tention.

Not that these representatives of many nations shall in any way lose
their sense of sympathy for the nations of their birth, in times of
either peace or of distress, although they have found it either
advisable or greatly to their own personal advantage and welfare to
leave the lands of their birth and to establish their homes here.

The fact that in the vast majority of cases they find themselves better
off here, and choose to remain and assume the responsibilities of
citizenship in the Western Republic, involves a responsibility that
some, if not indeed many, heretofore have apparently too lightly
considered. There must be a more supreme sense of allegiance, and a
continually growing sense of responsibility to the nation, that, guided
by their own independent judgment and animated by their own free wills,
they have chosen as their home.

There is a difference between sympathy and allegiance; and unless a man
has found conditions intolerable in the land of his birth, and this is
the reason for his seeking a home in another land more to his liking and
to his advantage, we cannot expect him to be devoid of sympathy for the
land of his birth, especially in times of stress or of great need. We
can expect him, however, and we have a right to demand his _absolute
allegiance_ to the land of his adoption. And if he cannot give this,
then we should see to it that he return to his former home. If he is
capable of clear thinking and right feeling, he also must realise the
fundamental truth of this fact.

There are public schools in America where as many as nineteen languages
are spoken in a single room. Our public schools, so eagerly sought by
the children of parents of foreign birth, in their intense eagerness
for an education, that is offered freely and without cost to all, can
and must be made greater instruments in converting what must in time
become a great menace to our institutions, and even to the very life of
the nation itself, into a real and genuine American citizenship. Our
best educators, in addition to our clearest thinking citizens, are
realising as never before, that our public-school system chiefly, among
our educational institutions, must be made a great melting-pot through
which this process of amalgamation must be carried on.

We are also realising clearly now that, as a nation, we have been
entirely too lax in connection with our immigration privileges,
regulations and restrictions. We have bee