There is no room in this country for
hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated
Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans.
Some of the very best Americans I have ever known
were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad.
But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before
the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or
English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a
matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must
be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly
condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then
no matter where he was born, he is just as good an
American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this
nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its
continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to
become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate
knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-
Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-
Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its
separate nationality, each at heart feeling more
sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with
the other citizens of the American Republic.
The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are
hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room
for them in this country. The man who calls himself an
American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that
he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a
thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body
politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns
to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance,
the better it will be for every good American.
Addressing the Knights of Columbus
New York City
12 October 1915
