Our Common Country/Chapter 9
You who are men and women of foreign birth, I do not address as men and women of foreign birth; I address you as Americans, and through you I would like to reach all the American people. I have no message for you which is not addressed to all the American people, and, indeed, I would consider it a breach of courtesy to you and a breach of my duty to address myself to any group or special interest or to any class or race or creed. We are all Americans, and all true Americans will say, as I say, "America First!"
Let us all pray that America shall never become divided into classes and shall never feel the menace of hyphenated citizenship! Our uppermost thought to-day comes of the awakening which the World War gave us. We had developed the great American Republic; we had become rich and powerful, but we had neglected the American soul. When the war clouds darkened Europe and the storm threatened our own country, we found America torn with conflicting sympathies and prejudices. They were not unnatural; indeed they were, in many cases, very excusable, because we had not promoted the American spirit; we had not insisted upon full and unalterable consecration to our own country—our country by birth or adoption. We talked of the American melting pot over the fires of freedom, but we did not apply that fierce flame of patriotic devotion needed to fuse all into the pure metal of Americanism.
I do not blame the foreign born. Charge it to American neglect. We proclaimed our liberty, but did not emphasize the essentials to its preservation. We boasted our nationality, but we did not magnify the one great spirit essential to perfect national life.
I speak for the fullest American devotion; not in putting aside all the tenderer and dearer attributes of the human heart, but in the consecrations of citizenship. It is not possible, and it ought not to be expected, that Americans of foreign birth shall stifle love for kinsfolk in the lands from which they came. It would be a poor material for the making of an American if one of foreign birth would, or could, be insensible to the fortunes of father and mother, or grandfathers and grandmothers, of brothers and sisters; if he could be insensible to the fortunes of the people from whom he came. America does not want, and does not ask that. We want the finer attributes of humanity in all our citizenship, and we wish these lovable traits in foreign-born and American-born. But we do ask all to think of "America First;" to serve "America First," to defend "America First," and plight an unalterable faith in "America First."
We are unalterably against any present or future hyphenated Americanism. We have put an end to prefixes. The way to unite and blend foreign blood in the life stream of America is to put an end to groups; an end to classes; an end to special appeal to any of them; an end to particular favor for any of them. Let's fix our gaze afresh on the Constitution, with equal rights to all, and put an end to special favors at home and special influence abroad, and think of the American, erect and confident in the rights of his citizenship.
I like to think of an America without sectional lines, an America without class groups. I do not mean the natural fellowship or fraternity, that association which comes from wholesale human traits. I am thinking of the selfish grouping that made us sectional, and the selfish grouping which makes for classes, and the selfish grouping which looks to government to promote selfish ends rather than the good of our common country.
I like to think of an America where every citizen's pride in power and resources, in influence and progress, is founded on what can be done for our people, all our people; not what we may accomplish to the political or national advantage of this or that people in distant lands.
It was my official duty to sit with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations when it was hearing the American spokesmen for foreign peoples, during the peace conference at Paris. Under the rules, we could give hearing only to Americans, though many whom we had no right to hear sought to bring their appeal to the Senate, as though it possessed some sense of justice which had no voice in Paris. We heard the impassioned appeals of Americans of foreign birth on behalf of the lands from which they came—where their kinsfolk resided. No one doubted their sincerity; no one questioned their right to be interested. But for me there was a foreboding, a growing sense of apprehension.
How can we have American concord; how can we expect American unity; how can we escape strife, if we in America attempt to meddle in the affairs of Europe and Asia and Africa; if we assume to settle boundaries; if we attempt to end the rivalries and jealousies of centuries of Old World strife? It is not alone the menace which lies in involvement abroad; it is the greater danger which lies in conflict among adopted Americans.
This is the objection to the foreign policy attempted, not with the advice and consent of the Senate, but in spite of warning informally uttered. America wants the good will of foreign peoples, and it does not want the ill will of foreign-born who have come to dwell among us.
Nothing helpful has come from the wilful assumption to direct the affairs of Europe. No good of any kind has proceeded from such meddling in Russia. None in the case of Poland. None in the case of the Balkan States. None in the case of Fiume. On the contrary, the mistaken policy of interference has broken the draw-strings of good sense and spilled bad counsel and bad manners all over the world.
That policy, my countrymen, is a bad policy. It is bad enough abroad, but it is even more menacing at home. Meddling abroad tends to make Americans forget that they are Americans. It tends to arouse the old and bitter feelings of race, or former nationality, or foreign ancestry, in the hearts of those who ought never to be forced to turn their hearts away from undivided loyalty and interest given to "America First."
I want America on guard against that course which naturally tends to array Americans against one another. I do not know whether or not Washington foresaw this menace when he warned us against entangling alliances and meddling abroad, but I see it, and I say to you that all America must stand firm against this dangerous and destructive and un-American policy. Meddling is not only dangerous to us, because it leads us into the entanglements against which Washington warned us but it also threatens an America divided in her own household, and tends to drive into groups seeking to make themselves felt in our political life, men and women whose hearts are led away from "America First" to "Hyphen First!"
For Americans who love America, I sound a warning. The time might come when a group or groups of men and women of foreign birth or foreign parentage, not organized for the interest of America, but organized around a resentment against our government interference abroad in their land of origin, might press, by propaganda and political hyphenism, upon our government to serve their own interests rather than the interests of all America. It is not beyond possibility that the day might come—and may God forbid it!—when an organized hyphenated vote in American politics might have the balance of voting power to elect our government. If this were true, America would be delivered out of the hands of her citizenship, and her control might be transferred to a foreign capital abroad.
I address this warning to you because though it is a message to all Americans which you may spread widecast, nevertheless it is of even greater concern to you, who were born on other soil, or whose parents were born upon other soil, than it is to any one else in all the world. America is peculiarly your America. Men and women of foreign blood, indeed, are Americans. They have come here because, under our Republic, grown upon a firm foundation, there is liberty, and the light of democracy which shines in the hearts of all mankind. America is yours to preserve, not as a land of groups and classes, races and creeds, but America, the one America! the United States, "America the Everlasting!"
Let us all remember, however, that "America First" does not mean that the America which we all love and under whose flag we must always remain a people united is to be an American blind to the welfare of humanity throughout the world or deaf to the call of world civilization. But our ability to be helpful to mankind and our preparation for leadership lies in first being secure at home, and mighty in our citizenship. Therein lies strength; therein is the source of helpful example.
Let us say it to native-born and to foreign-born—our citizenship ought to be founded first upon our sense of service; we must not be deluded by the idea that government is a magic source of benevolence. No government can ever give out more resources than its citizens put in. Just as good citizenship, whatever its creed, or race, means "America First," so also good government means the welfare of all its citizens.
I insist that American conscience recognize the duty of protecting our national health. I insist that it protect American motherhood, and American childhood, and the American home. I insist that it place the welfare of the human being above all else. I insist that it act, not only to give the weak, and those who need protection, and who righteously should have social justice, their due, but because the concern for the less fortunate is an interest of us all.
Above all, we must give our attention as a nation, to American childhood, because American childhood is the future citizenship of America.
Health comes first. The war disclosed that between a fourth and a third of our young men in the draft were physically delinquent. Examination of our school children in various cities discloses that nearly fifty per cent. of them—boys and girls—have physical defects, most of which can be remedied if discovered in time. I do not discuss at the moment the relation of federal health agencies to local health agencies, but I do say that we must insist upon an American conscience acting at once to raise our health standards, especially as they bear upon the welfare of American childhood.
There can be no defense for working conditions which rob the American child of its rights, just as there can be no defense of an industrial life of a nation or the agricultural life of a nation which so draws away the strength of our women that it poisons and weakens motherhood. When we make these assertions of national conscience, we do not make them for political gain, but we make them as a principle standing above party, and as an American principle and in behalf of all America.
It is impossible, my countrymen, to have an America such as we would have her, until there are no failures upon her part to protect American childhood and American motherhood. The nation, the several states and all their communities and all citizens of America must unite to prevent the growth in America of sore spots where the equal opportunity of every man, woman and child to prove his own worth might be taken away from the human individual.
It has seemed fitting to speak of this matter of social betterment, because the greater proportion of our foreign-born Americans have preferred our cities and the lure of the factory to the call of the American farm. It is not surprising. For association's sake, many of them have accepted crowded tenements and privations, and dwelt amid conditions which do not permit standing out in the fulness of American opportunity or measuring to ideal American standards. We want them to know the best America and give their best to America, and in clasping the hand of American conscience and freedom, they shall be impelled to give America both head and heart in that love and loyalty that make in America a people distinct from all others in surpassing love of country.