to do, but it is very difficult to give other
people things to do. We cannot exempt you from work; we cannot exempt
you from the strife and the heart-breaking burden of the struggle of the
day--that is common to mankind everywhere. We cannot exempt you from the
loads that you must carry; we can only make them light by the spirit in
which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of
liberty, it is the spirit of justice.

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the committee that
accompanied him to come up from Washington to meet this great company of
newly admitted citizens I could not decline the invitation. I ought not
to be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my spirit
as an American.

In Washington men tell you so many things every day that are not so,
and I like to come and stand in the presence of a great body of my
fellow-citizens, whether they have been my fellow-citizens a long time
or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with
them and go back feeling that you have so generously given me the sense
of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts, of its great
ideals which made America the hope of the world.

III.

AMERICA FOR HUMANITY.

[_President Wilson's address to the Mayor's Committee in New York, May
17, 1915, on the occasion of the naval parade and review in the
Hudson:_]

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Secretary, Admiral Fletcher, and Gentlemen of the Fleet:
This is not an occasion upon which it seems to me that it would be wise
for me to make many remarks, but I would deprive myself of a great
gratification if I did not express my pleasure in being here, my
gratitude for the splendid reception which has been accorded me as the
representative of the nation, and my profound interest in the navy of
the United States. That is an interest with which I was apparently born,
for it began when I was a youngster and has ripened with my knowledge of
the affairs and policies of the United States.

I think it is a natural, instinctive judgment of the people of the
United States that they express their power appropriately in an
efficient navy, and their interest is partly, I believe, because that
navy somehow is expected to express their character, not within our own
borders where that character is understood, but outside our borders,
where it is hoped we may occasionally touch others with some slight
vision of what America stands for.