The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-08-22


government. Any who come back I'M
authorized are received and treated as
felons.
A Russian-born citizen of the United
States may sit in the Cabinet of the
President, in the American Senate, or on
the bench of the Supreme Court. But
his mere passport. though 1t bear the
seal of the republic, would not save him
from the lot Of a criminal if he should
venture to re-enter the gate of the
Car.
The effect of this survival of tenth
century barbarism is an unpleasantly
familiar sight 10 an American traveller
up and down the frontier of Russia"
There one may see American citizens,
whose allegiance the United States ac-
cepts and claims and who at home are
the equals in citizenship of the Adamses
and the Lees, skulking about like guilty
culprits. although their only purpose
may be to visit and comfort dying
parent
I saw one OF those Americans. who
CHANGED to be of Russian-Jewish origin
and heard his rejoicing over his stealing
a forbidden glimpse of his birthplace by
the imaginary lines where the empires
of the Car and the Kaiser meet This
man had come all the way from America
to see his mother once more before she
died and she had come across into East
Prussia for visit with her lons-abs ent
son.
He had not intended to risk journey
into Russia but his mothers stories of
the old home tempted him to revisit the
scenes of his boyhood and he searched
out. frontier trader whose physical de-
scription sufficiently tailed with his own.
Bribing the trader to lend him his pass
port, he went into Russia after dark.
To tive whose now
is writ large on the war maps. There
he drove about the old familiar streets in
the shadows of night. saw the roof under
which he was born and the houses of
his kindred. He even recognized some
of the voices he heard in the stiffness of
the evening.
But he drove by in silence. not daring
to betray himself by word of greeting
or a wave of the hand. For this Ameri.
can cannot have the protection of his
government in the only country in the
world where he could possibly need its
protection.
Backward steps.
The government of the United State:
has not lived up to its principles in this
important matter, those principles de-
clared by Buchanan in 1s4S and EN-.
bodied in the act of Congress of 1865
Too often it has carelessly lowered the
standard. as President Mckinley once
permitted himself to do. In his message
to Congress in 1899 Mckinley naively
pointed out the contrast between ths
American and the European position
seeming to regret that the United States
did not recognize a dual allegiance
and made no distinction between native
and naturalized citizens. That gave
away the case entirely, and the State
Department has been inclined too read
lily to adopt the older view that mel
were made for sovereigns rather than
that sovereigns were made for men.
The present war in Europe has raised
| anew this old question Thousands OF
the foreign-born in America. natural
| lied and unnaturalized. have returned
to fight for their native lands. = Many
| " ent of their own choice. and this Is
their right just as much as 1t Is the
right Of those native Americans who
have entered the ranks of the European
| armies. But not a few immigrant citi.
| zens have gone reluctantly and only be.
cause they knew that II they did not Il
they never again could visit the old home
without risk of punishment for falling to
report now and to fulhll their dual alle-
glance
Only lately Secretary Lansing has dis
played a certain complacency in the
presence of the most extreme claims OF
! foreign nations upon American citizens.