It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a 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 disappointing.  No doubt you have found that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere else in the world.  No doubt what you found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand.  But remember this:  If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you.  A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him.  A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief.  That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome.  If I have in any degree forgotten what America was intended for, I will thank God if you will remind me.  I was born in America.  You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you.  No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.  Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought.  You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.

See, my friends, what that means.  It means that Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world.  I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations.  You know how it is with a family.  A family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members.  So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind.  The example of America must be a special example.  The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not.  There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.  There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this:  We cannot exempt you from work.  No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world.  We cannot exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the day—­that is common to mankind everywhere; we cannot exempt you from the loads that you must carry.  We can only make them light by the spirit in which they are carried.  That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice.