st play fair. It is essentially the straight game that the
true American plays, and he insists that you shall play it too.
Evidence there is, of course, to the contrary in American life,
experiences that seem to give ground for the belief that the man
succeeds who is not scrupulous in playing his cards. But never is this
true in the long run. Sooner or later--sometimes, unfortunately, later
than sooner--the public discovers the trickery. In no other country in
the world is the moral conception so clear and true as in America, and
no people will give a larger and more permanent reward to the man whose
effort for that public has its roots in honor and truth.

"The sky is the limit" to the foreign-born who comes to America endowed
with honest endeavor, ceaseless industry, and the ability to carry
through. In any honest endeavor, the way is wide open to the will to
succeed. Every path beckons, every vista invites, every talent is
called forth, and every efficient effort finds its due reward. In no
land is the way so clear and so free.

How good an American has the process of Americanization made me? That
I cannot say. Who can say that of himself? But when I look around me
at the American-born I have come to know as my close friends, I wonder
whether, after all, the foreign-born does not make in some sense a
better American--whether he is not able to get a truer perspective;
whether his is not the deeper desire to see America greater; whether he
is not less content to let its faulty institutions be as they are;
whether in seeing faults more clearly he does not make a more decided
effort to have America reach those ideals or those fundamentals of his
own land which he feels are in his nature, and the best of which he is
anxious to graft into the character of his adopted land?

It is naturally with a feeling of deep satisfaction that I remember two
Presidents of the United States considered me a sufficiently typical
American to wish to send me to my native land as the accredited
minister of my adopted country. And yet when I analyze the reasons for
my choice in both these instances, I derive a deeper satisfaction from
the fact that my strong desire to work in America for America led me to
ask to be permitted to remain here.

It is this strong impulse that my Americanization has made the driving
power of my life. And I ask no greater privilege than to be allowed to
live to see my potential America become actual: