The first news that we, the American people, must contrive to get into the White House about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved, and that we do not like an improving tone in our government. We want to be expressed the way McAdoos express us. We want a government that expresses our faith in one another, in what we are doing, and in ourselves, and in the world.
We are singing over here on this continent. We would not all of us put it in just this way. But our singing is the main thing we can do, and a government that is trying to improve us feebly, that is looking askance at us and looking askance at our money, and at our labour, and that does not believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know what we are like.
Our next national business in America is to get the real news over to the President of what we are like.
It is news that we want in the White House. A missionary in the White House, be he ever so humble, will not do.
Mr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as he whirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing like bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible power with us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking out into a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it was not his talking but his singing that made him powerful--his singing, or doing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won"ts, his a.s.suming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men.
He sang his way roughly, hoa.r.s.ely, even a little comically at times into the hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put a great crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot, boiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, as I write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the White House (with some one else to say grace) is before the people.
The people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House and refresh themselves.
At least, the soup course is on the table.
Who did it, please? Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready?
Theodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing "_I will, I will, I won"t, I won"t_," and acting as if he believed in the world.
Bryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter"s table saw him doing it.
Bryan saw how it worked.
Bryan had it in him too.
Bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in the fight. He saw the signals from the nations over the sea.
Then Armageddon moved to Baltimore.
And now table is about to be spread.
It is to be Mr. Wilson"s soup.
But the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it. And we will wait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses.
A poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced.
The only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in America is--acting as if we believed in people. This particular art is ours.
Other people may have it, but it is all we have.
This is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet or artist.
Speaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America has produced that European peoples and European governments have noticed for forty years, or had any reason to notice. We respectfully place Mr.
Roosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr.
Brandeis) as a typical American before the eyes of the new President.
We ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latest news about us.
The true imaginative men of our modern life, the poets of crowds and cities are not to-day our authors, preachers, professors or lawyers or philosophers. The poets of crowds are our men like this, our vision-doers, the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in the real and daily things, the daring Governors like Wilson and like Hughes, the daring inventors of great business houses, the men who have invented the foundations on which nations can stand, on which railroads can run, the men whose imaginations, in the name of heaven, have played with the earth mightily, watered deserts, sailed cities on the seas, the men who have whistled and who have said "Come!" to empires, who have thought hundred-year thoughts, taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine year leases, who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live, for cities to be cool, to be light, to be dark, who have conceived ways for nations to talk, who have grasped the earth and the sky like music, like words, and put them in the hands of the people, and made the people say, "O earth," and "O sky, thou art great, but we also are great! Come earth and sky, thou shalt praise G.o.d with us!"
Who are these men?
Let the President catch up!
Who are these men? Here is Edward A. Filene, who takes up the pride, joy, beauty, self-respect, and righteousness of a city, swings it into a Store, and makes that Store sing about the city up and down the world!
Here is Alexander Ca.s.satt, imperturbable, irrepressible, and like a great Boy playing leapfrog with a Railroad--Ca.s.satt who makes quick-hearted, dreamy Philadelphia duck under the Sea, bob up serenely in the middle of New York and leap across h.e.l.l Gate to get to Boston!
Let the parliaments droning on their benches, the Congresses pile out of their doors and catch up.
Let the lawyers--the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers, wondering and running to and fro, creeping in offices, who have tried to run our world, blurred our governments, and buzzed, who have filled the world with piles of old paper, Congressional Records, with technicalities, words, droning, weariness, despair, and fear ... let them come out and look! Let them catch up!
Let a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing. If a man cannot sing, let him be silent. Only men who are singing things shall do them.
I go out into the street, I go out and look almost anywhere, listen anywhere, and the singing rises round me!
It was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great web across the sky.
It was singing that dug the subways under the streets in New York.
It was singing, a kind of iron gladness, hope and faith in men, that has flung up our skysc.r.a.pers into the lower stories of the clouds, and made them say, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to G.o.d.
Ah, how often have I seen them from the harbour, those flocking, crowded skysc.r.a.pers under that little heaven in New York, lifting themselves in the sunlight and in the starlight, lifting themselves before me, sometimes, it seems, like crowds of great states, like a great country piled up, like a nation reaching, like the plains and the hills and the cities of my people standing up against heaven day by day--all those flocks of the skysc.r.a.pers saying, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to G.o.d.
The skysc.r.a.pers are news about us to our President. He shall reckon with skysc.r.a.per men. He shall interpret men that belong with skysc.r.a.pers.
And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout.
The skysc.r.a.pers are their skysc.r.a.pers.
The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in the hearts of the people.
If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo as a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White House until he does.
My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to come in.
We are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in G.o.d, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people.
In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun climbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninety million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into their souls. They stand with us.
The skysc.r.a.pers stand with us.
All singing stands with us.
Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen them!
That sun and that wind, I say before G.o.d, are America! They are the American temperament.