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 we 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 if they can but satisfy their quest for what their spirits crave; 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 behind 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.  America does not consist of groups.  A man who thinks of 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.

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity.  You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps.  Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred.  I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow-men.  He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase.  We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.  It was but an historical accident no doubt that this great country was called the “United States”; yet I am very thankful that it has that word “United” in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart.