h, these colonies gradually become
Americanised, their vernaculars, even when jealously cherished, become a
mere medium for American conceptions of life; while in the third
generation the child is ashamed both of its parents and their lingo, the
newspapers dwindle in circulation, the theatres languish. The reality of
this process has been denied by no less distinguished an American than
Dr. Charles Eliot, ex-President of Harvard University, whose prophecy of
Jewish solidarity in America and of the contribution of Judaism to the
world's future is more optimistic than my own. Dr. Eliot points to the
still unmelted heaps of racial matter, without suspecting--although he
is a chemist--that their semblance of solidity is only kept up by the
constant immigration of similar atoms to the base to replace those
liquefied at the apex. Once America slams her doors, the crucible will
roar like a closed furnace.

Heaven forbid, however, that the doors shall be slammed for centuries
yet. The notion that the few millions of people in America have a moral
right to exclude others is monstrous. Exclusiveness may have some
justification in countries, especially when old and well-populated; but
for continents like the United States--or for the matter of that Canada
and Australia--to mistake themselves for mere countries is an
intolerable injustice to the rest of the human race.

The exclusion of criminals even is as impossible in practice as the
exclusion of the sick and ailing is unchristian. Infinitely more
important were it to keep the gates of _birth_ free from undesirables.
As for the exclusion of the able-bodied, whether illiterate or literate,
that is sheer economic madness in so empty a continent, especially with
the Panama Canal to divert them to the least developed States.
Fortunately, any serious restriction will avenge itself not only by the
stagnation of many of the States, but by the paralysis of the great
liners which depend on steerage passengers, without whom freights and
fares will rise and saloon passengers be docked of their sailing
facilities. Meantime the inquisition at Ellis Island has to its account
cruelties no less atrocious than the ancient Spanish--cruelties that
only flash into momentary prominence when some luxurious music-hall lady
of dubious morals has a taste of the barbarities meted out daily to
blameless and hard-working refugees from oppression or hunger, who,
having staked their all on the great adventu