s you
brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than
we are.

See, my friends, what that means. It means that Americans must have a
consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in
the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of
criticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family
gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in
the neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is not
constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and
prejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness,
that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the
nations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example.
The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because
it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and
elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a
thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a
nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force
that it is right.

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that
we have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We cannot exempt
you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We
cannot exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking 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 to be here. 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
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 what you have so
generously given me--the sense of your support and of the living
vitality in your hearts of the great ideals which have made