The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1921-03-05

aty OF It's best thought. Europe at Its
best was divided by secular hatreds
and sleeping on its arms, Every
country was grooming with the cruel
poverty of its millions. while kings and
courts and aristocracies played the
game of diplomacy or of war uncon-
scious of the enemies within their,
gates. The national riyalries OF Eu.i
rope had crossed the seas and We're,
if anything, more bitter thanli in the.
home land. Frenchman and Spaniard
and Englishman mutually suspected
and despised each other in the New.
World as in the Old. And the COL
onies themselves were divided by
jealousies and chickering's. Rhode Is
land fenced its postroads to keep the
men from Massachusetts from using
them. Massachusetts long collected
its tithes for it's ministers, and per-
secuted dissenters from the prevailing
worship. So illiberal had Maryland
become that it's Catholic gentlemen
Were planning just before the Revolu-
tion to sell their property and to move
ITO some district beyond the Mississippi
where the penal laws of England
would not reach them
Effect of Constitution.
Within a generation the face of the
whole country changed. Those who
for centuries had not lived at peace
with one another in the Old World
and those who, never till now, had
borne with each other in the New, be-
gan to live in Already, to relinquish
their intolerance, to relax their rigid
bigotries and to discover how common
are the interests of all mankind when
they come to know each other.
Nations come into being through
various causes. Community of blood,
of language, of religion, of memories
play notable part in their creation.
Hatred of a common oppressor is a
solvent of tribal animosities and jeal
ouSies 1t was the French Revolution
which, more to dislodge the Austrians
than to benefit the Italians, proclaimed
the evangel of United Italy and sue
ceeded where patriots and poets for
thousand years had failed. 1t was the
French in Napoleon days that gave
birth to that federation of German
states which under the leadership of
Prussia so quickly learned the lesson
of militarism that undid it and nearly
ruined all Europe. Poverty, suffering,
the memory of wrongs have quickened
the national sense in bleeding Ireland
cfu Mt hn
turbulent little peoples of the Balkans.
Danger to America.
But here was heterogeneous group
without a common origin, with scarce
ly a common language, without COM
mon hatred, brought together for no
more exalted reason than that of eco
nomic interest, and exposed to all the
hazards of unexampled liberty in con-
ditions that have not normally called
for sacrifice but rather have conduced
to indulgence, and in the course of 100
years it has developed on American
mentality and produced type that is
easily recognizable and that has GER
tain distinct qualities which look very
much like national virtues At this
hour when civilization is bleeding
from many great wounds and tortured
cries of despair and misery reach us
from abroad and stir within us the
echoing sympathies of bewildered hor-
ror, we are tempted to turn with aver
sion from the conventional optimism
of our jingoed past and to wonder if
our country with all the rest is not
tottering to it's fall The labored sta
tistics of our army inspectors have
discovered and accurately enumerated
health and of foreign idiom there are
among us. The air is clamorous with
protest against the hardships of life
and the injustices of men. Shell
shocked" as we doubtless are, we be-
come suddenly blind to the transfer
nations that have taken place. that
have always been taking place and
that are even now taking place under
our eyes. How freedom is the solvent
as well as the mould by which the ele-
ments of our national life have been
developed and the type of simple, up
right, resourceful men like Washing
ton and Lincoln has sunk into the
imagination of our people and become
national ideal. They have become
patriotic less by having had patriot
ism taught to them than by having had
the sense of responsibility for their
government imposed upon them. They
have accepted the challenge of man
hood because their government treat
ed them as men.
The American temperament.
| believe that there is no country
on the globe where the things that
make the citizen are more emotion
ally described or more reluctantly rec
ognized than in ours. From the day
that the constitution was adopted to
this we have lived in the midst of
disaster. The colonies in which so
many convicts of the London jails and
so many British redemptioners achiev-
ed responsibility and station became
instantly aroused lest the country
should be infested with the criminals
of Europe. In land where the right
of citizenship has always been re-
cent acquisition there has been from
the earliest days a most unfeigned
suspicion of the alien and the for
eigner. The Alien and Sedition Act
of Adams day threw all the irish into
Jefferson's fold and made them till
yesterday the traditional Democrats