St. Paul tidende. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1902-1928, 1920-02-06

American institutions be dealt With
as severely as those who happen to be
Of foreign birth. -
"Some foreign born people have
been found trying to accomplish
things which strikes at the root of
the foundations of all we believe I'M,
he resumed. 1--WE shall proceed
against these people with all the
strength Of the law and the vigor of
the American government. But we
are not proceeding against them be.
cause of their foreign birth. To make
that perfectly clear to them, we must
! proceed With equal vigor against
those engaging in equal practices of
American birth.
I'VE are trying to recover from the
staggering blow that the great war
dealt at civilization. We are trying
now to get together to solve the prob
lens that face us. No one can tell
what Roosevelt would have done
about particular problems. But any
n who knew him can tell the prin-
ciples that Would have guided him in
attacking those problems, and that is
what We a do. We can be guided
in Il effort to solve those problems
by the same sound principles that
would have guided him..
Illustrating a principle that was
Roosevelt's, that humanity knows no
distinction between those who have
wealth and those who have none
those who are of one race and those
of another, Colonel Woods told of an
incident that might we'll be interpret
ed as Roosevelt's attitude toward the
foreign born.
Il couldn't help thinking that the
attitude of Roosevelt toward the fore
ign born was illustrated by a story
that is. told of him when one of the
boys was going to a public school in
Washington, said Colonel Woods.
1.-The story runs substantially like
this: One of the boys - one of the
Younger boys, I have forgotten which
one it was told another boy that
he had come home from school one
day and told his father that he didn't
think he was going to play with
Willie Jones any longer. Father was
interested and asked why.
"'Well', he said, "they tell me that
Willie Jones isn't a nice boy. Father
was interested still further and said,
why, that is too bad; in what way
does he fail to be a nice boy?'
"'Well, his father is a laborer and
he lives in a poor little house down
in the Southeast and they say he is
not a nice boy.
my boy, said the father, there
are some differences between people
that l understand. 1 understand the
difference between a tall boy and a
short boy, or between a fat boy and a
thin boy, or a boy with dark hair and
a boy with light hair. 1 don't under
stand the difference between a boy
whose father is one kind of a laborer
or any other kind of laborer. I don't
understand the difference between a
boy who lives in a small house and
a boy who lives in a large house.
The only real kind of difference that
l understand about boys and that you
should understand about boys is the
difference between a good boy and q
bad boy'".
In conclusion Colonel Woods stated
there is no difference between the
citizenship Of a person born in this
country and the citizenship of a per-
son, born in another country. who
comes mere and is n~aturaliZed.
There is no distinction between
the qualification given by twenty-one
years spent in America and being an
American born and the qualification
given by coming to this country from
another country, accepting whole.
heartedly, genuinely, m%ilitantly, cor
daily, the ideals and obligations of
this country, coming forward, be-
coming American citizens and cast
ing just as good and just as potent
a vote as is cast by those who were
born in this country. There is no
distinction between those two classes
of citizens.