ork, a torch to light the
pathway of men to the things that they desire, and men of all sorts and
conditions struggled toward that light and came to our shores with an
eager desire to realize it, and a hunger for it such as some of us no
longer felt, for we were as if satiated and satisfied and were indulging
ourselves after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic devotion of
the early devotees of those great principles. Strangers came to remind
us of what we had promised ourselves and through ourselves had promised
mankind. All men came to us and said, "Where is the bread of life with
which you promised to feed us, and have you partaken of it yourselves?"
For my part, I believe that the constant renewal of this people out of
foreign stocks has been a constant source of reminder to this people of
what the inducement was that was offered to men who would come and be of
our number.

Now we have come to a time of special stress and test. There never was
time when we needed more clearly to conserve the principles of our own
patriotism than this present time. The rest of the world from which our
polities were drawn seems for the time in the crucible and no man can
predict what will come out of that crucible. We stand apart,
unembroiled, conscious of our own principles, conscious of what we hope
and purpose, so far as our powers permit, for the world at large, and it
is necessary that we should consolidate the American principle. Every
political action, every social action, should have for its object in
America at this time to challenge the spirit of America; to ask that
every man and woman who thinks first of America should rally to the
standards of our life. There have been some among us who have not
thought first of America, who have thought to use the might of America
in some matter not of America's origination. They have forgotten that
the first duty of a nation is to express its own individual principles
in the action of the family of nations and not to seek to aid and abet
any rival or contrary ideal. Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word
that does not express what America ought to feel. America has a heart
and that heart throbs with all sorts of intense sympathies, but America
has schooled its heart to love the things that America believes in and
it ought to devote itself only to the things that America believes in;
and, believing that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to
allow itself to be d