of Americanism. Regarding him as an authority I read his book, called "Americanism versus Bolshevism." It began as follows:

"I dedicate this book to all Americans who love their country, revere its ideals, understand and support its institutions, and are willing to give their all in order that 'our Government shall not perish from the earth.'

"I dedicate this book to them, car

an expression of love, and it implies no derogation of love to say that the expression of it does not describe its object.

It is a well known fact that all lovers characterize their mistresses in much the same terms. Subject to differences of culture and racial genius they all employ the superlative form of adjectives of praise.

Egypt:

And

The last part of this dedication was evidently the centripetal patriotism of Mr. Hays. But since in the opening sentence the author referred to the "ideals" and "institutions" of America, I read on in the hope of discovering what these were. this is what I learned: "Americanism is a synonym for self-government," "America stands for orderly, continuous, never-ending progress," "America stands for law," "America means love of your fellow-man," "America stands for hope," "America is founded on family love and family life," "America means increased production and increased production for all."

But why, I asked myself, did the mayor stop there? Then I reflected that it was because his vocabulary or his ink had given out. It did not mean that there were any good things which a discriminating mind must deny of America, but only that there are some things that even the fondest mind does not think of or have the means to express. This might be called eulogistic or laudatory patriotism. It is

Doth glance from heaven to earth, The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the
Turns them to shapes, and gives to
poet's pen

any nothing

A local habitation and a name."

When a lover desires to publish his love he does not consult psychology, pathology, anthropometry or criminology; he consults the unabridged dictionary. Or he consults the poets, who have accumulated through the ages the longest and most varied vocabulary of adulation. You could not substitute a lover's characterization of his mistress for her thumb-print or photograph, and insert it in her passport for purposes of identification. It testifies to the passion and eloquence of the lover, but does not describe the mistress. Little girls are not really made of "sugar and spice and everything nice," though it is proper that little boys should think so. Similarly, we gather from Mayor Hanson's panegyric that he loves his country, and that he is both exuberant and articulate; but while this is much to his credit, it does not describe or

The mistress would naturally like to believe what her lover tells her, and the greater his ardor the greater the strain on her modesty. But love itself and the self-satisfaction which love may beget in its object are two very different things. The lover humbles himself before the object of his love, which is but the symbol of his ideal. He sets something above himself, by which he measures his limits and directs his aspirations. He has no delusions about himself. But to be the victim of love, to believe that one is that which others admire, is a most precarious moral state. And the higher the ideal, the worse it is to believe that one has realized it. The most hopeless paranoiac is the man who thinks he is God.

In love of country a man is both lover and beloved. All Americans belong to the audience which the patriotic orator addresses. He even belongs to it himself. The American people have thus had many lovers and many flatterers. To love them, or to seem to love them, is a condition of securing their favor. It is not It is not strange that they should end by believing what they are so often told. But suppose a people to be convinced that they are what their patriotic orators tell them they are. What is there left to live for? Nothing, if the orators have been really eloquent-or almost nothing. There remains just one further possibility short of total moral quiescence: one may still set an example to others. This is the last moral asset of self-righteousness.

American patriotic oratory abounds

"Let Columbia still continue to sit here enthroned between our silver seas, the Atlantic upon the east, the blue Pacific upon the west, 'these seas which serve us in the office of a wall or as a moat defensive against the envy of less happy lands.' And to our future jubilee shall come, in the fullness of time when we hold it, not kings and princes as a relic of the imperialism, the barbarism, the despotism of the past; not conquered nations, conquering war, but rather the nations of the earth in peaceful procession, to sit at our feet and learn from a study of America's history the story of man's final emancipation from wrong and oppression and do Columbia reverence as the uncrowned queen of the highest, the freest, and the noblest type of civilization upon the face of the earth. That is the ideal which I hold for my country. That is the mission I would have her bring to mankind."

I have before me as I write a cartoon published recently in "The Saturday Evening Post." Europe is represented by a dissipated and rapacious suitor kneeling at the feet of America, and labeled "Intrigue," "Greed and Imperialism," "Hate and Militarism.” America is represented by an erect, pure figure of austere beauty, and wearing an expression in which disapproval and serenity are happily mingled. Her reply is, "Why don't you reform first?"

Exemplary nationalism is this consciousness of virtue enthroned above a wayward world or of purity assailed by corruption. It is undoubtedly a most agreeable state of mind for those who can achieve it, but is it an al

together healthy state of mind? The fact is that the "influence of example" has never been sufficiently considered in its effects upon the exemplar. It is one thing to follow an example and another thing to set one. There is a difference, too, between seeking to be worthy of imitation and posing as a model. There is even a difference between letting your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and conceiving illumination to be your special mission. It is a good thing to imitate nobility; it is a sobering and somewhat appalling thing to reflect that others may imitate you: but to go about looking noble, to register and broadcast nobility, in order that others may profit by your example, to become, in short, a sort of moral exhibit, is to undertake a rôle that most men are glad to leave to God. In fact, the triumph of Christianity over paganism suggests that to love is not only more human, but even more divine, than to be the selfconscious object of love.

It is essentially a difference of posture, a little difference of attitude, but the kind of little difference that in moral matters makes all the difference. It is not a question of attending to the beam in your own eye rather than the mote in your brother's, but of rolling your beamless eye in order that your poor dim-sighted brother may admire it, while remaining at a moteless distance, where you are safe from contagion. You are not unaware of your brother and of his mote; they define your rôle and mark your elevation. But, acting in the capacity of an example, you do not remove his mote. You do not, strictly speaking, go out of your way at all; you act only by inducing action in others.

You

are, as Aristotle said of God, an “unmoved mover."

Furthermore, if there should happen by any unhappy chance to be a beam in your own eye, you cannot, without changing your posture, remove that. So long as you are preoccupied with causing your light to shine, you are not seeking for light, and the man who is chiefly concerned that others should see his works is correspondingly less concerned with making them good. It follows that, unless by great good fortune one should already possess perfection, one is not likely thus to achieve it. And even if one already has perfection, the exemplary pose may mar it.

8 4

There are two popular symbols of America. The one is Columbia enthroned, or the Statue of Liberty enlightening the world. America, so symbolized, is a modern replica of Juno, whose chief concern it was to look after other people's morals. Juno was the Olympian prude, a model matron and self-appointed censor. Her modern replica stands at the portal of America and faces east, holding a torch for the edification of foreigners. The Statue of Liberty is, like Juno, essentially statuesque. She is the frozen perfection. It is absolutely incompatible with her posture that she should do anything but hold the torch and wear a fixed expression of consummate virtue. It is true that she was made in France, but we have adopted her, and her creation argues a Gallic insight into the moral psychology of America.

It is to our credit, however, that we have felt the need of another symbol. While the Statue of Liberty embodies

I

HAD passed my first summer in the office with the distinct understanding that I was to postpone my vacation until October, when I had arranged to go down on Long Island to take part in the last election in county politics in which, as now appears likely, I was ever to be actively engaged. In November I returned from the hectic campaign with the feeling of being in the haven where I would be. With Mr. Gilder at Marion, on Buzzard's Bay, through the summer, and Mr. Johnson and Mr. Buel deep in the War Series, I had lacked no opportunity of trying my hand at many tasks that ordinarily would not have been open to a beginner. To learn every detail of the routine work of the office appeared highly advisable, for the flood-tide of activity and prosperity that the War Series had caused was certain to be followed by the ebb, when poorly piloted craft might be stranded. The very terms of my engagement seemed to prove that others had had the same thought in mind, for I had entered upon my work for a definite period of fifteen months, with the provision that I might be transferred to the dictionary department at any time during that period if the company thought best.

The doubt was to be the skeleton

that sat at the feast through the whole year and a quarter, and it was only after the stated time had already passed that I was to learn that the conditional nature of my engagement had from the first been forgotten by those who had made it. As Mr. Gilder informed me, I had long since been considered "one of them," whatever that might mean to them or to me.

It gave me at least a new status in my own mind, and a certain tranquillity of spirit, and the zeal for my work, which up to that time had been mainly personal and defensive, took on thenceforth the complexion of loyalty to the magazine itself. I was not one of its parents, not even a godparent; it was more like being a dependent spinster aunt in the household, and with all the devotion that such lonely souls frequently display, I also possessed at times the singular conviction of theirs that I alone was greatly concerned with the manners and appearance of the child of the family. I rejoiced in its excellences, but openly grieved at its shortcomings, and watched it go out to the public with an ever present fear that it fared forth with a splotch on its face or a shoe-string untied.

And there were so many possibilities for splotches and flying shoestrings! Roughly speaking, every