52 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
‘he men of each race possess an in- 
destructible stock of ideas, traditions, 
sentiments, modes of thought, an un- 
conscious inheritance from their an- 
cestors, upon which argument has no 
effect. What makes a race are their 
mental and, above all, 
characteristics, the slow growth and 
accumulation of centuries of toil and 
conflict. ‘These are the qualities 
which determine their social efficiency 
as a people, which make one race rise 
and another fall, which we draw out 
of a dim past through many genera- 
tions of ancestors, about which we 
can not argue, but in which we blindly 
believe, and which guide us in our 
short-lived generation as they have 
guided the race itself across the cen- 
turies. 
I have cited a witness of the high- 
est authority and entire disinterested- 
ness to support what I have said as 
to the fixed and determinate char- 
acter of the English-speaking race. 
Now that,I come to show what that 
race is by recounting its qualities and 
characteristics, I will not trust myself - 
to speak, for I might be accused of 
prejudice, but I will quote again M. 
Le Bon, who is not of our race nor 
of our speech: 
“Inability,” he says, “to foresee the 
remote consequences of actions and 
the tendency to be guided only by the 
instinct of the moment condemn an 
individual as well as a race to remain 
always in a ‘very inferior condition. 
It is only in proportion as they have 
been able to master their instincts— 
that is to say, as they have acquired 
strength of will and consequently em- 
pire over themselves—that nations 
have been able to understand 
the importance of discipline, the ne- 
cessity of sacrificing themselves to an 
ideal and lifting themselves up to 
civilization. If it were necessary to 
determine by a single test the social 
level of races in history, I would take 
willingly as a standard the aptitude 
displayed by each in controlling their 
impulses. ‘The Romans in antiquity, 
the Anglo-Americans in modern 
times, represent the people who have 
possessed this quality in the highest 
degree. It has powerfully contrib- 
uted to assure their greatness.” 
Again he says, speaking now more 
in detail: 
“Let us summarize, then, in a few 
words the characteristics of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, which has peopled 
the United States. There is not per- 
haps in the world one which is more 
homogeneous and whose mental con- 
stitution is more easy to define in its 
great outline. ‘The dominant quali- 
ties of this mental constitution are 
from the standpoint of character a 
their moral’ 
will power which scarcely any peo- 
ple except perhaps the Romans have 
possessed, an unconquerable energy, a 
very great initiative, an absolute 
empire over self, a sentiment of in- 
dependence pushed even to excessive 
unsociability, a puissant activity, very 
keen religious sentiments, a very fixed. 
morality, a very clear idea of duty.” 
Again he says: 
“But. above all it is in a new 
country like America that we must 
follow the astonishing progress due 
to the mental constitution of the Eng- 
lish race. ‘Transported to a wilder- 
ness inhabited only by savages and 
having only itself to count upon, we 
know what that race has done. 
Searcely a century has been necessary 
to those people to place themselves in 
the first rank of the great powers of 
the world and today there is hardly 
one who could struggle against them.” 
Such achievements as M. Le Bon 
credits us with are due to the quali- 
ties of the American people, whom 
he, as a man of ‘science looking below 
the surface, rightly describes as ho- 
mogenous. ‘Those qualities are moral 
far more than intellectual, and it is 
on the moral qualities of the English- 
speaking race that our history, our 
victories, and all our future rest. 
There is only one way in which you 
can lower those qualities or weaken 
those characteristics, and that is by 
breeding them out. If a lower race 
mixes with a higher in sufficient num- 
bers, history teaches us that the lower 
race will prevail. The: lower race 
will absorb the higher, not the higher 
the lower, when the two strains ap- 
proach equality in numbers. In other 
words, there is a limit to the capacity 
ef any race for assimilating and ele- 
vating an inferior race, and when you 
begin to pour in in unlimited numbers 
people of alien or lower races of less 
social efficiency and less moral force, 
you are running the most frightful 
risk that a~ people can run. The 
lowering of a great race means not 
only its own decline but that of civ- 
ilization. M. Le Bon sees no danger 
to us in immigration, and his reason 
for this view is one of the most in- 
teresting things he says. He declares 
that the people of the United States 
will never be injured by immigration, 
because the moment they see the peril 
the great race instinct will assert it- 
self and shut the* immigration out. 
The reports of the Treasury for the 
last fifteen years show that the peril 
is at hand. I trust that the prediction 
of science is true and that the unerr- 
ing instinct of the race will shut the 
danger out, as it closed the door upon 
the coming of the Chinese. 
That the peril is not imaginary or 
the offspring of race prejudice, I will 
prove by another disinterested wit- 
ness, also a Frenchman. M. Paul 
Bourget, the distinguished novelist, 
visited this country a few years ago 
and wrote a book containing his im- 
pressions of what he saw. He was 
not content, as many travelers are, to 
say that our cabs were high priced, 
the streets of New York noisy, the 
cars hot, and then feel that he had 
disposed of the United States and 
the people thereof for time and for 
eternity. M. Bourget saw here a 
great country and a great people; in 
other words, a great fact in modern 
times. Our ways were not his ways, 
nor our thoughts his thoughts and he 
probably liked his own country and 
his own ways much better, but he 
none the less studied us carefully 
and sympathetically. What most in- 
terested him was to see whether the 
socialistic movements, which now oc- 
cupy the alarmed attention of Eur- 
ope, were equally threatening here. 
His conclusion, which I will state in 
a few words, is of profound interest. 
He expected to find signs of a com- 
ing war of classes, and he went home 
believing that if any danger threat- 
ened the United States it was not 
from a war of classes, but a war of 
races. 
Mr. President, more precious even 
than forms of government are the 
mental and moral qualities which 
make what we call our race. While 
those stand unimpaired all is safe. 
When those decline all is imperiled. 
They are exposed to but a single dan- 
ger, and that is by changing the qual- 
ity of our race and_ citizenship 
through ‘the wholesale infusion of 
races whose traditions and inheri- 
tances, whose thoughts and whose be- 
liefs are wholly alien to ours and with 
whom we have never assimilated or 
even been associated in the past. The 
danger has begun. It is small as yet, 
comparatively speaking, but it is large 
enough to warn us to act while there 
1s yet time and while it can be done 
easily and efficiently. There lies the 
peril at the portals of our land; there 
is pressing the tide of unrestricted 
immigration. ‘The time has certainly 
come, if not to stop, at least to check, 
to sift, and to restrict those immi- 
grants. In careless strength, with 
generous hand, we have kept our 
gates wide open to all the world. If 
we do not close them, we should at 
least place sentinels beside them to 
challenge those who would pass 
through. The gates which admit men 
to the United States and to citizen- 
ship in the great Republic should no 
longer be left unguarded, 
a ee ee ee ee eee 
« 
“w 
—— 
Ss Se. 
S| eo ee 
