New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-06-10

become citizens they are still types,
from which some truth about their his
toric origins can be appreciated. Thus
the poor Jews are the most Jewish Jews,
in the most honest and dignified sense OF
Judaism. In the same way the Amerl-
can-Irish are at least much more genu-
inc than the Anglo-Irish.
In comparison, the English have little
experience of actually living with the
other Europeans. For us Italy is rep
resented by an occasional organ-grind-
err, and even Germany by a somewhat
less occasional waiter; here and there
a stray Swede labors to teach us Swed-
ish drill, or a stray Frenchman with
infinitely less success) to teach us
French. We are in this sense more
provincial, in being more insular. We
do not see these foreign things in bulk;
and many Americans must see them in
bulk. They must, for instance, see the
Roman Catholic religion on large
scale; sometimes almost on its true his
toric scale. The Italians, am told, have
created in some corners something that
England has unfortunately lost since
the Reformation-a true peasantry. 1t
is also, | believe, the fact that the rev.
dictionary secret societies of America
are more akin to the Continental ones
than is anything that exists at all ex-
tensively in England; that the Black
Hand is more upon the old model Of the
Malta. Altogether, can claim this adj
vantage in addressing Americans about
Europe, that do not take for granted
at the start that they know nothing
about it. | know well there is sense
in which the American, so far from
merely glancing hurriedly like globe
trotter at the front door and facade of
European civilization, has been let by
a back door into the basement; has en-
loved at least an elaborate introduction
to the dust-bin, and has had a glimpse
of those subterranean cellars in which
can be stored the fuel-and the gun
powder.
The second arresting fact about
America, missed by many Of the Eng
ish, is that all this mary-colored cos
mopolitanism is held together, and can
only be held together, by a creed. To say
that such motley combinations cannot
be held together by creed IS simply to
be ignorant of history 1t is not to
know, for instance, what diverse shades
of civilization and savagery went to
make up, in its finest days, the fighting
unity of Islam and how varied was the
mosaic even of that Roman Christendom
which was its rival in the Crusades.
Whether the American ideal will in fact
prove as powerful tie as these old
ideals | will not attempt to predict or
even to discuss but history is there to
show that it need not fail through being
an ideal, Independent of earthly or APP
parent differences. It is almost unnec-
essary to state the ideal or abstract
creed which is here in question; it has
fortunately been stated very lucidly long
ago, when there was granted to the
genius of jefferson the divine power of
dogmatism. Dogmatism is that work
of the brain that corresponds to build
ing: and most other work of the brain
corresponds to blowing bubbles. That
there is a human dignity overruling all
dignities, that every man is heir to
kingdom of natural rights, that all laws
are IN no indeed bv whether they in