OCR Text |
Show America should be in leading-st rings j to European king's. j European conimontariar.s hi the ' earlier years of the republic found a stock subject fur ridicule in what j I they regarded as the boas'. fulness and' self-sufficiency of Amr-rican.-i who, niriid their crude surroundin.es, bd:ev-j j ed in the superiority of their i.-i.titu- lions and the future greatness of America. Am-erica. Their villages! they b!i :ved would be cit:es; the wilderness, they believed, would in time be teeminir with people. Their hopes have been realized; their dreams have come 'rue. For Americans to lose their spirit of optimism would be to lose that which is a possession of greater value than all the inherited, of material possessions, from the past. For courage cour-age and confidence can create anew. Cowards and weaklings cam'ot even defend that which they inherit. Preachers of pessimism have been busy in this country in recent years. We have an extensive literature of cynicism, of depreciation, of despair. The Sinclair Lewises, the Menckens, the Dreiscrs, have filled the air with their . super-sophisticated, sneering, villifying assaults upon everything :n America. They have sought to break down the faith of Americans in themselves, in their country, in their civilization, and with the superficial they have achieved a degree of success. suc-cess. It would be difficult to over-estimate the part played in the creation of the present depression in the Un't-ed Un't-ed States by the preachers of pessimism. pessi-mism. It is generally agreed that fear, lack of faith, lack of hope and confidence, are chiefly responsible for the present halt in American prosperity, pros-perity, and if the belief were to arise tomorrow that the future is bright, it would immediately become bright. Cynicism is the vice of both immaturity im-maturity and senility. Those who become be-come subject to such a mood have already failed. The resolution to do is half of the deed. Those who are constantly preaching lack of faith in America, in her traditions, her ideals and her future, are doing all they can to break down that quality of the American mind which has been responsible for most of American achievement. And since many of these preachers of despair are known to be radical social revolutionaries, there is method in much of this madness. Americans should preserve that psychology of youth which has made America great. They should close their ears to the caterwaulings of the moral weaklings who choose to ignore all the values of our civilization, dwell solely upon the abuses and misuses mis-uses of the existing order, and thus do what they can to make a failure of America by giving to Americans the psychology of failure. AMERICA'S MOST PRECIOUS GIFT. Emil Ludwig, Germany's chief literary lit-erary figure, says that what has most impressed him in the American Ameri-can people is their spirit of optimism and self-confidence, as contrasted with the pessimism and fear prevalent preval-ent in Europe. He declares that Am-erica Am-erica has the spirit of youth, Europe of old age, and that this fact underlies under-lies much that is characteristic of both civilizations. This statement is true and of great importance. The despair which has seized upon Europe since the World War accounts for the readiness of millions who have lost confidence in themselves, and hope for the future, to surrender the control of their destinies des-tinies to dictatorships, or centralized governments drifting toward despotism. despot-ism. ' America is a monument to the courage and confidence of her people. peo-ple. It took adventurous spirits to leave behind the associations of the Old World in the 17th and 18th centuries, cen-turies, make the perilous passage of the sea, and seek homes in the virgin wilderness. It took courage for the pioneers of that era to fight their way toward the interior against the warlike savages and the savage wilderness. wil-derness. Such conflict bred in men and women wo-men a self-confidence that finally sought and achieved national independence. indepen-dence. It was no longer tolerable that |