I stood in its hall, thinking and asking myself: Will it ever succeed in spreading justice and security among men, and in removing doubt, anxiety, and fear from the depths of their bewildered souls? Would that it might!

And would that they might attain the liberty of the peoples at which they aim! In America stands the greatest statue that symbolizes it, looking out over New York from the small green island amid the waters of the Atlantic, which sway like a heavy metal, a layer of transparent, rippling water glistening upon its surface, where the small boats plow along, carrying those who go to see the statue of that idol which the peoples have worshipped since the earliest ages.

And we cannot but ask: What is the motive power in America? Perhaps then we may be able to fix the places of weakness in ourselves.

For we, as individuals, and outside our own surroundings, can hold our own with the individuals of the advanced nations. And many of us surpass the rest of the students in their universities.

I know a man of my country to whom his American professors said, in homage to his brilliance: Would that you were an American. And I know another, studying in one of their universities, to whom they said: You are keener than those who taught us.

Why, then, do we shrink as a whole, and lag behind the human procession in the modern world renaissance?

Where lies the source of greatness in America? Is it in her leaderships, which do not tear at one another for private interests? Or in the firm union among

her various states, across those vast, far-flung lands, and among her various individuals throughout the length and breadth of their country — a union which foreign currents do not rend, nor crooked inclinations, nor destructive, poisonous passions?

Or is it in her appreciation of talents, and her veneration of her men, her heroes, who wrote the history of America with their struggle and gave her, out of their own lives, freedom and life? From George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Will Rogers and Walt Disney, and others... and yet others — to whom she has raised statues, or whose houses she has preserved, keeping up the gardens around them and making them places of pilgrimage, visited by tourists, countrymen and strangers alike, in reverence and awe. Thus she kindles high resolve and quickens dignity in souls.

Where is the foundation on which their glory is built?

Is it in the living, energetic people, confident of the justice of its institutions and the democracy of its laws? Or in that elect company which administers and organizes, leads and directs and draws the plans?

No doubt in this, together with other factors, lies the source of America's strength and of her mighty renaissance. And this hasty sketch will not suffice to speak of it all.

For every renaissance has a spirit that kindles, and lights up souls and minds. And the life of peoples has its causes and its means: it drinks from knowledge, endures by work, and thrives on sincerity in patriotism. And whoever desires to rise must take hold of these things and learn from them.