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Our late Leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with his universal sympathy for all oppressed and his profound understanding of Jesus' revolutionary spirit of love and sacrifice, carried on his revolutionary work for forty years and brought about at last the liberation of the Chinese people.

My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.

And my father, after all, was a nationalist.

He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.

My father valued patriotism above all other social obligations, but he had his own particular interpretation of just how true patriotism was meant to function.

My father was a statesman, I am a political woman. My father was a saint. I am not.

My father volunteered in early 1941, before Pearl Harbor, and became an officer in the U.S. Navy. As I was growing up, he taught me the responsibility of command: A leader is ultimately responsible for every aspect of the welfare of people under his or her care. That was a deeply felt obligation in his generation.

My father, John Steinbeck, was a man who held human history in great reverence, and in particular the biographies of those people who had risked their lives, their fortunes, and their worldly honor to defend the rights and prerogatives of those who were powerless to defend themselves.

The patriot subordinates himself to his State in order to raise it above all other States and thus, as it were, to find his personal sacrifice repaid with ample interest through the might and greatness of his fatherland.