country is held together by a finer metal than gold and by a nobler symbol than the eagle of our coinage.

They found that although there have come here in the last twenty years some thirteen millions of aliens, broken bits, torn patches of all nationalities and races, we are being knitted to one another as a nation. At no time in our history has the sense of nationality been stronger, and never before were we more truly the United States of America than now.

These students of our national life were amazed and confounded as they observed the change in the expression, bearing, and deportment of the peoples whom they knew in the Old World as sullen, rebellious, suspicious, and incapable of cohesion.

AMERICA ALONE1

RUDOLPH BLANKENBURG (1843-1918)

I came from foreign shores to find a home here, and I know what it is to love another land; but I want to urge upon you that you must love America first of all. With the high privilege of citizenship in this great country go responsibilities. You must dedicate yourselves from this day to America alone.

In forswearing allegiance to the potentate of the land from which you came, you must give yourself utterlyto the United States. Let your motto be "America first, last, and all the time." No matter what may happen in the world at large, no matter what befalls the

1 From a speech made by Mayor Blankenburg, a distinguished reform mayor of Philadelphia, welcoming President Wilson to Philadelphia, May 10, 1915.

country you love that you left behind, our first allegiance is to the country of our adoption.

The motto which I accepted long ago as my own is, "Do right and fear not." Don't let any one for a moment divert you from the thought that you are an American forever and nobody's slave. Never let anybody for selfish reasons dictate what you shall do. Let no one, when age shall have come upon you as it has upon me, point to you as one who has been an enemy to his country, who has broken his oath of allegiance!

A FAR JOURNEY 1

ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

It was no easy task for me on the morning of that 7th of October, 1881, to believe my senses when I first experienced that well-nigh overwhelming feeling that I was really in the great city of New York. As our little party proceeded on across Battery Park up toward Washington Street, I felt the need of new faculties to fit my new environment. A host of questions besieged my mind. Was I really in New York? Was I still my old self, or had some subtle unconscious transformation already taken place in me? Could I utter my political and religious convictions freely, unafraid of either soldier or priest? What were the opportunities of the great New World into which I had just entered? What was awaiting me

1 Mr. Rihbany is a Congregationalist minister of Boston, who came from Syria to this country as an immigrant, in 1881. From "A Far Journey." Copyright, 1914, by Abraham Mitrie Rihbany. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Used by permission of the publishers.

in America, whose life, as I had been told, was so vast, so complex, and so enlightened? Whatever the future had "of wonder or surprise," it seemed that merely being in the United States was enough of a blessing to call forth my profoundest gratitude.

Nor did I have to wait very long for tangible evidence to convince me that America was the land of liberty and opportunity. On that very evening my eyes beheld a scene so strange and so delightful that I could hardly believe it was real. Sitting in the restaurant early in the evening, we heard, approaching from the direction of "uptown," band music and the heavy tread of a marching multitude which filled the street from curb to curb. Some one, looking out of the window, shouted, "It is the laborers! They are on their way to Battery Park to hold a meeting and demand their rights." That was all that was needed for me to dash out with a few others and follow the procession to the near-by park. I had heard in a very fragmentary way of the "united laborers" in Europe and America, but, while in Syria, and as a Turkish subject, it was almost beyond me to conceive of workingmen in collective moral and political action. The procession was dotted with illuminated banners inscribed with mottoes which I could not read, and the gathering must have been that of some "trade union." Reaching the park the crowd halted, and a huge mass of eager men and a few women faced the impassioned speakers. What those speakers said was beyond my understanding. I was a stranger to the country, the English language, and the political and social activities of free men. From some fellow Syrians who understood English I learned that those workingmen were protesting against certain issues which I cannot now recall. I was intensely interested

in the conduct of the few policemen present. They walked about leisurely around that human mass, toyed with their clubs, and seemed utterly indifferent to all that was going on. The orderly conduct of the meeting and the rational way of protesting against wrongs, real or imaginary, was to me poetry set to music. How I wished I could return to Syria just for a few hours and tell my oppressed countrymen what I had seen in America; just to tell them of the freedom and intelligence of the American laborer, and of his right and ability to convert parks and street corners into lecturing platforms.

I was told while in Syria that in America money could be picked up everywhere. That was not true. But I found that infinitely better things than moneyknowledge, freedom, self-reliance, order, cleanliness, sovereign human rights, self-government, and all that these great accomplishments imply can be picked up everywhere in America by whosoever earnestly seeks them. And those among Americans who are exerting the largest influence toward the solution of the "immigration problem" are, in my opinion, not those who are writing books on "good citizenship," but those who stand before the foreigner as the embodiment of these great ideals.

The occasions on which I was made to feel that I was a foreigner an alien were so rare that they are not worth mentioning. My purpose in life, and the large, warm heart of America which opens wide to every person who aspires to be a good and useful citizen, made me forget that there was an "immigration problem" within the borders of this great Commonwealth.

It was in that little town [Elmore, Ohio] also that I first heard "America" sung. The line "Land where my

fathers died" stuck in my throat. I envied every person in that audience who could sing it truthfully. For years afterward, whenever I tried to sing those words, I seemed to myself to be an intruder. At last a new light broke upon my understanding. At last I was led to realize that the fathers of my new and higher self did live and die in America. I was born in Syria as a child, but I was born in America as a man. All those who fought for the freedom I enjoy, for the civic ideals I cherish, for the simple but lofty virtues of the typical American home which I love, were my fathers! Therefore, I could sing the words "Land where my fathers died" with as much truth and justice as the words "Land of the pilgrims' pride."

My soul was fired with admiration for the devotion, heroism, and endurance of the American volunteer soldier, of both the North and the South. And oh, the story of Abraham Lincoln! How it opened every vein of sympathy in my nature and awakened in me deep, almost religious reverence for the memory of that "rich and various man." As I read and re-read the records of his journey from a log cabin to the White House, Lincoln seemed to me to be the noblest human example this side the Crucifixion, and the supreme vindication of democracy.

And now to say that my enthusiasm for the martyr President has been sobered down and relieved of its high coloring does by no means indicate a reversal of my youthful estimate of his worth. No, Abraham Lincoln remains to me as one of the great world-builders and saviors of humanity. But my present opinion is that, if humanity is not to be pronounced a failure, no one individual can be so good above all other individuals, nor of sufficiently inclusive greatness, as to be called the noblest human