of the Nation. But very few
have succeeding in preserving their European education and culture
while at the same time assimilating themselves with American life.
It is difficult for the average man to form an adequate conception
what strength, energy, and perseverance are necessary to absorb the
unfamiliar language, habits, and customs of a new country, without
the loss of one's own personality.

Emma Goldman is one of the few who, while thoroughly preserving their
individuality, have become an important factor in the social and
intellectual atmosphere of America. The life she leads is rich in
color, full of change and variety. She has risen to the topmost
heights, and she has also tasted the bitter dregs of life.

Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June,
1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never
dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy. Like
all conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced that their
daughter would marry a respectable citizen, bear him children, and
round out her allotted years surrounded by a flock of grandchildren,
a good, religious woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a
strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of their
child, and carry it to the heights which separate generations in
eternal struggle. They lived in a land and at a time when antagonism
between parent and offspring was fated to find its most acute
expression, irreconcilable hostility. In this tremendous struggle
between fathers and sons--and especially between parents and
daughters--there was no compromise, no weak yielding, no truce. The
spirit of liberty, of progress--an idealism which knew no
considerations and recognized no obstacles--drove the young
generation out of the parental house and away from the hearth of the
home. Just as this same spirit once drove out the revolutionary
breeder of discontent, Jesus, and alienated him from his native
traditions.

What role the Jewish race--notwithstanding all anti-semitic calumnies
the race of transcendental idealism--played in the struggle of the
Old and the New will probably never be appreciated with complete
impartiality and clarity. Only now are we beginning to perceive the
tremendous debt we owe to Jewish idealists in the realm of science,
art, and literature. But very little is still known of the important
part the sons and daughters of Israel have played in th