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In the foregoing brochure I aim particularly to reach the
growing generation of my countrymen, born in America.
There is among some of them a tendency to belittle, and in
certain cases even to despise, their Swedish ancestry and anything
that reminds them of Sweden. This weakness, not to say folly,
is regrettable and due partly to ignorance of the history of the
race from which they sprung, partly to a false pride in being
born Americans, which is not due to their own merit, but to
that of their parents, who have sacrificed and suffered and
labored hard to acquire American citizenship. It is a great
advantage to any person to be born of good stock, and the
characteristics possessed by our nationality, hammered into it by
more than twenty centuries of strife with a soil, climate and
surroundings requiring courage, manliness and strength to
secure a living, are not changed nor lost by a sudden transplanting
from one country to another. The sturdy independence, the
strength of arm, of will, and of purpose, is the invaluable heritage
that has been founded and developed in Sweden, by the
physical, religious and political conditions of that country, and, bred
in the bone, descends from father to son through untold
generations. This is the power of our race which has subdued the
woodlands and the prairies and made them blossom as the rose;
which in every walk of life has carried our people to
competency and success. To be born of a nation having a history
like ours, and to be heir to the culture of a race as enlightened
and progressive as the Swedish, is a boon to any individual for
which he should be thankful to the Giver of all good things, and
not affect to minimize or despise the splendid heritage thrust
upon him.
By respecting ourselves and our common origin, we gain
the respect of our neighbors, whoever they may be. By
cultivating the good in our inheritance and reaching out for the best
that education, faith and loyalty enable us to possess, we fit
ourselves worthy citizens of a democracy where individual
rectitude is the basis for the stability of the state.
L. P. N.
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