American Industriousness and Creativeness Greece Must Accept and Adopt the American Spirit. (Editorial)
Greek Star, April 19, 1907
Is there anywhere in the world so much commercial progress, education, intelligent industriousness, and a constructive forging to greatness as in the United States?
Is there anywhere in the annals of history a manifestation of this kind? The answer is no! The United States of America is leading the world today.
The American cosmopolitan population today thinks and works for greatness, unparalleled in the chronicles of the world's history.
American Greeks as part of this great country will give valuable service to Mother-Greece if they permit their American acquired spirit to permeate the land of their birth.
Mother-Greece will shine once more as a bright star in the heavens of the world, if the American spirit of greatness is permitted to influence the minds of her people.
2Greece with her inherent, but otherwise inactive greatness will reach unbelievable heights if the life and activity of the United States is taken as a model.
Undoubtedly the American dollars, sent to Greece by American Greeks, will be a relief to her sufferings, but the real salvation of the country depends not upon dollars alone, but upon the creative mind of the nation.
The best creative mind of the world today is the one that America possesses.
Greece must accept and adopt the American spirit.
In urging Mother-Greece to Americanize her national thoughts and actions one may say that we are infatuated with America and American progress and consequently we have stumbled upon deception.
A non-progressive or cynic may say that people with inferiority complexes always suffer from estrangement. And if Greece pays attention to colonial Greeks who are influenced by their respective national spirit, first thing you know, Greece will be a place of many and varigated cross-currents of national thoughts, spirits and adaptations.
3American Greeks, despite their newly established colonies in America, have made themselves felt not only in America but in Greece as well. Whether our brother-Greeks on the other side of the ocean want to admit the truth or not the facts are there just the same. They (the American-Greeks) have made a clean cut distinction from other Greek colonists in the world. Every hamlet, town and city in Greece is flooded with American dollars, American ideas and thought and methods. They are perforated by the invincible American spirit and if they are not conscious now of the American influence upon them, the time is not far away when they shall know it and reckon with it.
American-Greeks, imbued by the greatness of the American spirit, have set out to lift up their relations and former townsmen from their inactiveness and chronic apathy and inject them with the American spirit of diligence and productiveness.
Millions of American eagles accompanied by American methods were sent to Greece by American-Greeks to build churches, schools, water works, roads, buildings and other public and private improvements.
Mother-Greece has turned her eyes and hopes upon those, Yanky-Greeks, as we are called.
4What other colonial Greeks the world over could compare themselves with American-Greeks in doing things for Mother-Greece?
Greeks the world over are the same in so far as their devotion to Greece, but American-Greeks, due to their American acquired greatness, are topnotchers.
They do things in a big way and they do it quickly.
That is why they have made themselves felt everywhere.
Their inherent progressiveness coupled with American spirit has created wonders.
It is not an exaggeration to say that many trades and businesses, now flourishing in America under Greek control, were either dormant or non-existent before the arrival of the Greeks as immigrants.
The Greek, with his active mind and his American acquired scope of operations enhanced by the greatness of the American spirit, has flooded America with confectioneries, restaurants, flower shops, fruit stores, commission houses, shoe repairing shops, shoe shine stands, grocery stores and many other businesses.
5Thousands upon thousands of jobs were created by the new Greek enterprises. Hundreds of thousands of people were affected one way or another by the Greek activities.
And this handful of Greeks in America have made themselves known to the whole country as a progressive element of the United States, and have made themselves a locomotive power in pushing Mother-Greece to better times and thoughts. Whenever and wherever the American Greeks have visited the land of their birth, they have left behind not only the almighty American eagle but also germs of Americanism, which in years to come will blossom into a beautiful and fragrant flower.
But let us not get away from the main-issue. The point is it is the American spirit which the author of this article wants Greece to accept and adopt.
The phenomenal superiority of the American-Greeks over all Greeks, according to our reasoning, is attributed to the spirit of America which the Greek immigrant to America has accepted, adopted, and injected into his being. That being the case and as a true American he sets out to spread the greatness of his Americanism all over his beloved Greece.
6One with keen analytical observation and free from bias and narrow nationalism will be able to see, sooner or later the invincible force of the spirit of America will cover and permeate the whole world. Because it stands for liberty, equality, and justice. That is the idealistic song of the poets. That is the loftiest conception of the philosophers, and undoubtedly the will of providence.
Mother-Greece in the past has lead the world into education, civilization, culture and anything that was conceived as good. And the writer of this article earnestly urges the dowager Queen of the World, to take the lead again above all other nations and accept the spirit of America. Hellenism in the past was accepted and adopted by Greeks and non-Greeks as a beneficent thing to man-kind. Americanism to-day is the crystallization of past lofty and divine thoughts, the fulfilment of a dream, a dream which mankind has had for eons of time. Devotion to narrow nationalism or any power on earth will not be strong enough to thwart the spread of the spirit of America in the whole world. That is a natural law to man's evolution.
American-Greeks therefore can rightly and justly urge Mother-Greece to be the first nation in the world in accepting and adopting the American spirit, thus 7again getting the first honors and benefits in that which will follow later in all the nations of the world.
The American spirit is not idealistic only, devoid of material gains, but, on the contrary it envolves all that is practical and needful in man's upward trend, spiritually and materially.
American living standards, from the highest to the lowest, are far above all other nations.
Living standards in poverty stricken Mother-Greece, as well as in enormously wealthy countries, are so bad that it really is a disgrace to our social order.
Mother-Greece, with her inherent progressiveness, will lift herself up from the present struggle and chronic suffering if she proves herself wise in accepting the American spirit, the panacea of all human ills. American industriousness, American liberty, equality, and justice, and American thinking will lift any nation out of its material and spiritual predicament.
8We sincerely wish and hope that Mother-Greece will take the world initiative and permit the spirit of America to become her national thought.
P. S. Lambros, Editor,
The Greek Star.
