The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-06-11
From the Boston Globe.

(0 in the indictment which the late
 Mrs. Anna A. Rogers, shortly before her death, drew up against the men of this country and which is present. ed in the June Atlantic. Confining herself to the negative faults of American men, to "the sins of American masculine omis- miosn," as the writer puts it, she enum- crates the exasperating complacency with which the average American is reputed to regard himself and all things else; his mental provincialism, which prevents him from knowing or caring what foreigners think of him; his carelessness in allow ing education and all higher culture to be feminized; his responsibility for the humiliating slave trade in which rich American girls are sold to the titled deca- dents of England and the continents" his Shabit and fury of work, unreason- ing, illogical, quite unrelated to any need;" the inability of American young men to make love properly; their defects as conversationalists and their general dullness, when it comes to music, art and literature.
 Contrasted with many other charges that have been made against our alleged sings of omission and of commission, that surely does not look like very formid- able indictment, and 1t will doubtless be read with the complacency which Mrs. Rogers so vigorously condemned. The cure for complacency is often worse than the disease itself. Better a complacent person than one who Is fidgety, restless and impatient.
 And as for our mental provincialism" that will take care of itself in due time, If it should become serious. There is It. tie present danger that Americans as d whole will ever be any more ''provincial' than were the ancient Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, or than are the modern Germans, English, French, Italians. On the contrary, with the floods of immi- grafton pouring through our open gates, slowly and imperceptibly, but none the less surely, inundating our American civ ilization, we are becoming cosmopolitan in spite of ourselves. Hes a fine cos mopolitan character" We sometimes hear 1t said of a man who has traveled so much that he has quite lost all love for or connection with his native land and has become "a man without a country Better the distinctive. highly individual ized provincial with all his peculiarities than the colorless, flavorless cosmopoli- tan.
 To conteract our alleged mental pro- vincialism, the writer in the Atlantic ;,nt ;,,f he o6- vanced grades in all schools of ''the seri- ous study of the criticism of the United States written by the enlightened and just foreigners who have not always flat tered us." A compilation of such criti- csms has recently been made by John Graham Brooks with fine discrimination, but if 1t were used as textbook in schools it would stir up no end of trouble. Criticism is the very worst of foods for young minds.
 The charge that the education of the American youth has passed into the hands of women was made several years ago by Professor Muensterberg, who said: If the entire culture of the nation is womanized it will be in the end weak
  gress of the world.' In Europe the ma- jority of teachers are men; in America the majority are women. A comparison of the net educational results in primary and secondary schools here and abroad affords no occasion for alarm at the so- called "feminization of the schools.
 Criticisms of races and of nations are always more or less unsatisfactory and unconvincing, because they involve gen. eralizations, and "all generalizatons are false, including this one." In one sug- gestive passage, however, the Atlantic writer does not generalize; she particu- larlzes when she says "Frenchmen sup port their wives and still find time to go shopping with them. too. Englishmen do likewise, and find energy left to place their sons in school, energy to watch keenly the love affairs of their daughters, unhesitatingly bidding this or that man begone; moral courage and physical vi- tality left after the days work to be in fact, as well as in fancy the head of the house.
 To which the average American huS- band would doubtless reply: I will cheer