Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-10-10
philadelphia Public Ledger ]

lin sentencing a German preacher,
convicted of utteIing seditious. re-
marks and interfering with the mill
tary activities of the Government,
Charles f. Amidon, Federal District
Judge for North Dakota, delivered an
address on the duty of the foreign
born in the United States and the
duty of the United States to the Tor
eign-born. The accused was the Rev
j. Fontana, of the German EyanSeli-
cal Church of New Salem. n. D. Fol
lowing is what Judge Amidon said:1
X|OU received your final papers
7 as a citizen in 1898. BY the
oath which you then took you
renounced and adjured all allegiance
to Germany and to the Emperor OF
Germany, and swore that you would
bear true faith and allegiance to the
United States. What did that mean?
That you would set about earnestly
growing an American soul and put
away your German soul. That is
what your oath of allegiance meant.
Have you done that? l do not
think you have. You have cher
ished everything German and stifled
everything American. You have
preached German, prayed German
read German, sung German. Every
thought of your mind and every
emotion of your heart through all
these wears has been German. Your
body has been in America, but your
life has been in Germany. II you
were set down in Prussia to-day you
would be in harmony with your en-
vironment. 1t would fit you just as
flower fits the leaf and stem of the
plant on which it grows.
You have influenced others who
have been under your ministry to dc
the same thing. You said you would
cease to cherish your German soul
and that you would begin to build
up inside of you an American soul
That meant that you would begin
the study of American life and his
tory; that you would open your mind
and heart to all of it's influences;
that you would try to understand Its
ideals and purposes, and love them
that you would try to build up inside
of yourself a whole group of feel
ings for the United States, the same
as you felt toward the Fatherland
when you left Germany.
There have been a good many Ger
mans before me in the last month
They have lived in this country, like
yourself, ten, twenty, thirty, forty
years, and they had to give their evil
dence through an interpreter. 1t
has been an impressive part of the
trial. AS I looked at them and tried,
as best 1 could, to understand them,
there was written all over every one
of them, Made in Germany" Amer
lean life had not dimmed that mark
in the least. 1t stood there as bright
and fresh as the inscription upon a
new coin.
do not blame you and these men
alone. I blame myself. I blame my
country. We urged YOU to come; we
welcomed you; we gave you oppor-
tunity; we gave you land; we con-
ferred upon you the diadem of
American citizenship-and then we
left you. We paid no attention to
what you have been doing.
And now the world war has
thrown searchlight upon our ma
tional life and what have we discov-
cred? We find all over these United
States, in groups. little Germanys,
little Italys, little Austriss, little
Norways, little Russias. These for
eign people have thrown a circle
about themselves, and instead of
keeping the oath they took that they
would try to grow American souls
inside of them they have studiously
striven to exclude everything Amer
lean, and TO cherish everything for
eign.
A clever gentleman wrote a ro-
nance called America, the Melting
Pot" 1t appealed to our vanity aud
through all these years we have been
seeing romance instead of fact. That
is the awful truth. The figure of my
country stands beside you to-day. 1t
says to me: do not blame this man
alone. I am partly to blame. Pun
ish him for his offense. but let him
know that I see things in a new
light; that new era has come here.
Punish him to teach him and the
like of him, and all those who have
been misled by him and his life, that
a change has come; that there must
be an Interpretation anew of the
oath of allegiance. 1t has been in
the past nothing but formula of
words. From this time on 1t must
be translated into living characters
incarnate in the life of every for
eig.ner who has his dwelling place
within our midst. If they haYe been
cherishing foreign history, foreign
ideals. foreign loyalty, it must be
stopped. and they must begin at