ward the
stimulation and spread of sane principles of national life among all
sorts and conditions of men and women who make up our population. But
anything and everything that goes by the name of Americanization is not
necessarily an effective move in that direction. There is slowly
growing up a body of incisive criticism dealing with the current
epidemic of Americanization work that is sweeping the country on the
wings of clever catch-words and generous emotions. It may be of
interest and value to attempt an analysis and statement of the main
points of that body of criticism. Here are a few plainly valid
criticisms.

First, it is psychologically bad to approach Americanization work
through a _super-organized and much-trumpeted movement, because such a
policy warns the foreigner in advance that a crowd of superior_ persons
have set out to improve him. That is generally resented. The fact is
that hardly a thing has been proposed as desirable in an
Americanization program that is not the duty or function of some
existing institution of our country, the church, the school, the
industry, the press. Education, hygiene, and a decent inter-class
courtesy are necessary features of any sound Americanization program,
but they can be more effectively applied by calling them what they are
and promoting them in normal ways than by branding them Americanization
and cursing them with the blight of paternalistic uplift.

But it is probably useless to quarrel with a long established national
habit. It is a habit of ours to create a new organization for every
new task. Not only does that practice have the drawbacks just
mentioned, but it robs our established institutions of the habit of
doing creative work, leaves our established institutions as homes of
the routine and the regular. There is a fundamental difference between
England and the United States in this matter. In England the few men
who have caught an idea or envisioned a need, do not, as a regular
practice, create a new propagandist organization instanter, but in most
cases set quietly to work to get the machinery of established
institutions going on the task. An increasing number of clear-minded
folk are becoming convinced that Americanization would proceed much
faster and more soundly through the increase efficiency of the existing
machinery of school and church and press and industry, without any
fanfare of trumpets, than through any propagandist "drive" for