[67]There have come among us in the last half century more than twenty million European immigrants with all manner of mental background, many of them having tradition which will no more blend with American traditions than oil will blend with water. And he proceeded to point out their inexperience with democratic institutions, their lack of respect for law and for women, their disbelief in progress. In addition, we need only note that many of these people were Catholics and Jews; the total number of the former in the United States in 1923 being estimated at 18,000,000 and of the latter at 3,600,000. And the Jews were far more conspicuous than their numbers, on account of their massing in the great cities and their concentration in certain lines of industry. Thus the ground was fully prepared for a new anti-alien movement, expressing itself this time in the form of efforts to restrict immigration. This movement was under way in 1914, and would probably have followed in the course of its precursors. But world-shaking events ensued which altered the course of groups in America as well. The outbreak of the World War in 1914, the entrance of the United States into the war in 1917, altered all groups, profoundly affected the American group mind, and made the relation between the sub-groups and the mind of America very different from what it had been. The results of this process are still evident, and it is among them that we can look for anti-Semitism, together with many other types of intolerance and group opposition. CHAPTER V. THE WORLD WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH 1. With the outbreak of the World War in August 1914, the mind of America suddenly became strikingly distinct from that of Europe. They were fighting; we were watching. President Wilson appealed to the United States to be “neutral in fact as in name ... impartial in thought as well as in action.” The older American stock sympathized, on the whole, with England, except for the Irish and Germans; the newer immigrants had different racial and national affinities and memories, some holding allegiance to their former governments, some, like the oppressed Russian Jews, being especially bitter against their former rulers. In this situation, American neutrality was the result, not of indifference, but of lack of understanding on the part of many groups in our population and of a stalemate between the rest.