Mohave County miner., 1918-04-06
THE UNITED STATES AS A
 NATION

In those far-Off days, that other age which pre- ceded the Great War; we Americans were often asked to tremble for our future Once it the outraged American aristOcrat who said: Look here. We are altogether too generous to immigrants. All the tions of Europe diluting native population. We have now more Germans than we have original English, Scotch and Irish. Soon will have Scandinavians, Slavs Italians and Greeks. How are we transplanted Britishers going to main- tain the free institutions for which ancestors fought in the face of this influx? They unac- customed to edged tools like universal suffrage and free speech and public assembly. Why should give them all votes they don't know how to use? Why should we reduce ourselves to an insignificant minority? These people have not learned to love liberty"
 Our answer was that the love of liberty mon to mankind and America the melting pot in- to which all the nations could be poured to make
 nation born to liberty and devoted to free in- stitutiOns.
 Again it was the cultivated of that New Eng land which produced LOngfellOw, transcendentaism, and the "Atlantic Monthly" who to protest in this fashion: "0ur language our morality, and our social standards disappearing under this flood ot aliens. We no longer speak English undefiled. ln- deed large sections of population speak and read no English at all. They take in newspapers printed in a foreign language; they send their children to schools conducted in foreign language. Our sober and thoughtful Sunday has given way before the Continental hoday-we degenerating from a God-fearing churchgoing people into which sup ports Sunday baseball beer gardens, and public dance halls. Our standard of living is going down. These people do not bathe, they sleep ten in rOOm they feed their children beer instead of milk
 And our answer was that the aspiration toward q better life was common to all mankind and America was the melting pot into which all the nations could be poured to produce nation born to plenty and devoted to education.
 Again it was the student of world politics who said: Some day there is going to be great war All Europe will be engaged in a death grapple We will be inevitably involved in this struggle Our native stock our English Irish, and Scotch, will be drawn to the mother country by the strongest of all ties the ties of a common blood, common language, and a common tradition. So our Germans will be drawn to Germany, and Swedes to Sweden and our Russians to Russia, and Italians to Italy, and our Austrians and Hungarians to Austria and Hungary. What are we going to do? Fight on all sides at once? Eventually we may have to defend our right to exist as a nation against half Europe! Do you imagine that our insignificant minority of native Americans can unite all these alien elements, halt of whom must invariably sympathize with the enemy into nation with sOul one will, and one united front to the enemy?"
 And our answer was "If the time ever comes when we must defend ourselves, we shall be united by our common love of liberty, our common asplra- ton toward better life, by our common home. For America is the melting pot into, which all the na- tons have been poured to produce new natlon' stronger, freer than any other.
 Yet if this was our invariabe answer to the charge that we were not homogeneous and united people, but mere pOlygOt of the nations, 1t was not an ai- swer based on a tried and tested knowledge. It was our hope and our conviction But we had our doubts and our fears. year ago we all talking about hyphenated Americans and the more we talked the more we feared. What if we had been wrong from the beginning? What if it all dream?
 Today on the first anniversary of our declaration of war against Germany, we know that our answer was the true answer. We know that the only dream was the bad dream of our fears, the dream that we were not nation. We know that we are nauon- COler's Weekly.