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 ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 St. Andrew's Society 
 
 San Francisco, April 3rd, 1916 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. W. F. McNUTT 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 JOHN R. MCNICOLL PRINTING CO.. 213 LEIDESDORFF STREET 
 
 1916 
 
Address to the St. Andrews Society 
 
 By ■ ' - 
 Dr. W. F. McNUTT 
 
 Mr. President and Friends: 
 
 The text this evening is Our Hyphenated Friends and 
 a few remarks on collateral subjects. 
 
 It is said of the Scotchman that he must always talk or preach 
 from a text, and that his hearers never expect or require his 
 preachment to have any particular relation to the theme indi- 
 cated by the text. For instance, the dear old minister that I 
 have in days agone listened to a thousand times, regardless of 
 what his text might be, somewhere in the course of his long 
 sermon never failed to remind us that we could be sure our sins 
 would find us out. From the great number of indictments 
 being issued of late by our courts we are quite justified in 
 believing that the sins of at least some of our hyphenated 
 friends, are finding them out. Since so many of our hyphen- 
 ated citizens have abused our hospitality and proved faithless 
 to the country they solemnly swore to defend and protect and 
 dishonored the country from which they came, it is a matter of 
 congratulation that hot in the political arena or in electioneer- 
 ing handbills do we find demagogues bidding for hyphenated 
 Scotch votes. The Scotch have left the hyphen to those who 
 have made it a byword and a scandal. We most undoubtedly 
 have too many hyphenated citizens who designate the land of 
 their nativity by a very large capital letter before the hyphen 
 and a very small a after it. When a Scotchman takes up his 
 abode in a foreign land, he becomes a respectable and honored 
 citizen of the country, and would despise to stoop to the dis- 
 honorable and dastardly methods now being perpetrated in 
 this country by so many of our hyphenated citizens and their 
 countrymen. When an alien becomes an American by adoption, 
 he should be an American in fact, no hyphen. It is reported 
 broadcast that many of our hyphenated citizens have received 
 dispensations from the governments of their nativitity, allowing 
 them to become citizens of our country for political and voting 
 purposes, while they retain their citizenship in the government 
 
 638918 
 
from^which the}^ ^solemrJy swore to forever sever their obliga- 
 tion?.* V^^pron] '•gli(>h{.*qiii:5€ns and the governments issuing the 
 di^peosationa.ejay tbe^.^oft^ Lord deHver ns! With all such, 
 h^h(Ji:**iJ?^tCLit'arifcra'^y. bubble. 
 
 A gentleman invited to participate in a hyphenated race con- 
 vention of his countrymen, recently held in New York, declined 
 the invitation, saying that he was "so fully occupied just now 
 in trying to be a faithful American citizen that he had no time 
 for considerations of the fortunes of any other country, except 
 to sympathize with the unfortunate peoples afflicted by the 
 unspeakaHe horrors of the European War." The Executive 
 Committee of a society of the same race, also declining the 
 invitation, wrote saying they "thought that the people at home 
 are better judges of their rights, their policies and their duties, 
 than any number of praiseworthy and well-meaning men of 
 their race in America." These men are Americans in fact — no 
 hyphen. 
 
 The Literary Digest, one of our best and most conservative 
 journals, heads an article in a March number thus : the "Teuton 
 Lobby" in Congress, "an astounding chapter in the continued 
 story of German conspiracy against the United States is to be 
 read in the documents revealing the political activities of the 
 national German-American Alliance." The New York Evening 
 Sun says : "An organized effort has been made and is still being 
 made to rule America from Potsdam." 
 
 That staid and conservative journal, The North American 
 Review, thinks that it is high time that something should be 
 done to prevent dual citizenship ; that aliens coming here have 
 no right to use their political activities in the interest of their 
 native country, rather than in the welfare of their adopted coun- 
 try and adds, "the hyphen must go." To which every good 
 American says, amen. While the hyphenated societies and 
 leagues have in their members many of the best examples of 
 American citizenship, their members are not ignorant of the 
 fact that their societies are too often used for political pur- 
 poses and not always in the interest and welfare of their 
 adopted country, but in the interest of their native land. So 
 long as their names appear in the roll of hyphenated citizens, 
 they have no right to complain if the American looks at them 
 askance and questions their loyalty. "No man can serve two 
 masters." The dual citizen must go. This country welcomes, 
 regardless of creed or nationality, men and women, boys and 
 
girls, who will become good, red-blooded United States citizens. 
 May the time soon come when no others need apply : no 
 hyphenated, no dual citizens wanted. 
 
 While Europe is involved in this, the greatest war of all 
 times, it is to be expected that each of us should sympathize 
 with the country of his nativity engaged in so cruel a war. But 
 we should never forget our sacred obligations to the land we 
 live in. The strictest neutrality does not imply indifference. 
 That we have been welcomed to this country, protected by its 
 laws, offered every opportunity to advance our own interest, 
 and it is our duty to assist this nation and administration in itc. 
 sincere desire to retain the friendship of all belligerents and to 
 act the honorable part of a neutral neighbor. Unfortunately, 
 too many of our foreign and hyphenated friends have abused 
 their accepted hospitality, ignored their obligations and have 
 become a danger to the country that welcomes and protects 
 them. They have compelled our government, railroads, ship- 
 ping concerns and manufacturers, to double-guard their prop- 
 erties and the lives of their employees against a class of these 
 citizens, whose diabolic deeds, smell to heaven. 
 
 The traitor to the country in which he lives and whose hos- 
 pitality he accepts and enjoys, or a traitor to his adopted coun- 
 try, is just as debased and false as is the traitor to the manor 
 born, he "is a stain of his breed, dishonoring manhood's form," 
 a shame and discredit to the mother who gave him birth. We 
 have all heard the expression — "fair weather Christians," which 
 is intended to mean that they are respectable in their church 
 attendance and duties so long as no sacrifice is required of 
 them, while no trying circumstances arise to test their sin- 
 cerity and integrity. It is much to be regretted that so many of 
 our hyphenated friends have proved that they were only fair 
 weather citizens ; that they wore the livery of the loyal citizen 
 to serve the country of their nativity in. Thus has our gov- 
 ernment been betrayed by unholy tongues, and basely stung by 
 traitorous citizens. That they were considered good citizens is 
 true, which only serves to make their apostacy the more lament- 
 able. What a disappointment, what a degradation, what a per- 
 vertion from good citizenship. 
 
 A nation is but a collection of individuals and the world is 
 generally willing to allow the individual to estimate his own 
 value and importance. Our hyphenated German friends have 
 so often and loudly proclaimed for their country vast supe- 
 
riority in science, art, literature, culture, government and about 
 everything else, that thousands who have given the matter no 
 great thought have actually come to believe them. They are 
 not an inventive people. They are not in any sense pioneers in 
 science, art. government, literature, or music. A very intelli- 
 gent and able American writer says, "People talk of the scien- 
 tific German, as of a magical super-monster of research. What 
 is Germany's message to the world ? I beg to remark it is not 
 science. England, let us remember, taught the world the 
 elements and foundations of modern practical life, of modern 
 government, and of modern business." Liebig, their greatest 
 chemist, was educated as a chemist in France. Says an 
 American scientist, "The British inventors of the 18th century, 
 Hargreaves, Kay, Wyatt, Arkwright, Watt, etc.. gave to us the 
 means by which, and by which alone a rich and broad life can 
 be made for all mankind. They gave us the idea and practice of 
 power-driven machinery. Nothing can take the glory away 
 from them, the most fruitful crop of practical promoters that 
 ever lived." No less an authority than Dr. Henry Smith Wil- 
 liams, when asked for his opinion on the scientific thinkers of 
 Europe, said : "The French. Germans, Italians. Dutch, Scandi- 
 navians, have all performed prodigious feats in the conquest of 
 scientific knowledge, but after all, counting everything, the 
 leadership is England's." Another scientific writer says, Who 
 are these Germans that they should bring into international 
 discussion a constant claim to scientific supremacy? "They 
 never produced any m.an or any ten men, or any hundred men, 
 who so utterly altered all thought for all the world as did 
 Darwin." Nor did they ever produce a Pasteur or an Edison. 
 It was Pasteur in his French laboratory who changed the 
 whole perspective of disease by his germ theory. Before 
 Pasteur's time, the average annual death rate for all civilized 
 nations was 30 to every 1 ,000 of population. Now the death rate 
 is IS to the 1,000. It is estimated that there are now 12.000,000 
 fewer deaths annually in these nations than before Pasteur's 
 day. It is Pasteur's germ theory that has deprived of its 
 victory "that invisible host — the pestilence that walketh in dark- 
 ness." We owe to French laboratories the new science of 
 Radio-activity, whose possibilities we dare not as yet even pre- 
 dict. And it was our own Edison — the electric wizard, who 
 flunsf the challenge to the "sable goddess on her ebon throne" 
 
and defied the power of her leaden sceptre to hold the night in 
 darkness. 
 
 But Germany has a civic message for the world, and one it 
 would be well for every nation to heed. It is the systematic, 
 intelligent and laborious application of scientific methods and 
 inventions to the arts and industries, — making two blades of 
 grass grow where but one or none grew before, thus giving 
 employment to her people and wealth to the nation. A few 
 years ago two Americans, Brady and Lovejoy, invented a 
 method by which nitrogen could be taken from the air, since 
 which time this nation has paid to foreign countries millions of 
 dollars for nitrogenous material. The Germans, availing them- 
 selves of the Brady and Lovejoy invention of synthetic produc- 
 tion, take their nitrogen from the air. It is not the inventor 
 who by his genius benefits a nation, but he who makes the in- 
 vention useful to the people. The British and American 
 bankers, with their staff of clerks and scribes, are simply high 
 class pawn brokers. The German bank includes in its stafif, 
 expert mechanics, expert chemists, expert commercial advisers, 
 expert promoters, any one of which is at the service of him who 
 wishes to exploit an invention. If the exploitation meets with 
 the approval of the bank's expert or experts, the bank's money 
 and advisers are at the service of the applicant. Of the modern 
 German pushing spirit, — to quote a recent English writer : "It 
 is the most highly organized machine, the most deliberate and 
 thorough going system for arriving at material ends, which has 
 ever been devised by man." This is Germany's civic message 
 to the world, and I beg to remark that it is not the result of the 
 noble teaching of the Reformation. 
 
 The boosting and boasting of this wonderful German learn- 
 ing and culture we hear so much about, is not always from our 
 hyphenated citizens. At a German banquet recently given in 
 New York, Chas. W. Eliot, ex-President of Harvard Univer- 
 sity, made in a speech, remarks which I have heard severely 
 criticized. He said, "The Teutonic peoples set a higher value 
 on Truth, in speech, in thought and in action, than any other 
 peoples." The merciless, inhuman and brutal treatment of 
 Belgium's innocent women and children, the cold blooded 
 murder of that administering angel, Nurse Cavill, the sending 
 of hundreds of inoffensive women and children to their ocean 
 grave in the Lusitania, I suppose are illustrations of their higher 
 value of truth in action. The granting of a holiday to their 
 
school children, that they might too rejoice over the terrifying" 
 struggles and the dying screams of despair of the little children 
 clinging to their mothers. as they went down to their water 
 grave, I suppose was an illustration of their higher value of 
 truth in thought and a lesson in German Kultur. Their moans, 
 the slimey deep redoubled to the waves and they to heaven. 
 The punishment of this accursed and barbarous crime we leave. 
 English has no language to fittingly depict the ferosity of such 
 parlous brutality. Nor has civilized humanity the mental power 
 to conceive the degredation of soul of him who could honor by 
 decoration the creature who perpetrated the fiendish deed. 
 "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.'" Another astounding 
 statement of our ex-President, viz., ''The great doctrine of civic 
 liberty, in industries, in society, in government, is the result of 
 the German reformation, and America has been the greatest 
 beneficiary of that noble teaching" There is no nation abso- 
 lutely independent of all other nations for its advancement in 
 industries, in society, in government, and our nation is the 
 beneficiary of many. Ours is not and never was and never can 
 be an isolated nation, all nations are bound together by com- 
 mercial and other ties. Our interests have always been and 
 will be bound to the interests of many countries. The natural 
 laws of the universe are over all, we cannot escape our destiny. 
 When Louis XIV. revoked an edict which proved so detri- 
 mental to France, it added physical, material and moral force to 
 our country. When the heir to the Austrian throne was struck 
 down at Serajevo, its material and social effects have been felt 
 in our country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
 
 True, none of the blessings and privileges that we enjoy 
 sprung full fledged from American independence. Not one of 
 our liberties was conceived in America. Every one of them had 
 been for generations fighting that monumental fraud — the di- 
 vine right of kings — that hollow sham — privilege of birth, that 
 delusive halo of caste. 
 
 Long before the German reformation, progressive men in 
 Briton had conceived and dreamed of the principles of temporal 
 and spiritual liberty. Others, inspired with the spirit of Jere- 
 miah, and feeling that "a. man's a man for a' that," had pro- 
 claimed them ; patriots unafraid had fought for them, and many 
 martyrs had died for them. The progress and life of every 
 nation must play its part in the common needs and requirements 
 of universal civilization. The inter-dependence of nations must 
 
 6 
 
necessarily increase with modern facilities. Fortunately, our 
 Constitution was not the beneficiary of that noble teaching of 
 the German reformation. It contains no trace of feudalism or 
 serfdom or of privileged classes, or divine right of kings. It 
 has more the footprints of England, France and Holland than 
 of the "noble teaching of Germany." Frederick, called the 
 Great, was but a few years older than Washington. When 
 speaking of his people, he always called them his poor cattle. 
 Down to Napoleon's time the feudal system prevailed in Ger- 
 many ; the people were serfs bound to the soil. The govern- 
 ment was, as at present, directed by the privileged classes who 
 had a full belief in the divine right of kings. Frederick wielded 
 a facile pen ; he wrote a severe criticism of the famous French 
 atheist Holbach, not for denying God, but for questioning the 
 divinity of kings. In Prussia, of Frederick's subjects there 
 were probably not five hundred persons outside the public 
 service who" had any political opinion of their own. The army 
 was officered entirely by the nobility. Thie nobility were not 
 allowed any occupation except the service of the crown. At 
 the opening of the 19th century, Germany still remained a prey 
 to the tribal system of the Middle Ages. In fact, it was not 
 until 1807 that the edict of Ritter von Stein abolished the 
 mediaeval arrangement of Prussian society, viz., serfage and the 
 fixed line of distinction between noble, burghers and peasant. 
 
 It is a debatable question whether there would have been any 
 United States had it not been for the help of France, in money, 
 ships, munitions and men. France was the only continental 
 European power that played a conspicuous part in establishing 
 and influencing the early history and independence of the 
 United States. Germany sent her Hessians, but surely we were 
 not her beneficiaries on that account. The Italian Ferrero 
 acknowledged internationally as one of the greatest historians 
 of the age, says of Italy : "At least part of the intellectual and 
 moral disorders from which our generation has suffered so 
 much is due to German ideas and teaching. Through these 
 we are losing our sense of right and justice in the great affairs 
 of the world, our sense of humanities in art, philosophy, litera- 
 ture and politics." He is evidently not enamored with the 
 noble teaching of Germany. 
 
 Our good Dr. Eliot must have forgotten that the English 
 priest and great reformer, Wycliffe, preceded Luther by some 
 150 years, that the P>ritish were heading for democracy 100 
 
years before that in the Magna Charta, strugghng to keep ahve 
 the spark of freedom throughout the long dark ages of violence 
 and oppression ; the example of their sacrifices and their noble 
 teaching have come bowling down the ages. Now to wane and 
 recede, but never to dye out. John Calvin and John Knox were 
 contemporaries of Luther. A great number of people, and I 
 expect we might include Mary, Queen of Scots, thought Knox 
 was some reformer. Carlyle called him the master mind of his 
 day. An American writer says of him, "To the memory of 
 John Knox we acknowledge our obligations, we are what we 
 are because this man lived." 
 
 The pioneers of New England were more the beneficiaries of 
 Calvin and Knox than of Luther. They brought with them 
 their Puritan conscience, the spirit of the Scotch Convenanters 
 — Religious liberty or death — never submit, never surrender! 
 But charity is the greatest of all virtues and we mu^t not be too 
 exacting in criticising a post-prandial speech. Our good Dr. 
 Eliot is a gentleman and a ripe scholar, I have no doubt, but 
 the German wine was of the best brand and plenty of it, and he 
 considered it the proper thing under the circumstance, and who 
 would not, to deal out a little fulsome praise and flattery to his 
 hosts, who would readily credit him with a high sense of truth 
 in speech, and believe that he was the beneficiary of that great 
 virtue from the "noble teaching of the German reformation." 
 
 Let us remember too that our good Dr. Eliot said, "the Ger- 
 man peoples," and we must not forget that there is a wide 
 distinction between the German peoples and the Prussian mili- 
 tary autocracy. The Germans, when not hypnotized by Prus- 
 sian militarism, are a sympathetic and kindly people, the Allies 
 bear them no unkindness. They leave to Prussia a monopoly 
 of the gospel of hate. They realize that the peasants are 
 dragooned into the army and made to believe by the Prussian 
 militarist that they are fighting in defense of their fatherland. 
 
 Great Britain was twenty years in sending Napoleon to St. 
 Helena. Her population at that time was only about ten 
 millions. It was not her numbers, it was British pluck and 
 persistance. Now the great British Empire encircles the earth. 
 Some portion of her people are every hour in the twenty-four 
 enjoying the sunlight. Now her population is counted by the 
 hundreds of millions. It is not to the noble teaching of the Ger- 
 man reformation, but to British love of liberty, civil and re- 
 ligious, and to justice, inasmuch as rich and poor are equal 
 
 8 
 
before the law (conceived long before the reformation), she 
 owes the fact that from the remotest corners of her vast 
 Empire — from "some place far abroad, where sailors gang to 
 fish for cod," to India's coral strands, comes voluntary help in 
 her hour of need. Her enemies hoped and thought that the 
 British state was disjointed and out of frame, and that they 
 could alienate her provinces and engender and foster inter- 
 necine strife in Ireland. Of the two great Irish leaders, he of 
 the north, Sir Edward Carson, became a member of the British 
 cabinet, and the Hon. John Redmond of the south said in Par- 
 liament, "I tell the Government they can take every British 
 soldier out of Ireland to meet the enemy of the Empire. Ire- 
 land's sons will take care of Ireland. The Catholics of the south 
 will stand shoulder to shoulder with their Protestant fellow 
 countrymen of the north to fight the common foe," and they 
 are making good. Canada's answer to the enemy's intrigues 
 is : , We are coming. Mother Britain, 500,000 strong ; 500,000 
 patriotic hardy sons of the north, in the morning of their man- 
 hood. The bleaching bones of the Emden is Australia's monu- 
 ment of her loyalty to her mother. In Africa the British enemy 
 has been despoiled of her possessions, while from far oflf India 
 comes the cry, "Our sunburnt sons are coming. Long live the 
 British Empire." 
 
 "The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee." 
 Autocracy's hope of world dominion is fading like a dream. 
 That strange psychological power of common suffering and the 
 mingling of the blood of British subjects together in a common 
 cause for democracy has cemented the British Empire and 
 guaranteed the imperial destiny of all the British possessions. 
 1914 will mark a new era for Great Britain and her Provinces. 
 It was then they were reborn and became the great British 
 Empire, one and indivisable and will stand or fall fighting for 
 the principles of justice, humanity and representative govern- 
 ment by the people, for the people. "For he to-day that sheds 
 his blood with me shall be my brother ; be he ne'er so vile. This 
 day shall gentle his condition." 
 
 The English language is the commercial language of the 
 world and will remain so, the world dominion is not for the 
 noble teaching of Germany. The British provinces are not to 
 be torn from their mother. Their sturdy sons are giving a 
 good account of themselves at the front. A few weeks ago a 
 Dutch statistician stated that Germany was spending 80 per 
 
cent of her national income for war purposes, and that England 
 was spending 10 per cent of hers. (It was stated in the 
 Scientiiic American that the German government has borrowed 
 more money than all the Allies.) It does not require an expert 
 to figure out what the necessary result must be. With her long 
 and thorough preparation for war, and with twice the number 
 of troops and four times the number of artillery. Germany 
 thought by falling suddenly upon her unprepared victim, she 
 could smash her way to Paris. She found to her cost that the 
 Belgian soldiers of to-day are worthy sons of worthy sires. 
 The great Caesar pronounced the Belgians the bravest soldiers 
 of Europe. And she failed to trample down the invincible 
 French and British soldiers, chivalrously fighting for France, 
 for home and humanity, out numbered and half prepared as 
 they were. As to the final outcome of this great war, there can 
 be but one ending, the Allies have no call for discouragement. 
 
 "Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." 
 Goth "Shall perish, write the word, 
 
 In the blood that she has spilt. 
 Perish, hopeless and abhorred. 
 
 Deep in ruin as in guilt." 
 
 Whilfe there are a dozen nations involved in this great crisis, 
 "the fundamental reason of this war, whose great decision hath 
 much blood let forth," is the irrepressible conflict between 
 democracy and autocracy, between the democratic British Em- 
 pire and the autocratic German Nation. Between democracy 
 and autocracy there is a deep mutual distrust and antagonism, 
 an irrepressible moral conflict. Whether representative gov- 
 ernment is to endure, or if autocracy with its divine right of 
 kings is necessary for the government of nations, is in pro- 
 gress of solution. The sword will not be returned to its 
 sheath until this great question is determined. There will be 
 no compromise, "One must prove greatest — till then, blows, 
 blood and death." Woe to democracy if autocracy be vict- 
 orious ! if military despotism prevails ! Then indeed will the 
 government of the people, by the people and for the people, 
 perish from the earth. The famous political and social psycho- 
 logist Graham Wallas says, "a decisive victory for the German 
 governing caste in their present temper would be in my view 
 a disaster to all that I most value in civilization." The noted 
 publicist A. G. Gardier says, "behind the militarism of Napoleon 
 
 10 
 
there was a certain human and even democratic fervour, but 
 behind the gospel of the Kaiser there is nothing but the death 
 of the free human spirit." 
 
 When one or the other of these cries, Hold, enough ! there will 
 be peace. But until then, imfortunately, the non-military partici- 
 pant peace makers may continue to meet, pray, talk, resolve and 
 adjourn, and wait till danger's troubled night depart and the 
 star of peace return. International law, peace treaties, arbitra- 
 tion treaties, national praying bouts, Ford lunacy vaporings 
 without adequate means to enforce their demands and desires, 
 are as inefficient for peace as the stuff that dreams are made of. 
 
 Germany has lost all her provinces ; all her foreign trade. 
 Her flag is no longer seen in the marts of the world. "Brit- 
 tania rules the waves." 
 
 "Shatter the beauteous breast you may, 
 The spirit of Britain none can slay ; 
 Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul's, 
 Deem ye the fame of Nelson falls ?" 
 
 The British are a dogged, stubborn and persistent race. Her 
 sons at the front to-day came from fathers of war proof, fathers 
 who for liberty, justice and humanity have carnadined the 
 Seven Seas and consecrated every land with their blood. 
 
 II 
 
G389iS 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY