abounding physical and moral energy,
their freedom from any taint of personal corruption, their whole-souled
desire and effort for the public good. Were not such heroes, impossible
as they would have been in any other civilized country, perfectly
illuminative of your national state of mind?"

For one, I confess that I do not know what reply to make to my
imaginary European critic. I suspect that he is right. At any rate, we
stand here at the fork of the road. If we do not wish to linger any
longer over a catalogue of intellectual sins, let us turn frankly to
our moral preoccupations, comforting ourselves, if we like, as we
abandon the field of purely intellectual rivalry with Europe, in the
reflection that it is the muddle-headed Anglo-Saxon, after all, who is
the dominant force in the modern world.

The moral temper of the American people has been analyzed no less
frequently than their mental traits. Foreign and native observers are
alike agreed in their recognition of the extraordinary American
energy. The sheer power of the American bodily machine, driven by the
American will, is magnificent. It is often driven too hard, and with
reckless disregard of anything save immediate results. It wears out
more quickly than the bodily machine of the Englishman. It is typical
that the best distance runners of Great Britain usually beat ours,
while we beat them in the sprints. Our public men are frequently--as
the athletes say--"all in" at sixty. Their energy is exhausted at just
the time that many an English statesman begins his best public service.
But after making every allowance for wasteful excess, for the restless
and impatient consumption of nervous forces which nature intended that
we should hold in reserve, the fact remains that American history has
demonstrated the existence of a dynamic national energy, physical and
moral, which is still unabated. Immigration has turned hitherward the
feet of millions upon millions of young men from the hardiest stocks of
Europe. They replenish the slackening streams of vigor. When the
northern New Englander cannot make a living on the old farm, the French
Canadian takes it off his hands, and not only improves the farm, but
raises big crops of boys. So with Italians, Swedes, Germans, Irish,
Jews, and Portuguese, and all the rest. We are a nation of immigrants,
a digging, hewing, building, breeding, bettering race, of mixed blood
and varying creeds, but of fundamental faith in the wag