We
certainly cannot teach anything approaching a true Americanism until we
ourselves feel and believe and practise in our own lives what we are
teaching to others. No law, no lip-service, no effort, however
well-intentioned, will amount to anything worth while in inculcating
the true American spirit in our foreign-born citizens until we are sure
that the American spirit is understood by ourselves and is warp and
woof of our own being.
To the American, part and parcel of his country, these particulars in
which his country falls short with the foreign-born are, perhaps, not
so evident; they may even seem not so very important. But to the
foreign-born they seem distinct lacks; they loom large; they form
serious handicaps which, in many cases, are never surmounted; they are
a menace to that Americanization which is, to-day, more than ever our
fondest dream, and which we now realize more keenly than before is our
most vital need.
It is for this reason that I have put them down here as a concrete
instance of where and how America fell short in my own Americanization,
and, what is far more serious to me, where she is falling short in her
Americanization of thousands of other foreign-born.
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