Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1919 — “Americanism in United States Must Be to Us a Political Religion” [ARTICLE]

“Americanism in United States Must Be to Us a Political Religion”

By FRANKLIN K. LANE.

, Secretary of Interior

That there are today over seven million persons in the United States above ten years of age unable to read or write English, including those who cannot even speak or understand our language, proclaims an indefensible indifference to civic responsibility on the part of the average ™ er ’ ican. The native Americans, those men into whom traditions of liberty have been sunk by experience of generations, are primarily responsible for whatever indifference has been shown by this nation in the education and enlightenment of those whom they have invited to these shores. Upon us is the responsibility; ours the responsibility and ours the opportunity. We know now that there is no such thing as Americanism, unless Americanism is in our souls. We have got to feel it first, and then we have got to put it out among other people. We want now to give a new significance to thatQword. We want it to meat! help; we want it to mean sympathy; we want it to mean understanding; we want it to mean largeness of view. We want it to mean not patronage but the largest human fellowship. . . . • • America is an inspiration. AmerilJ. is a spirit. America is something mystical which lives in the heavens. It is the constant and continuous searching of the human heart for the thing that is better. We are compelled to move on and on by something that we know not of. That is the essence oFAmericanism. Take out of out hearts the belief that the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is true, that God’s truth is marching on, and you defeat America, but until you'take that from us the real America cannot be beaten in battle. We are trying a great experiment in the Uiiited States. We are fashioning a new people. We are doing the unprecedented thing in saying that Slav, Teuton, Celt and the other races that make up the civilized world are capable of being blended here, and we say this upoA the theory that blood alone does not control the destiny of man, that out of his environment, his education, the food that he eats, the neighbors that he has, the work that he does, there can be formed and realized a spirit, an ideal which will master his blood. # Americanism in the United States must be to us a political religion. And it is our function to be the preachers of this gospel: Now because man has liberty in his hands—because he has the right to determine his own destiny—now the day of freedom is at hand, and he can make this world what he wants it to be.