Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1920 — Americanism [ARTICLE]

Americanism

By LEONARD wood

1 am not a Virg’nian but an American. — Patrick Henryi Speech in the Virginia Convention, 1765. THESE words of Patrick Henty make a sermon In Americanism. They are brief as a text, but as full of meat as any sermon. Native-born Americans, perhaps, need the lessons to be drawn from Henty’s words more than some of the American citizens of foreign birth. Men and women who come here from the other shores naturally think In terms of the United States and not in those of any state. Henry was a "Virginian talking to Virginians when he proclaimed his Americanism an paramount to his stateism. The state is the state and the country is Me country. No man can be merely a Massachusetts man, or a New York man, or a California man, but he must be an American man If he Is to moot the requirements of citizenship in She great republic. This has nothing at ail to do with varying opinions concerning state powers and federal powers.

In the late war divisions of men representing every state in the Union fought for the light. Theirs was a pride, not local fut national In the camp and in the field the mingling of men from all parts of the country made in part fer Americanisation, but in larger put for Americanism. There were comparatively few soldiers who needed what we call Americanization. The day has not yet come perhaps when the'men st Maine can take the same pride in the deeds of men of California that Mey take in the deeds of the sons of the land of the pine tree. . It is not human nature to suppose that this sheuld be the case, but within the last few a nearer approach to ths ultimate goal of a perfected patriotism has been made. There is nothing in this to prevent a man from taking pride hi the particular state of his birth and upbringing. “There is no place like home." The affections center in one’s neighborhood, but there are the broader affections which embrace the whole country and which in real American hearts are held supreme. Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky, nominated and elected to the presidency from Illinois,, thought only in terms of the union of states. Theodore Roosevelt, bom in New York, living for some years in the open West, was intensely American. He knew nothing of state boundaries.