You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom?... to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race.... You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You cannot become Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.... 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. Biological Assimilation. With this clarified meaning of assimilation or Americanization, let us examine the assimilability of the Japanese. First of all, we shall take up the matter of racial amalgamation. Immediately the questions arise, "Is it possible to amalgamate the Japanese? Is it desirable to do so? Is it necessary to do so?" To the first question, paradoxical as it may seem, careful observations compel us to reply that it is, and that it is not, possible to amalgamate the Japanese blood with the American. Just as there is no national boundary in science, so there is no human barrier in marriage. Truth and love appear to transcend all natural and artificial obstacles. That love defies racial difference has been amply proven in the United States, where all races are in the process of being fused together. It has no less conclusively been proven by the number of happy marriages that have taken place between Americans and Japanese in this country and in Japan. On the other hand, it is unthinkable that the Japanese should begin wholesale intermarriages with Americans in the near future, to the extent of losing their racial distinction. This is unthinkable because of the social stigma--and Americans as well as Japanese are extremely sensitive on the question of social environment--and the legal and economic handicaps which cause thoughtful persons of both nationalities, who take into consideration the welfare of themselves as well as of their descendants, to refrain from indulging in uncustomary marriages. It is more likely, therefore, that while here and there sporadic cases of intermarriage will continue to take place, and that such cases will gradually increase as the Japanese raise the degree of Americanization, it is wholly out of the question that under the present conditions of social, economic, and political encumbrances, the practice will prevail to any large extent.