in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes, and we should tolerate no allegiance to any other flag, whether a foreign flag or the red flag or black flag. We have room for but one loyalty, loyalty to the United States. We have room for but one language, the language of Washington and Lincoln, the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg speech; the English language. English should be the only language used or taught in the primary schools, public or private; in higher schools of learning other modern languages should be taught, on an equality with one another; but the language of use and instruction should be English. We should require by law that within a reasonable length of time, a time long enough to prevent needless hardship, every newspaper should be published in English. The language of the church and the Sunday-school should be English. The government should provide night schools free for every immigrant who comes here, require him to attend them, and return him to his own country unless at the end of five years he has learned to speak and read English. This war has shown us in vivid and startling fashion the danger of allowing our people to separate along lines of racial origin and linguistic cleavage. We shall be guilty of criminal folly if we fail to insist on the complete and thoroughgoing unification of our people....

This is one of the demands to be made in the name of the spirit of American nationalism. The other is equally important. We must treat every good American of German or of any other origin, without regard to his creed, as on a full and exact equality with every other good American, and set our faces like flint against the crea

tures who seek to discriminate against such an American, or to hold against him the birthplace of himself or his parents.

We must resolutely refuse to permit our great nation, our great America, to be split into a score of little replicas of European nationalities, and to become a Balkan Peninsula on a larger scale. We are a nation, and not a hodgepodge of foreign nationalities. We are a people, and not a polyglot boarding-house. We must insist on a unified nationality, with one flag, one language, one set of national ideals. We must shun as we would shun the plague all efforts to make us separate in groups of separate nationalities. We must all of us be Americans, and nothing but Americans; and all good Americans must stand on an equality of consideration and respect, without regard to their creed or to the land from which their forebears came.

We are the fellow countrymen of Washington and Lincoln, of Lighthorse Harry Lee and his great son, of Grant and Sherman and Farragut, of Marion and Paul Revere and Schuyler, of Washington's General Sullivan and Lincoln's General Sheridan. These men were of diverse ancestry; their forefathers came from England or Ireland or Scotland or Holland or France or Spain. But they were American, and nothing else; and if we are really to be loyal to their spirit, we, in our day, must be Americans, and nothing else. And, above all, we must be Americans, and only Americans, in the face of any and every foreign foe.

We are also, and just as much, the fellow countrymen of Muhlenberg and Custer. There is no more typically American figure in the Revolutionary War than that of

Muhlenberg, the American of pure German blood, the pastor of a Lutheran church at the outbreak of the Revolution. On the Sunday after the call for arms came, he mounted his pulpit; he admonished his flock that there was a time for prayer and a time for battle, and that the time for battle had come. Casting aside his frock, he appeared in the uniform of a colonel of the Continental Army; and on many a stricken field he proved his valor and devotion. Custer, a man of German descent, was one of the most gallant and heroic figures of the Civil War and the Indian Wars; his name and career made up one of the finest traditions of our army. In the Civil War there fought many, many men of German birth; Sigel, Osterhaus, Heintzelman; innumerable others. They proved their Americanism by their deeds. Their grandsons are in our armies and navy to-day. Their undivided loyalty is given to one flag, to our flag. They are incapable of a loyalty different from that of their fellow Americans of different blood. These fellow Americans of theirs who happen to be of different blood must in their turn see to it that any one who discriminates against these men because they are of German blood is himself branded as a traitor.

Above all, we are bound to treat all our fellow Americans with reference solely to their whole-hearted loyalty to American ideals as embodied in the great Americans whose names I have used above. True Americans who are in whole or in part of German blood claim nothing except the right to serve America and to be judged according to their service.1

1 From The Great Adventure. Copyright, 1918. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers.

V

NATIONAL STRENGTH-THE BASIS OF

INTERNATIONAL PEACE

LET us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I. NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS

I

THERE can be no genuine feeling of patriotism of the kind that makes all men willing and eager to die for the land, unless there has been some measure of success in making the land worth living in for all alike, whatever their station, so long as they do their duty; and on the other hand, no man has a right to enjoy any benefits whatever from living in the land in time of peace, unless he is trained physically and spiritually so that if duty calls he can and will do his part to keep the land against all alien aggression.1

II

If the people have not vision, they shall surely perish. No man has a right to live who has not in his soul the power to die nobly for a great cause. Let abhorrence be for those who wage wanton or wicked wars, who with ruthless violence oppress the upright and the unoffending. Pay all honor to the preachers of peace who put righteousness above peace. But shame on the creatures

1 Speech at Cooper Union, New York City, November 3, 1916.

who would teach our people that it is anything but base to be unready and unable to defend right, even at need by the sternest of all tests, the test of righteous war, war waged by a high-couraged people with souls attuned to the demands of a lofty ideal.1

III

IF in the future we have war, it will almost certainly come because of some action, or lack of action, on our part in the way of refusing to accept responsibilities at the proper time, or failing to prepare for war when war does not threaten. An ignoble peace is even worse than an unsuccessful war; but an unsuccessful war would leave behind it a legacy of bitter memories which would hurt our national development for a generation to come. It is true that no nation could actually conquer us, owing to our isolated position; but we would be seriously harmed, even materially, by disasters that stopped far short of conquest; and in these matters, which are far more important than things material, we could readily be damaged beyond repair. No material loss can begin to compensate for the loss of national self-respect. The damage to our commercial interests by the destruction of one of our coast cities would be as nothing compared to the humiliation which would be felt by every American worthy of the name if we had to submit to such an injury without amply avenging it. It has been finely said that "a gentleman is one who is willing to lay down his life for little things"; that is, for those things which seem little to the man who cares only whether shares

1 From Fear God and Take Your Own Part. Copyright, 1916. George H. Doran Company, publishers.