Under the system of wisely ordered liberty, combined with incentive to
individual effort whereof the foundation was laid by the far-sighted
and enlightened men who created this nation and endowed it with the
most sagacious instrument of government that the wit of man has
devised, America has grown and prospered beyond all other nations.
It has stood as a republic for nearly a century and a half, which is
far longer than any other genuine republic has endured amongst the
great nations of the world since the beginning of the Christian era.
Its past has been glorious, the vista of its future is one of
boundless opportunity, of splendid fruitfulness for its own people and
the world, if it remains but true to its principles and traditions,
adjusting their expression and application to the changing needs of
the times in a spirit of progress, sympathetic understanding and
enlightened justice, but rejecting the teachings and temptations of
false, though plausible prophets.
More and more, of late, do we see the very foundations of that
majestic and beneficent structure clamorously assailed by some of
those to whom the great republic generously gave asylum and to whom
she opened wide the portals of her freedom and her opportunities.
These people with many hundreds of thousands of their countrymen came
to our free shores after centuries of oppression and persecution.
America gave them everything she had to give--the great gift of the
rights and liberties of citizenship, free education in our schools and
universities, free treatment in our clinics and hospitals, our
boundless opportunities for social and material advancement.
Most of them have proved themselves useful and valuable elements in
our many-rooted population. Some of them have accomplished eminent
achievements in science, industry and the arts. Certain of the
qualities and talents which they contribute to the common stock are of
great worth and promise.
But some of them there are who have shown themselves unworthy of the
trust of their fellow-citizens; ingrates, disturbers, ignorant of or
disloyal to the spirit of America, abusers of her hospitality.
_Some there are who have been blinded by the glare of liberty as a
man is blinded who, after long confinement in darkness, comes suddenly
into the strong sunlight. Blinded, they dare to aspire to force their
guidance upon Americans who for generations have walked in the light
of liberty._
_They have become drunk with the strong wine of freedom, these men who
until they landed on America's coasts had tasted nothing but the
bitter waters of tyranny. Drunk, they presume to impose their reeling
gait upon Americans to whom freedom has been a pure and refreshing
fountain for a century and a half._
_Brooding in the gloom of age-long oppression, they have evolved a
fantastic and distorted image of free government. In fatuous
effrontery they seek to graft the growth of their stunted vision upon
the splendid and ancient tree of American institutions._