Our freedom of access, our hospitality, our amazing opportunity, have brought to us each decade millions of people of stocks alien to that by which our institutions were established. We have been put under an extraordinary strain. And just as England and other nations have in the past shown their colonizing energy by sending out offshoots, planting them upon distant and empty territories and building up new nations in their own image, so we are displaying at least an equal colonizing energy in the way in which we have received these vast numbers and are assimilating them and making them over essentially into our image.

I do not mean that the nation has in no respect been changed or modified in the process. The developments from these recent additions to our population have not yet clearly appeared, but we already can see enough to permit us to believe that as a result the nation will have not only a more cosmopolitan but a richer and a more versatile citizenship, that our free institutions will essentially remain intact and the spirit of our democracy be broadened.

The influence which the mixture of races is likely to exert upon our institutions and civilization is certainly not less important than the character of the race type ultimately to be evolved. We have seen little as yet of the operation of the commonly accepted idea of the "melting pot" and have witnessed little change in the individual type. The "melting pot" notion is that we cast a certain number of Englishmen, Germans, Irishmen, Italians and members of other races into a crucible as we should the components of steel and that they become thoroughly melted and fused, and that after this fusion we may take out a new creation of uniform structure which will be the ultimate and standardized American. Possibly in the distant future we may see something of that sort, and the Irish and English crossed with the French and German, and every other known stock, may appear in a new creature who will be the typical member of the new American race. . . .

But the process will surely be slow. Indeed I am skeptical enough to doubt that this standardized world citizen or American citizen is destined to appear in a future which is not very distant. I fancy the world for mundane purposes will be as well off without either and that to increase the monotony of its citizens will not contribute to the interest of the world. The race landscape, if that term is permissible, will be no less interesting if it shall maintain its present general features, even though the divisions between the fields may not be so abrupt but may blend into each other. The strong tendency is toward the preservation of the integrity of the race stocks.

But there is a practical truth in the melting pot notion likely to be seen in times which are not remote. The fusion is more likely to be witnessed in our general achievement and in the sum of our civilization. If we shall prove reasonably homogeneous in one respect and remain devoted to democracy and the maintenance of free institutions, then, under the stimulus of our freedom, we may hope to witness in our country the noblest achievements, the fairest fruitage of the different races in our population. We may hope to see the industrial efficiency of the Germans, the strong fibre of the British with genius for political freedom, and the literary and artistic qualities of the Latin race.

We shall have a "melting pot" worth while, if out of it shall come a fusion and blending of the best works of all races and a more many-sided and a fairer civilization.

TO NEWLY-MADE CITIZENS

WOODROW WILSON

[This address was delivered at Convention Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1915.]

It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think to-night, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States.

This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantly renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created. It is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the world.

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God- certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great Government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race. You have said, "We are going to America not only to earn a living, not only to seek the things which it was more difficult to obtain where we were born, but to help forward the great enterprises of the human spirit to let men know that everywhere in the world there are men who will cross strange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to them if they can but satisfy their quest for what their spirits crave; knowing that whatever the speech there is but one longing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for liberty and justice." And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you- bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them. I certainly would not be one even to suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin, these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts, — but it is one thing to love the place where

you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You can not dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You can not become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. It was but an historical accident no doubt that this great country was called the "United States"; yet I am very thankful that it has that word "United" in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart.

It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice

poor A man does not

A man does not and if some of us

in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at all in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. go out to seek the thing that is not in him. hope for the thing that he does not believe in, have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. If I have in any degree forgotten what America was intended for, I will thank God if you will remind me. I was born in America. You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you come expecting us to be better than we are.

See, my friends what that means. It means that Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is