Americanism
enlightenment. There were some good practical suggestions; but nowhere any cohesion, nowhere any sense of solidarity, nowhere any concern for national honour or authority.
It was perhaps to be expected that Mr. Burghardt Du Bois's conception of true Americanism would be the abolishment of the colour line, and that Mr. Eugene Debs would see salvation in the sweeping away of "privately owned industries, and production for individual profit." These answers might have been foreseen when the questions were asked. But it was disconcerting to find that all, or almost all, of the "representative" citizens represented one line of civic policy, or civic reform, and refused to look beyond it. The prohibitionist discerned Americanism in prohibition, the equal suffragist in votes for women, the biologist in applied science, the physician in the extirpation of microbes, the philanthropist in playgrounds, the sociologist
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