Evening star., 1936-10-28
By the Associated Press.

NEW YOhh, OctODeT <o.-rOuoWH
Is the text of President Roosevelt
speech at the fiftieth anniversary Gel
ebration at the Statue OF Liberty to
day:
Fifty years ago our old neigh
Dor and friend from across the sea
gave us this monument to stand at
the principal Eastern gateway. to
the New World. Grover Cleveland,
President of the United States, ac-
cepted this gift with the pledge
that I'VE will not forget that Lib
erty has here made her home; nor
shall her chosen altar be neglected"
During those so years that cove
nant between ourselves and our
most cherished convictions has not
been broken.
Four hundred years ago, in Eu-
rope. as we'll as in Asia, there was
little hope of liberty for the aver
age men of courage and good will.
The ambitions of a ruling class
and the times alike. conspired
against liberty Of conscience, lib
erty of speech, liberty of the per-
son. liberty of economic oppor-
tunity. Wars. dynastic and re-
ligious, had exhausted both the SUBJ
stance and the tolerance of the
Old World There was neither eco
nomic nor political lberty-nor any
hope for either.
Then came one of the great
ironies of history. Rulers needed
to find gold to pay their armies
and increase their power over the
common men. The seamen they
sent to find that gold found instead
the way of escape for the common
man from those rulers. What they
found over the Western horizon
was not the silk and jewels of
Cathay, but mankind's second
chance-a chance to create a new
world after he had almost spoiled
an old one.
And the Almighty seems pur-
posefully to have withheld that
second chance until the time when
men would most need and appre-
ciate liberty, the time when men
would be enlightened enough to
establish it on foundations sound
enough to maintain it.
For over three centuries a steady
stream Of men. women and chill
dren followed the beacon of liberty
which this light symbolizes They
brought to us strength and moral
fiber developed in a civilization
centuries old but fired anew by
the dream of a better life in
America. They brought to one new
country the cultures of a hundred
old ones. - ..
Emigrants to America
Not the Failures.
1t has not been sufficiently en-
phasized in the teaching of our
history that the Overwhelming ma
jority of those who came from the
nations of the Old World to our
American shores we're not the lag
CARDS. not the timorous. not the
failures. They were men and
women who had the supreme cour-
age to strike out for themselves,
to abandon language and rela-
tives-to start at the bottom with
out influence. without money and
without knowledge of life in a very
young civilization. We can say
for all America what the Cali
fornians say of the Forty Miners,
"the towards never started and
the weak died by the way"
Perhaps Providence did prepare
place of the second chance. Ger
tainly, millions of men and
women have made it that. They
adopted this homeland because in
this land they found a home in
which the things they most desired
could be theirs-freedom of oppor-
tunity, freedom Of thought, free
dom to worship God. Here they
found life because here there was
freedom to live.
1t is the memory of all these
eager seeking millions that makes
this one of Americas places of
great romance. Looking down this
great harbor like to think of the
countless number of inbound YES
sells that have made this port. I
like to think of the men and
women who-with the break of
dawn off Sandy Hook-have
strained their eyes to the West for
. first glimpse of the New World.
They came to us-most of
then-in steerage. But they, in
their humble quarters, saw things
in these strange horizons which
were denied to the eyes of those
few who travelled in greater lux
ury.
They came to us speaking many
tongues-but a single language,
the universal language of human
aspiration.
How well their hopes were justi-
fed is proved by the record of
what they achieved. They not
only found freedom in the New
World, but by their effort and de-
votion they made the New Worlds
freedom safe, richer, more far
reaching, more capable of growth.
Within this present generation
that stream from abroad has large
ly stopped. We have within our
shores today the materials out of
which We shall continue to build
an even better home for liberty.
We take satisfaction in the
thought that those who have left
their native land to join US, may
still retain here their affection for
some things left behind-old Gus
toms, old language, old friends.
Looking to the future, they wisely
choose that their children shall
live in the new language and in
the new customs of this new