world. We "take
our good things where we find them," and what we take becomes "American"
as soon as it gets into our hands. And yet, if anything new does not
happen to suit any of us, the favorite method of attack is to denounce it
as "un-American." Pretty nearly every element of our present social fabric
has been thus denounced, at one time or another, and as it goes on
changing, every change is similarly attacked.

The makers of our Constitution were good conservative Americans--much too
conservative, some of our modern radicals say--yet they provided for
altering that Constitution, and set absolutely no limits on the
alterations that might be made, provided that they were made in the manner
specified in the instrument. We can make over our government into a
monarchy tomorrow, if we want, or decree that no one in Chicago shall wear
a silk hat on New Year's Day. It was recently the fashion to complain that
the amendment of the Constitution has become so difficult as to be now
practically a dead letter. And yet we have done so radical a thing as to
change absolutely the method of electing senators of the United States;
and we did it as easily and quietly as buying a hat--vastly more easily
than changing a cook. The only obstacle to changing our Constitution, no
matter how radically and fundamentally, is the opposition of the people
themselves. As soon as they want the change, it comes quickly and simply.
Changes like these are not un-American if the American people like them
well enough to make them. They, and they alone, are the judges of what
peculiarities they shall adopt as their own customs and characteristics.
So that when we hear that this or that is un-American, we may agree only
in so far as it is not yet an American characteristic. That we do not care
for it today is no sign that we may not take up with it tomorrow, and it
is no legitimate argument against our doing so, if we think proper.

And now what does this all mean? The pessimist will tell us, doubtless,
that it is a sign of decadence. It does remind us a little of the later
days of the Roman empire when the peoples of the remotest parts of the
known world, with their arts, customs and manners, were all to be found in
the imperial city--when the gods of Greece, Syria and Egypt were
worshipped side by side with those of old Rome, where all sorts of exotic
art, philosophy, literature and politics took root and flourished. That is
usually regarded as a pe