Stephen Spender
AMERICANIZATIO.N
I
Edmund Wilson noted, in
A Piece of My Mind,
that the
term "Americanization" had undergone various changes. He began
with a letter of Jefferson's, written in 1797, in which Jefferson
wrote of parties who charge each other "with being governed by at–
tachment to this or that of the belligerent nations, rather than the
dictates of reason and pure Americanism." A century later, in 1899,
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to William Archer that "Americanism"
meant "to treat an American on his worth as a man, and to dis–
regard absolutely whether he be of English, German, Irish or any
other nation; whether he be of Catholic or Protestant faith." This
is the official and public American Dream. Later, Theodore Roosevelt
discussed "Americanism" as though
it
included all the freedoms,
privileges, rights and advantages of democracy. Opposite to it was
un-Americanism, which meant "government by plutocracy or gov–
ernment by a mob."
But after the First WorId War Theodore Roosevelt gave "Amer–
icanism" a different emphasis. Confronted by the Russian Revolu–
tion, he pronounced that there could
be
no "Americanism" under the
Red Flag. Edmund Wilson ends by quoting the younger Theodore
Roosevelt, who called a meeting on 3 March 1920 "at which it was
decided to thoroughly Americanize
all
war veterans, then to utilize
them in the work of making good citizens of the foreign-born of the
States." The change is obvious. But that noun "Americanism" once
had an aura of Republican reas.on and the ideal.
