nce of S

pe of a decent, orderly, comfortable living, in freedom; but it must be as hard and real

e Yugoslavs in the mills, the Hungarians and Poles and Czechs in the mines and at the boilers, the Greeks at the fruit stands; we must destroy the great lie that all the "lesser races" whom Hitler now enslaves were first slaves to our

lion F

transportation, but took root and grew, understanding freedom as it came to them, making their way in the world, becoming part of America, depr

ors, is good enough. The immigrant was exploited, greedily and brutally; and twenty years later

ly accepted by custom; and as the unity of America was enriched by the blood of more races and nations, prejudice h

World

into the best jobs; they knew that for a time life would be strange, and even its pleasures would be alien to them. They knew, in short, that America was not the New Eden; but they also knew that it was the New World, which was enough. We have no apologies to make to the immigrant; except for those incivilities which people often show to strangers. Our law showed them nothing but honor and equity. The er

at we are getting our laws, our movies, our dentistry, our poems, our news stories, our truck gardening, and a thousand other necessities of life, from immigrants and from first generation descendants of immigrants; and that they are respected and rewarded, as richly as a child of the DAR or the FFV's would be in the same honored and needed professions; we ha

say one thing, harder to say honor

uropeans who did them were free of Europe, because

il of

e Sicilian, the Croatian and the Lett, expressed the genius of their country more completely in America than their contemporaries at home; because on the free soil of America, they were not alien, they were not in exile. One can ask what was contributed to medicine by any Japanese who remained at home, comparable to the work of Noguchi or Takamine in America; or whether any Spaniard has surpassed the clarity of a Santayana; any Czech the scrupulous research of a Hrdlicka; any Hungarian the brilliant, courageous journalis

eed be a slave. The great lie Hitler is spreading over the world is that there are "countries which love order", and that they are by nature the enemies of the Anglo-Saxon democracies. It is a

e peoples of Europe have lived together in amity in America, all have intermarried. Nothing in America-not e

ality of the Dark Ages, people have wondered whether the German people themselves may not be incapable of civilization. Their eagerness to serve any master sufficiently ign

s As F

the oppressed since the time of Altgeld. Of the six million Germans who emigrated, the vast majority were capable of living peaceably and serviceably with their fellowmen. Of these six, one million fled from reactionary governments after the democratic revolution of 1848 had failed, millions of others came to escape the harsh imperialism of victorious Germany aft

Germans; they are neither a superior race nor a people incapable of se

rhood of t

nt peoples whom Germany now enslaves! They have seen the German conquest of Continental Europe; the ascendancy of the Teutonic-Aryan

e the proof of the equal dignity of every man's soul, a proof which Hitlerism can never destroy. We can say to the Greeks who see the swastika over the Parthenon and the Norwegian whose bed is stripped of its comforters, and to the Serb still fighting in the mountain passes, the one th

e practical men and the poets both had discovered: America means opportunity. Now we can see the vast implications of the simple assertion. Because America meant opportunity, we can incite riot against Hitler in the streets of Oslo and

we know them. We know they can free themselves because they have shown the

them believe it-as the French did not believe it when we failed to break the British blockade in the

leteering were limited. But he succeeded. Our task is formidable enough; because the radio is so guarded, it may be har

t Effect

f people, the day laborers and the housewives; and with the intelligent section of the middle class which resisted fascism too little and too late, but never accepted it. We have to revive the sp

e have a quarrel with more of the German people than we had in 1918; we are contemptuous of the Italians; but it is still our business to distinguish between the Storm Troopers and their unfortunate victims, between the lackeys of fascism and the easy-going Italian peasant who never knew what had hit him. There are millions of Germans and Italians in America, w

hard to follow; we shall be pushed back, as the British were, because we are not yet ready for the offensive; so for a year perhaps our very entrance into the war will tend to increase the prestige of our enemies. Therefore, in this time, we must use other powers, our other front, to touch sources of despair: our counter-propaganda must rebuild the self-respect of the Europeans, of those who resisted and were conquered and even of those who failed to res

opaganda to lead us to attack Americans of German and Italian birth or parentage; our enemies will say that the unity of America is a fraud, that we have only welcomed Italians and Germans to make t

ave to

It is possible that a true fifth column exists and, more serious, that a deep disaffection has touched many Americans of European birth. We have to watch the dangerous ones; the others have to be re-absorbed into our common society-and we can best take them in by the honesty and the friendliness of our relation with their fellowmen abroad. We have to tell the Italians here what we are saying to the Umbrian peasant and the factory worker in Milan and the clerk in a Roman bank whose movements are watched by a German soldier; the Germans, too. And what we say has to be confident and clear and consistent. For months the q

o think of the Norwegians in Minnesota when we speak to the Norwegians in the Lofotens; the Germans in Yorkville and the Poles in Pittsburgh should know what we say to Berlin and to Warsaw. Our words have to help win the war, and to begin the reconciliation of Europe without which we are not safe. That reconciliation we have turned into a positive thing, a cooperative life which has made us strong; we have to tell Europe what we have done, how Eu

will organize it, how far we mean to go. If we want to answer honest