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Show Foreign Critics Overlook Wonderful Power of the American Spirit By J. ALFRED SPENDER, British Journalist. Much of the foreign criticism of American democracy and institutions institu-tions misses that impalpable but supremely important thing, the American Ameri-can spirit. This spirit belongs to the whole country and gives it, despite its differences of races, climate and natural features, its unity and individual indi-vidual character. There is no experiment in nation making to compare with it in all the world, and whatever difficulties and problems might still lie ahead, no nation has ever succeeded so -well in so short a time in making one people out of a multitude of diverse elements. The traveler in America who keeps his eyes open and his mind free is conscious all the way of a process of creative evolution breaking and making at a pace which is in vivid contrast with the slower movement in the Old world. All American institutions must be seen against this background of unceasing individual energy, the energy of pioneers still breaking new ground and with their minds fixed more on the future than on the past or even the present. |