"The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied nationalities in the United States.
"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions, languages, and customs, it begins, at that very moment, to sow the seeds of insurrection and revolution.
"My old teacher and colleague, Professor Burgess, once defined a nation as an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea—to something which will serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.
"The accuracy of this definition can hardly be
