Euro-Americans

“ Thus the distance between America and Europe is being diminished; and Americans in their individual behavior bear the most abundant and generous testimony to the benefits which American democracy can derive from association with the European nations. ”

“ To the European immigrant—that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life—the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity. ”

“ The feeling in favor of the United States was then strong in all parts of Europe, except in France and England. In these countries it was somewhat divided—in France by the failure of Maximilian, and in England by the rivalry of trade, and sympathy with the south. Generally, in referring in Europe to the people of the United States, the people speak of us as Americans, while those of other parts of America are Canadians, Mexicans, etc. ”

“ I had learned in Europe, long before joining the “United States,” that the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to Americans afloat, than to a continent they think as far off at least as the moon. ”

“ FACTS AND MOTIVES IN THE MODERN WORLD Like every other European, I had gone to North America with the fixed idea that it was the country of the practical spirit par excellence, and that the Americans were all men who did not lose themselves in dreams, but lived in reality, intent on shaping it to their own ends, and acquiring by the most rapid means the tangible and sure blessings of life—riches, prosperity, power, and the mastery over nature. ”

“ The ultimate development of these mighty riches might be merely a general advance, both material and ideal, of Europe and America. Rich and prosperous Americans might try to assimilate the culture of Europe, and on her part Europe, in her effort to increase her own riches, might seek to equal America. But a historian of antiquity who returns from America cannot share this optimism. In the lap of modern civilisation, there are twin worlds struggling with each other for leadership. But these two worlds are not, as people are apt to think, Europe and America. Their names are Quality and Quantity. ”

“ The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others. Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide: Will we turn back, or finish well?
Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. Like Americans before us, we will show that courage and we will finish well. We will lead freedom's advance. We will compete and excel in the global economy. ”

“ In these world-shaking events the Americans played their splendid part beside their English kin, as they were destined to do one hundred and fifty-nine years later upon the soil of Europe itself, closing up forever, as most of us hope, the cleavage between nations of the same language and same ideals. ”

“ The Americans do not belong to “our” system—“our” meaning the intimate close brotherhood of British and French and Italians and Spanish and so forth, the British rather marginal to the Latin Catholic world. The Americans are a “New Thing”—capitals; they are a new culture outside the Western European culture. They are a “new race.” ”

“ The idea that Europe was in her decrepitude proved only ignorance and want of enlightenment, if not of freedom, on the part of Americans, who could only excuse their error by pleading that notwithstanding these objections, in matters which for the moment most concerned themselves Europe was a full century behind America. ”

“ America has made contributions to Europe far more important. Who can estimate the amount, or the value, of the augmentation of the commerce of the world that has resulted from America? Who can imagine to himself what would now be the shock to the Eastern Continent, if the Atlantic were no longer traversable, or if there were no longer American productions or American markets? ”

“ I have shown you how Washington's policy has been gradually changed: but one mighty difference I must still commemorate. Your population has, since Monroe's time, nearly doubled, I believe; or at least has increased by millions. And what sort of men are these millions? Are they only native-born Americans? No European emigrants? Many are men, who though citizens of the United States are, by the most sacred ties of relationship, attached to the fate of Europe. ”

“ Immigrants of all European nationalities learn to speak and write English—their children of the next generation become Americans. As a London Consul-General of the United States pointed out to me, the reunion of the European race, as a political measure on a vast scale, has been first accomplished in the American Commonwealth. Never since the pre-historic time of the root-origins of our language, never since the corporate unity of the Roman Empire, has there been so vast a breaking down of barriers between Europeans. ”

“ There the plenitude of society confines many useful ideas, and often extinguishes the most laudable schemes which here ripen into maturity. Thus Europeans become Americans.
But how is this accomplished in that crowd of low, indigent people, who flock here every year from all parts of Europe? I will tell you; they no sooner arrive than they immediately feel the good effects of that plenty of provisions we possess: they fare on our best food, and they are kindly entertained; their talents, character, and peculiar industry are immediately inquired into ”

“ The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; ”

“ Meanwhile, I see all around me valiant Americans, Southern European by birth and tradition, Americans now in spirit and loyalty and tendency. These men and women have mastered the opportunity—for they had to seek and improve it themselves—to become assimilated. ”

“ As matters stand, I think we may reasonably ask whether the Americans “most prominent in cultivated European opinion,” the Americans who “live habitually out of America,” are not less exiles than advance agents of the expansion now advertising itself to the world. ”

“ I therefore confess to you frankly, ending these lectures, that I do not belong to that number of Europeans who most enthusiastically admire things American. I think that Americans in general, in North America as in South, so readily recognise in themselves a sufficient number of virtues, that we Europeans hardly need help them in the belief, easy and agreeable to all, that they stand first in the world. ”

“ Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world! ”

“ If these men who, being a little eminent, went to ever-glorious France and received an ovation, which they don’t, their enthusiasm would alike tingle at the roots of their hair.
The Americans are nearly as good as older states, perhaps better than some. As three hundred years of civilization is, say, to six hundred, in that proportion they are as good as Europeans. ”

“ All of the Americans have got money. Come quickly before somebody gets all of it away from them.” As soon as it becomes known that America can offer advantages which{80} Europe doesn’t possess, the European is filled with a passionate desire to capture a few of them. ”

“ He held the theory that the few Americans living and working abroad formed the nucleus of American overseas industrial expansion and that they were regarded by Europeans as representative of their fellow-countrymen. ”

“ Out of a million well-established Americans, taken indiscriminately from all occupations and conditions, compared to a corresponding assortment of Europeans, a larger proportion of the former will be leading alert, active, and useful lives. ”

“ The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization. ”

“ To the good European the most striking characteristic of the United States is a widespread intellectual anæmia. So far from exhibiting those traits of freedom and progress which harrow the souls of sensitive aristocrats in Europe, the American people alarm the outsider in search of stimulating ideas by their devotion to conventions and formulæ. ”

“ The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions. ”

“ We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States have been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only—which is a very great mistake. ”

“ I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; neither can you seize hold of that unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering. ”

“ In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth. ”

“ Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS—our inferior one varies with the place. ”

“ Jefferson went still further, and he introduced a maxim into the policy of the Union, which affirms that "the Americans ought never to solicit any privileges from foreign nations, in order not to be obliged to grant similar privileges themselves." ”

“ However the Americans may fall short, in practice, of the professed principles of their association, they have realised many things for which the rest of the civilised world is still struggling; ”

“ America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. ”

“ This immense continent being peopled with elements of European civilization, could not remain a mere appendix to Europe. But when it is connected with Europe by a thousand social, moral, and material ties, by blood, religion, language, science, civilization, and commerce, to believe that it can rest isolated in politics from Europe, would be just such a fault as it was that England did not believe in time the necessity of America's independence. ”

“ Whatever shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of Americanization; however America may have failed to help my transition from a foreigner into an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity. ”

“ It is a work by which we will repay to France and Portugal and to Sweden—to all our mother lands across the Atlantic—all the gifts of civilization, of literature, of art, of the results of their long struggles upward from barbarism to light, with which they have endowed us. For in the vast fields of incalculable wealth that the American continents offer to the enterprise and the cultivation of the world, the older nations of Europe will find their wealth, and opportunity for the exercise of their powers in peace and with equality. ”

“ Yes, gentlemen, this is so sure to me, that I would pledge life, honour, and everything dear to man's heart and honourable to man's memory, that either America must take her becoming part in the political regeneration of Europe, or she herself must yield to the pernicious influence of European politics. There was never yet a more fatal mistake, than it would be to believe, that by not caring about the political condition of Europe, America may remain unaffected by the condition of Europe. ”

“ Thus America is not at all uninterested in the higher activities of the mind. It would be more just to say that as a nation, and without regard to individual instances, she interests herself in such activities less than in industry, in business and in agriculture. But is not this also the case with Europe? Who would dare affirm that the progress of the arts and sciences and letters is at this moment the principal concern of the governments and the influential classes of the Old World? We Europeans have only to listen to what people are saying round about us. ”

“ The ties which bind America to Europe bind her to no one country, but to all; bind her equally, it would seem, to France, Britain and Germany. The first founders of the Republic were of British stock, but with the passing years millions of Germans have found a home within her hospitable borders, together with natives of every nation at war. ”

“ The result of this community of interests, commercial, political, and moral, between Europe and America—of this frequency and rapidity of intercourse between them, is, that it becomes as difficult to point out the geographical degree where American policy shall terminate, and European policy begin, as it is to trace out the line where American commerce begins and European commerce terminates. ”