l be argued.

That may be; but you, on the other hand, must admit that I did not
succeed by reason of these shortcomings: it was in spite of them, by
overcoming them--a result that all might not achieve.

XXXIX. What I Owe to America

Whatever shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of
Americanization; however America may have failed to help my transition
from a foreigner into an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift
that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity.

As the world stands to-day, no nation offers opportunity in the degree
that America does to the foreign-born. Russia may, in the future, as I
like to believe she will, prove a second United States of America in
this respect. She has the same limitless area; her people the same
potentialities. But, as things are to-day, the United States offers, as
does no other nation, a limitless opportunity: here a man can go as far
as his abilities will carry him. It may be that the foreign-born, as in
my own case, must hold on to some of the ideals and ideas of the land of
his birth; it may be that he must develop and mould his character by
overcoming the habits resulting from national shortcomings. But into the
best that the foreign-born can retain, America can graft such a wealth
of inspiration, so high a national idealism, so great an opportunity for
the highest endeavor, as to make him the fortunate man of the earth
to-day.

He can go where he will: no traditions hamper him; no limitations are
set except those within himself. The larger the area he chooses in which
to work, the larger the vision he demonstrates, the more eager the
people are to give support to his undertakings if they are convinced
that he has their best welfare as his goal. There is no public
confidence equal to that of the American public, once it is obtained. It
is fickle, of course, as are all publics, but fickle only toward the man
who cannot maintain an achieved success.

A man in America cannot complacently lean back upon victories won, as he
can in the older European countries, and depend upon the glamour of the
past to sustain him or the momentum of success to carry him. Probably
the most alert public in the world, it requires of its leaders that they
be alert. Its appetite for variety is insatiable, but its appreciation,
when given, is full-handed and whole-hearted. The American public never
holds back from the man to whom it gives; it never besto