been assistant and lecturer in
philosophy at Harvard, instructor in logic at Clark University, and
since 1911 of the faculty of philosophy at the University of
Wisconsin. At the request of the late William James, he edited his
unfinished book on "Some Problems of Modern Philosophy." Besides
contributing to philosophical and general periodicals, Dr. Kallen is
the author of a recently published book on "William James and Henri
Bergson." Dr. Kallen was one of the founders of the Harvard Menorah
Society, and has rendered signal service, both by tongue and pen, to
the Menorah movement._]

The United States of America are at peace with all the world. Our
government is not taking sides in the great war; officially we are the
friends of all the embattled powers. And yet--we have but to take up
any newspaper, anywhere in America, to find violent praise of one
side, violent blame of the other. The sentiment of our country is
divided. On all sides, our diverse populations are emphasizing afresh
their European origins and background. The German in German-American,
the Slav in Slavic-American, the Briton in British-American, have
awakened, have become demonstrative and emphatic. The President,
observing this, has declared his official and personal boredom with
the "hyphenated American," and the conception expressed in this phrase
has become an issue in the written and spoken discourse of our
country.

Why, in an officially neutral country, has this come to pass? When we
look closely to the ground and principle of the division of sentiment
in our population, we discover this significant fact: the division is
not truly determined by the merits of the European issue; it is
determined by the lines of our population's European origin and
ancestral allegiance. The Americans of German and Austrian and Magyar
ancestry are pro-German; those of French or British or Russian
ancestry favor the Allies. Only the Jews seem to be an exception to
this rule. Being mainly from Russia, their favor should go to the
Russians, but their newspapers, almost without exception, favor the
Germans. The case of the Jews, however, is an exception that proves
the rule. Although the majority of them came from Russia, they have
had no part in the Russian polity; they have been oppressed,
persecuted, terrorized, as their brethren still are in Russian
territory. As Americans, what portion and what hope have they in
Russia that they should desire Russian victory? N