Modern American Prose Selections | Page 5

men who mastered the mighty days, Abraham Lincoln.

AMERICAN TRADITION[2]
FRANKLIN K. LANE
[Footnote 2: Address delivered by Secretary Lane at the University of Virginia, Feb. 22, 1912. Reprinted from the University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin, and from The American Spirit, by Franklin K. Lane (Copyright, 1918, by the Frederick A. Stokes Co.). By permission of the author and of the publishers.]
It has not been an easy task for me to decide upon a theme for discussion to-day. I know that I can tell you little of Washington that would be new, and the thought has come to me that perhaps you would be interested in what might be called a western view of American tradition, for I come from the other side of this continent where all of our traditions are as yet articles of transcontinental traffic, and you are here in the very heart of tradition, the sacred seat of our noblest memories.
No doubt you sometimes think that we are reckless of the wisdom of our forebears; while we at times have been heard to say that you live too securely in that passion for the past which makes men mellow but unmodern.
When you see the West adopting or urging such measures as presidential primaries, the election of United States Senators by popular vote, the initiative, the referendum and the recall as means supplementary to representative government, you shudder in your dignified way no doubt, at the audacity and irreverence of your crude countrymen. They must be in your eyes as far from grace as that American who visited one of the ancient temples of India. After a long journey through winding corridors of marble, he was brought to a single flickering light set in a jeweled recess in the wall. "And what is this?" said the tourist. "That, sir," replied the guide, "is the sacred fire which was lighted 2,000 years ago and never has been out." "Never been out? What nonsense! Poof! Well, the blamed thing's out now." This wild Westerner doubtless typifies those who without heed and in their hot-headed and fanatical worship of change would destroy the very light of our civilization. But let me remind you that all fanaticism is not radical. There is a fanaticism that is conservative, a reverence for things as they are that is no less destructive. Some years ago I visited a fishing village in Canada peopled by Scotchmen who had immigrated in the early part of the nineteenth century. It was a place named Ingonish in Cape Breton, a rugged spot that looks directly upon the Atlantic at its cruelest point. One day I fell into talk with a fisherman--a very model of a tawny-haired viking. He told me that from his fishing and his farming he made some $300 a year. "Why not come over into my country," I said, "where you may make that in a month?" There came over his face a look of humiliation as he replied, "No, I could not." "Why not?" I asked. "Because," said he, brushing his hand across his sea-burnt beard, "because I can neither read nor write." "And why," said I, "haven't you learned? There are schools here." "Yes, there are schools, but my father could not read or write, and I would have felt that I was putting a shame upon the old man if I had learned to do something he could not do." Splendid, wasn't it! He would not do what his father could not do. Fine! Fine as the spirit of any man with a sentiment which holds him back from leading a full, rich life. Yet can you conceive a nation of such men--idolizing what has been, blind to the great vision of the future, fettered by the chains of the past, gripped and held fast in the hand of the dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to meet the needs of a new day, serene, no doubt self-sufficient, but coming how far short of realizing that ideal of those who praise their God for that they serve his world!
I have given the two extremes; now let us return to our point of departure, and the first question to be asked is, "What are the traditions of our people?" This nation is not as it was one hundred and thirty-odd years ago when we asserted the traditional right of Anglo-Saxons to rebel against injustice. We have traveled centuries and centuries since then--measured in events, in achievements, in depth of insight into the secrets of nature, in breadth of view, in sweep of sympathy, and in the rise of ennobling hope. Physically we are to-day nearer to China than we were then to Ohio. Socially, industrially, commercially the wide world is almost a unit. And these thirteen states have spread across a continent to which have been