“There
is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer
to hyphenated Americans, I
do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have
ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is
not an American at all.”
“This
is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who
puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a
matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the
United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other
allegiance.”
“But if
he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was
born, he is just as good an American as any one else.”
“The
one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all
possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to
become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of
German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans,
Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate
nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that
nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”
“The
men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and
there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an
American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the
citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of
our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land
to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every
good American.”
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