South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1916-07-05
SAYS AMERICA
HARD TOFATHOM
English Writer Declares Even
Natives Themselves Are
Puzzled.
IntrruaIIonaI Nev- service

international News Service:
LONDON. July 5.-Writing TO
London newspaper. sydney Brooks
declares that American citizens are
amazed and puzzled by the facts
about their own country which the
great Vsr has revealed.
He says.
That America should puzzle an
outsider like myself is nothing. But
that Americans themselves should
lie 5ewIldered by their own coun-
try. should confess their inability 10
explain it. should be at a loss to
diagnose its state or mind or 20 say
whittier. if anywhere. it rs lending
this is really curious and really i'm
portant
once the easiest country in the
world 10 understand America has
become one Of tbe most difficult.
Even the shrewdest native judges
admit themselves bafhed. The war
has revealed 10 them a new Amer
lea. OF which they hardly profess TO
know anything Those OF them who
are OF British stock not only feel
themselves strangers i'm their own
land. but are aware that their posi-
ton as the governing race is being
sharply challenged. II is not i'm
Flanders OF on the North sea alone
that the Anglo-Saxondom is having
TO fight 10 hold it's own
Despair is Tragic.
''It would be difficult to exasger-
ate the quite tragic despair with
which thousands and a dare say tens
of thousands. OF Americans exhibit
their doubts and their confusion and
their distress Men whose names
are known the world over and who
have held some Of the highest Of
fees in the republic have confessed
70 me shat they are wholly al sea.
that America seems to them chaos
ia which all the familiar lights and
landmarks have been submerged.
and that there is little or nothing
left which they dare take for
granted.
" AhffA fANN'NtN NAAfttA liINl 2 AAANIl
anything else IS 90 ind themselves
surprised by the war into the sus-
picion that the United states is not
nation. This war. they say. has
found ms out. We trusted 90 our
school system 10 assimilate an these
aliens in our midst. We see now
that il has failed. that racialism is
rampant amons MS. and that there
are men calling themselves Amer
leans who are ready 20 sacrifice
everything that is most distinctly
= merican in the interests of the Eu-
ropean country from which they
came
But ~ is not only.r they go ON,
this ugly spectre of internal division
tIat frightens US. We have been
forced into the belief that. apart al
together from the German-Amer-
leans ana the other hyphenated hy-
birds. this country is too vas, and its
population at present too scattered
and its component parts too heter-
,-cncous 10 allow Of any genuine ma
tional oompactness either of thought
or action
System Has Revenge.
"'Our federal system. too. is hav-
irtg its revenge upon MS. our people
have a strong local patriotism Do
Crnters I'm the town on VILLAGE i'm
which they 1--we. Sometimes it en-
braces the state. Very rarely does
DO embrace the country as whole.
We have next 20 no national con-
seriousness. for the average American.
America is The world and his own
community the most important part
Do it
There is a good deal of truth in
these lamentations. The war has
long since disappeared from the
front PAGE of the majority of the
newspapers in the middle west
What happens in Jonesville. O.. in