions with un- sparing pen. British aristocraticdom was delighted. To him and to his publishers American Notes brought Bank of Eng land notes In such substantial figures that the famous novelist began to real ize one of his 'ideals.' the accumula- tion of cold cash. In satirizing and caricaturing America, Dickens discover ed a literary gold mine, and he deter mined to work 1t out by following American Notes" with Martin Chuzzle- witt in 1S44 The realism, If not the ideal ism, of the whole thing was splendid. And a quarter of a century later in the closing years of his life, he repeated the performance by returning to us with apologies for his Notes and his "Chuzzlewit." His lofty 'fdealism' then took the form of select readings from his own works from which, according to his biographers, he realized two hundred f md dollars in faw nights. clear of all expenses What Dickens then gave was out of all proportions to the com pensation. His elocution was execrable. A score of boys In the public schools of every town he appeared in could have done better than he did, but his audiences were not dissatisfied; for Satirist Dick ems on the platform was more amusing than any one of the ludicrous charac- ters in his books.
 Dickens had some predecessors and a long line of successors, nearly all of them concurring in opinion that all our ideals are of the earth earthly. They have the right to hold and to express them In whatever form they please That is pure ly a matter of taste. Not few Ameri cans also, 1t must be admitted, accept these foreign estimates of their country and countrymen, as just and true in near ly every respect. I read only few days
 
 bishop of a great church on the subject, and many of our more pretentious period icals frequently contain papers filled with the same kind of pessimism. The ques- ton Is what degree of truth is there in it all? As a people. have we no ideals ex- cept those which centre around the ac- emulation of wealth and the osten- tatious display of it when 1t has been acquired? superficial view of what is Hnfn r1o int to that conclusion, but would it be just? Would the judgment be correct? for .one do not think so. On the contrary, is it not susceptible of very easy proof that from the very beginning of our career as an independent nation. from the foun- dation of the colonies themselves, we have always had ideals that may be said to be the very sublimation of ideal ism? What, for instance, did the Purl- tans bring with them to Plymouth Rock! Did they not cherish the very highest ideal in all the world at the time. namely that of freedom to worship God m their own way unawed by courts and by par liaments? And, as its twin sister' uiu they not there erect the temple or elVll liberty and government, in so Tar as 1t was possible for them to dor Ihey planted the seed of the momentous revo- lution that was to end in the iouhuatlon
 
 ever known and which is today in the front rank of the nations along all the lines of human progress.
 There is a god deal of vapidity aloat with respect to ideals, much inane writ ing and still more inane thinking. Amer ica is accused of mammon worship. Is there less of it in any other country than here? Has the United States a monopoly in 1t? What is the policy of England or France, or Germany if not national ag- grandizement with the direct object of individual gain in the extension of com merce and trade? Where are their par ticular ideals ?1n what do they consist? The honest accumulation of wealth is not a transgression of any law, human or divine. In this. then, all stand on the same moral plane. It is the misuse, or abuse, of vast financial accumulations that calls for condemnation. And this being admitted, the question naturally suggests itself in what country has money been more lavishly expended dur ing the last fifty years in the creation and endowment of institutions for the betterment of humanity than in the Uni ted States? Not one can be found. To assert in view of all this magnificent and generous sacrifice. that America is