Introducing the American Spirit Part 5

I have since been at Lake Mohonk at a time when national pa.s.sions were aroused, and when those who had prophesied the early pa.s.sing of the battle fever were discredited prophets. While there, a letter reached me from the Herr Director, in which he sent greetings to his host and hostess and the members of the conference, and in which he recalled his former accusation that we are no better than other people; for "are you not pro-Ally and filling your pockets with the proceeds from the sale of war munitions? Where now is your boasted fairness?"

My reply was that I in common with many others wish we could wash our hands of this b.l.o.o.d.y business of selling ammunition, and that I still firmly believe that the American people will retain their poise during this dreadful upheaval.

Yes, even to-day I can say with no less pride than usual that I believe in the American Spirit, in its sense of fairness and its love of justice, and while I trust that this country may be kept from so great a catastrophe as war, and I be kept from so severe a trial of my loyalty as having to choose on which side to fight, I know I would freely and unhesitatingly be on the side of my country, the United States of America.

Three glorious days had pa.s.sed at Lake Mohonk and when the guests left that mountain top no one went more reluctantly than the Herr Director and his wife, and all the way back to the great city they felicitated upon their delightful experiences, while I rejoiced in my country and its spirit. When the Herr Director wrote his book I found that he acknowledged having discovered four things at Lake Mohonk. First, an unparallelled hospitality. Secondly, that the leading men of America are soberly practical, unemotional, somewhat self-centered; but, at the same time, men of high ideals. Thirdly, that its military men attend conferences for international arbitration, that they do not rattle their sabers, and in appearance cannot be distinguished from mere civilians.

Finally, that the American man boasts most and loudest of his sense of fairness; and while I write these lines, I am hoping and praying that this may indeed be not an empty boast, but an integral part of the American Spirit.

V

_Lobster and Mince Pie_

If I were gastronomically inclined I would study New York's cosmopolitan population and its progress towards Americanization from the standpoint of its restaurants; for the appet.i.te is most loyally patriotic. A man may cease to speak his mother tongue and have forsworn allegiance to Kaiser and to King, but still cling to his ancestral bill of fare.

If I were an absolute monarch and wished my alien people quickly a.s.similated, I would permit them to speak their native tongue and cling to the faith of their fathers; but I would close all foreign restaurants, and as speedily as possible obliterate from their memory the taste of viands "like mother used to make."

I fear that it is neither Goethe nor Schiller, nor Bismarck nor Kaiser Wilhelm who has kept the memory of the Fatherland alive in the minds and hearts of many German people in America. Dare I say that possibly much of their patriotism and loyalty is due to the taste of rye bread and sweet b.u.t.ter, _Rindsbrust_ and _Pell Cartoffel_, not to mention a certain frothy amber fluid?

Be that as it may, when I discovered that the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin were homesick, I took them to a German restaurant to a.s.suage their pangs; just as if, did I detect the same symptoms in an American whom I wished to make thoroughly at home in a foreign country, I would take him where a meal could be properly concluded with apple pie and cheese or ice-cream.

The restaurant I selected lent itself particularly well to my purpose, for everything was imported, from the Bavarian architecture to the _Frankfurter_ sausages. The _menu_ card was adorned by illuminated, medieval lettering, and on the smoked rafters were painted pious and impious verses, which gave the room a literary atmosphere.

It was as crowded and full of tobacco smoke and the odors of savory meats as the most loyal German could desire, and my guests were thoroughly at home. They ate their food happily, praised it discriminatingly, and studied the familiar environment carefully. As usual, certain things were lacking; for the Herr Director is a keen critic and never accepts anything as perfect.

I agreed with him that the orchestra was too noisy and on the whole superfluous, and that the native American dining there could be easily recognized by the indifference with which he ate. We heard no loud complaining, and little or no quarrelling with the waiters. The food was accepted in a humble sort of way whether it was satisfactory or not; bills were paid, tips were given in the spirit of meekness, and accepted in the opposite way, and the guests left without any ceremony except that of paying their toll to the keepers of their hats and coats, a form of extortion quite unparallelled abroad.

In striking contrast to our mere eating was my guests' enjoyment of every morsel of the food which they had selected, not simply because it was food, but because it was a note fitting into the gastronomic harmony. The head waiter and all his minions hovered about them with due reverence, and woe to him who by pose or gesture disturbed the perfect accord.

A friend from Nebraska who was staying at our hotel had joined us at dinner. When the waiter handed him the bewildering bill of fare, he waved it aside saying: "Just bring me a big lobster stewed in milk, with a dish of pickles and a mince pie."

The waiter turned pale, the Herr Director gasped, almost strangling on the salad he was eating, and the Frau Directorin looked at me despairingly. The waiter was the first to recover his composure, and cautiously suggested that the gentleman might like some Lobster a la Newburgh.

"Nix," said the Nebraskan, "I want lobster a la Milkburgh, and don't forget the pickles."

The waiter retreated and after a long conference with his superior, informed the gentleman that he could have his lobster stewed in milk, but that it would cost him one dollar and fifty cents.

"Hustle it along," was the curt reply, and in about fifteen minutes he was deep in his bowl of lobster stew, flanked on either side by pickles and mince pie, while the rest of us were eating our way leisurely and artistically through a _menu_ which began with _caviar_ and ended with _Camambert_ and _demita.s.se_.

After dinner, American men, manners and ideals became the subject of a discussion into which my Western friend good-naturedly entered, although he was made a horrible example of the fact that we are ill-mannered. The Herr Director insisted that our nation is too young to have any except bad manners, and while no doubt we had improved in the years since he first made our acquaintance, the improvement had not yet permeated the ma.s.ses.

That which I called the American Spirit was the spirit of the few cultured, academic persons I knew, but the majority of the people was as alien to it as was our Nebraska friend's lobster and mince pie to our delicious and dietetically correct dinner.

"I don't give a hang for your 'dietetically correct dinner.' I want what I want, when I want it!" the Nebraskan said, smiting the table with his fist, and evidently suppressing stronger language with an apologetic glance at the ladies of our party.

"That is exactly it; you want what you want, when you want it," the Herr Director repeated, "whether or not it is on the bill of fare, or in the statute book, or among the laws of the Universe. In that I suppose you Americans all agree; that is your _American Spirit_." He uttered the last phrase with special emphasis, and with no attempt to hide the sneer.

I admitted that my friend's demand for the thing he wanted, regardless of the bill of fare and in defiance of a dietary law (of which he was not as yet conscious), was a manifestation of our individualism, a rather wide-spread characteristic. I was fain also to admit that our individualism is not always as harmless to others as in the case under discussion. It is an att.i.tude of mind which has developed into a system to which we are committed for better or worse, and is in striking contrast to the German ideal of submission to an accepted order.

"Yes," from the Herr Director with evident pride. "That which makes Germany great and strong is our willing submission to authority; but remember it must be intelligent authority, and at the same time it must be efficient. To be sure," he acknowledged, "we are often chagrined by the '_Streng Verboten_' to the right of us and the '_Nicht Erlaubt_' to the left of us. We are much governed but we are well governed, and you, too, will some day discover that the common weal has to be above the individual's caprice. Your evident disrespect of laws and conventions results from the lack of intelligence back of them, and you have no respect for your lawmakers because they do not deserve it."

At this point the Nebraskan astonished us by saying that he had recently been in Europe on business, selling grindstones, that he knew something about Germany, and he never was gladder to get back to G.o.d's country than when he finally set foot upon his native soil. He had many adventures, and as an example of what he had to suffer from one of Germany's well enforced laws, he told a story which proved his sense of humor, though the "laugh was on him."

"When I was in Berlin I made out a small bill for some goods I had sold, and the man told me that I must affix to it some revenue stamps. I didn't want to bother with it, and told him so. The thing was too trifling anyway.

"I never thought of that bill again till I was forcibly reminded of it in Hamburg as I was about to sail for home. I was haled before the court, and the judge fined me fifty _marks_. Of course I knew I had to pay it, so I handed him the money and told him in good English to take it and go to the hot place with it. I didn't dream that he understood, but he replied in as good English as I gave him: 'Officials of my rank travel first-cla.s.s. I must therefore have fifty _marks_ more.' That little joke cost me a lot of money. I wouldn't want to live in a country where I couldn't tell anybody I pleased what I felt like telling him."

The Herr Director doubted the accuracy of the story because "no German official would show so little dignity." I, too, doubted it; but on the ground that no German official would have so keen a sense of humor.

There followed an animated argument between the Nebraskan and the Herr Director as to which is of more importance, the individual or the state.

The Nebraskan insisted that the state being the creation of individuals, they are of supreme importance, while the Herr Director persisted in his theory that the state is supreme and that it is the business of the individual to make it dominant and powerful, to which end the state must make him effective.

"An ineffective individual is a menace to the state, and a state which cannot impress its will upon the individual and make him submissive and effective will be vanquished in the great compet.i.tive struggle constantly going on."

"I suppose you're effective enough, but you're as slow as mola.s.ses in January."

"Oh, yes, we are slow, but we are thorough; we take our time to do a thing well, while your hurry is as wearing as it is useless. When we came down here this evening we were in a hurry. We were rushed to your crowded subway to take a certain train, although the next one would have done as well. In about three minutes we were pushed out of that train into another, because it went faster, and we reached here breathless. We saved time, but for what purpose? To see you eat your lobster and mince pie?" And he looked contemptuously at the Nebraskan.

"What are we going to do now with the two or three minutes we saved?"

This was a question I could not answer, for I did not know why I had hurried. Perhaps because of the excess of ozone in the air, or possibly because every one else was hurrying.

"You see," he continued, "we Germans never make the mistake of confounding hurry with efficiency. We hurry, too, when we must, or when we have a rational purpose. We know that great things cannot be accomplished in a hurry. We lay our foundations not only patiently, but thoroughly and cheerfully.

"You work like slaves who are eager to finish the job, as you call it.

We cherish towards our job a sentiment of love and loyalty which we call '_Pflichttreue_,' a word for which you have no equivalent, proving of course that you have not the thing itself."

I translated the word as loyalty to duty.

"Yes, that may be correct, but it does not ring true. _Pflichttreue_ has an ethical significance which your translation does not convey.

"I have noticed that your conductors shed their uniforms the instant they leave their trains, as if they were ashamed of their job. With us, any uniform, whether a railroad conductor's or a general's, is gloried in, and honored because of the work it represents."

The Nebraskan thought us too democratic for uniforms, which is the reason we do not value them more than we do.

"It is not the uniform, it is our work in which we glory. A shoemaker with us is as proud of his job as the Emperor is of his. He is Emperor by the grace of G.o.d, because he believes it is a G.o.d-given task to which he must be faithful, and we once had a shoemaker who called himself with equal pride, 'Shoemaker by the grace of G.o.d.'

"This pride spiritualizes the simplest and commonest work by making every man a conscious part of the state, and he works for its glory and power. It is a glory shared by his wife and family," and the Herr Director pulled from his pocket a German newspaper. "Look at this funeral notice. The widow signs herself not only as the widow of a particular man, but as the widow of a man who did something of which she is still proud. While she remains a widow she will sign herself _Amalia Henrietta Schmidt Koenigliche Hof Opern Obo Spieler's Wittwe_."

"How can we be proud of our jobs," queried the Nebraskan, after his hearty laugh at _Amalia Henrietta Schmidt_, "when we never have a job which we expect to hold permanently? I started out with school teaching, then I got hold of a good thing in the way of Carborundum and made grindstones. That's what took me to Europe. When that business went bad, I bought out the livery stable in my town, and now I am in the moving picture business. If I could sell out at a good price I'd do it and take up any old thing as long as there is money in it."

He was right. Our work is not sacred to us, for too often it is only the means to an end, and frequently a very selfish end. Because Germany has had centuries of carpenters and tinkers and shoemakers who planed boards and mended pots and shoes "by the grace of G.o.d," and swung the hammer as if it were a sword, they are now wielding the sword as if it were a hammer.

In some way we must get this spiritual appeal of the job, which means not only that we shall have to dedicate ourselves to our task in a manner worthy of its significance, but that the state must have this spiritual att.i.tude towards the worker, and treat him as though worthy of his place in the economy of the nation. It is this wise provision for the workers' efficient education, the state's recognition that the well-being of the individual is its concern, which has given to Germany the unfailing devotion of all her people.

I was roused from these meditations by hearing the Nebraskan's voice.