fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We cannot exempt you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We cannot exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the day that is common to mankind everywhere; we cannot exempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make them light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice. When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the committee that accompanied him to come up from Washington to meet this great company of newly admitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought not to be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my spirit as an American to be here. In Washington men tell you so many things every day that are not so, and I like to come and stand in the presence of a great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have been my fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go back feeling what you have so generously given me the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts of the great ideals which have made America the hope of the world.

WHAT AMERICA MEANS

ADDRESS OF THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, THE HONORABLE FRANKLIN K. LANE, NEW YORK, JANUARY 11, 1919

I

SHOULD take it that this gathering, representing so many sections of the country and so many of its elements, is itself a community council. If we could have such meetings in all our cities and in all quarters of our cities the matter of Americanization would soon cease to concern us.

To meet men from Armenia and Italy, from Greece and from Persia, from Russia and from all the nations of Europe, to the very edge of the Atlantic to look into their eyes, to learn their conception of America, to hear what they believe America offers them, to help them to their understanding, to spread our goods before them our ideals, our traditions, our opportunities; this is the very first step in weaving them into our flag — the very first step in the process of Americanization.

This is an especially appropriate time to meet, because to-night I can announce to the country that whatever previous differences have existed between the Federal departments in their relations to the foreign-born are now composed and the larger problems of the melting pot, in so far as they lead up to the moment when an alien has determined to become a citizen and has declared himself of that mind, unquestionably and very properly rest with the Department of the Interior, upon which Congress long since conferred the responsibility of supervising public instruction through the Federal Bureau of Education.

But there is another reason that makes this an auspicious moment to prepare for a more intensive campaign against insulating and disorganizing influences in the Republic. The people of the United States have been engaged for two years and more in a task that has given them a new sense of glory glory sprung from the consciousness that they were useful to America and it has not been limited to the boys in khaki

a sense of

across seas. Those who are here represent that spirit — the artisans, the merchants, the business men, the women - all have sacrificed as one, have wrought with heart and hand and purse that they might make the name of America eternal - by making America a synonym for liberty and generosity and knightliness to the ends of the earth.

It has never seemed to me that it was difficult to define Americanization or Americanism: "I appreciate something, I admire something, I love something; I want you, my friends, my neighbors, to appreciate and admire and love that thing, too. That something is America."

The process is not one of science; the process is one of humanity. But just as there is no way by which the breath of life can be put into a man's body, once it has gone out, so there is no manner by which, with all our wills, we can make an American out of a man who is not inspired by our ideals, and there is no way by which we can make any one feel that it is a blessed and splendid thing to be an American, unless we are ourselves aglow with the sacred fire, unless we interpret Americanism by our tolerance, our fairness, our thoroughbred qualities, our liberality, our valor, and our kindness.

We have made stintless sacrifices during this war; sacrifices of money and blood sacrifices; sacrifices in our industries; sacrifices of time and effort and preferment and prejudice. Much of that sacrifice shall be found vain if we do not prepare to draw to ourselves those later comers who are at once our opportunity and our responsibility, and such responsibilities invoke and fortify the noblest qualities of national character.

There is in every one of us, however educated and polished, a secret, selfish, arrogant ego, and there is in every one of us an infinite capacity for nobility. In this war I could see that there came out immediately the finer man, and, pray God, the better self in us all the man who came to the front at the call to arms remains captain forever after.

We expect that man to search out his immigrant neighbor and say, "I am your friend. Be mine as well. Let me share in the wisdom and instruct me in the arts and crafts you have brought from strange and ancient countries, and I shall help you succeed here."

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