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perhaps too sensitive; but his resentment was always generous, and he was honorable and high-minded to the utmost degree. His military service was highly distinguished. I saw him when borne home, suffering with severe wounds. Of his work as Professor in the University, I know nothing except by hearsay and anecdote, always complimentary and expressive of the warm regard felt for him by his students; but my knowledge of his character and of his attainments satisfied me, without any further testimony, that his teaching was always able, conscientious and thorough. While I saw so little of him in later years, it is a pleasure now to remember that Professor Peters had been my long time associate and friend.

CONCLUSION.

When I read over what I have here written, I feel that it is too long and too personal. Yet when I remember that, in recollections of this kind, it is perhaps the personal element that gives most interest, I conclude to let it stand with all imperfections. Especially I feel how inadequate has been my account of Dr. Harrison and of my own obligations to him. But if I have succeeded in giving pleasure to any of his old students or my own, and have contributed anything to the history of an institution to which I owe so much, and which in my old age I still so gratefully admire and love, I shall be more than rewarded.

University of South Carolina,

December, 1914.

ON NATIONALIZING THE AMERICAN SPIRIT.*

BY CHAS. W. KENT.

What a glorious era of peace this would be, were the world not enagegd in a dire and distressing war! On last Wednesday we celebrated the one hundreth anniversary of peace among English speaking nations, but our celebration was subdued into an undemonstrative quiet by the fact that we did not have the heart to rejoice in our own immunity from war while other nations were suffering its disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, our minds have reverted to our earlier struggles and to the small beginnings of our majestic nation, and as we look back we can surely agree with the historian, Greene, when, with unqualified praise of Washington, he exclaims that "no nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life." The hour would not be misspent if we devoted it wholly to meditations upon his illustrious life, that from such a study we might rise keenly aware of the greatness of our world-hero and deeply inspired to a nobler conception of his dream for his country. The consecration and catholicity of his life challenge to the full our consideration, but so wide is its scope and so far reaching its influence that we are constrained to select but one thought for our present study.

That George Washington was a Federalist, believing in national unity, is a commonplace, but that his devotion to this spirit of unity was one of the controlling principles of his life may well give us pause today as we contrast our country now with the country of his time. The hundred and twenty-six years that have elapsed since he was inaugurated as President have not brought us so near as he would wish to the realization of his dream of a country with a single ideal, with a single purpose, with a single informing spirit.

What is this evasive American spirit? Without definition or

*Address delivered in the Church of the Holy Communion, New York, on Washington's birthday, February 22, 1915. In the opinion of Dr. Henry Mottet, the Rector, this was the first religious celebration of Washington's birthday in an Episcopal church. Dr. Kent spoke last year in a church of another religious body on "Washington's Religion."

subtle analysis of content, we are doubtless agreed that this visible America, with its magnificent sweep, prodigal wealth, and uncounted power in material ways, is not the real America we love. The real America is the invisible America, finding its existence, not in space and time, but deeply inbedded in our patriotic bosoms. This invisible America is the real American kingdom that lies within us. National spirit is the soul of a nation, informing its physical and political body; the inner principle, giving life and vigor to a material frame, otherwise dormant or dead. For Washington, this national spirit of "amity and concession," pulsating with the sacred fire of liberty, resulted in the principle of national unity. "It is the love of unity that leads to unity of government and it is the unity of government that constitutes us one people." Within, this spirit is the spirit of national liberty, without, it is the spirit of "exalted justice and benevolence to all nations."

By our adventurous life and strange experiences American has become an epithet compact with enriched connotation. It is associated with secure asylum and kindly protection, with ennobling love of liberty, and with "a just pride of patriotism." It stands, too, for a formal, if not an actual, unity.* "Essential union is not a union based upon the consent of the governed and bound by political regulations of their making, but is a union of common sentiment and common ideals secured by a common pride in achievements and a partnership in patriotism. Mountains and rivers are not such impassable barriers as sentiments. The Jews and the Samaritans were kept asunder not by physical obstacles but by worship in different temples." This essential unity must not be sought in utterances, however sage and alluring, nor in aceds, however brilliant and convincing, but in the soul of the people, which is "the higher and intelligent life of the organism."

Now the question that confronts us is, do we find this single soul, this essential unity, this oneness of spirit in our national life today? Washington, born in a State where some had placed her honor and her rights above that of the Nation, emphasized again and again his allegiance to his Nation as higher than that to his State. He willingly sacrificed his comfort, his ease, and

*From "Literature and Life," by Charles W. Kent.

his ardent wish for a retired life to a national unity that was not merely constructed, but inherently constructive. It is all too obvious to the traveler at home-and the traveler abroad without domestic knowledge can help us little here-that this American spirit lacks solidarity. The higher and intelligent life of our national organism manifests itself so variously that we are sometimes at a loss to ascertain whether it has a single determining and unifying factor. But it has, I am sure of it, and it is to be found in the loyal love of liberty which runs through our national spirit like a great central core. The surface around this core presents broken threads and frazzled ends indicative of weakness. It behooves us to inquire into the causes of this lack of. united spirit and the possible remedies which in this moment of religious reverence for our great leader and his country we may be able to suggest.

I note, first, the sheer extent in space which strains by distances alone the strength and tenacity of this American fiber. As our minds sweep today across this continent, we must travel many miles to the west before we find the center of our American population, and several thousand added miles will lead us outside of the Golden Gate before we find the medial line which divides the eastern border of our continental possessions from the western. And out beyond this continental territory lie on either side islands which are now counted among our possessions. Is it humanly possible that a territory so imperial in its extent may all be fired by a single enthusiasm, inflamed by a single spirit, and directed toward a single aim?

Washington asked this question in other form and answered: "Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal." The real danger is not in distances, but in differences: the danger of supreme and even self-satisfied ignorance of its several portions. It has been my fortune to live or sojourn in varied sections of our great far-lying country. I have not merely seen it in perspective, when for a term of years I lived outside of her borders and saw her looming large through the mist of loving tears as my mind's eye gazed across the wide Atlantic. Fresh from my American college, I spent two glowing years in Charleston, South Carolina, where admitted to the warmth and exclusiveness of a charming society, one might

easily be lulled into a sense of quiet content with a life of inactivity. Five years I spent in the border line where sentiment was tense in our Civil War. I have lingered in the Far West, where the wide sweeping prairies merge into the purple hills, and the very winds that sweep across the unmeasured plains bring with them the breath of expanding space and a sense of the wideness of the world. There the fascination of a great outdoor life challenging to daring deeds fills the soul. But neither Charleston nor Wyoming, nor Knoxville has proved disobedient to the vision of essential liberty; nor has the sense of liberty been lost in the throbbing Middle West, where education, unlike that of Old New England, is not a matter of course, and unlike that of the Old South is not a matter of class, but is today a matter of intense conviction. There self-reliant, self-dependent American citizenship is not contaminated by the allurements and blandishments of Old World life. But in each of these sections and in the Hawaiian Islands, and in Virginia, as in New York, though the saving sense of liberty remains, the essential soul life of these several parts shows divergencies, sometimes vagaries, that make us wonder whether after all there is one spirit that binds them all together as with an invincible bond. The misconceptions and misrepresentations of the several parts of our great Nation are due far more to ignorance than to any sense of hostility, and these misrepresentations must give place to a truer picture and a saner and more honest report. These can come only through knowledge, knowledge, if possible, at first hand; if not this, then from those who know at first hand and only in the last analysis, if at all, from abstract and detached study. It may be given to some but to very few to form any conception of a different nation or a widely. different part of his own country from a mere abstract study of books or from meditation however mature upon conditions which have not been rightly sensed.

Permit me to say that our Government itself has not infrequently been in grave error in attempting to govern at long range and without adequate information as to the governed. The tremendous and disastrous blunders made by the Government in dealing with the negro problem have not been due so

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