■/5 
 
j^mertcan Loyalty 
 
 An Address Delivered in the Old 
 South Church, Boston, Massachusetts, at 
 the Morning Service, March i8, 191 7 
 by the Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D. 
 
 Printed for the Standing Committee 
 of the Old South Society by the 
 Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Copyright, 1917, by the Old South Society 
 

 NOTE 
 
 HPHIS address was delivered at the morning service of 
 -■- The Old South Church, March 18, 1917, when 
 there was displayed the flag presented by members of 
 the Church for permanent use in the auditorium. 
 
 A plate to be affixed to the flag-staff will bear an in- 
 scription embodying the facts recorded in the following 
 statement, which appeared upon the Order of Service 
 for the day: 
 
 THE NATIONAL FLAG DISPLAYED THIS DAY IS PRESENTED TO 
 THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH BY SEVERAL OF ITS MEMBERS WHO 
 SERVED THEIR COUNTRY IN THE WAR FOR THE PRESERVATION 
 OF THE UNION, IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH, THE FORTY-THIRD — OF 
 WHICH THE FIFTEENTH MINISTER OF THIS CHURCH, JACOB 
 MERRILL MANNING, WAS CHAPLAIN — THE FORTY-FOURTH AND 
 THE FORTY-FIFTH REGIMENTS OF MASSACHUSETTS VOLUN- 
 TEERS. IT IS PRESENTED IN HAPPY MEMORY OF THEIR COM- 
 RADES, LIVING AND DEAD; IN EVER DEEPENING LOYALTY TO 
 THEIR BELOVED COUNTRY; IN THE SURE FAITH THAT THE OLD 
 SOUTH CHURCH WILL CONTINUE TO BE WHAT IT HAS EVER 
 BEEN, A PROPHET OF THE INTEGRITY AND FREEDOM OF THE 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 / 
 
 m 28 1917 
 
 'GI.A457666 
 
American Loyalty 
 
 For where thy treasure is there will thy heart he also. 
 
 MATT. VI : 21. 
 
 WHEN we think of the many races that 
 go to make the one hundred milhon 
 Americans of today, what assurances 
 have we of their loyalty to this new country 
 in times of international crisis? Here are men 
 from every nation under heaven. Is there any 
 outpouring upon them of high power, any 
 descent of patriotic fire, any fresh conscious- 
 ness of the Holy Spirit of political freedom 
 and hope, mighty enough to bind these races 
 into one vast brotherhood of loyal and proud 
 Americans .^^ 
 
 We must confess, at the outset, to the pres- 
 ence of two serious disadvantages. The first 
 is the absence of homogeneousness. Homo- 
 geneousness is a mighty factor in national 
 unity. Where the people are of one stock, 
 where they are from centre to circumference 
 kith and kin, there, in all times of crisis, national 
 feeling is wont to go with the universal move- 
 ment and strength of the tide. No part of 
 the nation has power to go the other way; it 
 is all one, and it runs to the flood as by the will 
 of the Infinite. This wonder of homogeneous 
 strength we do not possess; this initial, natural, 
 inevitable loyalty is not ours. 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 Nor have we Americans the instinct of loyalty 
 to our country born of history. Whether we 
 know it or nor, the voices of history sing in 
 the soul of a nation, and charm it into unity, 
 both when the song is a dirge and a paeon. 
 In the fibre of our flesh, in blood and brain 
 there are stored the subtlest memories, the 
 most potent susceptibiHties. Men are largely 
 the resultant of racial experiences in the 
 historic environment in which their ancestors 
 have lived. They are born with instinctive 
 loves for nature as she appears in a particular 
 country. Even the universal features of na- 
 ture, sunrise and sunset, the morning and 
 evening stars, take on new beauty and splen- 
 dor because they shine through the dear heavens 
 that bend above the beloved land. For these 
 peoples nature is bathed and transfigured in 
 the most moving human associations; it is 
 never beheld except through the eyes of racial 
 achievement, suffering, love and tears. Nature 
 becomes a country whose homes are founded 
 and whose cradles are rocked upon a land of 
 hollowed graves. Loyalty here rises as by 
 the force of gravity, it is pushed upward by the 
 unseen might of immemorial generations, it 
 calls aloud in the strength of great instincts; 
 it can be undone only by the wreck of all social 
 order that comes from the sway of the tyrant. 
 This vast assurance of unity and loyalty we 
 possess only in a minority of our people, and it 
 would be folly to underestimate our poverty 
 here. 
 
 We must seek for assurances of the loyalty 
 of Americans, of all races, in other spheres of 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 human nature: in immediate experience of 
 good, in the strength of reason, in the magic 
 of just imagination, and in the sense of obhga- 
 tion to the future. These fountains of loyalty 
 will be found, I am persuaded, abundant and 
 perennial. 
 
 1. I name immediate experience of benefit 
 as the fu-st universal assurance of American 
 loyalty. This does not hold for adventurers, 
 shirks or humbugs. We discount them. We 
 affirm that for the healthy, the industrious, the 
 enterprising and the earnest of all races it is 
 good to be here. Work is surer here than 
 elsewhere for the man willing to work, wages 
 are higher, food is more abundant and of finer 
 quality, the conditions of life are more whole- 
 some, the chances to rise in the grade of one's 
 work are better; while the opportunties for 
 personal improvement by education, and the 
 sympathy of good men with aspiring youth are 
 in America simply incomparable. 
 
 When the children are made part of this 
 experience the assurance of loyalty becomes 
 much stronger. The children go to the public 
 schools; they read the history of the Revolu- 
 tion; they take pride in it as their own, and 
 sometimes they ask, as an Englishman's boy 
 did, after reading a description of the battle 
 of Bunker Hill, "Father, be you an EngKsh- 
 man.^" ''Yes, my boy," was the reply. "Then 
 we hcked you." When the poor immigrant 
 finds it possible to send his gifted boys and girls 
 to college; when he sees them treated with 
 respect; when he sees them graduate, as is 
 often the case, among the first scholars of their 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 class; when he further sees them thus equipped 
 entering hfe with alluring prospects of success, 
 he is, as I have found, in many instances, 
 bowed down with a sense of gratitude to the 
 country in which this experience of good is 
 possible. Thousands of humble parents, in 
 in the last twenty years, have gone on com- 
 mencement day to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, 
 all the greater colleges and universities of the 
 country, to witness the triumph of their sons 
 and daughters, to give expression to their 
 pride and joy, and to confess grateful allegiance 
 to the institutions of learning that have thus 
 taught, inspired, wrought into worth and power 
 the lives of those dearest to them. Here is a 
 shuttle flying without ceasing in the High 
 Schools and Colleges of the land, threaded with 
 the sense of benefit, on the loom of unrestricted 
 opportunity, weaving the robe, in royal purple 
 and gold, of American loyalty. 
 
 There is another immediate experience of good 
 that issues in loyal love for this country. Im- 
 migrants leave behind them needy kinsmen, 
 parents, sisters and others of remoter relation- 
 ship. The true-hearted, who in this new land 
 do not forget the old, who in founding families 
 here remember with tender and devout affec- 
 tion the home circles in which their life began, 
 are able to send generous help to those in dis- 
 tress. They are able to do this without the 
 sense of hardship; they are able to do what they 
 could not have done had they never come 
 hither. From the surplus of wages earned in 
 this richer land, they enjoy the privilege denied 
 them before, the privilege of making the existence 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 of their needy kindred in the old home less of 
 a burden, more of a happiness. Picture this 
 privilege when it concerns a beloved mother. 
 Look at her in age, infirmity and want; think 
 of the good she has done, the sons and daughters 
 that she has given to the world. Imagine her 
 life of toil, anxiety, tenderness and tears; life 
 has taken at each stage all that she had to give; 
 it has taken at last her strength of body and 
 her vigor of heart. Others of her children are 
 themselves so burdened that they can hardly 
 come to her rescue. Several of them have come 
 here; they have prospered, and they are able 
 to turn the stormy afternoon of their mother's 
 life into sunshine, and the evening into peace. 
 The cottage of many an aged mother is made 
 comfortable and cheery by day, and hghts are 
 made to twinkle brightly from its windows in 
 the oncoming night, because of the constant 
 and generous devotion of sons and daughters in 
 America. When the end has come, and the 
 beloved dead is laid to rest in the ancient 
 church-yard, and the memorial stone is set in 
 dear remembrance to guard the sacred spot, 
 the sense of the privilege freely bestowed by 
 America, to utter the feelings of veneration in 
 acts of veneration, rises into a kind of religious 
 homage to this beneficent land. 
 
 When the three disciples of Jesus who were 
 selected to share the transcendent vision of 
 their Master's transfiguration were under the 
 wonder of this privilege, one of them cried out, 
 Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us 
 build three tabernacles, one for thee, one for 
 Moses and one for Elijah. The immediate ex- 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 perience of good, rare and exalted good, good 
 that is good for the entire circle of kindred 
 lives, good that is good for the worthy who have 
 spent their strength in love and service, good 
 for age, leaning on its staff and in want, issues 
 forever in the passionate desire to build a 
 permanent grateful abode there. Our country 
 has given us these immediate experiences of 
 good, therefore we love it, with a grateful and 
 loyal devotion. 
 
 2. There is next the work of reason. Re- 
 flection upon hfe here, in contrast to Hfe in the 
 old country, issues in a fresh experience of good. 
 The first feehng of the immigrant is apt to 
 be a perverse sentiment. Everything in the 
 old country stands transfigured. This is part 
 of life, and is both good and evfl. 
 
 ''Care and trial seem at last 
 Through memory s sunset air, 
 Like mountain ranges overpast, 
 In purple distance fair.'' 
 
 The new American has to wage a battle with 
 this perverse feeling, which is not a pure recol- 
 lection but often a pure hallucination. Every- 
 thing in the old country is at first glorified, 
 everything in the new is at first belittled, if 
 not bitterly reproached. America, it was hoped, 
 would prove itself to be Paradise; instead it is 
 a land where thorns and thistles grow, where 
 men eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. 
 It thus appears as a sullen and ugly disappoint- 
 ment; the old country, glowing in the rosy 
 light of the far-away sunrise, in spite of the 
 years of trouble and sorrow, is now felt to be 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 Paradise, and it has been left behind and 
 abandoned for this! While this perverse feel- 
 ing continues, this wild juggler with truth, 
 this necromancer who paints old sorrows in 
 heavenly colors, who darkens angel faces with 
 the dye of fiends, there is no hope for reasonable 
 comparison and reconcihation. 
 
 Homesickness is a fearful malady, but it is 
 not incurable. It is a self-hmiting disease, 
 and if the patient does not die, time will prove 
 the great effective physician, as in other human 
 afflictions, so in this. Homesickness resem- 
 bles a certain extreme alcoholic disturbance; 
 it fills the palatial dwelKng where it is with 
 vipers and demons; it transforms the squahd 
 hut where it is not, where it longs to be, into 
 a place of celestial freedom and peace. Intoxi- 
 cation at its worst, if the patient is isolated 
 long enough, comes at length to soberness; 
 homesickness, however long it may run riot, 
 eventually gives way to sound sense and calm 
 judgment. Then it is that a new epoch arrives 
 in the life of the American immigrant. Reason 
 emerges, calls for the plain facts, sets the old 
 and the new in fair comparison, and upon due 
 dehberation goes forward to a just conclusion. 
 
 Friends are as numerous here as in the old 
 country, employers are more just and consider- 
 ate, men are rated, in this land as nowhere 
 else, on their merit, worth is surer of recognition, 
 capacity of promotion, energy of success; be- 
 sides, there is a surrounding atmosphere of 
 sympathy with pluck, daring, devotion to one's 
 task and faith in one's ideals. Here the balance 
 of goods is clearly in favor of the new country. 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 Through a reasonable mind the immigrant is 
 winning a new love for America. 
 
 In the old world society, as a general thing, 
 is still deeply influenced by the feehng of caste. 
 There is the King, there is the royal household; 
 there is the duke, the marquis, the earl, the vis- 
 count, the baron, and the poor first rung of the 
 aristocratic ladder, the Sir somebody. It is 
 true that the feudalistic order of society has 
 received many hard knocks; it is true that a 
 milhon voices roll into all sorts of aristocratic 
 ears the great plea of Burns for essential man- 
 hood: 
 
 "A prince can make a belted knight, 
 
 A marquis, duke, and a' that: 
 But an honest mans aboon his might, 
 
 Guid faith he maunna fa' that! 
 For a' that, and a' that. 
 
 Their dignities, an a' that. 
 The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, 
 
 Are higher rank than a' that,'' 
 
 Still, in the most democratic countries of 
 Europe these words are more or less of a defiant 
 protest against a dominant adverse order; 
 while here they utter with trumpet tones, and 
 amid universal approval the prevaihng social 
 sentiment. The exceptions, in the person of 
 the snob, the plutocrat, and other abnormal 
 Americans, men and women, are after all purely 
 incidental and completely insignificant. The 
 atmosphere is, broadly speaking, wholly favor- 
 able to the recognition of noble character as 
 everywhere the supreme thing in American 
 society. Thus as the American immigrant pon- 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 ders this new phenomenon, it commends itself 
 to his reason; the longer he considers it, the 
 surer he is that here is one of the best and most 
 hopeful things in the world. 
 
 The next step is plain. Here in the dignity 
 of toil, in the doctrine that usefulness to society 
 is always a badge of honor; here in expansive 
 social freedom, in the equality of honest man 
 with honest man; here in the pubhc contempt 
 for idleness and wealth devoted to mere display 
 and lust; here in the aboriginal American idea 
 of the intrinsic worth of nothing but manhood 
 and womanhood, is the greatest chance on 
 earth for the free and unrestricted development 
 of the best forces in our nature, — diligence, 
 skill, conscientiousness, self-respect, in one great 
 phrase, the humanity of man. Here we are 
 not serfs, we are no man's tools; we are not 
 machines or drudges, we are citizens of the 
 United States of America. We cannot be 
 ruled without our consent. Our rulers repre- 
 sent us; they are accountable to us; our 
 relation to them is not that of subjects to a 
 sovereign, but that of a sovereign to his re- 
 sponsible servants. 
 
 Slowly the economic, the social and the polit- 
 ical advantages here rise into the heart of the 
 American immigrant through his understanding. 
 America means for him, as he reflects upon its 
 structure, a new world. Therefore with the 
 consent of his whole mind he comes to identify 
 his existence and fate with the existence and 
 fate of the American RepubKc. 
 
 3. The loyalty of all true Americans is great- 
 ened by the power of a just imagination. Imag- 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 ination is the telescope of the mind; it makes 
 visible blazing realities that otherwise would 
 remain invisible. There is the size of this 
 country. The travel of the average American 
 can lead to no adequate notion of this reahty. 
 The eye takes in but a small part of the district 
 where one lives. This continental land can be 
 seen only through the telescope of imagination. 
 When the western limit of Alaska lies in the 
 glow of sunset, the eastern Hmit of Maine is 
 burning in the fire of sunrise. Here is a 
 Republic on which the sun never sets. One 
 sees imagination at work representing the en- 
 chanting physical greatness of our country, 
 in such familiar anecdotes as these: An Ameri- 
 can in England is afraid to go out after dark, 
 lest he may fall off the Island into the sea. 
 There is not enough water in the Thames and 
 the Severn, the Tweed and the Clyde, to gargle 
 one of the mouths of the Mississippi. The 
 United States is bounded on the north by the 
 Aurora BoreaUs, on the south by the Southern 
 Cross, on the east by the Primeval Chaos, and 
 on the west by the Day of Judgment. Size 
 is always impressive. In the winter months, 
 look, of a clear evening, at the star Sirius, the 
 brightest splendor in the stellar universe. Read 
 the calculated dimensions and brilliancy of this 
 star made by astronomers, and with imagina- 
 tion thus informed, allow this superlative wonder 
 of the heavens to cast its spell over you. In 
 this way you will come to understand the unique 
 impressiveness of the physical magnitude of the 
 Republic. When to this we add scenery un- 
 surpassed, economic resources unequalled, the 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 possibility of homes and food for hundreds of 
 miUions of prosperous and happy human be- 
 ings, we have on the mere physical level of ex- 
 istence a nation with a unique appeal to the 
 imagination of its citizens. 
 
 Let imagination paint another picture. Think 
 what American intellect and energy have done, 
 within one hundred years, for our people and 
 for the world, in the development of the eco- 
 nomic resources of the nation. It is a miracu- 
 lous story, to be told only in the language of 
 inspired dreams: ''The wilderness and the 
 soUtary place shall be glad for them, and the 
 desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." 
 American inventions are in the service of the 
 civihzed world. American science has an hon- 
 orable place wherever science is known, and in 
 one science at least, astronomy, America has 
 for the last thirty years led the world. In 
 apphed science our country is fast becoming 
 the equal of the best ; our technical schools and 
 state universities are putting, scientific intelli- 
 gence in command of the economic resources 
 and needs of our people. Education has be- 
 come a passion among our youth, and the story 
 of the wealth devoted to education in the last 
 fifty years reads like a fairy tale. Religion 
 here is a reality where it is anything. The 
 saddest revelation of this war concerns Chris- 
 tianity. In Europe among rulers and men 
 of power it is little more than an academic 
 interest, a sentimental memory. Among Prot- 
 estants and Catholics alike, for the time at 
 least, the glory is departed. Nowhere is there 
 a great prophet of hope, a church with a mighty 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 forward look, a community of men swayed by 
 moral faith in the universe, and in mankind. 
 The backward look is great, the retrospect is an 
 enchantment, yesterday illumines the world 
 with its character and power; today is a day 
 of darkness and tomorrow is midnight. The 
 hope of the Catholic faith is here; the future 
 of essential rehgion is here; the forward look 
 is here, and it is great with high expectation. 
 
 All these realities do not appeal with equal 
 power to all our people; to many of our people 
 the higher among these realities make no ap- 
 peal. Yet as a grand totality, these reaHties 
 make our country the wonder and splendor that 
 it is in the imagination of all true citizens. 
 Magnitude, wealth, beauty, intellect, — practical 
 and scientific, — religion, whether in the ancient 
 form of authority or in the freedom of this 
 modern day, and the future, promising the 
 richest reahzation for the highest dreams of a 
 great people; here is our country, as it fives in 
 the imagination of the milfions that love it. 
 
 This Repubfic belongs to our people; it is 
 theirs to enjoy, to defend, to heighten in worth, 
 and to transmit to future generations. I be- 
 Ueve that a new sense of ownership and obfiga- 
 tion is almost sure to come out of the present 
 crisis. America is ours to enjoy, ours to guard, 
 ours to live for, ours if need be to die for; and 
 if this shall be the mood of our people, a new 
 America shall arise fairer still and yet more 
 beloved. This is one of the reasons why I 
 favor the universal military training of aU fit 
 young men. It puts the nation into the imagi- 
 nation of youth, as their nation; it lifts the 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 country before the eyes of our people as a 
 glorious banner; it calls for service and hard- 
 ship and trained manhood, and it gives in re- 
 turn a new consciousness of the worth of the 
 Republic. If you would love at your best, do 
 something for that which you love. Parents 
 love their children most when they have done 
 their best for them; children love their parents 
 most when they become their support and solace. 
 The fountain of love is opened to the infinite 
 depths only by unselfish service. The flag 
 of the nation presented this day to this church, 
 by members in our communion, who fought in 
 the war for the preservation of the Union, in 
 sacred memory of the men of four regiments, 
 represents a love made mighty, and lasting as 
 life, by sacrificial service. Ask our youth to 
 dream dreams of the country that is theirs, to 
 train to defend it, in all times of need, as part 
 of their obligation, and the Republic will open 
 new fountains of loyalty and enthusiastic de- 
 votion in all hearts. Our ideal of education is 
 of a nation universally trained for Hfe and all 
 its essential interests, and thus maintaining 
 through all changes its democratic character, 
 a nation owned, loved, served and defended by 
 the sovereign people. 
 
 Can we doubt that such a nation will always 
 command, in every day of crisis, the homage 
 of its people.^ Can we doubt the loyalty to this 
 beneficent Repubhc, if worse comes to worst, of 
 any class of our citizens, EngHsh, Irish, Scottish, 
 Scandinavian, French, Italian, German.^ My 
 Pro-German Irish friend who sells newspapers 
 at the Park Street entrance to the subway is 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 typical. His confession is this: "I am with the 
 Germans till they attack this country; then 
 I am agin them forever." The words of the 
 great recruiting song of the Scottish National 
 Poet, when Napoleon was planning his invasion 
 of Britain, fittingly express, I believe, the pas- 
 sion of our citizens, native and adopted, and 
 adopted from all lands and races. Here is a 
 single stanza of that song, with a few words 
 changed to meet the present situation: 
 
 ''Does haughty [^Teut.'] invasion threat. 
 Then let the loons beware, Sir! 
 There 's [iVo/i] walls upon our seas 
 And volunteers on shore, Sir! 
 The Nith shall run to Corsincon, 
 And Criffel sink in Solway, 
 Ere we permit a foreign joe 
 On [this great land~] to rally!'' 
 
 Another stanza of the same song, confessing 
 our own troubles and at the same time fiercely 
 prohibiting outside interference in the settle- 
 ment of them, may not be out of place : 
 
 ''The kettle o' the Kirk and State, 
 Perhaps a clout may jail in H: 
 But deil a joreign tinkler loon 
 Shall ever ca' a nail int. 
 Our jathers' blude the kettle bought, 
 And wha would dare to spoil it ? 
 By Heavens! the sacrilegious dog 
 Shall juel be to boil it!'' 
 
 For the only adequate philosophy of American 
 loyalty we come now to my text. There are 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 among human beings wise love and unwise. 
 Wise love appears with worth in the object of it, 
 and saving benefit in the subject of it. Unwise 
 love is made evident by two things, the absence 
 of worth in the object of it, the absence of sav- 
 ing benefit in the subject of it. CordeUa loves 
 worth in her father, worth in her husband; her 
 soul is saved by love. Romola, in George 
 Eliot's great novel, loves Tito; hence her sorrow. 
 Her greatest sorrow is that to save her soul 
 she must cease to love the worthless object 
 of it. 
 
 This is the truth that rises into clearness, like 
 the world in the light of morning, in the great 
 words of Jesus: "For where thy treasure is 
 there will thy heart be also." Love and treas- 
 ure go together always. Where the treasure 
 is only a fancy, a dream; where it is not a reality 
 love must eventually die. Where the treasure 
 is unimaginably great, there love goes from 
 strength to strength, till both the treasure and 
 the love find themselves eternally one in the 
 heavenly world. 
 
 Because the America that we behold and love 
 has in it worth immeasurable, and because we 
 who love America know the saving benefit 
 that our love and our service bring, we are 
 confident of our loyalty to our country in her 
 day of crisis, our increasing attachment, our 
 ever-deepening sense of gratitude, our devotion 
 to the uttermost. We shall see to it that no 
 weapon formed against her shall prosper; we 
 pledge her our best endeavor and our highest 
 prayer that in the immemorial mornings and 
 evenings of coming l^me, she may appear an 
 
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AMERICAN LOYALTY 
 
 ever greater nation, fairer in the light of ap- 
 proaching and loveUer in the glow of receding 
 day; and when at last we must bid her farewell, 
 we shall leave her in the secret place of the 
 Most High, and under the shadow of the 
 Almighty. 
 
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