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 America the hope of the world.

ADDRESS AT MILWAUKEE

[Between January 27 and February 3, 1916, President Wilson made a series of speeches in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Des Moines, Topeka, Kansas City, and St. Louis.  The address made at Milwaukee, on January 31, has been chosen as representing the general tenor and spirit of the whole series.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: 

I need not inquire whether the citizens of Milwaukee and Wisconsin are interested in the subject of my errand.  The presence of this great body in this vast hall sufficiently attests your interest, but I want at the outset to remove a misapprehension that I fear may exist in your mind.  There is no sudden crisis; nothing new has happened; I am not out upon this errand because of any unexpected situation.  I have come to confer with you upon a matter upon which it would, in any circumstances, be necessary for us to confer when all the rest of the world is on fire and our own house is not fireproof.  Everywhere the atmosphere of the world is thrilling with the passion of a disturbance such as the world has never seen before, and it is wise, in the words just uttered by your chairman, that we should see that our own house is set in order and that everything is done to make certain that we shall not suffer by the general conflagration.

There were some dangers to which this Nation seemed at the outset of the war to be exposed, which, I think I can say with confidence, are now passed and overcome.  America has drawn her blood and her strength out of almost all the nations of the world.  It is true of a great many of us that there lies deep in our hearts the recollection of an origin which is not American.  We are aware that our roots, our traditions, run back into other national soils.  There are songs that stir us; there are some far-away historical recollections which engage our affections and stir our memories.  We cannot forget our forbears; we cannot altogether ignore the fact of our essential blood relationship; and at the outset of this war it did look as if there were a division of domestic