I believe emphatically that unless America can show itself worthy of its traditions and opportunities, we should not be honored nor sought as “an asylum for the oppressed,” nor be regarded as “a refuge from tyranny,” and that we should close our doors and put up a sign that means what we say. I am equally positive that we should give a constructive policy a fair trial--starting at Ellis Island and following the alien to the last hamlet with information, advice, and protection, with assurance of equality before the law in all respects, and giving him the full guarantees of our Constitution. If under these conditions he prefers his home language to ours, pays his allegiance to a country other than America, sends his savings home to be invested, persists in a second-rate standard of living, asserts his rights but refuses to meet his duties, reads the foreign language press instead of the American, joins the racial society instead of the city club,--then we shall know the fault is not the native American’s, and we can put up the bars with a clear conscience and with courage in our hearts. Americanism faces the future and is courageous. Nativism faces the past and is apprehensive. Never in the history of nations shall we have a greater opportunity to attain stability and leadership than now. The native American has in his own hands the power to build a great future for his land. He has the needed qualities, too; he has an idealism such as the world never witnessed before, in so high a degree as to seem naïve or childish to citizens of older races dyed in intrigue and used to always looking for the hidden motive under every apparently open move. He has courage and a faith in liberty detached though it sometimes is from his daily life. And I am one of those who hold that he still believes in equality--in spite of the manifold contradictions we see all about us. But he is, as we have seen, blind beyond parallel to his opportunities--to a degree that makes us question sometimes whether he has not, after all, committed the unpardonable sin of sinning against the light. He has been stupid, foolish, trivial. He has been content to treat his belief in liberty and equality as many a man treats his religion--as something precious, but not to be used in daily life.