The Monte Vista journal. (Monte Vista, Rio Grande County, Colo.) 1888-1921, 1915-05-15

You. have Just taken an oath or
allegiance to the United States. OF
allegiance to whom? OF allegiance
to no one unless 1t be God. Ger
tainly not of allegiance to those who
temporarily represent this great gov
eminent. You have taken an oath
of allegiance to 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 diff
cult to obtain where we were born,
but to help forward the great issues
of humanity 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 hui
man heart, and that is for liberty
and justice. And while you bring all
WIN Nou, Sou 'oihc WIN a
purpose of leaving all other countries
behind you-bringing that what is
best of their spirit but not looking
over your shoulders and seeking to
perpetuate what you intended to
leave in them. l 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 an
other thing to dedicate yourself to
the place to which you go. You can
not dedicate yourself to America I'M
less you become in every respect
and with every purpose of your will
thoro Americans. You cannot be-
come thoro Americans if you think
of yourselves in groups. A man who
thinks of himself as belonging to
particular 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 hui
ity can be welded together only by
love, by sympathy, by justice, not by
jealousy and hatred. l am sorry for
the man who seeks to make personal
capital out of the passions of his fell
low man. He has lost the touch and
ideal of America, for America was
created to unite mankind by those
passions which lift. and not by pas
sions which separate and debase. We
came to America, tither ourselves or
in persons of our ancestors, to better
finer things than they had seen be-
fore, to get rid of things that divide
and to make sure of things that
unite. 1t was but an historical &C
cident, no doubt, that this country
was called The United States and
yet | am very thankful that it has
the word United in it's title; and the
man who seeks to divide, man from
man, group from group, interest
from interest, in the United States is
striking at it's very heart
1T is a very interesting circum-
stance to me in thinking of those of
you who have just sworn allegiance
to this government that you were
drawn across the ocean by some
reckoning finger of hope, by some
belief, by some vision of new kind
of justice, by some expectation of a
better kind of life. No doubt you
have been disappointed in some of
us. Some of us are very disappoint-
ing. No doubt you have found that
justice in the United States goes only
with a pure heart and right pur-
pose, as it does everywhere else. No
doubt what you found here did not
seem touched for you, after al, with
the complete beauty of the ideal
which you had conceived beforehand.
But remember this, If you had
grown at all poor in the ideal, YOU
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