[Illustration:  THE LATE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND

Whose Assassination at Serajevo Precipitated the European War]

[Illustration:  H.M.  NICHOLAS I.

King of Montenegro, the Smallest of the Allied Powers

(Photo (C) American Press Assn.)]

II.

“HUMANITY FIRST.”

[President Wilson’s speech in Convention Hall, Philadelphia, Penn., May 10, 1915, before 4,000 newly naturalized citizens:]

It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception, but it is not of myself that I wish to think tonight, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States.  This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth.  Other countries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people.  This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women.  And so by the gift of the free will of independent people it is constantly being renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created.  It is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this great nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the world.

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States.  Of allegiance to whom?  Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God.  Certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great Government.  You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race.  You have said, “We are going to America,” not only to earn a living, not only to seek the things which it was more difficult to obtain where you were born, but to help forward the great enterprises of the human spirit—­to let men know that everywhere in the world there are men who will cross strange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to them, knowing that, whatever the speech, there is but one longing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for liberty and justice.

And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you—­bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave in them.  I certainly would not be one even to suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin—­these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts—­but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go.  You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans.  You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups.  American does not consist of groups.  A man who thinks himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.