U. S. Scraps Old "Melting Pot" Idea in Utilizing Alien-Born
HARRISON, EAGLE G.
U. S. Scraps Old "Melting Pot" Idea in Utilizing Alien-Born Harrison Praises Record of Foreign Groups in Natl Unity By EAGLE G. HARRISON Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization...
...A THOUGHTFUL Federal Judge took time to write me a few days ago concerning one group of naturalization petitioners heard in his court in Indiana...
...You boil the very soul out of it...
...Now you can have your citizenship papers and do more harm than someone who hasn't theirs...
...One of these ancient Japanese heroes, when asked if he wanted to send a last message to his mother, replied: "When we parted, she told me that our parting would be very long...
...Kallen has brilliantly identified with human liberty by showing their historical convergence...
...She asked me not to play the part of a coward...
...The courage to take one's own life is held highly in Japanese public esteem...
...But o it's the only way I can explain it...
...For this crime I disembowel myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing the act.' "Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down to hi...
...Nazi...
...And among Out native citizenry we have, I submit in spite <Jf some evidence to the contrary, steadily improving and maturing attitudes—a growing distaste for racial or religious intolerance, a broadening acceptance of the principles of equality of Opportunity, a keener realization, in short, of that.which we are now at war to save for our nation...
...with one blow the head had been severed from the body...
...Get this, Mike Brock isn't trying to make the law...
...Taki Zanzaburo...
...The ceremony took place in one of the local temples and had been ordered performed at ten-thirty at night by the Mikado himself...
...To one of then we always thought the answer was obvious and irrefutable...
...Besides, she hasn't clothes, no way of getting there and back...
...And he knows freedom can never be finally won, being threatened riot only by its foes, not only by some of its momentary friends, but by all its defenders...
...IN the ancient art of Hara-kiri two seconds * are appointed to aid the condemned man in carrying out the act...
...He wrote, in part: "Yesterday one of the important events of my life took place...
...Dewey is said to call it an error not to "discriminate the 'esthetic' and the 'artistic...
...U. S. Scraps Old "Melting Pot" Idea in Utilizing Alien-Born Harrison Praises Record of Foreign Groups in Natl Unity By EAGLE G. HARRISON Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service...
...Attack on censorship by the hierarchy seems to call for a reservation that it is possible for the Catholic layman to be liberal and intelligent...
...He knew he had a right to, particularly when writing to the Government...
...but the motion was cried down by almost unanimoo* voice...
...6. It is prescribed that after the second has struck off the head he should take care not to raise his sword again but to hold it down, and retiring a step or two...
...It is decidedly nihilist...
...The judge then proceeded in his letter: "I think this record is one of the finest proofs of the value of the immigrant in times of peace as well as a time of war...
...The witnesses took their places...
...Bat if anyone thinks these scattered incidents reveal a lack of progress in our public thinking, he didn't see or doesn't remember what went on hv 191.7 or 1918, or even in 1919 and 1920...
...owe so much as a pioneer fighter for the right of"free press in this country...
...If it resists, if it refuses to surrender its being, you generate still more heat...
...That is indeed the free man's right...
...Free Culture THE publieatioi " of Horace M Kallen's two critical and inquiring volumes into the history of Art and Freedom is itself an achievement of free culture...
...A Review of Horace Kallen s Book The Relations of Art and Freedom By VAN METER AMES ART AND FREEDOM: A Historical and Biographical Interpretation of the Relations Between the Ideas of Beauty, Use and Freedom in Western Civilization From the Greeks to the Present Day...
...When he drew out the dirk, he leaned forward and stretched out his neck...
...Whole groups of Japanese officer* were known to commit hara-kiri rather than face the humili* ation of military defeat...
...I just decided I would tell you in case you didn't know, although it does sound like I'm trying to make the law...
...It is the spontaneity and fertility of the very life of us, and so contagious that where the artist is free no other man can remain bond...
...5. The blow is struck...
...As it is considered dishonorable for the victim to cry out because of pain, the second avoids this by striking before the dirk is inserted...
...During this sickeningly painful operation he never moved a muscle of his face...
...And a reader will find it hard not to agree that use is the process of overcoming opposition to human fulfilment, that art is "a new use of nature, or of other art, which liberates the spirit, if for an instant only, from the coercions and constraints which beset it...
...Now she can read a little American and also write a little although she-can talk better than she can read and write...
...Kallen cen-tends...
...An officer or person of rank will not lose his rank or honor if he is allowed "the honorable way out...
...Honorable Generals and Admirals of Japan, please note that, although defeated, you can still save your honor according to the ancient tradition of your land...
...117E are proud that so many are seeking United " States citizenship...
...Now I would like to have my mother get her citizenship papers...
...You begin by generating a great deal of heat under it...
...The letter she received read like this—You have made America your home...
...When the Crusades enriched Italian cities and rivalry was intensified in them between craftsmen and traders, the "gilds were the organs and energies of the struggle...
...This he handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it reverently, raising it to his head with boti hands, and placed it in front of himself...
...Taki Zenzaburo (the condemned man) advanced, slowly towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps even with more deference: in each case the salutation was ceremoniously returned...
...Though many artisans became priests after the triumph of Christianism, not all sought safety of that status, for there remained free and secular societies, not only of masons and carpenters but of architects, painters, statuaries and others...
...It was horrible...
...But it may be asked whether forms ever exhibit beauty apart from a metaphysical interpretation or from use in the broad sense indicated...
...By Horace M. Kallen...
...But my older brother is going in the Army next week and Mike, that's me, is "working in the navy yard...
...Seven foreigners from the legations were invited to be present...
...Is there any way she could receive books and learn at home...
...And the building of America goes on...
...whereas at least on pages 46 and 119 of A rt as Experience he is concerned to deny a gap between them, wishing to keep them together in a continuous process which neither term alone will cover as a whole...
...As they left the building, the petitioner said to my friend: "Isn't this a wonderful nation, taking time right in the middle of a war to make me, of German birth, a citizen...
...A condemned man named Taki Zenzaburo...
...ha looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately...
...Heaven knows anyone inclined to refute me could cite plenty of glaring examples...
...He would not face the condemned man squarely but sit at an angle rather obliquely while he reads the sentence...
...Yes, we have had a few spotty outbreaks of vigilant-ism...
...Today we...
...A. B. Mitford...
...The word hara-kiri does not mean' "honorable dispatch," it means plain "belly-cutting...
...If he had not been preoccupied with more important matters he would have seen that the fascination of aristocrats for Proust did not make him one...
...It is argued that these associations had kept a continuity with the collegia or unions of antiquity...
...was the victim...
...OBJECTIONS arising in the perusal of this work are often incidental, due perhaps to slips unavoidable in such an ambitious undertaking...
...for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling forwards...
...During the debate it was called "the very shrine of the Japanese national spirit...
...We were repudiating the very process by which our nation was built...
...The frontj>f the altar was covered with fresh white mats over which was laid a rug of scarlet felt...
...wiped his sword with a piece of paper which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor...
...Then you put your article in the melting pot...
...a smattering, many months back, of public hysteria, and a handful, of amateur performances in spy detection...
...White is the Japanese color for mourning...
...Zenger, German-born but later New York editor, to whom we...
...Writing materials may be given the condemned man so that he may send a last message, but it is not encouraged...
...This was what we once believed we ought to db tp our immigrants...
...Are people still to be denounced for failing to condemn the non-aggression pact of Stalin and Hitler, the foresight of Stalin in meeting Hitler half-way in Poland and heading him off in Finland...
...in a voice which betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in hit face or manner, spoke as follows: 'I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on 'tbe foreigners of Kobe, and again as they tried to escape...
...2. The second's assistant comes forw&rdwith a tray upon which lies a dirk...
...Regarding the exact moment to strike, there are various conflicting opinions...
...It is a token of the fall-bodied vitality of Dr...
...Kallen points out a democratic streak even there, in that Plato's God was an "Artist of Artists...
...Since it is not the purpose of the book to give full accounts of aesthetic theories, summaries of them, though adroit, lead to questions which only^-extended discussion could clear up...
...The contention is simply that when beauty does appear, it is a relation, and that rejection of this thesis will commit one to the theory that beauty is a property of an object, either as a form somehow beautiful in itself or as the token of a metaphysical reality...
...My little brother, Andy, ten years old, goes to school and Mother has to see to it that he does...
...Others say when the dirk is inserted in the left side of the abdomen by the condemned man...
...These people have helped^ to make this a city of about 115,000 from aJvUlage of about ten or twelve thousand...
...Some say when the hand reaches for the dirk...
...And one may question whether Communist influence has been steadily nefarious in this country...
...during the post-war years we had public-demonstrations of race hate we now like to forget...
...His is no narrow, pare disquisition on beauty and aesthetic appreciation, bat a study of art and freedom, culture and democracy, of real breadth and dimension...
...If any changing was required, all of it was required of the immigrants...
...But does that prove you are...
...They have made it wealthy and nationally known and now they and their offspring show a remarkable representation in our Array, Navy and Marine Corps, and even the Red Cross and WAACS are represented...
...7Vo volumes, 1006 pp...
...3. As the tray is placed before the condemned man, the second gets ready to strike the "blow with his sword...
...With the kaishaku (second) on his left hand...
...If the artist is not free his fellows cannot be really free...
...At ease in every stage of western civilization, he looks back over it from the vantage of pragmatic aesthetics to which he made distinguished contribution before the formulation of it that he hails in Dewey's Art as Experience...
...New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1942...
...4. The condemned man bows before the tray and reaches out for the dirk...
...there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall...
...The metaphysical alternative is ruled out for people who are wedded to a naturalistic and scientific outlook...
...This reply was received from the son of a non-citizen mother: "Dear Sir or Madan: "This is Mike Brock, who writes this letter, son of Mrs...
...According to the law, the piece of"paper you have says your a citizen...
...This officer then would read the words in a loud, firm voice...
...Tradition also recommends that the severed head should be placed on a thick square of paper...
...Thus it seems a tour de force to associate Santayana with empathy, and the treatment of Einfiihlung according to Lipps leaves the impression that for him the whole self was involved in aesthetic experience...
...The war has placed an extra responsibility on the Naturalization Service in connection with naturalization petitions filed by aliens of enemy nationalities...
...of modern trades-unions...
...This support of our ideals is, we now know, expressed quite as eagerly by those among us who are not citizens as by those who are...
...a refinement and attenuation into an Idea of the lowly Greek craftsman . . ." and in that Aristotle's views were largely a systematization of the practice and teaching of craftsmen...
...Therefore as I have already taken a long leave of her, I have no message to send to her now...
...A thing may have beauty "if it consummates this liberation, and we tend to realize its beauty as a relation between ourselves and this liberating power...
...Slowly, and with great dignity, the condemned man mounted the raised floor, prostrated hinv self before the high altar twice, and seated hna-self on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, the kaishoku crouching on his left-hand side...
...It occurs to me that one source of a nation's wealth is in its people and if any nation loses them to another, they lose much wealth embodied in the people lost by emigration...
...Analysis of ambiguities and conflicts in Dewey's aesthetic would have been welcome in view of its key position in Mr...
...And in the following review...
...have, with a surprisingly small percentage of exception, a solidly loyal, unified population, conforming with whole heart to our democratic way of living in time of peace and willing in time of war to make the sacrifices necessary to preserve that way of living...
...Kallen's book that issues like this can come up...
...The kaishaku made a low bow...
...and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the execution...
...I am glad to report that this situation is rapidly changing...
...As I now enter the Army, I have the proud feeling of fighting for my own country and under my own flag...
...We were also assuming that having brought this vfis't addition into our population, we were under ,n6 necessity of making any adjustment in ourselves...
...We dbrioasry cannot be divided even though We have one of the most diversified populations m the wwvid...
...But deep in your heart are you a citizen of the U.S.A...
...In 1895 when Japat was forced to surrender the city of Liao-tung, forty officers took the dirk in their own hands and did away with their lives...
...It seems not wholly sophistical to quote Mr...
...While these methods will expedite the handling of petitions and cause fewer delays, they will also serve to make it more difficult for the unqualified applicant to be granted citizenship...
...Kallen writes, "no other man can remain bond...
...Just a week ago, I received a letter from a German-born boy who came to this country as s refugee child to be adopted by an American family...
...Here the dirk, razor sharp, i» inserted deeply into the pit at the left side of the stomach, just above the hip...
...Does he hold this without qualification...
...We are increasing our facilities for handling petitions, and we are also instituting more efficient methods for investigating applicants...
...fof a moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then stabbing himself deeply below the waist on the left-hand side, he drew the dirk slowly across to the right side, and, turning it in the wound, gave a slight cut upwards...
...And on page 959 of Art and Freedom Dewey is said to hold mistakenly "that the work of art neither predicts nor interprets but reveals only...
...In case of doubt it is best to keep the dirk sharp...
...You use it when you want to deprive some other object completely of its present character, eliminate its shape, change its texture, wipe out everything that it has been except the raw material...
...The twin volumes of Art and Freedom, handsome and beautifully written as dedication to art could suggest, constitute a history of culture rather than of aesthetics alone or mere philosophies of art, since art for the author is nothing apart from life but rather that fresh insight and free achievement whereby events repeatedly take another turn and new consummations come into play...
...Now you can have your citizenship papers of the U. S. A. and still not be a citizen...
...She should have got them years ago...
...This officer remained to serve as witness...
...But we very soon began finding out that for our own good we'd better stop trying to make a Scotsman forget the heather or insisting that a Parisian learn to like the taste of water...
...But I think there is no refuting the trend...
...I was sworn in as a citizen of the United States of America...
...She's not in the best of health...
...MOST important, I believe, has been our scrapping of the old "melting pot" concept of the 20's, and our gradual realization of its fallacies...
...What has happened In the intervening years...
...In classical Greece and Rome the artist was also identified with the workman, though despised as such in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle...
...However, there some who claim the right to inflict the wound and request their second not to strike until the dirk is inserted...
...At that moment the kaishaku...
...girdle, and remained naked to the waist...
...The other week one of my friends told me he had recently had his first experience with our Naturalization Service in acting as a witness for a petitioner for citizenship...
...Communist, and Roman Catholic suppression of the artist's liberty, including a number of things said in this connection...
...It should be delivered clearly from beginning to end," for it is the duty of this officer to set the tone of stoic fortitude from the very start...
...to kneel respectfully before wiping the blade with soft paper which he has brought for this purpose...
...The answer is Yes...
...wrapped in fresh white silk...
...According to his own dictum that no art can live or grow without liberty, one might consider art which has been coming out of there as evidence of some freedom...
...When all you have left in the melting pot is a formless mass of raw material, then your ready to throw in the next one...
...The law requires us to give more time to an investigation of their applications, in order that there might be no doubt as to their qualifications for citizenship...
...The dirk !¦ razor sharp, with a blade about nine inches long...
...and is drawn across to the extreme right smie...
...And, certainly, we...
...OUCH is an actual eyewitness account of the traditional ceremony of the man condemned to hara-kiri...
...It is admitted that beauty is elusive, may not supervene upon art, and is in the long run not even sought by the artist who is more intent upon other goods...
...I do not mean to say, of course, that we are af;' or even very near perfection in all this...
...Yet Mr...
...Most controversial in Art and Freedom is the lumping together of Fascist...
...And so today more of us have come to understand that we can be fellows and compatriots while still enjoying best quite different dances, beverages, music, art and newspapers...
...That was their obligation, not ours...
...That is something I had eagerlyawaited and looked, forward to for a long time...
...Kallen can say "it not infrequently happens that liberty and the liberty of art express a distinction which makes no important difference," because the artist for him is every man as workman, so far as he is able to work as a human being should, freely, creatively...
...And sometimes in doing so, we ourselves learn...
...Finally obliged to realize afresh the social liberty vindicated by the New Deal...
...No foreigners had witnessed such an execution before...
...Also to be valued is the critic's right to dissent...
...II7AR is probably the supreme test of a na-" tion's unity...
...In announcing the sentence the officer would take his place in front of the man about to be condemned at a prescribed distance of exactly twelve feet (some old books on this gentle art say eighteen feet...
...A nfelting pot is a utensil of character— very marked character...
...Recently we sent out letters to non-citizens informing them of the citizenship education facilities available in their communities...
...Grasp of this original idea is facilitated by ample documentation...
...a vela-able institution, tending to the honor of the nobles and based on a compassionate feeling toward the official caste...
...Whether as spontaneous formations or as historical mutations, until well into the sixteenth century the gilds tended to work as engines of liberty alike against political tyranny and ecclesiastical oppression...
...One may wonder whether freedom of the artist has been as completely suppressed in Soviet Russia as Mr...
...He showed much the same spirit as one John Petet...
...According to law, yes...
...Van Meter Ames, well-known literary critic and aesthetician, asks a number of stimulating questions...
...Maybe Mike wasn't trying to make the law but he spoke his mind...
...During the war years, we had nationwide waves of »py*hunting—neighbor reporting neighbor, organizations advertising in the newspapers and selling memberships at one dollar each—and untold mental cruelty inflicted on perfectly innocent families...
...The condemned man may have some words to say in reply to the sentence but if these words are spoken in a frightened or confused manner, then no attention is to be paid to what he says...
...Now, according to law, to become a citizen, you have to have your citizenship papers...
...It was a large hall of dark timbers and huge lamps hung from the ceiling...
...This fortitude is the root and tradition of hara-kiri...
...A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood throbbing out of the inert heap before us, .which but a moment before had been a brave and chivalrous man...
...He stated that the applicants were asked, as a matter in interest, whether they had relatives in the armed forces of the United States...
...A Freudian interpretation of much in Catholicism will be challenged not only by communicants...
...The initiation of these changes . . . seems to me to be the liberty of the artist that refuses to compromise the singularity of his vision...
...Sincerely yours, Mike Brock...
...1. The second strips the right shoulder of the condemned man and drawing his long sword, quietly lays the scabbard down behind him...
...It has...
...A N eye-witness account of this act was re-corded some years ago by a secretary of a foreign legation in Japan, Mr...
...will not oe cowMfereo The FanaticalNipponese Hara-Kiri for Japanese Generals By MANUEL KQMkOFF FN feudal Japan the act of Hara-Kiri was given * definite striet ceremonial rules, and' 4hese rules still hold today...
...Absolute monarchs of the new national states destroyed the gilds by appointing artists to the king and making them dependent upon patronage...
...A substantial share in the "inevitable defeat" of Nazism and Fascism will be had by Americans born in the very countries where once those freedom crushing forces appeared to flourish...
...In olden days the seconds attending a nobleman of rank wore white clothes and the handle of the sword with which the principal second was to strike off the head of the victim was...
...The determination to' protect our democracy is as strong on the part of Americans who were born in other countries as it is among the native-born...
...As in English we avoid the word "belly" and substitute the more polite "abdomen," so the Japanese also avoid using the word hara-kiri and employ its polite synonym seppuku...
...Artists were the last to organize on this basis, having become detached from other men in the competition of busoiness enterprise, and having tried to justify their isolation by the theory of art*'for art's sake...
...After another profound obeisance...
...the officer who gave the order to fire on foreigners in Kobe many years ago...
...One of the three attendant ofheeri then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used in temples for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the wakizashi, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor's...
...Were the author not a New Yorker he might have been aware that 30 years before the First World War, instead of after, some Chicago architects quit disguising the structure of skyscrapers...
...When the artist is free," f)r...
...The past year has shown us to be more unified...
...Elsa Brock...
...who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in the air...
...John Dewey significance of their work, men of art had their gave an adequate statement of,that liberty which now Mr...
...a pillar of religion and a spur to virtue...
...And those of us who can call up first-hand recollections of the American scene in 1917-18 have the basis for a striking comparison in public attitudes as we look about today, To be sure, we have had many un-American demonstrations of discriminatory hiring practice in our war plants since this emergency arose;.but anyone who thinks we are slipping backward as a nation just didn't see or doesn't remember what we had in the last war...
...if it be liberating we call it beautiful . * * * POR he sees^the present conflict as the ultimate * battle in a perennial war to give all men the freedom of art...
...Some years ago a motion was made in Japanese parliament to abolish hara-kiri...
...Deliberately, with a steady hand, he took the dirk that lay before him...
...6.50...
...In the culture of free societies, this liberty has become the avatar of all the freedoms men fight and are ready to die for...
...Has the suppression of the artist under modern totalitarianism— German and Russian—been complete...
...That men whose work was appreciated while they were not could overcome in time their social handicap is attributed in this book very largely to unions, dating back to the Hellenistic world and able to survive the Roman Empire in which they maintained "a status in custom and law...
...This requirement, together with the fact that a great number of Italian and German aliens have applied for citizenship since 1939, has resulted in unusually long delays in the handling of such naturalization petitions, particularly in those districts having large proportions of petitioners of German and Italian nationalities...
...And Horace Kallen shows that ever since Plato the liberty of the artist has been feared by rigid authority which appears not merely in autocratic states but in free societies, though in the latter kept from suppressing freedom if not from fighting it...
...Ever since she was 15, she made America her home and she intends to make it her home for the rest of her days...
...I would like to have her go to school...
...The Industrial Revolution made artists enterprisers on their bwn until the revival in the United States of craft associations of artists, from 1900 on, which is attributed not to emulation of medieval life (as in Ruskinos attempt to resuscitate them) but...
...Carefully, according to custom, he tucked his sleeves under hti knees to prevent himself from falling backwards...
...But in cases of "dishonor" or failure to do what is expected, the honorable man of Japan condemns himself and performs the act alone...
...Kallen in reply to Mr...
...Professor Ames seems to be uncertain, and we can refer him to mountains of unshakeable, tragic evidence...
...Write me and let me know something...
...There were 189 petitioners for naturalization and the results showed that they had 203 relatives actually in the service and an additional 57 about to be called...
...We are trying to help...
...This event is a milestone in my life, and I assure you that I will do my best to live jjp to it...
...a few 'officials of local government acting on their own private brainstorms...
...Kallen's scheme...
...The liberty of the artist refuses to compromise the singularity of his vision...
...Kallen: "Let power be pattern and-good order, let it be disorder and confusion...
...We read much about the wealth of a country in natural resources, referring to minerals, forests, fuels, etc...
...So that leaves me gone...
...In this manner they take their places...
...When in the days of oid a man was ordered by his feudal lord to perform the act of hara-kiri, the news was brought to him by an officer of his own clan or province...
...than we have ever bean...
...an expression of pain for the first time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound...
...This tradition stems from the famous Ronins...
...NLY in a lifetime could a man write a work as comprehensive and profound as Professor Kallen's masterpiece, and at no time of life could it have been written without his unique ability to relate things that had seemed poles apart...
...It is prescribed by Japanese tradition that the . condemned man should take his place facing west and that his principal second face north...
...The tray with the dirk is not placed close to the condemned man, but about three feet away so that his body may bend forward as he stretches to reach it...
Vol. 26 • February 1943 • No. 6
