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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11192 ***
+
+THE
+
+AMERICANISM
+
+OF
+
+WASHINGTON
+
+By
+
+Henry van Dyke
+
+
+1906
+
+Hard is the task of the man who at this late day attempts to say
+anything new about Washington. But perhaps it may be possible to unsay
+some of the things which have been said, and which, though they were at
+one time new, have never at any time been strictly true.
+
+The character of Washington, emerging splendid from the dust and tumult
+of those great conflicts in which he played the leading part, has passed
+successively into three media of obscuration, from each of which his
+figure, like the sun shining through vapors, has received some disguise
+of shape and color. First came the mist of mythology, in which we
+discerned the new St. George, serene, impeccable, moving through an
+orchard of ever-blooming cherry-trees, gracefully vanquishing dragons
+with a touch, and shedding fragrance and radiance around him. Out of
+that mythological mist we groped our way, to find ourselves beneath the
+rolling clouds of oratory, above which the head of the hero was
+pinnacled in remote grandeur, like a sphinx poised upon a volcanic peak,
+isolated and mysterious. That altitudinous figure still dominates the
+cloudy landscapes of the after-dinner orator; but the frigid, academic
+mind has turned away from it, and looking through the fog of criticism
+has descried another Washington, not really an American, not amazingly a
+hero, but a very decent English country gentleman, honorable,
+courageous, good, shrewd, slow, and above all immensely lucky.
+
+Now here are two of the things often said about Washington which need,
+if I mistake not, to be unsaid: first, that he was a solitary and
+inexplicable phenomenon of greatness; and second, that he was not an
+American.
+
+Solitude, indeed, is the last quality that an intelligent student of his
+career would ascribe to him. Dignified and reserved he was, undoubtedly;
+and as this manner was natural to him, he won more true friends by
+using it than if he had disguised himself in a forced familiarity and
+worn his heart upon his sleeve. But from first to last he was a man who
+did his work in the bonds of companionship, who trusted his comrades in
+the great enterprise even though they were not his intimates, and who
+neither sought nor occupied a lonely eminence of unshared glory. He was
+not of the jealous race of those who
+
+    "Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne";
+
+nor of the temper of George III., who chose his ministers for their
+vacuous compliancy. Washington was surrounded by men of similar though
+not of equal strength--Franklin, Hamilton, Knox, Greene, the Adamses,
+Jefferson, Madison. He stands in history not as a lonely pinnacle like
+Mount Shasta, elevated above the plain
+
+    "By drastic lift of pent volcanic fires";
+
+but as the central summit of a mountain range, with all his noble
+fellowship of kindred peaks about him, enhancing his unquestioned
+supremacy by their glorious neighborhood and their great support.
+
+Among these men whose union in purpose and action made the strength and
+stability of the republic, Washington was first, not only in the
+largeness of his nature, the loftiness of his desires, and the vigor of
+his will, but also in that representative quality which makes a man able
+to stand as the true hero of a great people. He had an instinctive power
+to divine, amid the confusions of rival interests and the cries of
+factional strife, the new aims and hopes, the vital needs and
+aspirations, which were the common inspiration of the people's cause
+and the creative forces of the American nation. The power to understand
+this, the faith to believe in it, and the unselfish courage to live for
+it, was the central factor of Washington's life, the heart and fountain
+of his splendid Americanism.
+
+It was denied during his lifetime, for a little while, by those who
+envied his greatness, resented his leadership, and sought to shake him
+from his lofty place. But he stood serene and imperturbable, while that
+denial, like many another blast of evil-scented wind, passed into
+nothingness, even before the disappearance of the party strife out of
+whose fermentation it had arisen. By the unanimous judgment of his
+countrymen for two generations after his death he was hailed as _Pater
+Patriae_; and the age which conferred that title was too ingenuous to
+suppose that the father could be of a different race from his own
+offspring.
+
+But the modern doubt is more subtle, more curious, more refined in its
+methods. It does not spring, as the old denial did, from a partisan
+hatred, which would seek to discredit Washington by an accusation of
+undue partiality for England, and thus to break his hold upon the love
+of the people. It arises, rather, like a creeping exhalation, from a
+modern theory of what true Americanism really is: a theory which goes
+back, indeed, for its inspiration to Dr. Johnson's somewhat crudely
+expressed opinion that "the Americans were a race whom no other mortals
+could wish to resemble"; but which, in its later form, takes counsel
+with those British connoisseurs who demand of their typical American
+not depravity of morals but deprivation of manners, not vice of heart
+but vulgarity of speech, not badness but bumptiousness, and at least
+enough of eccentricity to make him amusing to cultivated people.
+
+Not a few of our native professors and critics are inclined to accept
+some features of this view, perhaps in mere reaction from the unamusing
+character of their own existence. They are not quite ready to subscribe
+to Mr. Kipling's statement that the real American is
+
+    "Unkempt, disreputable, vast,"
+
+I remember reading somewhere that Tennyson had an idea that Longfellow,
+when he met him, would put his feet upon the table. And it is precisely
+because Longfellow kept his feet in their proper place, in society as
+well as in verse, that some critics, nowadays, would have us believe
+that he was not a truly American poet.
+
+Traces of this curious theory of Americanism in its application to
+Washington may now be found in many places. You shall hear historians
+describe him as a transplanted English commoner, a second edition of
+John Hampden. You shall read, in a famous poem, of Lincoln as
+
+    "New birth of our new soil, the _first_ American."
+
+He knew it, I say: and by what divination? By a test more searching than
+any mere peculiarity of manners, dress, or speech; by a touchstone able
+to divide the gold of essential character from the alloy of superficial
+characteristics; by a standard which disregarded alike Franklin's fur
+cap and Putnam's old felt hat, Morgan's leather leggings and
+Witherspoon's black silk gown and John Adams's lace ruffles, to
+recognize and approve, beneath these various garbs, the vital sign of
+America woven into the very souls of the men who belonged to her by a
+spiritual birthright.
+
+For what is true Americanism, and where does it reside? Not on the
+tongue, nor in the clothes, nor among the transient social forms,
+refined or rude, which mottle the surface of human life. The log cabin
+has no monopoly of it, nor is it an immovable fixture of the stately
+pillared mansion. Its home is not on the frontier nor in the populous
+city, not among the trees of the wild forest nor the cultured groves of
+Academe. Its dwelling is in the heart. It speaks a score of dialects but
+one language, follows a hundred paths to the same goal, performs a
+thousand kinds of service in loyalty to the same ideal which is its
+life. True Americanism is this:
+
+To believe that the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the
+pursuit of happiness are given by God.
+
+To believe that any form of power that tramples on these rights is
+unjust.
+
+To believe that taxation without representation is tyranny, that
+government must rest upon the consent of the governed, and that the
+people should choose their own rulers.
+
+To believe that freedom must be safeguarded by law and order, and that
+the end of freedom is fair play for all.
+
+To believe not in a forced equality of conditions and estates, but in a
+true equalization of burdens, privileges, and opportunities.
+
+To believe that the selfish interests of persons, classes, and sections
+must be subordinated to the welfare of the commonwealth.
+
+To believe that union is as much a human necessity as liberty is a
+divine gift.
+
+To believe, not that all people are good, but that the way to make them
+better is to trust the whole people.
+
+To believe that a free state should offer an asylum to the oppressed,
+and an example of virtue, sobriety, and fair dealing to all nations.
+
+To believe that for the existence and perpetuity of such a state a man
+should be willing to give his whole service, in property, in labor, and
+in life.
+
+That is Americanism; an ideal embodying itself in a people; a creed
+heated white hot in the furnace of conviction and hammered into shape on
+the anvil of life; a vision commanding men to follow it whithersoever it
+may lead them. And it was the subordination of the personal self to that
+ideal, that creed, that vision, which gave eminence and glory to
+Washington and the men who stood with him.
+
+This is the truth that emerges, crystalline and luminous, from the
+conflicts and confusions of the Revolution. The men who were able to
+surrender themselves and all their interests to the pure and loyal
+service of their ideal were the men who made good, the victors crowned
+with glory and honor. The men who would not make that surrender, who
+sought selfish ends, who were controlled by personal ambition and the
+love of gain, who were willing to stoop to crooked means to advance
+their own fortunes, were the failures, the lost leaders, and, in some
+cases, the men whose names are embalmed in their own infamy. The
+ultimate secret of greatness is neither physical nor intellectual, but
+moral. It is the capacity to lose self in the service of something
+greater. It is the faith to recognize, the will to obey, and the
+strength to follow, a star.
+
+Washington, no doubt, was pre-eminent among his contemporaries in
+natural endowments. Less brilliant in his mental gifts than some, less
+eloquent and accomplished than others, he had a rare balance of large
+powers which justified Lowell's phrase of "an imperial man." His
+athletic vigor and skill, his steadiness of nerve restraining an
+intensity of passion, his undaunted courage which refused no necessary
+risks and his prudence which took no unnecessary ones, the quiet
+sureness with which he grasped large ideas and the pressing energy with
+which he executed small details, the breadth of his intelligence, the
+depth of his convictions, his power to apply great thoughts and
+principles to every-day affairs, and his singular superiority to current
+prejudices and illusions--these were gifts in combination which would
+have made him distinguished in any company, in any age.
+
+But what was it that won and kept a free field for the exercise of these
+gifts? What was it that secured for them a long, unbroken opportunity of
+development in the activities of leadership, until they reached the
+summit of their perfection? It was a moral quality. It was the evident
+magnanimity of the man, which assured the people that he was no
+self-seeker who would betray their interests for his own glory or rob
+them for his own gain. It was the supreme magnanimity of the man, which
+made the best spirits of the time trust him implicitly, in war and
+peace, as one who would never forget his duty or his integrity in the
+sense of his own greatness.
+
+From the first, Washington appears not as a man aiming at prominence or
+power, but rather as one under obligation to serve a cause. Necessity
+was laid upon him, and he met it willingly. After Washington's
+marvellous escape from death in his first campaign for the defence of
+the colonies, the Rev. Samuel Davies, fourth president of Princeton
+College, spoke of him in a sermon as "that heroic youth, Colonel
+Washington, whom I can but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so
+signal a manner for some important service to his country." It was a
+prophetic voice, and Washington was not disobedient to the message.
+Chosen to command the Army of the Revolution in 1775, he confessed to
+his wife his deep reluctance to surrender the joys of home, acknowledged
+publicly his feeling that he was not equal to the great trust committed
+to him, and then, accepting it as thrown upon him "by a kind of
+destiny," he gave himself body and soul to its fulfilment refusing all
+pay beyond the mere discharge of his expenses, of which he kept a strict
+account, and asking no other reward than the success of the cause which
+he served.
+
+"Ah, but he was a rich man," cries the carping critic; "he could afford
+to do it." How many rich men to-day avail themselves of their
+opportunity to indulge in this kind of extravagance, toiling
+tremendously without a salary, neglecting their own estate for the
+public benefit, seeing their property diminished without complaint, and
+coming into serious financial embarrassment, even within sight of
+bankruptcy, as Washington did, merely for the gratification of a desire
+to serve the people? This is indeed a very singular and noble form of
+luxury. But the wealth which makes it possible neither accounts for its
+existence nor detracts from its glory. It is the fruit of a manhood
+superior alike to riches and to poverty, willing to risk all, and to use
+all, for the common good.
+
+Was it in any sense a misfortune for the people of America, even the
+poorest among them, that there was a man able to advance sixty-four
+thousand dollars out of his own purse, with no other security but his
+own faith in their cause, to pay his daily expenses while he was leading
+their armies? This unsecured loan was one of the very things, I doubt
+not, that helped to inspire general confidence. Even so the prophet
+Jeremiah purchased a field in Anathoth, in the days when Judah was
+captive unto Babylon, paying down the money, seventeen shekels of
+silver, as a token of his faith that the land would some day be
+delivered from the enemy and restored to peaceful and orderly
+habitation.
+
+Washington's substantial pledge of property to the cause of liberty was
+repaid by a grateful country at the close of the war. But not a dollar
+of payment for the tremendous toil of body and mind, not a dollar for
+work "overtime," for indirect damages to his estate, for commissions on
+the benefits which he secured for the general enterprise, for the use of
+his name or the value of his counsel, would he receive.
+
+A few years later, when his large sagacity perceived that the
+development of internal commerce was one of the first needs of the new
+country, at a time when he held no public office, he became president of
+a company for the extension of navigation on the rivers James and
+Potomac. The Legislature of Virginia proposed to give him a hundred and
+fifty shares of stock. Washington refused this, or any other kind of
+pay, saying that he could serve the people better in the enterprise if
+he were known to have no selfish interest in it. He was not the kind of
+a man to reconcile himself to a gratuity (which is the Latinized word
+for a "tip" offered to a person not in livery), and if the modern
+methods of "coming in on the ground-floor" and "taking a rake-off" had
+been explained and suggested to him, I suspect that he would have
+described them in language more notable for its force than for its
+elegance.
+
+It is true, of course, that the fortune which he so willingly imperilled
+and impaired recouped itself again after peace was established, and his
+industry and wisdom made him once more a rich man for those days. But
+what injustice was there in that? It is both natural and right that men
+who have risked their all to secure for the country at large what they
+could have secured for themselves by other means, should share in the
+general prosperity attendant upon the success of their efforts and
+sacrifices for the common good.
+
+I am sick of the shallow judgment that ranks the worth of a man by his
+poverty or by his wealth at death. Many a selfish speculator dies poor.
+Many an unselfish patriot dies prosperous. It is not the possession of
+the dollar that cankers the soul, it is the worship of it. The true test
+of a man is this: Has he labored for his own interest, or for the
+general welfare? Has he earned his money fairly or unfairly? Does he use
+it greedily or generously? What does it mean to him, a personal
+advantage over his fellow-men, or a personal opportunity of serving
+them?
+
+There are a hundred other points in Washington's career in which the
+same supremacy of character, magnanimity focussed on service to an
+ideal, is revealed in conduct. I see it in the wisdom with which he, a
+son of the South, chose most of his generals from the North, that he
+might secure immediate efficiency and unity in the army. I see it in the
+generosity with which he praised the achievements of his associates,
+disregarding jealous rivalries, and ever willing to share the credit of
+victory as he was to bear the burden of defeat. I see it in the patience
+with which he suffered his fame to be imperilled for the moment by
+reverses and retreats, if only he might the more surely guard the frail
+hope of ultimate victory for his country. I see it in the quiet dignity
+with which he faced the Conway Cabal, not anxious to defend his own
+reputation and secure his own power, but nobly resolute to save the army
+from being crippled and the cause of liberty from being wrecked. I see
+it in the splendid self-forgetfulness which cleansed his mind of all
+temptation to take personal revenge upon those who had sought to injure
+him in that base intrigue. I read it in his letter of consolation and
+encouragement to the wretched Gates after the defeat at Camden. I hear
+the prolonged reechoing music of it in his letter to General Knox in
+1798, in regard to military appointments, declaring his wish to "avoid
+feuds with those who are embarked in the same general enterprise with
+myself."
+
+Listen to the same spirit as it speaks in his circular address to the
+governors of the different States, urging them to "forget their local
+prejudices and policies; to make those mutual concessions which are
+requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances to sacrifice
+their individual advantages to the interest of the community." Watch
+how it guides him unerringly through the critical period of American
+history which lies between the success of the Revolution and the
+establishment of the nation, enabling him to avoid the pitfalls of
+sectional and partisan strife, and to use his great influence with the
+people in leading them out of the confusion of a weak confederacy into
+the strength of an indissoluble union of sovereign States.
+
+See how he once more sets aside his personal preferences for a quiet
+country life, and risks his already secure popularity, together with his
+reputation for consistency, by obeying the voice which calls him to be a
+candidate for the Presidency. See how he chooses for the cabinet and for
+the Supreme Court, not an exclusive group of personal friends, but men
+who can be trusted to serve the great cause of Union with fidelity and
+power--Jefferson, Randolph, Hamilton, Knox, John Jay, Wilson, Cushing,
+Rutledge. See how patiently and indomitably he gives himself to the toil
+of office, deriving from his exalted station no gain "beyond the lustre
+which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting
+human felicity." See how he retires, at last, to the longed-for joys of
+private life, confessing that his career has not been without errors of
+judgment, beseeching the Almighty that they may bring no harm to his
+country, and asking no other reward for his labors than to partake, "in
+the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under
+a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart."
+
+Oh, sweet and stately words, revealing, through their calm reserve, the
+inmost secret of a life that did not flare with transient enthusiasm but
+glowed with unquenchable devotion to a cause! "The ever favorite object
+of my heart"--how quietly, how simply he discloses the source and origin
+of a sublime consecration, a lifelong heroism! Thus speaks the victor in
+calm retrospect of the long battle. But if you would know the depth and
+the intensity of the divine fire that burned within his breast you must
+go back to the dark and icy days of Valley Forge, and hear him cry in
+passion unrestrained: "If I know my own mind, I could offer myself a
+living sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute
+to the people's ease. I would be a living offering to the savage fury
+and die by inches to save the people."
+
+"_The ever favorite object of my heart_!" I strike this note again and
+again, insisting upon it, harping upon it; for it is the key-note of the
+music. It is the capacity to find such an object in the success of the
+people's cause, to follow it unselfishly, to serve it loyally, that
+distinguishes the men who stood with Washington and who deserve to share
+his fame. I read the annals of the Revolution, and I find everywhere
+this secret and searching test dividing the strong from the weak, the
+noble from the base, the heirs of glory from the captives of oblivion
+and the inheritors of shame. It was the unwillingness to sink and forget
+self in the service of something greater that made the failures and
+wrecks of those tempestuous times, through which the single-hearted and
+the devoted pressed on to victory and honor.
+
+Turn back to the battle of Saratoga. There were two Americans on that
+field who suffered under a great personal disappointment: Philip
+Schuyler, who was unjustly supplanted in command of the army by General
+Gates; and Benedict Arnold, who was deprived by envy of his due share in
+the glory of winning the battle. Schuyler forgot his own injury in
+loyalty to the cause, offered to serve Gates in any capacity, and went
+straight on to the end of his noble life giving all that he had to his
+country. But in Arnold's heart the favorite object was not his country,
+but his own ambition, and the wound which his pride received at Saratoga
+rankled and festered and spread its poison through his whole nature,
+until he went forth from the camp, "a leper white as snow."
+
+What was it that made Charles Lee, as fearless a man as ever lived, play
+the part of a coward in order to hide his treason at the battle of
+Monmouth? It was the inward eating corruption of that selfish vanity
+which caused him to desire the defeat of an army whose command he had
+wished but failed to attain. He had offered his sword to America for his
+own glory, and when that was denied him, he withdrew the offering, and
+died, as he had lived, to himself.
+
+What was it that tarnished the fame of Gates and Wilkinson and Burr and
+Conway? What made their lives, and those of men like them, futile and
+inefficient compared with other men whose natural gifts were less? It
+was the taint of dominant selfishness that ran through their careers,
+now hiding itself, now breaking out in some act of malignity or
+treachery. Of the common interest they were reckless, provided they
+might advance their own. Disappointed in that "ever favorite object of
+their hearts," they did not hesitate to imperil the cause in whose
+service they were enlisted.
+
+Turn to other cases, in which a charitable judgment will impute no
+positive betrayal of trusts, but a defect of vision to recognize the
+claim of the higher ideal. Tory or Revolutionist a man might be,
+according to his temperament and conviction; but where a man begins
+with protests against tyranny and ends with subservience to it, we look
+for the cause. What was it that separated Joseph Galloway from Francis
+Hopkinson? It was Galloway's opinion that, while the struggle for
+independence might be justifiable, it could not be successful, and the
+temptation of a larger immediate reward under the British crown than
+could ever be given by the American Congress in which he had once
+served. What was it that divided the Rev. Jacob Duché from the Rev.
+John Witherspoon? It was Duché's fear that the cause for which he had
+prayed so eloquently in the first Continental Congress was doomed after
+the capture of Philadelphia, and his unwillingness to go down with that
+cause instead of enjoying the comfortable fruits of his native wit and
+eloquence in an easy London chaplaincy. What was it that cut William
+Franklin off from his professedly prudent and worldly wise old father,
+Benjamin? It was the luxurious and benumbing charm of the royal
+governorship of New Jersey.
+
+"Professedly prudent" is the phrase that I have chosen to apply to
+Benjamin Franklin. For the one thing that is clear, as we turn to look
+at him and the other men who stood with Washington, is that, whatever
+their philosophical professions may have been, they were not controlled
+by prudence. They were really imprudent, and at heart willing to take
+all risks of poverty and death in a struggle whose cause was just though
+its issue was dubious. If it be rashness to commit honor and life and
+property to a great adventure for the general good, then these men were
+rash to the verge of recklessness. They refused no peril, they withheld
+no sacrifice, in the following of their ideal.
+
+I hear John Dickinson saying: "It is not our duty to leave wealth to our
+children, but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. We have counted
+the cost of this contest, and we find nothing so dreadful as voluntary
+slavery." I see Samuel Adams, impoverished, living upon a pittance,
+hardly able to provide a decent coat for his back, rejecting with scorn
+the offer of a profitable office, wealth, a title even, to win him from
+his allegiance to the cause of America. I see Robert Morris, the wealthy
+merchant, opening his purse and pledging his credit to support the
+Revolution, and later devoting all his fortune and his energy to restore
+and establish the financial honor of the Republic, with the memorable
+words, "The United States may command all that I have, except my
+integrity." I hear the proud John Adams saying to his wife, "I have
+accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have
+consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and the ruin of our children";
+and I hear her reply, with the tears running down her face, "Well, I am
+willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you,
+if you are ruined," I see Benjamin Franklin, in the Congress of 1776,
+already past his seventieth year, prosperous, famous, by far the most
+celebrated man in America, accepting without demur the difficult and
+dangerous mission to France, and whispering to his friend, Dr. Rush, "I
+am old and good for nothing, but as the store-keepers say of their
+remnants of cloth, 'I am but a fag-end, and you may have me for what
+you please.'"
+
+Here is a man who will illustrate and prove, perhaps better than any
+other of those who stood with Washington, the point at which I am
+aiming. There was none of the glamour of romance about old Ben Franklin.
+He was shrewd, canny, humorous. The chivalric Southerners disliked his
+philosophy, and the solemn New-Englanders mistrusted his jokes. He made
+no extravagant claims for his own motives, and some of his ways were not
+distinctly ideal. He was full of prudential proverbs, and claimed to be
+a follower of the theory of enlightened self-interest. But there was not
+a faculty of his wise old head which he did not put at the service of
+his country, nor was there a pulse of his slow and steady heart which
+did not beat loyal to the cause of freedom.
+
+He forfeited profitable office and sure preferment under the crown, for
+hard work, uncertain pay, and certain peril in behalf of the colonies.
+He followed the inexorable logic, step by step, which led him from the
+natural rights of his countrymen to their liberty, from their liberty
+to their independence. He endured with a grim humor the revilings of
+those whom he called "malevolent critics and bug-writers." He broke with
+his old and dear associates in England, writing to one of them,
+
+    "You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy and I am Yours,
+    B. Franklin."
+
+He never flinched or faltered at any sacrifice of personal ease or
+interest to the demands of his country. His patient, skilful, laborious
+efforts in France did as much for the final victory of the American
+cause as any soldier's sword. He yielded his own opinions in regard to
+the method of making the treaty of peace with England, and thereby
+imperilled for a time his own prestige. He served as president of
+Pennsylvania three times, devoting all his salary to public
+benefactions. His influence in the Constitutional Convention was
+steadfast on the side of union and harmony, though in many things he
+differed from the prevailing party. His voice was among those who hailed
+Washington as the only possible candidate for the Presidency. His last
+public act was a petition to Congress for the abolition of slavery. At
+his death the government had not yet settled his accounts in its
+service, and his country was left apparently his debtor; which, in a
+sense still larger and deeper, she must remain as long as liberty
+endures and union triumphs in the Republic.
+
+Is not this, after all, the root of the whole matter? Is not this the
+thing that is vitally and essentially true of all those great men,
+clustering about Washington, whose fame we honor and revere with his?
+They all left the community, the commonwealth, the race, in debt to
+them. This was their purpose and the ever-favorite object of their
+hearts. They were deliberate and joyful creditors. Renouncing the maxim
+of worldly wisdom which bids men "get all you can and keep all you get,"
+they resolved rather to give all they had to advance the common cause,
+to use every benefit conferred upon them in the service of the general
+welfare, to bestow upon the world more than they received from it, and
+to leave a fair and unblotted account of business done with life which
+should show a clear balance in their favor.
+
+Thus, in brief outline, and in words which seem poor and inadequate, I
+have ventured to interpret anew the story of Washington and the men who
+stood with him: not as a stirring ballad of battle and danger, in which
+the knights ride valiantly, and are renowned for their mighty strokes at
+the enemy in arms; not as a philosophic epic, in which the development
+of a great national idea is displayed, and the struggle of opposing
+policies is traced to its conclusion; but as a drama of the eternal
+conflict in the soul of man between self-interest in its Protean forms,
+and loyalty to the right, service to a cause, allegiance to an ideal.
+
+Those great actors who played in it have passed away, but the same drama
+still holds the stage. The drop-curtain falls between the acts; the
+scenery shifts; the music alters; but the crisis and its issues are
+unchanged, and the parts which you and I play are assigned to us by our
+own choice of "the ever favorite object of our hearts."
+
+Men tell us that the age of ideals is past, and that we are now come to
+the age of expediency, of polite indifference to moral standards, of
+careful attention to the bearing of different policies upon our own
+personal interests. Men tell us that the rights of man are a poetic
+fiction, that democracy has nothing in it to command our allegiance
+unless it promotes our individual comfort and prosperity, and that the
+whole duty of a citizen is to vote with his party and get an office for
+himself, or for some one who will look after him. Men tell us that to
+succeed means to get money, because with that all other good things can
+be secured. Men tell us that the one thing to do is to promote and
+protect the particular trade, or industry, or corporation in which we
+have a share: the laws of trade will work out that survival of the
+fittest which is the only real righteousness, and if we survive that
+will prove that we are fit. Men tell us that all beyond this is
+phantasy, dreaming, Sunday-school politics: there is nothing worth
+living for except to get on in the world; and nothing at all worth
+dying for, since the age of ideals is past.
+
+It is past indeed for those who proclaim, or whisper, or in their hearts
+believe, or in their lives obey, this black gospel. And what is to
+follow? An age of cruel and bitter jealousies between sections and
+classes; of hatted and strife between the Haves and the Have-nots; of
+futile contests between parties which have kept their names and confused
+their principles, so that no man may distinguish them except as the Ins
+and Outs. An age of greedy privilege and sullen poverty, of blatant
+luxury and curious envy, of rising palaces and vanishing homes, of
+stupid frivolity and idiotic publicomania; in which four hundred gilded
+fribbles give monkey-dinners and Louis XV. revels, while four million
+ungilded gossips gape at them and read about them in the newspapers. An
+age when princes of finance buy protection from the representatives of a
+fierce democracy; when guardians of the savings which insure the lives
+of the poor, use them as a surplus to pay for the extravagances of the
+rich; and when men who have climbed above their fellows on golden
+ladders, tremble at the crack of the blackmailer's whip and come down at
+the call of an obscene newspaper. An age when the python of political
+corruption casts its "rings" about the neck of proud cities and
+sovereign States, and throttles honesty to silence and liberty to death.
+It is such an age, dark, confused, shameful, that the sceptic and the
+scorner must face, when they turn their backs upon those ancient shrines
+where the flames of faith and integrity and devotion are flickering like
+the deserted altar-fires of a forsaken worship.
+
+But not for us who claim our heritage in blood and spirit from
+Washington and the men who stood with him,--not for us of other tribes
+and kindred who
+
+    "Have found a fatherland upon this shore,"
+
+and learned the meaning of manhood beneath the shelter of liberty,--not
+for us, nor for our country, that dark apostasy, that dismal outlook! We
+see the palladium of the American ideal--goddess of the just eye, the
+unpolluted heart, the equal hand--standing as the image of Athene stood
+above the upper streams of Simois:
+
+"It stood, and sun and moonshine rained their light
+  On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
+Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight
+  Round Troy--but while this stood Troy could not fall."
+
+We see the heroes of the present conflict, the men whose allegiance is
+not to sections but to the whole people, the fearless champions of fair
+play. We hear from the chair of Washington a brave and honest voice
+which cries that our industrial problems must be solved not in the
+interest of capital, nor of labor, but of the whole people. We believe
+that the liberties which the heroes of old won with blood and sacrifice
+are ours to keep with labor and service.
+
+    "All that our fathers wrought With true prophetic thought, Must be
+    defended."
+
+No privilege that encroaches upon those liberties is to be endured. No
+lawless disorder that imperils them is to be sanctioned. No class that
+disregards or invades them is to be tolerated.
+
+There is a life that is worth living now, as it was worth living in the
+former days, and that is the honest life, the useful life, the unselfish
+life, cleansed by devotion to an ideal. There is a battle that is worth
+fighting now, as it was worth fighting then, and that is the battle for
+justice and equality. To make our city and our State free in fact as
+well as in name; to break the rings that strangle real liberty, and to
+keep them broken; to cleanse, so far as in our power lies, the fountains
+of our national life from political, commercial, and social corruption;
+to teach our sons and daughters, by precept and example, the honor of
+serving such a country as America--that is work worthy of the finest
+manhood and womanhood. The well born are those who are born to do that
+work. The well bred are those who are bred to be proud of that work. The
+well educated are those who see deepest into the meaning and the
+necessity of that work. Nor shall their labor be for naught, nor the
+reward of their sacrifice fail them. For high in the firmament of human
+destiny are set the stars of faith in mankind, and unselfish courage,
+and loyalty to the ideal; and while they shine, the Americanism of
+Washington and the men who stood with him shall never, never die.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Americanism of Washington, by Henry Van Dyke
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11192 ***