Modern American Prose Selections | Page 5

the valor and self-devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and
the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will grow to feel a
peculiar sense of pride in the man whose blood was shed for the union
of his people and for the freedom of a race; the lover of his country and
of all mankind; the mightiest of the mighty 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.