When one comes among us, sharing the privileges of citizenship, to tell us that he is "immune" from the claims of our great ancestry, and the noble sentiment of our past, he is striking at the heart of our nationality. He is vastly more significant than his own alien voice. For his claims are being advocated by editors and politicians. His ideas are sweeping our communities. Our nation does not live because it is a geographical unit, nor because it accepts all the races of Europe. It lives because it fought at Yorktown side by side with Rochambeau and his Frenchmen. It lives in the songs of Whittier and in the heart of Lincoln. By its past of struggle for ideas it has given us a heritage. But we have substituted pacifism and commercialism for the old struggle, and we have substituted phrases for the old ideas which cost sacrifice to maintain. If enough citizens become "immune" from the influences that have shaped us, we shall lose our historic continuity, and become the sort of nation which these enemies would have us be. But these considerations do not bring alarm to our leaders. Our leaders supply the very intellectual defense for this treason. They supply it in the doctrine of so-called internationalism. Let us without delay select our position and hold it. Let us stand firmly on our traditions and history. We have no wish to be "immune" from our language and literature, our sentiment and ancestry. We need a fresh inoculation of those "influences." Let us reinforce the policy of Franklin which recognized the desirability of friendship with France and England. Let us restate the policy of Lincoln, who paused in the stress of a great war to strike hands with the workers of England, because they and he were at one in the love of liberty. No single factor of race and climate, language and culture is determinative on that central power of cohesion which gathers a multitude of persons--"infinitely repellent particles"--into an organism which lives its life in unity, and forms its tradition from a collective experience. But it does not follow that some one of these factors cannot be so strengthened as to disturb the balance. If the geographical territory is carved up the nation is destroyed. Successive waves of immigration can drown out the sharply defined character of a people. This is now taking place in the United States. The proof is our reaction to the war. It is not that we revealed differences of "opinion." It is that we were untrue to our tradition.