inly would not be one even to
suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of
his origin--these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of
our hearts--but it is one thing to love the place where you were born
and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you
go. You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every
respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You
cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups.
American does not consist of groups. A man who thinks himself as
belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become
an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your
nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

My urgent advice to you would be not only always to think first of
America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love
humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can
be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by
jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal
capital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touch and
ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those
passions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase.

We came to America, either ourselves or in persons of our ancestors, to
better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had
seen before, to get rid of things that divide, and to make sure of the
things that unite. It was but a historical accident no doubt that this
great country was called the "United States," and yet I am very
thankful that it has the word "united" in its title; and the man who
seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest,
in the United States is striking at its very heart.

It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of you
who have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you were
drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief,
by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better
kind of life.

No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us; some of us are very
disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in the United States
goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere
else in the world. No doubt what you found here