88 Bille—A History of the Danes m America. 
ambitious young Danes, thus securing them as a support for 
their church, at the same time giving them a training which 
would have made them more useful to themselves and the society 
in which they have chosen to live. While the net result of 
the educational efforts of the Grundtvigians so far consists in 
the securing of a few enthusiasts and sentimentalists who by 
their very system of education have been unfitted for taking any 
active part in affairs in this country, for they have taken a nar¬ 
row, one-sided view of Grundtvig’s teaching, accepting the emo¬ 
tional side and completely rejecting the practical. Yet, in jus¬ 
tice to them, it must be admitted that their main fault consists 
in adopting a mistaken ideal and espousing a hopeless cause. 
Their intentions were of a wholly philanthropic and disinterested 
nature. Many of them have made great sacrifices both in money 
and social position in order to carry out their ideas; and it is 
after all to be regretted that they did not adopt some more prac¬ 
tical means for carrying out their ideas among the American 
people at large, for they are full of a spirit none too common 
among us here. They could have done a great work, if, together 
with some good practical English instruction, they could have 
transmitted to the Danes, at large, in this county, a touch of 
their own idealism. There is need of something to tone down 
the all-absorbing materialism to which the immigrant is by na¬ 
ture predisposed, and which is so strongly re-enforced by the en¬ 
vironment in this country. Though the Grundtvigians are in a 
measure to blame for the social and religious failures of the 
Danes in this country, they are not the sole nor the main cause 
of this failure, — no matter what church or educational policy 
had been pursued, it would not have had the power to make even 
a fairly united nationality of the Danes. They have shown conclu¬ 
sively that they have had but little desire to establish any so¬ 
ciety or church modeled on the society and church existing in 
Denmark. Their object in coming to this country was to better 
their material condition. They left Denmark at a time when the 
spirit of national pride was at a low ebb, when all the political 
hopes and aspirations of the nation had been disappointed, and 
when the church was hopelessly divided against itself. There 
was nothing in their native land they could look to with special 
