Page:Armistice Day.djvu/333

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
 
UNITED STATES OF EUROPE
311

may pray as he pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.

"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of permanent hatred and an excuse for war.

"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and, by living happily—which means by living at peace—they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American terminology. The German-American, the Italo-American, the Irish-American all become Americans.

"So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war ends.

"The second thing which we may, with propriety, press upon the attention of the people of Europe after peace comes to them, is the fact that we are not only the great exponents, but the great example, of the success of the principle of federation in its application to unity of political life regardless of local, economic and racial differences.