ws in a
niggardly way; it gives all or nothing.

What is not generally understood of the American people is their
wonderful idealism. Nothing so completely surprises the foreign-born as
the discovery of this trait in the American character. The impression is
current in European countries--perhaps less generally since the war--that
America is given over solely to a worship of the American dollar. While
between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it
may not be amiss to say, from personal knowledge, that the Dutch worship
the gulden infinitely more than do the Americans the dollar.

I do not claim that the American is always conscious of this idealism;
often he is not. But let a great convulsion touching moral questions
occur, and the result always shows how close to the surface is his
idealism. And the fact that so frequently he puts over it a thick veneer
of materialism does not affect its quality. The truest approach, the
only approach in fact, to the American character is, as Viscount Bryce
has so well said, through its idealism.

It is this quality which gives the truest inspiration to the
foreign-born in his endeavor to serve the people of his adopted country.
He is mentally sluggish, indeed, who does not discover that America will
make good with him if he makes good with her.

But he must play fair. It is essentially the straight game that the true
American plays, and he insists that you shall play it too. Evidence
there is, of course, to the contrary in American life, experiences that
seem to give ground for the belief that the man succeeds who is not
scrupulous in playing his cards. But never is this true in the long run.
Sooner or later--sometimes, unfortunately, later than sooner--the public
discovers the trickery. In no other country in the world is the moral
conception so clear and true as in America, and no people will give a
larger and more permanent reward to the man whose effort for that public
has its roots in honor and truth.

"The sky is the limit" to the foreign-born who comes to America endowed
with honest endeavor, ceaseless industry, and the ability to carry
through. In any honest endeavor, the way is wide open to the will to
succeed. Every path beckons, every vista invites, every talent is called
forth, and every efficient effort finds its due reward. In no land is
the way so clear and so free.

How good an American has the process of Americanization made me? That I
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