And so, as you go throughout the United States, you find men attached to
different parts of our continent, making their homes in different places,
and not thinking often about the great country to which they belong,
excepting as it is represented by that flag; and every one of those local
attachments is a valuable asset to our country, and nothing should be done
to minimize them. When the boys come back from France, every one of them
says, "The thing I most desired while I was in France was to get home, for
there I first realized how splendid and beautiful and generous and rich a
country America was." We want to make these men who come to us from abroad
realize what those boys realized, and we want to put inside of their
spirits an appreciation of those things that are noble and fine in American
law and American institutions and American life; and we want them to join
with us as citizens in giving to America every good thing that comes out of
every foreign country.
We are a blend in sympathies and a blend in art, a blend in literature, a
blend in tendencies, and that is our hope for making this the supremely
great race of the world. It is not to be done mechanically; it is not to be
done scientifically; it is to be done by the human touch; by reaching some
door into that strange man, with some word or some act that will show to
him that there is in America the kind of sentiment and sympathy that that
man's soul is reaching out for.
This _is_ God's own country. We want the boys to know that the sky is blue
and big and broad with hope, and that its fields are green with promise,
and that in every one of our hearts there is the desire that the land shall
be better than it is--while we have no apologies to make for what it is.
This is no land in which to spread any doctrine of revolution, because we
have abolished revolution. When we came here we gave over the right of
revolution. You can not have revolution in a land unless you have somebody
to revolt against--and whom would you revolt against in the United States?
And when we won our revolution 140 years ago, we then said, "We give over
that inherent right of revolution because there can be no such thing as
revolution against a country in which the people govern."
We have no particular social theory to advocate in Americanization; no
economic system to advocate; but we can fairly and squarely demand of every
man in the United States, if he is a citizen, that he shall give supreme
allegiance to the flag of the United States, and swear by it--and he is not
worthy to be its citizen unless it holds first place in his heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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