Gradually the fact that this was a country where men could have a share in the government, could speak their minds, could worship God in their own way, could work out their ideals and ambitions without governmental interference as long as these in no way conflicted with the interests of law and order, went over the earth. It found its way into those countries of Europe where men were eager for its coming. The English, after the War of 1812, when the United States definitely established our standing as a nation, were among the first to come as settlers. And from other western countries of Europe came other settlers, led by the knowledge that here could they enjoy individual freedom. To America, as to the Promised Land, flocked the Irish. Restless under the English yoke, denied economic, political, religious, and educational liberty by a government of an alien neighbor, the Irish people turned westward. The famine and the political revolution of 1848 sent them out from Ireland by the tens of thousands. To our land they brought a passionate yearning for freedom and a passionate gratitude to the country which opened it to them; and because they were, as a people, gifted with the power of expressing their emotions, they spread the fame of the United States broadcast over the world as a haven for those who sought liberty. After them came the Germans, led by the political refugees of that country who had incurred the enmity of Prussia in the Revolution of 1848, which had striven to bring some measure of freedom to the German people. Denied it at home, hundreds of thousands of Germans came to America to find liberty in their individual lives, to find opportunity. It is these Germans and their descendants who, understanding what the Prussian yoke means, have become among the best of our American citizens. Knowing what they escaped, they know what America fights against now. The third great movement of a people to the United States has been the westward coming of the Jews. In this country, as in no other, they possessed full religious freedom, and to this country they have flocked from every land of Europe where they had huddled, unwelcome, for centuries. Here they have found no opposition to their faith. Here they have had full chance to worship as they would. For the first time in thousands of years the Jew could build his temple unhindered. For the first time since the Roman had gone into Palestine the Jew was a citizen of the land in which he dwelt. Then came the peoples of eastern Europe, peoples of the vast empire that is called Austria-Hungary for lack of a better name. Ruled by a man not of their race, a man of one of the oldest, most corrupt, and autocratic of the reigning families of Europe, they were struggling upward toward freedom when the growing commercial dominion of the United States took the word to them of our nation’s beacon. To us they have literally surged. Among us they have found the freedom denied their peoples at home.