serious fault which formerly existed to a very great extent among
Americans, and which has been growing less, was a certain provincial and
narrow way of looking at foreigners. There was a good deal of truth
underlying the observations and characterizations of Mr. Dickens which
made our people so angry sixty or seventy years ago. One of our American
humorists refers to the people of a western mining camp as looking upon
a newcomer with the idea that he had the defective moral quality of
being a foreigner. Now the residuum of that old feeling stands in the
way of American trade and American intercourse generally with other
nations. No one can do more to hasten the disappearance of that attitude
than you who have experienced the friendship and kindliness of the
people of this foreign country; you who have learned by your personal
experience how many and how noble are the characteristics of this
foreign people; you who have been able to see how much we Americans may
well learn from them; you can, each one of you, be a teacher of your
countrymen in your continued intercourse with your homes and your home
associates in the gospel of courtesy and kindliness toward all mankind.

There is one other thought that comes naturally to my mind. You not only
have not abandoned your duties toward your country by coming to this
foreign land, but you have acquired new duties toward the community and
the nation which has given you welcome and shelter and prosperity. There
is underlying all the materialism and the hard practical sense of the
American people regulating its own government for its own
interests--there is underlying that a certain idealism which carries a
conception of a missionary calling to spread through the length and
breadth of the world the blessing of justice and liberty and of the
institutions which we believe make for human happiness and human
progress. That mission is to be fulfilled, not by making speeches and
the giving of advice, the writing of books, or even the publication of
newspapers; it can best be fulfilled by personal influence and
intercourse of men one with another. No American who is in a foreign
land can help representing his country; its honor and its good name rest
upon each one of us the moment we cross the border. You not only
represent your country, but you have a duty to perform toward the
country in which you live, giving to her and to her people through your
efforts and all your association the