In that sense the Anglo-American native population is the host, extending hospitality, the benefactor of the immigrants. But this is also the land of promise for the native population themselves, in order that they may be penetrated by the influence of what is best in the newcomers, in order that their too narrow horizon may be widened, in order that their stiffened mental bent may become more flexible; that festivity, pageant and song may be added to their life by the newcomers; that echoes of ancient prophecy may inspire the matter-of-fact, progressive movements, so-called, of our day. America is the Wonderland, hid for ages in the secret of the sea, then revealed. At first, how abused! Spanish conquerors trampled it; it was the nesting place of buccaneers, adventurers, if also the home of the Puritans--bad men and good men side by side. Then for dreary centuries the home of slavery. Then the scene of prolonged strife. And now, on the surface, the stamping ground of vulgar plutocrats! And yet, in the hearts of the elect,--yes, and in the hearts of the masses, too,--inarticulate and dim, there has ever been present a fairer and nobler ideal, the ideal of a Republic built on the uncommon fineness in the common man! To live for that ideal is the true Americanism, the larger patriotism. To that ideal, not on the field of battle, as in Europe, but in the arduous toil of peace, let us be willing to give the “last full measure of devotion.” MARY ANTIN With the publication in 1912 of Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land,” a new interest was awakened in the experiences of the foreign-born, and since then several important autobiographies of immigrants have appeared. Miss Antin, who was born in Polotzk, Russia, in 1881, and came to America in 1894, was educated in the public schools of Boston, later attending Teachers’ College and Barnard College, Columbia University. Many an American boy and girl is familiar with her fine tribute to the part of the public school in her Americanization. In 1914 she published “They Who Knock at Our Gates,” “a complete gospel of immigration,” in which she aims to refute the material and selfish arguments of the restrictionists, basing her plea for a nobler and more liberal treatment of the immigration question upon the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is from this volume and “The Promised Land” that the following selections are taken. AN IMMIGRANT’S TRIBUTE TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND TO GEORGE WASHINGTON