Page images
PDF
EPUB

OUR DIVIDED COUNTRY

BY HENRY J. FLETCHER

I

DURING the first century and a third of our existence as a nation, it was the policy of the United States to encourage the settlement of our vast public domain as rapidly as possible, and we urgently invited immigration from every European country. In order to hasten the Americanization of the millions accepting our invitation we invented the theory, then perhaps new in the world, that every man has a natural right to throw off his old allegiance upon emigrating from his native land, and to accept citizenship in any country he may please to choose for his domicile. Every enterprising politician understood the advantage of bidding for the support of the new citizens by being most warm in welcome, most active in conferring the rights of citizenship upon them, and most eloquent in explaining how the European peasant, who never enjoyed the slightest participation in the government of his native country and was therefore utterly inexperienced and as ignorant as a child of the principles of civil government, was nevertheless abundantly qualified to exercise all the prerogatives of popular sovereignty. Now that we have a population of a hundred millions, so dense that migration to Canada on a large scale has been going on for years, so dense that Iowa in the last decennial census period lost so much population as to cut down her representation in Congress, the question of immigration and naturalization takes on a differ

ent aspect; especially so when we turn from an anxious study of a world at war to consider the resources upon which we can rely for defense, in the event that the conflagration should ultimately reach us.

It is becoming every day more and more clear that, in time of war, that state is relatively strongest which has the most homogeneous population, and that state is weakest whose population is most heterogeneous. When it comes to marshaling the energies of a country for attack or defense, the spiritual forces to be mobilized are at least as important as the material, perhaps more so; and whatever influences are at work to disintegrate the unity of the state must be taken into account in making an inventory of its available strength. Few nations suffer so much from divisive influences as the United States. Its citizenry is a mixture of all the races of the earth; and there is increasing evidence that, as respects many of the elements which compose the mass, they are imperfectly assimilated, and as respects many others, they have not undergone the slightest change in being transported to our shores. Allegiance to one's country is not a matter of words or declarations. It cannot be put on and off at will. If a Mongolian were permitted to be naturalized in the United States, he would be as much a Mongolian after naturalization as before; and he would continue to be a Mongolian in his sympathies, his instincts, his political and social conceptions, until he had lived here through

generations enough to take the Mongolian character out of him and his descendants. His declaration on oath that he was attached to the principles of the Constitution, and that he renounced allegiance to any other prince, potentate, or sovereignty, and particularly to the Republic of China, would have only the slightest effect upon him when his adopted country came into conflict with the land of his nativity. The United States is unquestionably wise in refusing naturalization to Oriental races, whose allegiance in the nature of things could only be skin deep. Naturalization should be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual transformation not merely a vaccination-mark to be carried by the wearer as a proof of his immunity from foreign military service.

There are not enough citizens of Mongolian descent in the United States to make the question from their standpoint interesting; but if there are nine millions of German birth or descent, three millions of Scandinavian, one and a half of French, more than two of Italian, ten of English, the extent to which their presence weakens the country becomes a matter of the first magnitude. The strength of the tie of allegiance to the United States as against the country of their origin, in case of life-and-death struggle between the two, is something which the individuals themselves are wholly incapable of estimating in advance. It depends upon the extent to which the old ties have been weakened and new ties formed here. It depends upon the extent to which the German, French, Russian, Italian, English characters have been erased and American traits developed in their place. It is measured by their unconscious recognition of the claims of family relations in the old country, the claims of the church which for centuries has exercised do

minion over them and their ancestors, and the claims of the government of the country which still asserts its sovereignty over its subjects in whatever part of the world they may have their domicile. Allegiance is a matter of psychology, quite as much as of law. In short, it is simply a question of the thoroughness with which the meltingpot has done its work. Until the nationality of the immigrant and his descendants has been melted and recast, he is still at heart a foreigner; he is an element of weakness and disunion, and to that extent he will be a traitor to his adopted country whenever that country comes to death-grips with the land of his birth. The instinct of nationality, which it has taken centuries of suffering and sacrifice for his native land to breed into him, cannot be obliterated by a superficial ceremony of naturalization and a few years' residence here. The only patriotism that is worth anything, or that can be relied on to give its life to save the life of the state, is one that has been mellowed by time and wrought into the spiritual fibre.

Just now the German-American part of our population is glorying in its Germanism, and is organizing itself in all sorts of ways to resist as stubbornly as possible the process of Americanization and to preserve as perfectly as possible its national characteristics. This is not mentioned as a fault, but merely as a fact. It is the more interesting because it is not true of any other section of our naturalized citizenship to the same degree. There are organizations of Danish, Bohemian, Welsh, and other nationalities, the purpose of each of which is to keep alive among its members and their children the memory of their native land, its history, language, art, and literature, and a just pride in their ancestry; but it is among the German-Americans preeminently that societies are being formed to promote in

this country the interests of their fatherland, and to intensify and perpetuate the sense of an undying fidelity to it. The invincibility of the German instinct is one of the chief proofs of the depth and strength of the German character. But the feeling is strong in varying degrees among our naturalized citizens of many European nationalities.

The intensity of this feeling among their subjects at home is the mightiest factor in the strength of most of the states now at war; it is the source of that indomitable fortitude which places every drop of blood and every dollar at the disposal of the state. But it is precisely this sense of indelible allegiance among our citizens of foreign birth, this recognition of an allegiance which survives naturalization, that is one of the most alarming sources of weakness in our own country.

II

A state's claim to the obedience of its subjects after their naturalization in a foreign country goes only one step beyond the claim, made by nearly all countries, of criminal jurisdiction over their subjects wherever in the world they may happen to be. The United States, almost alone among the nations, disclaims any right to punish American citizens for crimes committed within the dominions of other independent states. This right of a state, in the exercise of its sovereignty, to take jurisdiction of crimes of its subjects committed in foreign countries, and to inflict such punishment as it may think fit, is quite generally recognized; some states even go to the length, in certain cases, of asserting the right to punish the subjects of other countries for crimes committed abroad against its own subjects. This is an assertion of criminal jurisdiction by a state, not only within its own ter

VOL. 117-NO. 2

ritorial boundaries and upon the high seas and in uncivilized places where there is no law adequate to punishment of crime; it is an assertion of criminal jurisdiction within the boundaries of other independent sovereignties. Speaking broadly, this pretension is denied in the United States, and all right to so extensive a jurisdiction is denied here.

The position of the United States is briefly stated: the penal laws of a country have no extra-territorial effect. Jurisdiction is founded upon the idea that every state is supreme within its territorial boundaries, and the correlative doctrine that beyond those boundaries its penal laws have no force. Hence, if an American citizen should murder another American citizen while traveling in Europe, he could be punished by the government of the country where the crime was committed; but if it should for any reason neglect to proceed against him, he could not be punished upon his return home. Porter Charlton, who has been convicted in the Italian courts of murdering his wife, returned to America after the crime and was sent back to Italy upon request of the Italian government, notwithstanding the fact that that government would not have surrendered an Italian subject upon the request of the United States in a similar case. But if Italy had not demanded him, or if the government of the United States had refused to extradite him, there is no law in the United States under which he could be tried here.

This disclaimer by the United States of extra-territorial jurisdiction over its citizens is not an element of weakness, because comparatively few Americans permanently emigrate to foreign countries, and fewer still become naturalized there. But the steadfast assertion of such jurisdiction by foreign governments over their subjects domiciled

here has a very marked effect in delaying the process of Americanization, and in weakening the sense of American citizenship even after.naturalization here. If an Austrian knows that, while residing in Ohio, he may, by working in a factory, commit a crime against the laws of Austria for which he may be executed if he should ever return to his native land, or for which his inheritance there will be forfeited even if he never returns, he is made to realize very vividly the ties that bind him to the fatherland. The act may be perfectly innocent in the United States, but treasonable in the eyes of Austrian law. After committing such a crime, should he go through the solemn rite of naturalization, and thereby become theoretically 'entitled to the protection of his adopted country, the knowledge that the United States neither can nor will try to protect him must sadly weaken the force of his new allegiance.

The newspapers on September 26 printed an account of the proceedings at Youngstown, Ohio, in which one Ciepelowski, an Austrian subject, was brought into a court to answer questions propounded to him at the instance of the Austrian government, regarding alleged treasonable utterances here. It was stated that he refused to answer the questions, and proposed to resist any attempt to extradite him to Austria, and that the depositions taken were to be forwarded to the Austrian consul at Cleveland. The Dumba incident clearly showed the purpose of the Austrian government to notify its subjects working in American munitions factories that such acts would be considered as treason, and would render them liable to prosecution in Austria. Whether that government would try them in their absence, find them guilty, confiscate any property of theirs which could be found, for

feit their rights of inheritance, persecute their relatives, or exactly what steps it would take to punish them, -is not disclosed. Once guilty of such a crime, it is clear that no subsequent naturalization in this country could save them from the appropriate penalties.

The following advertisement is said. to have been published in many AustroHungarian newspapers in the United States: 'The Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Embassy, acting under orders from the home government, gives notice by this announcement to all Austrian and Hungarian citizens, including the men from Bosnia and Herzegovina, in conformity with Paragraph 327 of the Austrian Military Criminal Law, that all workmen who are employed in factories in this country which are making either arms or ammunition for the enemies of your country are guilty of a crime against the military safety of your fatherland. This crime is punishable by from ten to twenty years' imprisonment and, in especially aggravating circumstances, by the penalty of death. Against those who violate this order, the whole force of the law will be invoked in the event of their return hereafter to their own country.'

In the case of the more ignorant foreigners, imbued with a deep sense of the ability and willingness of their native country to punish relentlessly any violation of its laws, even when committed in this country, it is not likely that the ceremony of naturalization, whose significance is but feebly grasped and whose legal effect is at the best obscure and doubtful, can emancipate them from the dominion of a sovereignty which claims the right to follow them to the ends of the earth.

Lately a number of applicants for citizenship in the courts at Minneapolis were examined by an officer of the

United States Naturalization Bureau. He put to each of them this question: 'I have been told that Germany and some of the other nations of Europe have passed laws permitting their native-born to enlist in their armies and enjoy all the privileges of full citizenship even though such native-born may be naturalized citizens of the United States. I have also been told that there are laws in those countries aiming to affect the actions of the native-born even while they are in the United States, and aiming also to hold them to observance of the laws of the European countries. Now I want to know, if such laws exist, whether you intend to obey them or be governed by them in any way?' The applicants are said to have answered that they would pay no attention to any such laws, and all said that they did not know that the laws had been passed.

They were also asked: 'You may some time be called upon to pass the supreme test of citizenship and loyalty; you may be asked to bear arms against the land of your birth. Will you do it if you are called?' And they answered that they would take up arms against their native land if called.

Those promises may or may not have been sincere; the questions may or may not have been clearly understood. The applicants may believe to-day that they would fight against their native land if called upon; but when the crucial time comes, and the summons of his adopted country sounds in his ears while the call of his ancestral country rings in his heart, nobody knows which call the German-American will answer.

This assertion by European states of jurisdiction to punish crimes committed by their subjects abroad, though recently brought home to us and having a sound of novelty, is not new. The English courts have repeatedly tried,

convicted, and executed men for murders committed in foreign countries --in Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere. There is nothing surprising in a state's assertion of the right to punish its own subjects for treason or other crimes striking directly at the safety of the state, though committed within the jurisdiction of a foreign power. Nearly every country punishes such crimes if the offender can be caught, no matter where they were committed.

In a few countries the right is claimed to punish the subjects of foreign states for ordinary crimes committed abroad, if the victims are the subjects of the punishing state; but most European countries disclaim so extensive a jurisdiction. No self-respecting government could tolerate the prosecution of its own citizens in the courts of a foreign country for a crime alleged to have been committed at home. It would amount to an invasion of the territorial sovereignty, and very few countries would at the present day venture upon so offensive a course unless prepared to affront the country whose citizens were endangered by it. There are such laws in Russia and Greece, and such jurisdiction is provided for to a limited extent in Norway, Sweden, Austria, and Italy; but cases involving the question must be of very rare occurrence. But many foreign nations would punish American citizens for acts injurious to the safety of the foreign state, though they were committed here and the citizens were innocent under our laws; and it is very certain that they would punish their own subjects, though raturalized in the United States, for such offenses committed before naturalization; that is, they would not admit that naturalization could purge the crime, any more than it could relieve the immigrant of the obligation to perform military service to which he became liable before he left his na

« PreviousContinue »