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American freedom of opportunity. We have found that we can provide for the registration and the education of our immigrants without running counter to any of the laws of nations, and by this means we propose to make a better America for immigrants and better immigrants for America. This problem is very close to me, for I was an immigrant myself, and I have lived all my life in a community made up largely of Welsh, and English and German immigrants. The fact that these people have made good citizens, despite the handicaps under which they labored, should prompt us to do everything that we can to enlarge their opportunities.

It is with this thought in mind that we propose the registration and education of the alien in America. We want to make clear to them the duties and obligations, as well as the privileges and opportunities of life in America. We want to see that they are fitted to take up these duties and to take advantage of these opportunities. We want to give them every chance to become good stalwart American citizens.

The Congressional committee which framed the registration bill debated as to whether the educational features of the plan should be made mandatory upon the alien, or should be left to his own voluntary action. They asked me about it and I said:

"If you had voluntary education for children in America, half of our children under fourteen years old would be in the workshop rather than in the school house."

If compulsory education is good for the children of America, surely it is good for those who come to us from abroad. We will be doing a tremendous amount of good not only for the alien but for ourselves if the government undertakes to educate the newcomer to our shores as to America and all that it means. The alien must know America, its traditions, its constitution, its laws, and its customs, if he is to make the most of his opportunities here. And America must make itself known to the alien, if the country is to acquire sturdy citizenship among those who come to us from other nations.

I know the immigrant and I know that he does not want coddling. I sometimes lose patience with some of our dear sisters in those organizations that sob and sympathize with the "poor alien." Sobbing with the alien or over the alien will not help him or us. To that class of people I say: "We foreigners do not want sympathy, we want opportunity."

That is what I want to give the alien who comes to this country. An opportunity to work out his own destiny, under the best possible conditions, an opportunity to know America and all that America means, an opportunity to become a real citizen of a better nation.

My recent experiences with international law have been from the point of view of this immigration problem. And the point of view is the vital thing after all. Talking with the Chief Justice here a few moments ago, I told him the story of two laborers working side by side. One of them was doing

about five times the work the other accomplished. The boss came up and touched the one that was shirking on the shoulder and said:

"Here, John, what does this mean? Your friend here is producing five times as much as you are. You're not keeping up with him at all."

"That's right," said John, "I have told him about it half a dozen times, but he doesn't pay any attention to me."

So my point of view on international law is undoubtedly limited by my own recent experiences. But I am very glad to have had an opportunity to be with you and to get better acquainted. Some day you may come over to Washington and we will have a chat about international law. For international law is cropping up every day in the Department of Labor. Our three per cent. law, for instance, is stirring international representatives. We were holding a conference on the three per cent. law the other day, and after the meeting, one of the business men who attended came to me and said, confidentially:

"Well this has been strange to me. I didn't know what they were talking about at first-that three per cent. immigration law up in Congress. I thought they were discussing that three per cent. for another purpose."

I have been very happy to be with you. I am sorry my old friend, Professor Hart, is not here. He is one of God's noblemen, and I am always delighted to meet his friends and to talk with him and those who are close to him. I am very glad to have had this opportunity to be with you and to know you.

The TOASTMASTER. As the head of an institution of learning, I am very glad to know that the speaker who has just taken his seat is a graduate of the same university as Abraham Lincoln, "The University of Hard Knocks." Anybody who applies to the work in that institution brains and energy and ambition is sure to get a pretty good education; and I think that the Secretary of Labor is entitled to a degree that we here might bestow upon him. One thing he said reminds me of a friend of mine in the State of New York, my native State. A few years ago a gentleman of considerable wealth in the manufacturing industry, who had three daughters, told me that he had each one of those girls learn a trade. One learned to be a dressmaker. I forget what the others did. But each one had to learn a trade until she could earn a living by it. Now, he said, I don't know what their future may be. They may marry. Their husbands may fail in business, and there is nothing more hopeless in this world than a woman whose husband has failed, or died, and who without any training for it is compelled to rely upon herself for support. My girls are not going to be left that way. Whether they marry or not they have to be independent, and so they are taught a trade. And so I think myself every American boy or girl ought to have a trade that they can fall back upon. I wish I had one myself, Mr. Secretary.

I am now going to call on a member of our national legislature. We all look to the Hill above us here as a source of sweetness and light! And one exponent of that will speak to us tonight, the Honorable Henry W. Temple, of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and therefore, of course, one of our own circle.

ADDRESS BY THE HON. HENRY W. TEMPLE

Member of the House of Representatives, and Member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs

Mr. Toastmaster, ladies and gentlemen: I envy the Chief Justice; not for the first time, I may say, but particularly this evening I envy him his place on the program. I had hoped to listen to him first, and then, having at least had an opportunity to catch some of his inspiration, to speak under its influence. It cannot be supposed that he had any like purpose in selecting the last place on the program, but if he had, I fear his hopes are doomed to disappointment. Mine would not have been if I could have spoken after him.

I have been interested in the discussions to which I have listened during the last few days at the meetings of the Society of International Law, and in the spirit which I have observed there. Many of you are not only students of the law of nations but also men of large experience in government and international affairs. There is an opportunity now for the members of this Society such as seldom comes. There has been an earthquake that shook the world and almost destroyed large portions of it. It seemed to be shattering the very foundations of civilization, and at the beginning its hardest blow was struck against international law. It is to men like the members of this Society that the world must look for guidance in rebuilding the structure.

Reference has been made to the men on the Hill, where there is so much sweetness and light. We have been interested in the subjects of which you are students, but we were told that there was not going to be any more international law, that those of us who had given some study to it had wasted our time, that in the future nations would be governed by the doctrine of military necessity and in emergencies would disregard international law, so that the world must give up all hope of orderly development under the influence of law, because there would be no law for the control of nations in their dealings with one another. Well, it was not true. International law was hit hard during the war, but it comes out of the struggle with bright prospects. It will be a long, long time before any nation, drunk with its own power, will challenge the conscience of mankind again.

America cannot stand aloof from the settlements that are to come. We must shoulder our share of the world's load. There is hardly any difference of opinion among the people of this country with regard to that, though we may differ considerably as to the attitude we should take-the means we

should use in carrying our share of the burden. We know well enough that the world is not built, like a modern steamship, in separate water-tight compartments; and if it were, this compartment would go to the bottom with the ship if the others should fill. America cannot be indifferent to the danger; it threatens the whole world, and we are a part of the world. The danger still threatens and threatens seriously. It will take thought, not mere impulsive action to overcome that danger-the thought of men like the members of this organization, who will give much consideration to the great problems of the time, studying not only laws but even more deeply considering institutions which are the full expression of laws.

I confess I have more confidence in principles and institutions developed by experience and rooted in the past than I have in institutions invented under pressure to meet a special situation. The principle that has already laid hold on men's minds, the law that such a principle suggests to the leaders among the nations, will control the development of institutions, but the invented institution, devised to meet a particular situation, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

I do not know that I ought to say so in the presence of so many special students of such matters, but I have sometimes thought that of all the instrumentalities of government established by the Constitution of the United States, there is only one which had no roots in our own past history, and it proved to be the only piece of our governmental machinery which did not work the way it was intended to. Perhaps everything else in our Constitution was inherited, for our institutions have their roots in the land that was the mother country of the founders of America. They were modified, developed, and adapted to the unfamiliar conditions which arose in the new world, but their origin was on the other side of the Atlantic. New England town government was a modification of the parish government of Old England; county government in Virginia was an adaptation of English county government. When the States came together in 1787 to create a central government, they did what their ancestors had done who first came to the colonies they set up the only kind of government they knew, the kind they had been living under previous to that time.

Practically everything they required was already familiar to them. There was one exception, however. They had determined not to adopt the principle of hereditary monarchy, and it became necessary to find a way to select a chief magistrate. They invented the Electoral College. Oh, that institution may have been suggested by the College of Cardinals which elects the Pope, or by the College of Electors who chose the Emperor for the Holy Roman Empire; but even if it was not an absolutely new invention, even if it be true that it was more or less consciously a reminiscence of one or the other or both of these, it had no roots in our own past. Now, the purpose and intention of the men who invented or devised the Electoral College was that its members should be men of wide acquaintance among

public men, that they should come together in each State without instructions, and in the exercise of their own judgment vote for the man whom they thought best fitted to hold the office of chief magistrate. How did it actually work? What do we do now? Why, we hold national conventions and each party nominates a candidate to whom candidates for members of the Electoral College are pledged. One man may say, "I voted for Harding," another may say, "I voted for Cox." As a matter of fact, neither of them voted for Mr. Harding or for Mr. Cox. They voted for men whose names they have forgotten or did not know at the time. These unknown men went to the various meetings of the electors in the several States and voted for the man they were pledged to. There is no law that required them to do so. The Constitution of the United States knows nothing of the nominee of a national convention. A member of the Electoral College might have voted for Smith or Jones, if he had chosen to do so, instead of the man nominated by the national convention of his party, and there would have been no penalty,-except that he would not have dared to go home.

The unwritten law is stronger than that which is written. If an invented institution does not express the political genius of the people, that genius will find a way to express itself in spite of the institution. So when we discuss the affairs of the whole wide world, we should be careful that the solutions which we devise for the problems that trouble us have roots in the past and are derived from principles so generally accepted that they will appeal to the experience of every member of the family of nations. We must keep what we have, hold fast to that which we have already achieved, maintain the principles of international law that have already been recognized, and let the development from these be a natural development.

In times like these changes may come fast. The law is a living thing, and the quick, new growth may be tender. We may be able to train it as we train a vine on a trellis; we may somewhat control its growth and the form it is going to take; but if it grows from the old root and has the old life in it, it is likely to be a much more useful thing than an artificial vine with no life at all.

I do not intend to occupy more time, but I do want to say that there are a good many men up on the Hill that are thinking as you are about these matters, hoping for progress, striving for it, and we do expect the members of this Society, among other leaders, to show us something of the light.

The TOASTMASTER. Mr. Temple has given us some very sound principles, I am sure; and I may perhaps be permitted to divulge a secret in saying that I am looking myself just now for a candidate for a position in international law in the University of Chicago, and I think it might be very desirable to promote the Congressman! He says he taught the subject for seven years in another institution. You see he certainly is trained in international law.

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