Introducing the American Spirit Part 1

Introducing the American Spirit.

by Edward A. Steiner.

Introduction_

"_Das ist ganz Americanish_." Whenever a German says this, he means that it is something which is practical, lavish, daringly reckless or lawless.

It means a short cut to achievement, a disregard of convention, an absence of those qualities which have given to the older nations of the world that fine, distinguishing flavor which is a fruit of the spirit.

Many attempts have been made to enlighten the Old World upon that point; but in spite of exchange-professorships and some notable, interpretative books upon the subject, we are still only the "Land of the Dollar."

We are not loved as a nation, largely because we are not understood, and we are not understood because we do not understand ourselves, and we do not understand ourselves because we have not studied ourselves in the light of the spirit of other nations.

Coming to this country a product of Germanic civilization, knowing intimately the Slavic, Semitic, and Latin spirit, the writer was compelled to compare and to choose. Yet he would never have dared write upon this subject; not only because it was a difficult task, but because he had been so completely weaned from the Old World spirit that he had lost the proper perspective. Moreover, of formal books upon this subject there was no dearth.

During the last ten years, however, he has had the advantage of being the _cicerone_ of distinguished Europeans who came to study various phases of our inst.i.tutional life, and they brought the opportunity of fresh comparisons and also of new view-points in this realm of the national spirit.

These unconventional studies, most of which received their inspiration through the visit of the Herr Director and his charming wife, are here offered as an Introduction to the American Spirit, not only to the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin, but to those Americans who do not realize that a nation, as well as man, "cannot live by bread alone;"

that its most precious a.s.set, its greatest element of strength, is its Spirit, and that the elements out of which the Spirit is made, are so rare, so delicate, that when once wasted they cannot readily be replaced.

As the sin against the Holy Spirit is the one sin for which the Gospel holds out no forgiveness for the individual, so there seems to be no hope for the nation which transgresses against this most vital element of its higher life.

Inasmuch also as the Spirit is something which guides and cannot be guided, these informal introductions appear in no geographic or historic sequence, but are necessarily left to the leading of the spirit, of which "no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth."

E. A. S.

_Grinnell, Iowa_.

I

_The Herr Director Meets the American Spirit_

The Herr Director and I were sitting over our coffee in the _Cafe Bauer_, _Unter den Linden_. In the midst of my account of some of the men of America and the idealistic movements in which they are interested, he rudely interrupted with: "You may tell that to some one who has never been in the United States; but not to me who have travelled through the length and breadth of it three times." He said it in an ungenerous, impatient way, although his last visit was thirty years ago and his journeys across this continent necessarily hurried. I dared not say much more, for I am apt to lose my temper when any one anywhere, criticizes my adopted country or questions my glowing accounts of it.

But I did say: "When you come over the next time, let me be your guide."

"Why should I want to go over again?" he replied. "It's a noisy, dirty, hopelessly materialistic country. You have sky-sc.r.a.pers, but no beauty; money, but no ideals; garishness, but no comfort. You have despatch, but no courtesy; you are ingenious, but not thorough; you have fine clothes, but no style; churches, but no religion; universities, but no learning.

No, I have been there three times. That's enough. I know all about it.

_Fertig!"_ And with that he dismissed me without giving me a chance to relieve my feelings, of which there were many; although he took advantage of a minute that was left and told me that I was an _Unausstehlicher Americaner_ whose judgment had been warped by my great love for my adopted country.

Evidently the Herr Director reversed his decision not to come to this country; for the following spring I received a cablegram to meet him on the arrival of his ship at the Hamburg-American dock, which of course I promptly did. The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin stepped onto the soil of the United States with a predisposition to be martyrs, to endure the sufferings entailed by travel with as little grace as possible, and to suppress to the utmost all pleasurable emotion.

On the other hand, I was determined to show off my United States from its best side, to woo and win the Herr Director's and the Frau Directorin's approval. In my laudable endeavor I seemed to be supported by that divine providence which watches over the whole world in general, but over the United States in particular. The weather was perfect, the sky festooned in fleecy clouds, the air charged by a divine energy; and when the sun shines upon the harbor of New York--well, even the most taciturn European cannot resist it.

The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin greeted all the good Lord's endeavor and mine, with an air of condescension as something due their station. From force of habit they worried and fussed about their baggage, although there was nothing to worry or fuss about, for it was safe on its way to the hotel. They were shot under the river and the busy streets of Manhattan and whirled up to the twenty-first story of their thirty-two-storied hotel without having taken more than a dozen steps to reach it.

The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin refused to be impressed by the rooms a.s.signed them, in which not a single comfort or luxury was missing, and complained because they were not as big as barns and the ceilings not as high as a cathedral. The Frau Directorin eyed the bath-room almost in silence; but she did wonder why they put out a whole month's supply of towels at once, instead of doing it in the provident European way of one towel every other day.

The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin, like all Europeans who can afford to travel, are exceedingly aesthetic, and at the same time fond of good food, and their first approving smile was won at the breakfast table, when they were each face to face with half a grapefruit of vast circ.u.mference, reposing upon a bed of crushed ice. Their smiles broadened when they had introduced their palates to an American breakfast food, a crispy bit of nut-flavored air bubble, floating upon thick, rich cream; and, although they had made up their minds that American coffee was vile and they must not taste it, they could not resist its aroma, and drank it with a relish.

When the Herr Director said: _"Der Kaffee ist gut,_" I knew that my prayers were being answered, and that the good Lord still loves the United States of America.

Most of us have shown off something--a baby, school-children, a schoolhouse, a town, an automobile, a cemetery. You know that feeling of pride which thrills you, that fear lest pride have a fall if it or they fail to "show up." But have you ever tried to show off a country--a country which you love with a lover's pa.s.sion; a country whose virtues are so many, whose defects are so obvious; a country whose glory you have gloried in before the whole world, but whose halo has so many rust spots that you wish you might have had a chance to use Sapolio on it ere you let it shine before your visitors? A country of one hundred million inhabitants, of whom every fourth person smells of the steerage, when you wish that they all smelled of the Mayflower; a country where more people are ready to die for its freedom than anywhere, and more people ought to be in the penitentiary for abusing that freedom; a country of vast distances, bound together by huge railways and controlled by unsavory politicians; a country with more homely virtues, more virtuous homes, than anywhere else, yet where the divorce courts never cease their grinding and alimonies have no end?

Ah! to show off such a country, and to have to begin to do it in New York, beats showing off babies, school-children, automobiles, and cemeteries.

The Herr Director was sure he would hate our sky-sc.r.a.pers; he had seen them from the ship, and the a.s.saulted sky-line looked to him like the huge mouth of an old woman with its isolated, protruding teeth. Frankly, I myself am not interested in sky-sc.r.a.pers; I prefer the elm trees which shade the streets of the quiet town where I live. I thank G.o.d daily for the men who had faith enough to plant trees upon those wind-swept prairies. They were mighty spirits who came to the edges of civilization and drove the wilderness farther and farther back by drawing furrows, sowing wheat, and planting trees--those men whom heat and a relentless desert could not separate from that other ocean with its Golden Gate to the sunset and the oldest world. Determining to have and to hold it till time is no more, they proceeded to unite the two oceans in holy wedlock.

A task which involved another nation in hopeless scandal and bankruptcy, they completed with as little ceremony as that which prevails at a wedding before a justice of the peace. Those were the men who went among savages, yet did not become like them; who for homes dug holes in the ground among rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs, and moles, and made of such homes the beginnings of towns and cities.

If I admire the sky-sc.r.a.pers it is because they are an attempt on the part of this same type of people to do pioneering among the clouds.

Public lands being exhausted, they proceed to annex the sky and people it, now that the frontier is no more.

What the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin would say to the sky-sc.r.a.per meant to me, not whether they would say it is beautiful or ugly, but whether they would discover in it the Spirit of America, the daring spirit of the pioneers who built Towers of Babel, though reversing the process; for they began with a confusion of tongues which outbabeled Babel, and finished on a day of Pentecost when men said: "We do hear them all speaking our own tongue, the mighty works of G.o.d."

We moved along Broadway, pressing through the crowds, the Herr Director puffing and panting, the Frau Directorin doing likewise. The Flatiron Building with its accentuated leanness lured them on until we came to the open s.p.a.ce of Madison Square and they were face to face with the Metropolitan tower.

The Herr Director said: "_Gott im Himmel!_" The Frau Directorin said: "_Um Gottes Himmels Willen!_" And then they gazed their fill in silence.

I have never "done" Europe with a guide, nor have I ever had an American city introduced to me through a megaphone, so I scarcely knew what to say.

I did not know the exact height of that tower, nor how many tons of steel support it, nor the size of the clock dial which tells the time of day up there "among the dizzy flocks of sky-sc.r.a.pers"; but I did know that the tower represented some big, daring thing, an expression of the spirit which could not be defined nor easily interpreted to another.

After his first outburst the Herr Director continued to say nothing--he was stunned; so was the Frau Directorin. We walked on, looking up, higher and higher still, until our eyes met another tower, the Woolworth Building--a shrewd Yankee five-and-ten-cent enterprise, flowering into purest Gothic.

The cathedrals of Europe are wonderful, undoubtedly. Master minds drew the plans and master hands built them, slowly, by an age-long process.

They turned religious ideals into stone lace and lilies, hideous gargoyles and brave flying b.u.t.tresses, aisles and naves and rose windows. Yes, they are quite wonderful. But to turn spools of thread, granite-ware, and dust-cloths into this glory of steel and stone is, to me, more marvellous still. The spirit of the pioneer cleaving the sky has become beautiful as it has ascended.

We are worrying a great deal about our lack of sensitiveness to beauty and form; we chide ourselves as being crude and unresponsive to art; we rush madly into the study of aesthetics and buy Old Masters at the price of a king's ransom; yet we are not truly fostering America's art sense.

It ought not to come in the Old World's way--by glorifying dogmas and creeds, by petrifying religion into b.u.t.tresses and incasing our dead in tombs of beryl and onyx. It ought not to come with its mixture of paganism and religion, its armless Venus and its headless Victory. It should come first as it is coming--with the making of homes good to live in, factories planned to work in, stores fit to do business in, and schools built to teach in. It is coming--yes, it is coming.

But when our strong boys shall make filagree silver ornaments, carve pretty things on bits of ivory, or exhaust their energy in painting a lock of hair--when that time comes, we shall be an old people ready for our ornamented tombs.

Next I took the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin through a portal flanked by pillars worthy to crown any Athenian hill; I led them into a Parthenon in which Athena herself might have joyed to be worshipped, and we heard the echoing and reechoing of a chant which lacked nothing but incense and organ notes to make one think one's self in an Old World cathedral. The chant was not a _Miserere_, but a call to entrust one's self to the depths of the earth--to descend into tubes of steel, beneath the river, and then travel to the fair cities of the living, throbbing, thriving West. It was a railway terminal without choking smoke, blinding dust, or deafening noise; also without that hideous mechanical ugliness which Ruskin so hated. This was merely a place from which one started to reach Oshkosh or Kokomo, Keokuk, Kalamazoo, or Kankakee. Yet more beautiful portals never swung to mortals in their fairest dreams of journeying to the abodes of bliss. The Spirit of America, at last crowned by beauty.

We reached our hotel fairly exhausted by our morning's walk; but, after being properly refreshed, the Herr Director ventured to criticize.

"Yes, you are a wonderfully resourceful people, keen and energetic, but chaotic. You take an Italian _campanile_ and elongate it fifty times; or a Gothic church, and attenuate it; or a Romanesque cathedral, and support it by Ionic pillars; or a cigar box, and enlarge it a million times. You put all these things side by side, and no one asks: Will they harmonize, or will they clash?

"Each man builds as he pleases, although he may blot out the other man's work and waste colossal energy merely to express himself. The result is confusion. You can feel that unrest, that discord, in the air. My nerves fairly ache! No, we shall not go out this afternoon. We must rest our nerves."

The Herr Director always spoke for his wife as well as for himself, thus expressing the collective spirit of the Old World. They both retired for a long rest, while I was left wondering how to introduce New York to them in the evening.