There is no difficulty in this, if our attitude is right. Americanism is entirely an attitude of mind; it is the way we look at things that makes us Americans.

If I could have my way I would say to the man in New York, "Come with me and I will show you America," and I would say to the man in San Francisco, "Come with me and I will show you America."

I would give to the man whom I wished to Americanize (after he had learned the language of this land) a knowledge of the physical America, so as to get an admiration, not only of its strength, of its resources, of what it could do against the world, but that he might have pride in this as a land of hope and a land in which men had won out. I would take him across the continent.

I would show him the good and the bad. I would show him the struggle that we are making to improve the bad conditions. I would tell him not that America is perfect, that America is a finished country, but I would say to him: "America is an unfinished land. Its possibilities shall never end, and your chance here and the chances of your children shall always be in ratio to your zeal and ambition."

America, we dare believe, will ever remain unfinished. This must be if there is anything to Americanism.

Let us push our horizons before us; let us so dare and do that no imagination can find a discouraging to-morrow.

It is beyond estimate when we shall reclaim all our lands or find all our minerals or make all our people as happy as they might be. But out of our beneficent, political institutions, out of the warmth of our hearts, out of our yearnings for higher intellectual accomplishment there shall be ample space and means for the fulfillment of dreams, for further growth, for constant improvement.

That conviction is at once our inspiration and our aspiration. I would try to show to him the tremendous things that have been accomplished by the United States 250,000 miles of railroad, 240,000 schools, colleges, water powers, mines, furnaces, factories, the industrial life of America, the club life of America, the sports of America, the baseball game in all its glory.

And I would give to that man a knowledge of America that would make him ask the question, "How did this come to be?"

And then he would discover that there was something more to our country than its material strength.

It has a history. It has a tradition. I would take that man to Plymouth Rock and I would ask, “What does that rock say to you?" I would take him down on the James River, to its ruined church, and I would ask, "What does that little church say to you?" And I would take him to Valley Forge and point out the huts in which Washington's men lived, 3.000 of them, struggling for the independence of our country. And I would ask, "What does this example spell to you? What caused them, what induced those colonists to suffer as they did - willingly?' And then I would take him to the field of Gettysburg and lead him to the spot where Lincoln delivered his immortal address and I would ask him, "What does that speech mean to you; not how beautiful it is, but what word does it speak to your heart? How much of it do you believe?"

And then I would take him to Santiago and I would ask, "What does that bay mean to you?"

And I would take him over to the Philippines where 10,000 native teachers every day teach 800,000 native children the English language.

And then I would bring him back to this country and say, "Grasp the meaning of what I have shown you and you will know then what Americanism is." It is not 110,000,000 people alone, it is 110,000,000 people who have lived through struggle, and who have arrived through struggle, who have won through work. Let us never forget that we are what we are because we have accomplished. There is a sentimentality which would make it appear that in some millennial day man will not work. If some such calamity ever blights us, then man will fail and fall back. God is great. His first and His greatest gift to man was the obligation cast upon him to labor.

The march of civilization is the epic of man as a workingman, and that is the reason why labor must be held high always.

We have nothing precious that does not represent struggle. We have nothing of worth which does not represent effort. We have nothing of lasting value that does not represent determination. We have nothing admirable which does not represent self-sacrifice. We have no philosophy except the philosophy

of confidence, of optimism and faith and the righteousness of the contest we make against nature.

We are to conquer this land in that spirit, and in our spirit we are to conquer other lands because our spirit is one that, like a living flame, goes abroad.

And again it is like some blessed wind some soft, sweet wind that carries a benison across the Pacific and the Atlantic, and we must keep alive in ourselves that this spirit is Americanism that it is robust and dauntless and kindly and hearty and fertile and irresistible, and through it men win out against all adversity. That is what made us great.

It is sympathetic. It is compelling. It is revealing. It is just. The one peculiar quality in our institutions is that, not alone in our hearts, but out of our hearts, has grown a means by which man can acquire justice for himself.

That is the reason, my Russian friend, my American friend, why this is a haven to you. Bring your music, bring your art, bring all your soulfulness, your ancient experience, to the melting pot and let it enrich our mettle. We welcome every spiritual influence, every cultural urge, and in turn we want you to love America as we love it because it is holy ground - because it serves the world.

Our boys went across the water. Never cease to venerate the years of their glory. Our boys went across the water because they were filled with the spirit that made America; a spirit that meets challenge; a spirit that wants to help. Combine these two qualities and you have the essence of Americanism a spirit symbolized by the Washington Monument; that clean, straight arm lifting to God in eternal pledge that our land shall always be independent and free.

To-night in Paris the President of this country, called by duty - your President and my President out of his knowledge of what war can do, out of a sense of its futility, out of a sense of its barbarity, is working that a better day may be brought about. He has invoked the genius of Europe to devise with him the machinery by which this curse may at least be minimized.

If you will visualize Woodrow Wilson at the council chamber striving for the happiness of mankind, together with the boy in khaki, whose love of righteousness alone carried him into the

Argonne Forest there to perish for the might of law and the salvation of mankind, you have a picture of the spirit of the Americanism that you must exemplar too - a spirit which the traditions and the history of our country demand of you.

How best may be spread that spirit through the land - how best can we explain our purposes and interpret our systems? Through the community council, through the school. I am making an appeal to Congress on behalf of an appropriation which will permit us to deliver from bondage thousands, tens of thousands, millions of children and men and women in these United States - to liberate them from the blinders of ignorance, that all the wealth and beauties of literature and the knowledge that comes through the printed word can be revealed to them.

Congress will be asked to help all States willing to coöperate in banishing illiteracy.

And I want you to help. We want to interpret America in terms of fair play, in terms of the square deal. We want to interpret America in healthier babies that have enough milk to drink. We want to interpret America in boys and girls and men and women that can read and write. We want to interpret America in better housing conditions and decent wages, in hours that will allow a father to know his own family and to support his household like a man.

That is Americanization in the concrete reduced to a practical, uplifting force.

I bring you the promise of unceasing betterments when I so give you the word. It is spoken for us, for Europe, for Asia. I bring you the spirit of the Declaration of Independence put into terms that are social and economic and ask you to help us.

AMERICANIZATION

P. P. CLAXTON, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION

XCEPT for a quarter million North American Indians, descendants of the natives whom the white settlers found here, the people of the United States are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born ancestors. All are immigrants or the offspring of immigrants. The oldest American families are so new in this country that they have hardly forgotten the traditions and the home ties of the countries from which they came. Though we are now more than a hundred millions of people between our double oceans, we have yet to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the second of the colonies out of which the nation has grown; one hundred and fifty years ago there were less than three millions of us.

From all the world we have come, mostly sons of the poor, all striving to better our condition in some way, all looking for a larger measure of freedom than was possible for us in the countries from which we came. Here, free from the domination of autocratic government and from the poisoning influences of decadent aristocracies, forgetting our fears and servile habits, we have elevated the best from all countries into a common possession, transfused and transformed it by our highest and best ideals and called it Americanism. A new thing this is in the world, and the most precious possession the world has. Though incomplete and still in the formative stage, growing richer and grander as the years go by, constantly clearing and purifying itself, its form and spirit are quite well determined.

To enter into this common heritage of the best of all, to be inspired with these ideals, to learn to understand the institutions which guarantee our freedom and rights and enable us to work together for the common good, to resolve to forget all purely selfish means for the work of the highest welfare of our country and of the world, is to become Americanized. To give