The
audience included four thousand newly naturalized citizens. This speech
attracted great attention because in it no reference was made to the
sinking of the "Lusitania," three days before.]
MR. MAYOR, FELLOW-CITIZENS:
It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it is
not of myself that I wish to think to-night, 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 out of other lands. And so by
the gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantly
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.
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