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
water 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._