Page:Lewis - The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928).djvu/275

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IDEAL OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
271

of the way in which, with the increasingly solid American organization, we can on the one hand assist the aspiring and right-thinking young crusader, and on the other hand get rid of all anarchists and hammer-wielders.

For we must never forget that even in the midst of this, the most luxurious and powerful civilization the world has ever known, there are always people who, for some insane reason that they themselves couldn't explain, still criticize and complain and refuse to climb on the band-wagon.

You take this.

I am reliably informed—though certainly I have not sullied my self-respect by reading any of them, but I have been informed of their contents by criticisms given in various sermons—I am informed that during this last year or so there have been published two books purporting to show that George Washington was not the great hero we all know him to be but a man that smoked, drank, used bad language, and flirted. Then there was an alleged biography claiming that Henry Ward