Page:The web (1919).djvu/75



allegiance to Germany and the Emperor of Germany, and swore that you would bear true faith and allegiance to the United States. What did that mean? That you would set about earnestly growing an American soul, and put away your German soul.

Have you done that? I do not think you have. You have cherished everything German and stifled everything American. You have preached German, prayed German, read German, sung German. Every thought of your mind and every emotion of your heart through all these years has been German. Your body has been in America, but your life has been in Germany. You have influenced others who have been under your ministry to do the same thing.

There have been a good many Germans before me in the last month. They have lived in this country, like yourself, ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, and they have had to give their evidence through an interpreter. It has been an impressive part of the trial. As I looked at them and tried, as best I could, to understand them, there was written all over every one of them, "Made in Germany." American life had not dimmed that mark in the least.

I do not blame you and these men alone. I blame myself. I blame my country. We urged you to come; we welcomed you; we gave you opportunity; we gave you land; we conferred upon you the diadem of American citizenship—and then we left you.

When we get through with this war, and civil liberty is made safe once more upon this earth, there is going to be a day of judgment in these United States. Foreign-born citizens and the institutions which have cherished foreigners are going to be brought to the judgment of this Republic. That day of judgment looks more to me to-day like the great Day of Judgment than anything that I have thought of for many years. There is going to be a separation on that day of the sheep from the goats. Every institution that has been engaged in this business of making foreigners perpetual in the United States will have to change—or cease. That is going to cut deep, but it is coming.

It must be pointed out that in spite of this charge of the judge, and in spite of the sentence of this minister of the gospel, his flock remained loyal to him and invited him back to preach when he got out of jail!

It has always been charged against the Germans in America that they were the most clannish of all the for