IX

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE

RACIALLY We Americans are a cosmopolitan people, but our spiritual heritage is of AngloSaxon lineage. It has come to us through the men who upon the rock-bound coast of New England and by the sloping banks of the rivers of old Virginia laid the foundations of future States. From the very first the gates of this new land "beyond the ocean bars" have been open to all light-seeking, truth-loving sons of men. The thirteen colonies long before the Revolution were inhabited by men and women of more than one race. In New York were the sturdy descendants of the unconquerable men of Holland, than whom no race has fought nobler battles for human liberty. In New Jersey and in Delaware were those who in memory still climbed the snowy hills of Sweden and heard her Sabbath bells. In the South, and even among the Puritans of New England, dwelt those of French names in whose veins coursed the blood of the Huguenots, who

for the sake of their fathers' faith, became fugitives and wanderers upon the face of the earth. In the Quaker Commonwealth of William Penn, along with the peaceful Friend from English hedgerows and green Irish meadows, there dwelt men of Teutonic blood from the legend-haunted valley of the Rhine and the snowy peaks and hoary glaciers of libertyloving Switzerland. And there too glowed the fire of Celtic hearts. In more than one sequestered vale even to-day the old Welsh names tell of those of the faith of Pennsylvania's founder who brought with them to the American wilderness the tradition of the storied hills and rugged mountains of little Wales. And beyond the blue ridges of the Alleghanies the militant dauntless Ulster Scot faced the terrors of the wilderness and led the westward march of empire. No part of these United States can trace its ancestry to one race alone. Neither are we a mere conglomerate of many races. We are a new people not English, nor Irish, nor German, nor French, but Americans.

In Bayard Taylor's "National Ode," read upon Independence Square, Philadelphia, July 4, 1876, just once does the poet rise to the level of the momentous day and the memorable occasion. In speaking of his country he said:

"No blood in her lightest veins

Frets at remembered chains,

No shame nor bondage has bowed her head.
In her form and features still

The unblenching Puritan will,
Cavalier honor, Huguenot grave,
The Quaker truth and sweetness,

And the strength of the danger-girdled race
Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness.
From the homes of all, where her being began.

Her Germany dwells by a gentler Rhine;
Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine;
Her France pursues some dream divine;
Her Norway keeps his mountain pine;
Her Italy waits by the western brine;
And broad-based under all

Is planted England's oaken-hearted mood,
As rich in fortitude

As e'er went worldward from the island-wall!
Fused in her candid light,

To one strong race all races here unite."

Here the poet, in language succinct and beautiful, gives expression to a fundamental fact of our national life. We are of many extractions, but "one people with one language, the English language, and one flag, the American flag." Many tributaries have flowed into the river of our American thought and ideals, but its source is unmistakably English. Whatever our race or sign, we are fundamentally Anglo-Saxon.

We are heirs of the "great tradition" of the Anglo-Saxon line. It was for us that the sturdy barons at Runnymede wrested the Great Charter from a weak-kneed tyrant. It was for us that Cromwell and his Ironsides waged heroic warfare at Naseby and Marston Moor. It was for us that Burke in winged words uttered his burningly eloquent defense of the ancient English liberties. It was to protect these selfsame inalienable rights that American yeomen laid down their lives at Bunker Hill and Brandywine. But our political heritage is but a slender portion of the priceless inheritance which has come to us from beneath the somber skies of Old England.

narrowness.

To be thankful that the English language is our language indicates no spirit of provincial So indissolubly is our speech united with the best in our national life that he whose inner life is most adequately expressed in another language and speaks in a foreign tongue and glorifies it at the expense of our national vernacular is fundamentally a foreigner. One lesson of the war which cannot be ignored is that the easier we make it for new citizens to retain the dialects and languages of lands across the water, the harder will be the task of Americanization. To have for our national speech the language whose

line has gone out to the uttermost parts of the earth, which to-day comes the nearest to being really a world language, is not the least of our national blessings. And through our linguistic heritage our soul lives are deepened and broadened by contact with the noblest body of literature ever produced by any people in the annals of the human race. In speech at least Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning are of us. This kinship in the starlit realms of literature with those who until the latest days will tower like sunken continents above oblivion's sea has in it something which should cast at least a faint "gleam" upon the barren fields of the most sordid and commonplace day.

Mighty as may be the appeal to the American heart of the supreme literature of the seagirt motherland, it is in the literary work of our own country that we find most clearly reflected our national life and ideals. Sometimes a poet or novelist brings us far nearer to the heart of reality than the historian or philosopher. It is futile to discuss the silly academic question as to whether or not there is a distinctive American literature. The flowers of prose and poetry which have sprung from American soil are American and nothing else. In the literature of our nation we find mir