that one in seven is a Catholic and one in thirty a Jew. To what extent this change is due to immigration and to what extent to the differential birth rate should be carefully considered.
In dealing with racial admixture, we should be certain that we are not considering merely nationality, religion, or language. In popular thought there is such a racial entity as the German, the Russian, the Frenchman, or the Italian. These, however, are not racial, but national terms. In a few cases of still unmixed peoples, like those of Sweden and Norway, nationality, language, religion, and race coincide. But in Germany, for instance, the Germans along the North Sea and the Baltic coasts are Protestant Nordics, while those of Bavaria, of Austria, and of other parts of the south are Catholic Alpines. Italy north of the Apennines is largely Alpine, slightly mixed with Nordic, while Naples and Sicily in the South are purely Mediterranean by race. In France, where there is a mixed Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine population, a single language and an ancient tradition have created an intense unity of national feeling, and in recent decades there has been a marked transfer of political control from the Nordic to the Alpine element, as evidenced by the names and features of the present political leaders. In Belgium there are two languages, in Switzerland four, to say nothing of the medley of languages in the old Austrian Empire. Only in Switzerland is there national unity, in spite of a diversity of tongue.
In America the events of the last hundred years, especially the vast tide of immigration, have greatly impaired our purity of race and our unity of religion and even threatened our inheritance of English speech. If our English language is saved it will be due in no small degree to the growing world power of the language itself and of its literature, as well as to the world-wide ocean commerce of Great Britain and her overseas empire.
In the United States today this unity of language is vigorously opposed by the foreign-language press. In all probability, however, this foreign press is doomed to die out as the older generation of immigrants passes from the scene. The fact that this non-English press represents a score or more of different languages makes it impossible for it in the long run to oppose successfully the English language.
In Canada the fact that the French language is officially recognized in Quebec and, for that matter, in the Parliament at Ottawa, makes the problem there more difficult. It may be here noted that the French language as spoken in Quebec is sneered at and ridiculed by the European French. The use of French speech in Quebec, like the attempted use of Erse in Ireland and Czechish in Bohemia, is merely serving to keep those speaking such language out of touch with modern literature and culture.
The absurdity of attempting to revive an obsolete language such as Erse is shown by its lack of literature of modern type. Sir Harry H. Johnston once said to the author that Erse was a perfectly good language, except for two facts—first, that nobody could pronounce it and, second, that nobody could spell it.
In Louisiana French is still spoken by the Creoles of New Orleans and by the French and Negro mixture called "Cajans." This linguistic diversity will in due course of time also disappear. More serious is the retention and use in New Mexico of the Spanish language by its Mexican-Indian population. Few people know that New Mexico is officially bi-lingual. Sooner or later this must be stopped, as it has greatly hindered the development of the State.
As to race, as distinct from language, religion, and nationality, we must consider our country today as being in large part a heterogeneous mixture of racial groups and individuals. Since America's first duty is to herself and to the people already here, she must weigh the effect upon the present, as well as upon the future, of such racial admixture as has already occurred and which promises to spread indefinitely.
A striking example of this was shown during the Washington Bicentennial in 1932, when some historians, in their efforts to placate the assertive groups of aliens in our midst, endeavored to show the existence in the colonies of substantial groups of these same aliens. For instance, they claimed that most of the Revolutionary personages of Irish descent were the same as the South Irish Catholics of today. That is wholly error. The so-called "Irish" of the Revolution were Ulster Scots either from the Lowlands of Scotland or from North England, who came to the colonies by way of the North of Ireland after having lived there for two or three generations. These Ulster Scots were reinforced by Protestant English who emigrated from Leinster and both were widely removed, religiously and culturally, from the South Irish Catholics, who did not come to this country in any numbers until the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840's drove them across the seas.
To take an example: In the Convention of 1787, which formulated the Constitution, certain individuals were put down as "Irish." These were Protestant Ulster Scots. In the Senate of today, a few of the senators are put down as "Irish." These are South Irish Catholics. To use the same term for these two different types of population is erroneous. They were widely separated religiously, racially, and culturally. The same thing is true of that part of our population which was referred to as "French." The French of the American Revolution and of our Constitutional Convention were Huguenot French, who, though few in numbers, took a prominent part in public affairs at the time of the Revolution. They were, for the most part, Nordic and were English-speaking. They were a distinguished group which had nothing whatever in common with the "Habitant" French of Quebec, who are Catholic Alpines. To call them both "French" is erroneous. A similar, but less marked distinction, exists between the North Germans and the Palatines, and they both differ from the South Germans in America, who are mostly Catholic Alpines.
In this connection it should be clearly understood that in discussing the various European races we are concerned only with such individuals of those races as came to America, and not with the populations which remained in the original homeland.
In Colonial times the Anglo-Saxon American avoided the danger arising from intermarriage with natives, which ruined the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World and threatened the destruction of the French colonies in Quebec. There was some crossbreeding between Englishmen and Indian squaws along the frontier, but the offspring was everywhere regarded as an Indian, just as a mulatto in the English colonies was regarded as belonging to the Negro race. This racial prejudice kept the white race in America pure, while its absence and the scarcity of white women ultimately destroyed European supremacy in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
At the time of the settlement of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the Roman Church was dominant. Its chief motive was to save souls for heaven rather than to perpetuate the control of Europeans. That church, therefore, favored marriage of the Europeans, Spaniard and Portuguese, with the native women and considered the children to be white. The same was true of the mixtures of French and Indians in Quebec, and the church recognized the resulting half-breed offspring as French and not native.
This policy of the church was aided by the lack of race dignity which is even today found sometimes among the French, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese. For example, in the South of Portugal there was a large Negro slave element introduced in the sixteenth century which is now absorbed into the surrounding population. Similar conditions exist in South Italy, where there is a substantial Negroid element, probably descended from the Negro slaves introduced by the Romans from Africa some two thousand years ago.
One of the unfortunate results of racial mixture, or miscegenation between diverse races, is disharmony in the offspring, and the more widely separated the parent stocks, the greater is this lack of harmony likely to be in both mental and physical characters. Herbert Spencer, in response to a request for advice, writing in 1892 to the Japanese statesman, Baron Keneko Kentaro, stated this biological fact very clearly when he said:
"To your remaining question respecting the intermarriage of foreigners and Japanese, which you say is 'now very much agitated among our scholars and politicians' and which you say is 'one of the most difficult problems,' my reply is that, as rationally answered, there is no difficulty at all. It should be positively forbidden. It is not at root a question of social philosophy. It is at root a question of biology. There is abundant proof, alike furnished by the intermarriages
