Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/219

The Modest Immigrant Horace Kallen has put the case into a few clear conclusive words when he says, "Only men who are alike in origin and spirit, and not abstractly, can be truly equal, and maintain that inward unanimity of action and outlook which makes a national life."

To look for "inward unanimity" among the seething mass of immigrants who have nothing more in common with one another than they have with us, is to tax credulity too far. The utmost we can hope is that their mutual antagonisms will neutralize their voting power, and keep our necks free from an alien yoke. Those of us who have lived more than half a century have seen strange fluctuations in the fortunes of the foreign-born. In 1883, when the Brooklyn Bridge was finished, the Irishmen of New York made a formal protest against its being opened on Queen Victoria's birthday, lest this chance occurrence should be misconstrued into a compliment to 203