Washington Journal., 1915-12-17
Why we Cling to
Our German Ways
Especial Correspondent for this paper
by a prominent Washingtonian).

When a German settles in the United
States and becomes a citizen OF this
country, he ceases to have any sort OF
allegiance to the government to which his
loyalty had heretofore been due. He
is henceforth an American in the polit-
ical sense; nay more, in the political
sense he ceases to be a German. The
interests Of his new country are from
that moment his own interests, and if
these interests should unfortunately con
hict with those of the country OF which
he formerly was a citizen, it is his duty
to prefer the welfare of his new country
to that of the land which gave him
birth. If he feels that he cannot do so,
he should never have become an Ameri-
can citizen, and if he has been natural
lied the best he can do is to return to
he old country and renounce his Ameri-
can citizenship at the earliest possible
moment.
So far, hardly anybody, and certainly
no American citizen of German birth will
differ. However, there are not a few
people, most of them of Anglo-Saxon
race, who attempt to make their German
fellow citizens do something more. They
ask of him nothing less than that he give
up his individuality, that he cease to be
the kind of man which nature has made
him, and become an entirely different
sort of a man, patterned after the Eng
fish model. They want him to think, feel
and live, no longer as a German but as
an Ang1o-Saxon, and if he refuses to do
so, they denounce him as a bad Ameri-
can.
Against this sore of arrogance on The
part Of our A~nglo-Saxon ~neighbors we
German-American shall protest as long
as there is a spark of self-respect left
in lis. In doing SO, we shall be not
worse but better Americans, for no
country has any use for a citizen who is
capable of the meanest and most con
temptible thing Of which a human being
may be guilty, the surrender of his own
personality
Personality, in other words, the con
seriousness every person has of being
himself rather than somebody else, is
universally recognized as every human
beings most valuable possession. This
modern term has substantially the same
meaning which in the older and more
popular parlance was called the soul.
Now a mans soul, or his personality,
may be said to have two sides: One that
is peculiar to him individually, by which
he is distinguished from every other in
sdividual man; and one which he shares
with all who have the same form of
culture, who have the same manner, at
tom, of feeling and living, who in
oricf belong to the same nationality as
he himself. These qualities, the peculiar
tiles by which a German can be distin-
guished from an Englishman or a
Frenchman, and again all these from the
Japanese or the Chinese, belong as much
to the personality of a man, as does the
Individual character which makes him
different from all other individuals even
within his race or nationality. If the
individual characteristics may be COM
pared to the heart and brain, the com
mon racial qualities are the skeleton and
the skin, and these organs are as neces-
sary parts of the body as are the former.
To give up, therefore, the racial individ
uality is as much as selling of ones soul
as if n were to consent to give UP ones
own individual way of feeling, thinking
and acting.
Even if it were possible for German
Americans to cease being Germans in
every racial and cultural aspect, as they
MAY do in merely political relations
even if we were to admit. which we
certainly do not, that the Anglo-Saxon
form Of humanity is better than the
German; even then we should refuse
absolutely and persistently to give up
our racial and cultural Germanism. For
by conserving to such an exchange we
should lose all that makes a man worth
something more than a beast with brains.
we should be selling our souls, we should
merit and should receive the punishment
of destruction as human beings.
This is the fundamental reason why
German-Americans are combating so
st%renuously the suggestion that they give
up their German culture, their specific
ally German characteristics. 1t is nee
essary, sometimes, to go beyond the or
binary arguments and express clearly
uhat l. Of the hotton nf +ha annaran+