- dial agency which will be applied more frequently in the
future. A law should be, and probably will be, placed upon our statute books which will hold over the head of every foreign-born citizen attaining citizenship in this country a warning that he must come into this court with clean hands and must keep his hands clean forever thereafter. That is to say, there shall be no more an absolute patent of citizenship, nothing irrevocable any more in the citizenship of the foreign-born. We will hold a first mortgage—we will give him no deed. Four years ago, doctrine like this would have been scouted. Four years hence it will be accepted, perhaps, as the truth; indeed, the tendency has already begun. In eight years it will be a law. In twenty years, America will be a nation, and the strongest on the globe.
In New Jersey, Frederick Würsterbarth, who had a certificate of American citizenship, perjured himself and remained true to his foreign birth. He declared he would do nothing to help defeat Germany, and had no desire to see America win. He would not contribute to the Red Cross or to the Y. M. C. A. He added the old hyphenated plea that to support the war against Germany would be like kicking his mother in the face. The Federal courts canceled the certificate of citizenship of Würsterbarth. In the New Jersey case, the judge said of Würsterbarth: "Before he could be admitted to citizenship, he must declare under oath that he would support the Constitution of the United States and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign sovereignty. Public policy requires that no one shall be naturalized except he exercise the utmost good faith in all the essentials required of him; and where the government is shown that good faith in any of the essentials is questionable, the burden must be on the respondent to dispel that doubt."
In addition to the statute which shall make false citizenship papers revocable, little doubt exists that we also shall have a law requiring the immediate deportation of any foreigner who has failed to take out his second naturalization papers within the prescribed time. The A. P. L. investigations during this war uncovered countless cases of these pseudo-citizens. Of what use can any Monroe doctrine be to America if it is our constant practice to nullify that
