Part 21

The exclusively journalistic skill of Mrs. Cole now remains to be considered, and this we find as brilliant as her other attainments. As the editor of numerous papers during every stage of her career, she exhibited phenomenal taste and enterprise; never failing to create enthusiasm and evoke encomium with her ventures both individual and co-operative. Her gift for gathering, selecting and writing news was quite unexampled. As the reporter =par excellence= of both associations, she was the main reliance of other editors for convention reports and general items; all of which were phrased with an ease, urbanity, and personality that lent them distinctiveness. Not the least of her qualities was a gentle and unobtrusive humour which enlivened her lighter productions. Amateurdom will long remember the quaint piquancy of the issues of =The Martian= which she cleverly published in the name of her infant son.

During these latter days nearly every amateur has expressed a kind of incredulity that Mrs. Cole can indeed be no more, and in this the present writer must needs share. To realise that her gifted pen has ceased to enrich our small literary world requires a painful effort on the part of everyone who has followed her brilliant progress in the field of letters. The United loses more by her sudden and untimely demise than can well be reckoned at this moment.

THE UNITED AMATEUR JULY 1919

Americanism

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Laureate

It is easy to sentimentalise on the subject of "the American spirit"--what it is, may be, or should be. Exponents of various novel political and social theories are particularly given to this practice, nearly always concluding that "true Americanism" is nothing more or less than a national application of their respective individual doctrines.

Slightly less superficial observers hit upon the abstract principle of "Liberty" as the keynote of Americanism, interpreting this justly esteemed principle as anything from Bolshevism to the right to drink 2.75 per cent. beer. "Opportunity" is another favourite byword, and one which is certainly not without real significance. The synonymousness of "America" and "opportunity" has been inculcated into many a young head of the present generation by Emerson via Montgomery's "Leading Facts of American History." But it is worthy of note that nearly all would-be definers of "Americanism" fail through their prejudiced unwillingness to trace the quality to its European source. They cannot bring themselves to see that abiogenesis is as rare in the realm of ideas as it is in the kingdom of organic life; and consequently waste their efforts in trying to treat America as if it were an isolated phenomenon without ancestry.

"Americanism" is expanded Anglo-Saxonism. It is the spirit of England, transplanted to a soil of vast extent and diversity, and nourished for a time under pioneer conditions calculated to increase its democratic aspects without impairing its fundamental virtues. It is the spirit of truth, honour, justice, morality, moderation, individualism, conservative liberty, magnanimity, toleration, enterprise, industriousness, and progress--which is England--plus the element of equality and opportunity caused by pioneer settlement. It is the expression of the world's highest race under the most favourable social, political, and geographical conditions. Those who endeavour to belittle the importance of our British ancestry, are invited to consider the other nations of this continent. All these are equally "American" in every particular, differing only in race-stock and heritage; yet of them all, none save British Canada will even bear comparison with us. We are great because we are a part of the great Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere; a section detached only after a century and a half of heavy colonisation and English rule, which gave to our land the ineradicable stamp of British civilisation.

Most dangerous and fallacious of the several misconceptions of Americanism is that of the so-called "melting-pot" of races and traditions. It is true that this country has received a vast influx of non-English immigrants who come hither to enjoy without hardship the liberties which our British ancestors carved out in toil and bloodshed. It is also true that such of them as belong to the Teutonic and Celtic races are capable of assimilation to our English type and of becoming valuable acquisitions to the population. But, from this it does not follow that a mixture of really alien blood or ideas has accomplished or can accomplish anything but harm. Observation of Europe shows us the relative status and capability of the several races, and we see that the melting together of English gold and alien brass is not very likely to produce any alloy superior or even equal to the original gold. Immigration cannot, perhaps, be cut off altogether, but it should be understood that aliens who choose America as their residence must accept the prevailing language and cultu