"There's one thing I won't stand for," I told her solemnly. "You can call my country a desert, my people incompetent, dis- honest, wasteful and careless to a degree ; you can blackguard our agriculture, horticulture, aboriculture, floriculture, viticul- ture, and — and — ("Apiculture," she suggested, with a serious face.)—you can deride our architecture and make trivial objec- tions to the use of soot as a civic decoration; but there is one thing I, as an American Man, will not stand— you mustn't criti- cize our Women !"
"I won't," she said meekly, a twinkle in her eye. "I won't say one word about them, dear—until you ask me to !"
Whereat I knew that my doom was sealed once more. Could I rest without knowing what she thought of them?
Chapter 6
The Diagnosis
HOW are you getting on with 'The Case,' Mrs. J.?" I asked El- lador one evening when she seemed rather discouraged. "What symptoms are worrying you most now ?"
She looked at me with wide anxious eyes, too much in earn- est to mind the "Mrs. J.," which usually rather teased her.
"It's, an awfully important case, Van dear," she answered soberly, "and a serious one—very serious, I think. I've been reading a lot, had to, to get background and perspective, and I feel as if I understood a good deal better. Still ——. You helped me ever so much by saying that you were not new people, just mixed "Europeans. But the new country and the new condi- tions began to make you all into a new people. Only ——."
"These pauses are quite terrifying," I protested. "Won't you explain your ominous 'still,' and sinister 'only'!"
She smiled a little. "Why the 'still' should have been followed by the amount which I did not understand, and the 'only' ——." She stopped again.
"Well, out with it, my dear. Only what?" "Only you have done it too fast and too much in the dark. You weren't conscious you see."
"Not conscious—America not conscious ?" "Not self-conscious, I mean, Van."
This I scouted entirely, till she added patiently: "Perhaps I should say nationally conscious, or socially conscious. You were plunged into an enormous social enterprise, a huge swift, violent experiment ; the current of social evolution burst forth over here like a subterranean river finding an outlet. Things that the stratified crust of Asia could not let through, and the heavy shell of European culture could not either, just burst forth over here and swept you along. Democracy had been—accumulating, through all the centuries. The other na- tions forced it back, held it down. It boiled over in France, but the lid was clapped on again for awhile. Here it could pour for- ward —and it poured. Then all the people of the same period of social development wanted to come too, and did,—lots of them. That was inevitable. All that 'America' means in this sense is a new phase of social development, and anyone can be an Amer- ican who belongs to it."
"Guess you are right so far, Mrs. Doctor. Go ahead!"
"But while this was happening to you, you were doing things yourselves, some of them in line with your real position and movement, some dead against it. For instance, your religion."
"Religion against what? Expound further." "Against Democracy."
"You don't mean the Christian religion, do you?" I urged, rather shocked.
"Oh, no, indeed. That would have been a great help to the world if they had ever taken it up."
I was always entertained and somewhat startled by Ellador's detached view. She knew the same facts so familiar to us, but they had not the same connotations.
"I think Jesus was simply wonderful," she went on. "What a pity it was he did not live longer!"
This was a new suggestion to me. Of course I no longer ac- cepted that pitiful old idea of his being a pre-arranged sacrifice to his own father, but I never deliberately thought of his having continued alive, and its possible effects.
"He is supposed to have been executed at about the age of thirty-three, was he not ?" she went on. "Think of it—hardly a grown man! He should have had thirty or forty more years of teaching. It would all have become clearer, more consistent. He would have worked things out, explained them, made people understand. He would have made clear to them what they were to do. It was an awful loss."
I said nothing at all, but watched the sweet earnest face, the wise far-seeing eyes, and really agreed with her, though in my mind rose a confused dim throng of horrified objections be- longing not to my own mind, but to those of other people.
"Tell me how you mean that our religion was against demo- cracy," I persisted.
"It was so personal," she said, "and so unjust. There must have crept into it, in early times, a lot of the Buddhist philo- sophy, either direct or filtered, the 'acquiring merit' idea, and ascetism. The worst part of all was the idea of sacrifice—that is so ancient. Of course what Jesus meant was social unity, that your neighbor was yourself—that we were all one human- ity—'many gifts, but the' same spirit.' He must have meant that—for that is So.
"What I mean by 'your religion' is the grade of Calvinism which dominated young America, with the still older branches, and the various small newer ones. It was all so personal. My soul— my salvation. My conscience—my sins. And here was the great living working truth of democracy carrying you on in spite of yourselves—E Pluribus Unum.
"Your economic philosophy was dead against it too—that foolish laissez-faire idea. And your politics, though what was new in it started pretty well, has never been able to make much headway against the highest religious sanction, the in- creasing economic pressure, and the general drag of custom and tradition— inertia."
"You are somewhat puzzling," my fair Marco Polo," I urged. "So you mean to extol our politics, American politics?"
"Why of course!" she said, her eyes shining. "The principles of democracy are wholly right. The law of federation, the meth- od of rotation in office, the stark necessity for general educa- tion that the people may understand clearly, the establishment of liberty—that they may act freely—it is splendidly, gloriously right! But why do I say this to an American!"
"I wish you could say it to every American man, woman, and child," I answered soberly. "Of course we used to feel that way about it, but things have changed somehow."
"Yes, yes," she went on eagerly. "That's what I mean. You started right, for the most part, but those highminded brave old ancestors of yours did not understand sociology—how should they? it wasn't even born. They did not know how soci- ety worked, or what would hurt it the most. So the preachers went on exhorting the people to save their own souls, or get it done for them by imputed virtues of someone else—and no one understood the needs of the country.
"Why, Van! Vandyke Jennings! As I understand more and more how noble and courageous and high-minded was this Splendid Child, and then see it now, bloated and weak, with unnatural growth, preyed on by all manner of parasites inside and out, attacked by diseases of all kinds, sneered at, criti- cized, condemned by the older nations, and yet bravely stum- bling on, making progress in spite of it all—I'm getting to just love America !"
That pleased me, naturally, but I didn't like her picture of my country as bloated and verminous. I demanded explanation.
"Do you think we're too big ?" I asked. "Too much country to be handled properly?"
"Oh, no!" she answered promptly. "Not too big in land. That would have been like the long lean lines of youth, the far- reaching bones of a country gradually rounding out and filling in as you grow. But you couldn't wait to grow, you just —swelled."
"What on earth do you mean, Ellador?"
"You have stuffed yourself with the most ill-assorted and un- assimilable mass of human material that ever was held togeth- er by artificial means," she answered remorselessly. "You go to England, and the people are English. Only three per cent. of aliens even in London, I understand. And in France the people are French—bless them! And in Italy, Italian. But here—it's no wonder I was discouraged at first. It has taken a lot of study and hard thinking, to see a way out at all. But I do see it. It was simply awful when I begun.
"Just look! Here you were, a little band of really promising people, of different nations, yet of the same general stock, and like-minded—that was the main thing. The real union is the union of idea; without that—no nation. You made settlements, you grew strong and bold, you shook off the old government. you set up a new flag, and then——!"
"Then," said I proudly, we opened our arms to all the world, if that is what you are finding fault with. We welcomed other people to our big new country— 'the poor and oppressed of all nations!' I quoted solemnly.
"That's what I mean by saying you i were ignorant of soci- ology," was her I cheerful reply. "It never occurred to you , that the poor and oppressed were not necessarily good stuff for a democracy."
I looked at her rather rebelliously.
"Why just study them," she went on, in that large sweeping way of hers. "Hadn't there been poor and oppressed enough in the past? In Chaldaea and Assyria and Egypt and Rome—in all Europe—every where ? Why, Van, it is the poor and oppressed who make monarchy and despotism—don't you see that ?'
"Hold on, my dear—hold on! This is too much. Are you blam- ing the poor helpless things for their tyrannical oppression ?"
"No more than I blame an apple-tree for bearing apples," she answered. "You don't seriously advance the idea that the op- pressor began it, do you ? Just one oppressor jumping on the necks of a thousand free men ? Surely you see that the general status and character of a people creates and maintains its own kind of government ?"
"Y-e-es," I agreed. "But all the same, they are human, and if you give them proper conditions they can all rise— surely we have proved that."
"Give them proper conditions, and give them time—yes." "Time! They do it in one generation. We have citizens, good citizens, of all races, who were born in despotic countries, all equal in our democracy."
"How many Chinese and Japanese citizens have you ?" she asked quietly. "How are your African citizens treated in this 'equal' democracy!"
This was rather a facer.
"About the first awful mistake you made was in loading your- self up with those reluctant Africans," Ellador went on. "If it wasn't so horrible, it would be funny, awfully funny. A beautiful healthy young country, saddling itself with an antique sin every other civilized nation had repudiated. And here they are, by millions and millions, flatly denied citizenship, socially ex- cluded, an enormous alien element in your democracy."
"They are not aliens," I persisted stoutly. "They are Americ- ans, loyal Americans; they make admirable soldiers "
"Yes, and servants. You will let them serve you and fight for you—but that's all, apparently. Nearly a tenth of the popula- tion, and not part of the democracy. And they never asked to come!"
"Well," I said, rather sullenly. "I admit it—everyone does. It was an enormous costly national mistake, and we paid for it heavily. Also it's there yet, an unsolved question. I admit it all. Go on please. We were dead wrong on the blacks, and pretty hard on the reds; we may be wrong on the yellows. I guess this is a white man's country, isn't it? You're not objecting to the white immigrants, are you ?"
"To legitimate immigrants, able and willing to be American citizens, there can be no objection, unless even they come too fast. But to millions of deliberately imported people, not immig- rants at all, but victims, poor ignorant people scraped up by paid agents, deceived by lying advertisements, brought over here by greedy American ship owners and employers of labor—there are objections many and strong."
"But, Ellador—even granting it is you say, they too can be made into American citizens, surely?"
"They can be, but are they ? I suppose you all tacitly assume that they are; but an outsider does not see it. We have been all over the country now, pretty thoroughly. I have met and talked with people of all classes and all races, both men and women. Remember I'm new to 'the world,' and I've just come here from studying Europe, and Asia, and Africa. I have the hinterland of history pretty clearly summarized, though of course I can't pre- tend to be thorough, and I tell you, Van, there are millions of people in your country who do not belong to it at all."
She saw that I was about to defend our foreign born, and went on:
"I do not mean the immigrants solely. There are Bostonians of Beacon Hill who belong in London; there are New Yorkers of five generations who belong in Paris; there are vast multitudes who belong in Berlin, in Dublin, in Jerusalem; and there are plenty of native Sons and Daughters of the Revolution who are aristocrats, plutocrats, anything but democrats."
"Why of course there are! We believe in having all kinds—there's room for everybody—this is the 'melting-pot,' you know."
"And do you think that you can put a little of everything into a melting-pot and produce a good metal? Well fused and flaw- less? Gold, silver, copper and iron, lead, radium, pipe clay, coal dust, and plain dirt ?"
A simile is an untrustworthy animal if you ride it too hard. I grinned and admitted that there were limits to the powers of fusion.
"Please understand," she urged gently. "I am not looking down on one kind of people because they are different from others. I like them all. I think your prejudice against the black is silly, wicked, and—hypocritical. You have no idea how ridicu- lous it looks, to an outsider, to hear your Southern enthusiasts raving about the horrors of 'miscegenation' and then to count the mulattos, quadroons, octoroons and all the successive shades by which the black race becomes white before their eyes. Or to see them shudder at 'social equality' while the ba- bies are nourished at black breasts, and cared for in their most impressionable years by black nurses—their children!"
