Part 25

Robert Maximilian Wernaer was born in 1865 in Jena, Germany, where he received his early education. After coming to the United States in 1884, he took a course in law at the Albany Law School, and attended Harvard University, from which he received his Ph.D. degree in 1903. His studies were continued abroad at Leipzig, Heidelberg, Geneva, and Berlin. He was admitted to the Bar in 1889 and practiced law in Brooklyn and New York. Later he was instructor in German at the universities of Wisconsin and Harvard, being also lecturer on German literature at the latter institution in 1908.

In 1917 there was published his stirring, patriotic poem, “The Soul of America,” which leaves no doubt concerning his stand on the great question of the hour. The parts reprinted here are taken chiefly from the opening cantos of the poem.

THE SOUL OF AMERICA

O America! Land of forests and prairies. Land of races and peoples, Land of freedom and tolerance, Looked-for haven of the nations of the world! To you I came, and you I adopted. I have infolded you as a child infolds its mother. I say to you: “My mother!”

I love you because you hold the torch of liberty in your outstretched hand. I love you because your constitution speaks of the people as the rulers. (I am a man--I salute you, brother!) I love you because you are not governed by a king. I love you because princes and nobles are not met on your streets-- The dignity of man is not lowered. I love you because of the true red mixture of human blood that flows in your veins. Blessed are the dreams of the first settlers! I love you because, in the beginning of your history, You gathered together your people; You girded your loins; You armed yourself with weapons of steel; And you fought. You fought for liberty; You fought for independence; O divine freemanship! You fought for democracy; You fought for nature’s own laws; And you won. Blessed are the noble men in whom the dreams of our fathers still live! And since those days, the peoples came from the ends of the earth, And you increased; And your stars now count forty and eight. I love you because of what you did in the middle of the nineteenth century,-- You liberated some millions of dark-colored people living among you; You emancipated them. I love you because you gave your blood for the Cubans. You fought for them, but took no soil. You made them free. The Filipinos will be free also. I love because you are a nation of givers. Above all else, I love you because of your Soul, The infinite vistas opening out from your Soul. Blessed be that Soul!

And since I love you, Since my life is entwined with your life, My ideals with your ideals,-- Gray matter and red blood have sealed the pledge,-- I wish you to guard the beacon fires lit on your mountains, I wish you to grow, And increase in the strength of body, In the strength of Soul, The things unseen, Your birthrights, O America!

III

America, my country! Brothers all! What is that Liberty of which you sing? Which impelled the first settlers to seek your soil? For which they offered up their blood? Which you sent abroad in your calls of love? Which brought the nations of the earth to you? Singing, singing, singing! Which you have stamped upon your documents and silver coins? The sunlight spread out over the States?-- What is that Liberty? You say it is your life-principle. Yes: it is your life-principle; The igniting spark that keeps your fires, O America! That feeds your Soul, your Spirit, your Being: As your Liberty is, so is your Soul; As your Soul is, so is your Liberty.

You are not merely dwellers on this continent; You are no longer a province; No longer in the leading strings of a parent land. Not now! You are a new land,-- New, because of a new era started; New, because you are not a land of just one race, But a company of races, Held together by a secret bond, By a sacred bond, Sacred as a consecrated altar, The link between you and your destiny,-- Your very Soul, your Spirit, your Being. Are you conscious of that? Do you feel it as you feel the pulsing of your heart? Do you feel it strike the tablet of your mind as a conviction? Do you feel it quiver through your body when the word “American” is uttered? What then is Liberty? What does the uplifted torch mean? The wreath about her brow? What is this Soul I am speaking about?

Brother, ask yourself that question. Ask yourself at night in the hour of rest. And in the morning when a new day dawns. Ask yourself now! For it is the time of a new consecration. To-day! To-day! Ask yourself a thousand times, For America’s To-morrow depends upon your answer! Yea, the world’s To-morrow depends upon your answer!

I know a man who years ago Departed from his native land, With treasures, wife and child; And settled in the kingdom of the sea. Rich he was, and, in due time, the king made him a lord. He was born in America, and had breathed her Principle of life, yet never known her Soul; Was born in America, yet had not been American.

I know a woman of leisure who lived in Paris; Ten happy, fleeting years she had spent there; Then she returned to the land of her birth-- For a visit. She made the visit shorter than she had intended; She thought of the arts she had left behind; She thought of the boulevards and lighted cafes; She thought of the Countess de C. and her cercle of friends; Our streets and cities she no longer liked; Our people seemed bourgeois to her; Our life was too busy, and fulsome of noise; She longed for leisure and fashion; She scorned our ways. She, too, had not known the Soul of our land, Though born under the Stars and Stripes. My brothers, there are many of these.

VII

My brother, what is Liberty? What is Democracy? I feel a quiver run Through our nation-- What is it we have left undone In faith and consecration?

Our faith of old-- Has it grown cold? Is it the search for gold That made us turn from pledges of the past, Forgetful of the things that last? To play? To chase the shadows in the sun? To count the trifles won? My brother, What is it we have left undone? What is it we must do? How can we see things through, In this New Age?

There is the flesh of body, in which the life of man is rooted; There is the light of the soul, which makes that life a child of God. There is the flesh of body, in which the life of a people is rooted; There is the light of her soul, which makes that life a nation.

What is our nation’s Soul? America’s Light? Her entity as a nation among nations? Her Being, I mean, her Heart, the glow Of her Spirit whereby she grows; Her mind whereby she knows Herself; her Entity Among the nations, free Or bound;--this Soul, do you know?

My brother, I tell you no new truth, Though a deep and wondrous truth. You may have forgotten--forgotten it! You, who have been here too long-- My brother, know it again, again! Or you, newcomer, no one may have told you-- Hear me, then! It is a faith,-- A faith on which hangs all the law and the singer’s prophecy; Which cuts down to the life-roots of our Being; Which lays bare the red-flowing blood,--the sap of life; And the white-shining Light,--the blossoms of life; Which makes us stand before our grave, and face to face with God. Blessed are the men of the past who saw the Light, who had the faith! It is a faith,-- The faith that through our democracy, A government and a people sprung from American soil, Many peoples, peoples sprung from the races of the world-- Through this democracy-- The high-held promises that sleep in man, Infinite stretches of powers potential, Social, intellectual, moral, In embryo traced in lines of beauty, Can into vital life be quickened, Strike deep their roots, Fed in this wondrous soil, And gather mighty powers of growth, Unfolding wing on wing of nascent life, Nearing the stature of ideal selfhood God has destined they should be, Through this democracy, Through a democracy of many peoples, The great American Experiment, The new hope-anointed start, A nation in which the people are the rulers, A free people of peoples free, Living in concord one with another, Striving steadfast for a high humanity, Reaching out to the ends of the world, Making an end of Race for the sake of Man, A humanity, great because it is a race of races, Great because pledged to advance the statehood of man, Crowned with the crown of freedom, Won with eyes and ears, and swords and plows, And creative brother-will, And love for noble deeds, and noble song, and noble art, Calling all men “brothers.”-- That is America’s Soul! Her Soul in the making.

WE MUST BE TRUE

We must be true, with faith renew Our solemn vows, forever true! True as the very prairie grass, The woods and fields and soil and mass Of rock, which sun and air have wrought,-- Growing without a thought, Truly American!

True to historic days, the flow And national ebb of times ago! True to the very drops of life, The battles fought, the stress and strife Of anguished years to make man free,-- Loving our Liberty, Truly American!

True to the Lincoln man, the love-chart Of a great impassioned human heart! True to the very cry of our Soul For better days, the far-out goal Of struggling man,--knowing no race, Lighted by a brother’s face, Truly American!

We must be true, with faith renew Our solemn vows, forever true! True to the very stars above, To truth, to freedom, justice, love For right; yea, unfaltering,--with the brave, Ready for a freeman’s grave, Truly American!

FOOTNOTE:

Copyright, 1917, by The Four Seas Company. By permission of the publishers.

ANGELO PATRI

The country which gave Dante and Garibaldi and Mazzini and Madame Montessori to the world saw the birth, in 1877, of Angelo Patri, teacher in the public schools of New York City and author of “A Schoolmaster of the Great City.” This book recounts his endeavors to realize his educational ideals. That he has been triumphantly successful does not seem to be entirely to the credit of contemporary pedagogical methods, and his arraignment of much current educational theory and practice is as severe as his passionate, Christ-like love of childhood is touching and beautiful. The World War has convinced educators rather generally of the need of vitalizing the work of the schools through contact with life itself, and for this none pleads more eloquently than he.

The following selections under altered titles are taken from chapters one, seven and eight.