Good Citizenship

Part 1

GOOD CITIZENSHIP

BY GROVER CLEVELAND

PHILADELPHIA

HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY

Copyright, 1908, by Howard E. Altemus

Published June, 1908

CONTENTS

Introduction 5

Good Citizenship 11

Patriotism and Holiday Observance 37

INTRODUCTION

It is not of the author’s own motion that the following essays are given to the public in this form. With characteristic modesty, Mr. Cleveland was willing that these addresses should lie undiscovered and unread in the limbo of pigeonholes or of yellowing newspaper-file; and yet the thoughtful reader will be the first to proclaim that these utterances are neither insignificant nor ephemeral. Their very themes are age-old. Before Rome was, Patriotism and Good Citizenship were the purest and loftiest ideals of the ancient world; and, through the ages that have followed, those nations have been noblest, bravest and most enduring in which love of home and love of country have been most deep-seated.

Mr. Cleveland’s address on Good Citizenship was delivered before the Commercial Club of Chicago in October, 1903; and that on Patriotism and Holiday Observance before the Union League Club, of the same city, on Washington’s Birthday, 1907. Now, with Mr. Cleveland’s sanction, they appear for the first time in book form.

No one can scan these pages, however hastily, without saying to himself, “Here is a man who preaches what, for a lifetime, he has been practicing.”

Not all patriotism finds expression in the heat and joy of the battlefield; nor does good citizenship begin and end on election day. Mr. Cleveland has, in himself, proved that an upright and fearless chief magistrate in the White House may be as true a patriot as the leader of a forlorn hope, as lofty a type of citizen as a Garrison or a Phillips. No public man of this generation has been more bitterly assailed than Grover Cleveland; none has met with more unswerving serenity the attacks, fair and foul, of those whose selfish interests have made them his sworn foes.

That famous phrase, uttered years ago, “We love him for the enemies he has made,” is a true saying.

THE PUBLISHERS.

GOOD CITIZENSHIP

GOOD CITIZENSHIP

There is danger that my subject of American good citizenship is so familiar and so trite as to lack interest. This does not necessarily result from a want of appreciation of the importance of good citizenship, nor from a denial of the duty resting upon every American to be a good citizen. There is, however, abroad in our land a self-satisfied and perfunctory notion that we do all that is required of us in this direction when we make profession of our faith in the creed of good citizenship and abstain from the commission of palpably unpatriotic sins.

We ought not to be badgered and annoyed by the preaching and exhortation of a restless, troublesome set of men, who continually urge upon us the duty of active and affirmative participation in public affairs. Why should we be charged with neglect of political obligations? We go to the polls on election day, when not too busy with other things, and vote the ticket our party managers have prepared for us. Sometimes, when conditions grow to be so bad politically that a revival or stirring-up becomes necessary, a goodly number of us actually devote considerable time and effort to better the situation. Of course, we cannot do this always, because we must not neglect money-getting and the promotion of great enterprises, which, as everybody knows, are the evidence of a nation’s prosperity and influence.

It seems to me that within our citizenship there are many whose disposition and characteristics very often resemble those found in the membership of our churches. In this membership there is a considerable proportion composed of those who, having made profession of their faith and joined the church, appear to think their duty done when they live honestly, attend worship regularly, and contribute liberally to church support. In complacent satisfaction, and certain of their respectability, they do not care to hear sermonizing concerning the sinfulness of human nature, or the wrath to come; and if haply they are sometimes roused by the truths of vital Christianity, they soon relapse again to their tranquil and easy condition of listlessness. A description of these, found in the Holy Writ, may fitly apply to many in the State as well as in the church:

“For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”

There is an habitual associate of civic American indifference and listlessness, which reënforces their malign tendencies and adds tremendously to the dangers that threaten our body politic. This associate plays the rôle of smooth, insinuating confidence operator and, clothed in the garb of immutable faith in the invulnerability of our national greatness, it invites our admiring gaze to the flight of the American eagle, and assures us that no tempestuous weather can ever tire his wings. Thus many good and honest men are approached through their patriotic trust in our free institutions and immense national resources, and are insidiously led to a condition of mind which will not permit them to =harbor= the uncomfortable thought that any omission on their part can check American progress or endanger our country’s continued development. Have we not lived as a nation more than a century; and have we not exhibited growth and achievement in every direction that discredit all parallels in history? After us the deluge. Why then need we bestir ourselves, and why disturb ourselves with public affairs?

Those of our citizens who are deluded by these notions, and who allow themselves to be brought to such a frame of mind, may well be reminded of the good old lady who was wont to impressively declare that she had always noticed if she lived until the first of March she lived all the rest of the year. It is quite likely she built a theory upon this experience which induced her with the passing of each of these fateful days to defy coughs, colds and consumption and the attacks of germs and microbes in a million forms. However this may be, we know that with no design or intention on her part, there came a first day of March which passed without her earthly notice.

The withdrawal of wholesome sentiment and patriotic activity from political action on the part of those who are indifferent to their duty, or foolhardy in their optimism, opens the way for a ruthless and unrelenting enemy of our free institutions. The abandonment of our country’s watch-towers by those who should be on guard, and the slumber of the sentinels who should never sleep, directly invite the stealthy approach and the pillage and loot of the forces of selfishness and greed. These baleful enemies of patriotic effort will lurk everywhere as long as human nature remains unregenerate; but nowhere in the world can they create such desolations as in free America, and nowhere can they so cruelly destroy man’s highest and best aspirations for self-government.

It is useless for us to blink at the fact that our scheme of government is based upon a close interdependence of interest and purpose among those who make up the body of our people. Let us be honest with ourselves. If our nation was built too much upon sentiment, and if the rules of patriotism and benignity that were followed in the construction have proved too impractical, let us frankly admit it. But if love of country, equal opportunity and genuine brotherhood in citizenship are worth the pains and trials that gave them birth, and if we still believe them to be worth preservation and that they have the inherent vigor and beneficence to make our republic lasting and our people happy, let us strongly hold them in love and devotion. Then it shall be given us to plainly see that nothing is more unfriendly to the motives that underlie our national edifice than the selfishness and cupidity that look upon freedom and law and order only as so many agencies in aid of their designs.

Our government was made by patriotic, unselfish, sober-minded men for the control or protection of a patriotic, unselfish and sober-minded people. It is suited to such a people; but for those who are selfish, corrupt and unpatriotic it is the worst government on earth. It is so constructed that it needs for its successful operation the constant care and guiding hand of the people’s abiding faith and love, and not only is this unremitting guidance necessary to keep our national mechanism true to its work, but the faith and love which prompt it are the best safeguards against selfish citizenship.

Part 2

Give to our people something that will concentrate their common affection and solicitous care, and let them be their country’s good; give them a purpose that stimulates them to unite in lofty endeavor, and let that purpose be a demonstration of the sufficiency and beneficence of our popular rule, and we shall find that in their political thought there will be no place for the suggestions of sordidness and pelf.

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