SHALLOW AMERICANISM
71
This description of a familiar kind of Ameri
canism
The
1844
in
is
1920.
easily recognizable in
shallow reformers are equally familiar.
"Many
rubbish, class.
a reformer perishes in the removal of
and that makes the offensiveness of
are partial, they are not equal to the
They
work they
this
They
pretend.
lose their
way
in the
on the kingdom of darkness; they expend their energy on some accidental evil, and lose
assault all
their sanity
moment social
man
and power of
that one or
system be corrected, but of
be in his
No
benefit.
It is
of
two or twenty errors
much
little
in
our
that the
senses."
foreign critic has ever pointed out
clearly the faults of the
more
American temperament.
But shallow Americanism, with its boast fulness and its conventionality, can not blind him to the ideal
America
that lies far deeper.
It is yet in the
making. "We
cannot look on the freedom of this coun-