A Wonderful Fourth of July

TT TILL IRWIN had one of the great ideas of the war V V when he suggested that the Fourth of July, 1918, should be "turned over" to Americans of foreign birth and descent for such celebrations as might most fittingly manifest their loyalty to the United States and their devotion to free institutions. It was not only the case that the celebration of the day in this manner, if carried to success, meant a new unity and a larger enthusiasm, but there was also the influence that it would exert upon the public opinion of other countries. When the Central Powers heard that Germans, Austrians, and Turks were marching in public demonstration of their repudiation of the autocratic governments from which they came, and when the neutral nations saw men and women of their blood declaring a great faith in the ideals of America, our cause was bound to know a great strengthening. Through our various contacts we put the idea up to the thirty-three foreign-language groups, and on May 21st this petition went to the President of the United States:

To THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

On the Fourth of July, 1776, the founders of this Republic began the movement for human liberty and the rights of nations to govern themselves. One hundred and forty-two years later we find the world democracy, of which this nation was a pioneer, formidably assailed by the powers of reaction and autocracy. We represent these peoples whose sons and daughters came to this land later than the founders of the Republic, but drawn by the same ideals. The nations and races and peoples which we represent are taking their part, in one way or another, in the struggle. Some, happily, enjoying a political entity, are fighting openly and with arms against the enemies of progress. Others, unhappily, submerged, can give but a passive opposition. Others have been forced against their will into the armies of the common enemy. Finally, a few still remain outside, hard pressed, threatened by the mailed fist, dreading alike to be drawn in and to be found apart from the rest when the hour of settlement comes. But all, through infinite suffering, struggle, either blindly or open-eyed, toward the same end, the right of peoples to govern themselves as they themselves see fit, and a just and lasting peace.

The higher interests of the races which we left behind have become identical, in this significant year, with the higher interests of the United States. We regard ourselves not only as members of an American commonwealth, one and indivisible, but of the world commonwealth, equally indivisible. United for the principles of that democratic world-state which is fighting now for its being on the battle-fields of Europe, we intend, on July 4, 1918, to manifest, by special celebrations, our loyalty to this country and to the cause for which we fight; and we respectfully request that you call the attention of your fellow-citizens to this fact, in order that they may join with us in commemorating this, the anniversary not only of national freedom, but of universal freedom.

From President Wilson came the sympathetic and favorable reply:

To OUR CITIZENS OF FOREIGN EXTRACTION:

I have read with great sympathy the petition addressed to me by your representative bodies regarding your proposed celebration of Independence Day; and I wish to convey to you, in reply, my heartfelt appreciation for its expression of loyalty and good will. Nothing in this war has been more gratifying than the manner in which our foreign-born fellow-citizens, and the sons and daughters of the foreign-born, have risen to this greatest of all national emergencies. You have shown where you stand not only by your frequent professions of loyalty to the cause for which we fight, but by your eager response to calls to patriotic service, including the supreme sacrifice of offering life itself in battle for justice, freedom, and democracy. Before such devotion as you have shown all distinctions of race vanish; and we feel ourselves citizens in a Republic of free spirits.

I, therefore, take pleasure in calling your petition, with my hearty commendation, to the attention of all my fellow-countrymen, and I ask that they unite with you in making the Independence Day of this, the year when all the principles to which we stand pledged are on trial, the most significant in our national history.

As July 4, 1776, was the dawn of democracy for this nation, let us on July 4, 1918, celebrate the birth of a new and greater spirit of democracy by whose influence we hope and believe, what the signers of the Declaration of Independence dreamed of for themselves and their fellow-countrymen, shall be fulfilled for all mankind.

I have asked the Committee on Public Information to co-operate with you in any arrangements you may wish to make for this celebration.

WOODROW WILSON.

Mr. Irwin and Miss Josephine Roche threw themselves into the arrangements with enthusiasm, and under their stimulation governors and mayors issued proclamations similar to that of the President, and exactly thirty-three nationalities in the United States commenced to make plans that would insure their people's complete participation. No pains were spared to make the day all they longed to have it. Probably never were there such gigantic preparations throughout the entire country for Independence Day, and certainly never was there such an outpouring of the nation's millions of new citizens and citizens-to-be as on July 4, 1918.

Demonstrations of the thirty-three nationalities took place not only in all the cities and towns, but in practically every community where any of these people dwelt. Reports of parades, pageants, and mass-meetings, resolutions, declarations, and inscriptions on banners, could be enumerated for every foreign-born group and for each separate community, but it would be only a repetition of the story of their devotion.

The pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, so beautiful a feature of that inspiring Fourth of July, was my idea. I claim the credit and cling to it with fondness because .the occasion stands out in the life of the Committee as one of the few events that swept from start to finish without attack, obstruction, or untoward happening. Everything in connection with the pilgrimage was dear and delightful, and lingers in memory as an inspiration. My first thought was merely to have the thirty-three foreign groups select representatives and send them to Washington, where the Committee would convey them to Mount Vernon by automobile to lay wreaths on the tomb of Washington and to make such speeches as befitted the occasion. And then it came to me that it was a time and place for the President himself not only to receive and greet the representatives of the foreign-born in the name of the country to which they were pledging their devotion, but also to make a new and explicit statement of America's ideals to the world.

At first the President refused flatly, for he felt that a speech at the tomb of Washington on the Fourth of July savored of presumption. When my own arguments proved unavailing I brought the foreign-born into play, and the message that he received made continued refusal an impossibility. When he consented finally it was with the completeness and generosity that never failed to mark his surrenders. For instance, he telephoned me a few days later, I remember, and remarked that if I had "no objections" to urge, he and Mrs. Wilson would be very glad to take the thirty- three representatives down to Mount Vernon as then* guests on the Mayflower. I had no objections to urge. Albanians, Armenians, Assyrians, Belgians, Bulgarians, Chinese, Czechoslovaks, Costa-Ricans, Danes, Dutch, Ecuadorians, Finns, French, French-Canadians, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Japanese, Lithuanians, Mexicans, Norwegians, Poles, Filipinos, Russians, Venezuelans, Rumanians, Spaniards, Jugoslavs, Swedes, Swiss, Syrians, and Ukrainians were in the throng that flocked aboard the Mayflower.

With their Old World conceptions, built around kings and queens and courts, the majority of them wore silk hats, frock-coats, and expressions of the utmost solemnity. Within an hour the whole funereal aspect of the occasion changed to an unaffected joyousness. I have never known a man who had the gift of simplicity in greater degree than Woodrow Wilson or one with such a human note in the personal relation. He has dignity without effort, graciousness without condescension, interest without affectation, all expressions of a democracy that came from the heart, not merely from the lips. With Mrs. Wilson and Miss Margaret Wilson he moved from group to group, laughingly suggesting that they put then* high silk hats to one side, as interested in them as they were in him, and giving every man and woman the feeling of being a sovereign citizen in a free country.

The scene at Mount Vernon was one that etched itself in memory. The shining stretches of the river, the walk up the winding path through the summer woods, the hillsides packed with people, the beat of their hands like the soft roar of a forest wind, the simple brick tomb of the Father of Our Country overhung with wistaria in all the glory of its purple bloom. A piano was tucked away behind a clump of cedars, and when John McCormack had somewhat recovered from his climb up the hill he sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," while each of the thirty-three representatives walked into the tomb,

£04 one by one, laid a wreath upon the grave, and offered a prayer to the "august shade of the departed." Easily, naturally, the group formed about the President, who stood on a grassy mound to the right of the vault, and Felix J. Stryckmans, Belgian-born, delivered the message bearing the signature of all the thirty-three representatives and expressing the feelings of the great masses of new Americans:

One hundred and forty-two years ago to-day a group of men animated with the same spirit as that of a man who lives here, founded the United States of America on the theory of free government with the consent of the governed. That was the beginning of America. As the years went on, and one century blended with another, men and women came from even the uttermost ends of the earth to join them. We have called them alien; but they were never alien. Though they spoke not a word of the language of this country, though they groped only dimly toward its institutions, they were already Americans in soul or they would never have come. We are the latest manifestation of that American soul.

We, who make this pilgrimage, are the offspring of thirty-three different nations — and Americans all. We come not alone. Behind us are millions of our people united to-day in pledging themselves to the cause of this country and of the free nations with which she is joined. From coast to coast, in city, town, and hamlet our citizens will be demonstrating that the oath they took upon their naturalization was not an empty form of words. Yes, more than that. When, to-morrow, the casualty list brings heaviness to some homes and a firm sense of resolution to all, we shall read upon the roll of honor Slavifc names, Teutonic names, Latin names, Oriental names, to show that we have sealed our faith with the blood of our best youth. To this beloved shade we come to-day with the hopes of our races garnered in our hands.

The President, in answer, delivered the address that stands in my mind as one of the greatest that ever came from his lips. With the home of Washington on the hill above him, with the tomb of the warrior-statesman at his back, and with the purpose of America expressed by the thirty-three nationalities before him — made one by democracy — he challenged the world with these imperishable sentences:

There can be but one issue. The settlement must be final. There can be no compromise. No half-way decision would be tolerable. No half-way decision is conceivable. These are the ends for which the associated peoples of the world are fighting and which must be conceded them before there can be peace:

1. The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at the least its reduction to virtual impotence.

2. The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangements, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation 01 people which may desire a different settlement for the sake oi its own exterior influence or mastery.

3. The consent of all nations to be governed in their conduct toward each other by the same principles of honor and of respect for the common law of civilized society that govern the individual citizens of all modern states in their relations with one another; to the end that all promises and covenants may be sacredly observed, no private plots or conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with impunity, and a mutual trust established upon the handsome foundation of a mutual respect for right.

4. The establishment of an organization of peace which shall make it certain that the combined power of free nations will check every invasion of right and serve to make peace and justice the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit and by which every international readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly concerned shall be sanctioned.

These great objects can be put into a single sentence. What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind. John McCormack then sang "The Star-spangled Banner" as it was never sung before, and down we went to the river again, onto the Mayflower and back to Washington.

Great as were the meanings and hopes which the spirit of 1918's Fourth of July brought the foreign-born, of equal importance were the foundations it laid for an understanding by our "Americans for generations back" that these "Americans by choice" came here with the same hopes as did our Pilgrim ancestors, and willing, as they were, to make the supreme sacrifice for their nation's safe continuance, and knowing, as they did, the cost of freedom. From that day a new unity was manifest in the United States.