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Show Prospective Citizens Must Be Made to Love the American Moral Ideals By DAVID KINLEY, President University of Illinois. We deplore the fact that many who have come to our shores from other lands to live their lives among us have failed to grasp as fully a9 we should .like, or to love as dearly as we do ourselves, the government and institutions of our country. We have been casting about for ways and means to Americanize them. I sometimes think that in our discussions of this subject we are confusing the kernel with the husk. Love of country docs not arise from mere intellectual knowledge of her. institutions or laws. Patriotism is a sentiment, not a reason's conclusion. If we would have the stranger to our system of government be loyal to it, we must teach him not merely to understand it, but love it. We have been placing too much roliance on ! machinery of organization and too little on sentiment. What we need to instill into the minds and hearts of our prospective fellow citizens is not simply knowledge of the mere mechanics of our governmental organization, but some notion of what it stands for and what it has cost ; of what it means in history and political development, in the promotion of freedom and human welfare. We must define and hold before them to love the spiritual in American life, the moral ideals that animate our people. We must be able to show them that under our system of government, with all its faults, they will be able to live a better life, to enjoy a greater welfare than they have been accustomed to. |