The New York Times/1899/3/10/The German-American

THE GERMAN-AMERICAN.

The life of Carl Schurz is a more eloquent and instructive lesson as to the true attitude of the German-American citizen than even his rare gift of exposotion could formulate. But the speech of Wednesday evening to the great company of German-Americans gathered to express their affection and honor for him included a very simple and noble statement of the ideals by which he has been guided:

“The German who makes this country the home of his choice must soon learn to understand — and most do learn it immediately — that henceforth this is his country; that his welfare and that of his posterity are closely bound up in the welfare of this Republic; that it shall never enter the minds of him or his countrymen to form here a separate nationality; that as a German-born he has no exceptional rights or duties or interests, but only the rights and duties and interests of the American citizen; that he must fully comprehend the responsibility of the American citizen under the free institutions of this Republic, so as to exercise his political rights honestly and wisely for the public good; that his own freedom, his own rights, and his own future are preserved most safely in the freedom, rights, and future of the community, and that he owes the American Republic his fullest devotion, and if necessary even his goods and his blood.”

This is a sound rule of conduct for any citizen, whether native or born elsewhere. But to this principle of devotion to the United States, of which his life has been an impressive example, Mr. Schurz adds the injunction to retain “the good and desirable ways of thinking, qualities, and customs brought from the old fatherland.” And he makes a convincing appeal to the Germans, whose “duty as well as evident interest it is to learn English,” not “to cease to cultivate German.” Why, in the name of common sense, should they? Not only, as he remarks, is it foolish to give up that which Americans of intelligence expend time and money to acquire, but apart from this consideration, it is an essential service to the social and political life of America that the elements brought to it from other shores, in response to the invitation of our free institutions, should be developed and assimilated. It would be sheer waste to discard them, and of these elements the intimate knowledge of the language and literature of the native land is one of the most precious.

The real American, not the average, but the typical American, is the complex and combined resultant of the many races that have come to this continent for the last four centuries. His “mother land,” to use a happy word of Mr. Schurz spoken forty years ago, “is the world.” It is precisely this fact that has made possible the unexampled achievements of the past, and it enables us to look to the future with that sober but confident courage which Mr. Schurz so finely expressed at the dinner of last week. The energy, independence, and aspirations of the strongest in each of the nationalities that make up the American nationality belong to it by inheritance and development. It needs and can make good use of all.

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