True Americanism 37 



be for two or three thousand years to come, the 

 words "home" and "country" mean a great deal. 

 Nor do they show any tendency to lose their sig- 

 nificance. At present, treason, like adultery, ranks 

 as one of the worst of all possible crimes. 



One may fall very short of treason and yet be 

 an undesirable citizen in the community. The man 

 who becomes Europeanized, who loses his power of 

 doing good work on this side of the water, and 

 who loses his love for 'his native land, is not a 

 traitor; but he is a silly and undesirable citizen. 

 He is as emphatically a noxious element in our 

 body politic as is the man who comes here from 

 abroad and remains a foreigner. Nothing will more 

 quickly or more surely disqualify a man from doing 

 good work in the world than the acquirement of 

 that flaccid habit of mind which its possessors style 

 cosmopolitanism. 



It is not only necessary to Americanize the im- 

 migrants of foreign birth who settle among us, but 

 it is even more necessary for those among us who 

 are by birth and descent already Americans not to 

 throw away our birthright, and, with incredible 

 and contemptible folly, wander back to bow down 

 before the alien gods whom our forefathers for- 

 sook. It is hard to believe that there is any neces- 

 sity to warn Americans that, when they seek to 

 model themselves on the lines of other civilizations, 

 they make themselves the butts of all right-thinking 

 men; and yet the necessity certainly exists to give 

 this warning to many of our citizens who pride 



