societies, and long before the war cloud grew black on the horizon, the farmer and laborer in England as well as in America read the wise maxims of Poor Richard's Almanack, and knew and respected its author.

He was the first American diplomat. Practically thirty years of his life were devoted to American interests abroad, first as agent of Pennsylvania carrying on a patient and successful attack on the vested selfishness of the Penn Proprietaries who refused to permit their Pennsylvania land to be taxed for the common benefits which they received from the Colony.

At last the Revolution came, and at an age when few men perform any work of great importance, he rendered his services in the cause of American liberty, second only to those of Washington himself. To those who still insist on considering history as a form of romantic drama, no contrast to the thrilling war story of the Revolution can be apparently more ridiculous than the story of the financiering by which that war was for the most part carried on. Congress had no money. Its requisitions on the several states were discounted or ignored. Individual patriots of means contributed heavily. Franklin loaned all his own ready money. Rich Robert Morris gave all he had and died in a poorhouse, but the funds thus obtained were utterly inadequate for the war. The Colonies were miserably poor. Where, indeed, was the money to come from to buy uniforms, guns, provisions, ships, and all the various supplies of an army and navy? The answer which Congress finally hit upon was very simple. They drew drafts on Franklin. Without any previous notice to him, without any inquiry as to whether he had funds or could raise them, they drew on him for anything and everything which the conduct of the war required. His simple duty was to find in France somehow the funds to meet these drafts. He did it.

He was perhaps the only American who at the time was known and respected for his personal worth in continental Europe. He was famous as scientist and philosopher. He was as engaging as he was wise. With a keen knowledge of human nature he knew how to deal with the French character. He was

E

a splendid borrower. Saddled as he was with two perfectly useless associates, who hampered him in France and slandered him at home, and with practically no other assistance than a sixteen-year-old grandson as his secretary, himself afflicted with the infirmities of old age, he persuaded a nation, deep in financial straits, to loan the struggling colonies the funds necessary for the war. In the critical year of the war his diplomacy obtained at last from France the recognition of American independence, and the active and open aid of French arms, obtained sixteen men-of-war, 4,000 men, and last but not least, $5,000,000, nearly $2,000,000 of which was a free gift.

Well might Paul Jones name his flagship the Bonnehomme Richard, for it was the pseudonym of the man who made his career possible, who fitted out his ships and found the pay for his sailors.

But this is no place to trace in detail the long story of Franklin's career of public service. The record of that service should, however, not stand alone as his claim on the memory of posterity. We must not overlook the vast, almost tangible influence of his plain, simple, hard-working life, its struggles, high purposes, its practical accomplishments upon the great artisan class in which he was born, on the vast army of young men whose lives depend upon their intelligence applied through their hands, working at his own trade of printing, or in the other practical arts.

That he had faults must be admitted. His enemies said that he had an inordinate desire for public office. He certainly filled many, and a desire for power is wrong only when the purposes are wrong for which it is coveted.

If he had so chosen, the immense powers of the mind which he had devoted to public service could have been devoted successfully to accumulating a fortune. He had great executive capacity. He devoted it to public rather than to private ends. When great businessmen of today prefer to be remembered by the form in which they leave their fortunes, by the endowments 'or funds they create, Franklin chose that succeeding generations should remember not the endowments of his fortune but the

stamp of his mind and character that he should leave for us, his descendants, the memory of a good citizen.

THE AMERICANISM OF WASHINGTON1

HENRY VAN DYKE

[Henry Van Dyke (1852- was born at Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was graduated from Princeton and later studied at Berlin. For some years he was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. In 1899 he was appointed to the Murray professorship of English literature at Princeton, his writings both in prose and in poetry having won for him acknowledged literary position. In 1913 he was appointed Minister of the United States to the Netherlands, a position which he filled with great ability until his resignation in 1917. The portions of his brochure, The Americanism of Washington, here reprinted, give the essential points of the discussion.]

What shall we say, then, of the Americanism of Washington? It was denied, during his lifetime for a little while, by those who envied his greatness, resented his leadership, and sought to shake him from his lofty place. But he stood serene and imperturbable, while that denial, like many another blast of evilscented wind, passed into nothingness, even before the disappearance of the party strife out of whose fermentation it had arisen. By the unanimous judgment of his countrymen for two generations after his death he was hailed as Pater Patriæ; and the age which conferred that title was too ingenuous to suppose that the father could be of a different race from his own offspring.

But the modern doubt is more subtle, more curious, more refined in its methods. It does not spring, as the old denial did, from a partisan hatred, which would seek to discredit Washington by an accusation of undue partiality for England, and thus to break his hold upon the love of the people. It arises, rather, like a creeping exhalation, from a modern theory of what true Americanism really is: a theory which goes back,

From The Americanism of Washington. (Copyright, 1906, Harper Brothers.) Reprinted by permission.

indeed, for its inspiration to Dr. Johnson's somewhat crudely expressed opinion that "the Americans were a race whom no other mortals could wish to resemble;" but which, in its later form, takes counsel with those British connoisseurs who demand of their typical American not depravity of morals but deprivation of manners, not vice of heart but vulgarity of speech, not badness but bumptiousness, and at least enough of eccentricity to make him amusing to cultivated people. I find that not a few of our native professors and critics are inclined to accept some features of this view, perhaps in mere reaction from the unamusing character of their own existence. They are not quite ready to subscribe to Mr. Kipling's statement that the real American is "unkempt, disreputable, vast," but they are willing to admit that it will not do for him to be prudent, orderly, dignified. He must have a touch of picturesque rudeness, a red shirt in his mental as well as in his sartorial outfit. The poetry that expresses him must recognize no metrical rules. The art that depicts him must use the primitive colors, and lay them on thick. I remember reading somewhere that Tennyson had an idea that Longfellow, when he met him, would put his feet upon the table. And it is precisely because Longfellow kept his feet in their proper place, in society as well as in verse, that some critics, nowadays, would have us believe that he was not a truly American poet.

Traces of this curious theory of Americanism in its application to Washington may now be found in many places. You shall hear historians describe him as a transplanted English commoner, a second edition of John Hampden. You shall read, in a famous poem, of Lincoln as

"New birth of our new soil, the first American."

That Lincoln was one of the greatest Americans, glorious in the largeness of his heart, the vigor of his manhood, the heroism of his soul, none can doubt. But to affirm that he was the first American is to disown and disinherit Washington and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson. Lincoln himself would have been the man to extinguish such an impoverishing claim with huge and hearty laughter. He knew that Grant and Sherman and Seward

and Farragut and the men who stood with him were Americans, just as Washington knew that the Boston maltster, and the Pennsylvania printer, and the Rhode Island anchor-smith, and the New Jersey preacher, and the New York lawyer, and the men who stood with him were Americans.

He knew it, I say: and by what divination? By a test more searching than any mere peculiarity of manners, dress, or speech: by a touchstone able to divide the gold of essential character from the alloy of superficial characteristics; by a standard which disregarded alike Franklin's fur cap and Putnam's old felt hat, Morgan's leather leggings and Witherspoon's black silk gown and John Adam's lace ruffles, to recognize and approve, beneath these various garbs, the vital sign of America woven into the very souls of the men who belonged to her by a spiritual birthright.

For what is true Americanism, and where does it reside? Not on the tongue, nor in the clothes, nor among the transient social forms, refined or rude, which mottle the surface of human life. The log-cabin has no monopoly of it, nor is it an immovable fixture of the stately pillared mansion. Its home is not on the frontier nor in the populous city, not among the trees of the wild forest nor the cultured groves of Academe. Its dwelling is in the heart. It speaks a score of dialects but one language, follows a hundred paths to the same goal, performs a thousand kinds of service in loyalty to the same ideal which is its life.

To believe that the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are given by God.

To believe that any form of power that tramples on these rights is unjust. To believe that taxation without representation is tyranny, that government must rest upon the consent of the governed, and that the people should choose their own rulers.

To believe that freedom must be safeguarded by law and order, and that the end of freedom is fair play for all.

To believe not in a forced equality of conditions and estates, but in a true equalization of burdens, privileges, and opportunities.

To believe that the selfish interests of persons, classes, and sections must

be subordinated to the welfare of the commonwealth.

To believe that union is as much a human necessity as liberty is a divine gift.