Evening star., 1943-09-19
The American

By James Truslop Adams.
fScribner's.J
James Truslow Adams, having
already written the history of the
United States, now gives us COM
mentary. American history, he
sagely observes, has been made by
Americans, and who are Americans?
He answers his question by attempt
Ing to describe the characteristics
of our native John Doe and Richard
Roe, and in describing those he re-
views the history of our country
from it's founding to about the be-
ginning of the present century, for,
in his view, our peculiar qualities
have manifested themselves from
our earliest years.
He finds that our average citizen
is an example of what Grevecoeur
called "the new man." that, as a
people, we are something new in
human history. We are individuals,
he says, but it is not our individ-
uality which gives us our newness !;
1t is the directions our individuality
has taken. We are idealistic, and
we are practical; to have a dream,
with us, Is to begin to plan imme-
diately to make the dream reality.
We are acquisitive, but not reten-
tive; we adore money making, and
we give what we make with con-
siderably better than princely gen.
erosity. We are ambitious and also
democratic; we all want to get on
in the world, but we believe firmly
in equality, too. For the first time
in human history, we have devel-
oped a great Nation without de-
veloping class system. We have
repeatedly demonstrated that we
will not submit to Communistic Or
ganization, but we have strong COM
munity feeling and neighborliness
which is found nowhere in Europe.
We believe that our country is the
finest in the world, but we set a
record in hospitality and have re-
peatedly immersed ourselves in war
for the sake of other countries,
which we believed to be suffering
oppression. We are cocky and we
are saved from the curse of cocki-
ness by the paradox that we are
also frequently unsure of ourselves.
Basically, these are the things Prof.
Adams has to say about us.
His belief is that our qualities of
originality derived from the land
of our continent. Democracy did
not develop here as a growth, he
says. 1t was an influence which
changed the first generation of the
earliest settlers AS he points out,
the pilgrim fathers, while they
lived in Holland, had no thought
of setting up their own state. They
abided by Dutch laws and con-
formed to the customs of the coun-
try. But hardly were they in
America before they began to
loosen the ties which bound them
to England, to the end that they
might live according to their own
ideas. They soon came to regard
their Colonial charters as hurdles
to be passed, rather than as bounds
to hold them. The land itself made
democrats, or, in Prof. Adams words,
I'VE, of all great Nations, have
never adopted or grown into de-
mocracy, but simply, as a whole,
have never known anything else"
He obviously feels that the present
tendency of our frazier, noisier in
tellectuals to impose European po-
litical concepts on us is poor turn
in our robust national history. It
would be comparable to strong
leader suddenly turning. for direc-
ton to the stragglers of his party,
or even to those who are going on
q totally different course. Our
common man, of whom we hear so
much from these same Europe
minded planners, has more in his
life, present and future, than has
the common man OF any other
nation which the world has ever
seen. His destiny is for himself
to shape, not for those who have
failed to approach even his mini
mum standards.