The first result, then, was that the original subgroups fell apart and that their opposition was stronger and more open than before the war. This was due certainly to the heightened emotional tone, not only of the American mind, but every group mind the world over. During the war men and nations lived habitually under conditions of excitement, uncertainty and tension. After the war the same emotional tone remained to color whatever group ideas might become associated with its action. So the whites who had drafted negroes to fight for them resented these same negroes coming home with the new pride of soldiers, remembering new equality of treatment they had received from the French. The daughters of the rich no longer danced with the poor, ignorant farm boys as they had in every cantonment. Prejudice against the uniform returned, and girls of certain classes would no longer care to be seen with soldiers or sailors; as they had when those men were expressing the group purpose by their very garments. And the hatred of the various immigrant groups for each other—the hatred of the older American groups against the immigrant, the Catholic and the Jew, returned with redoubled force. As the present writer found occasion to note directly after the close of the war: [70]During the war we felt that prejudice between men of different groups and different faiths was lessening day by day, that our common enthusiasm in our common cause had brought Catholics, Protestants and Jews nearer together on the basis of their ardent Americanism. Especially we who were at the front felt this in the first flush of our co-operation, our mutual interest and our mutual helpfulness. This disappointment was common to many of us who had allowed our hopes to run beyond our knowledge. Another cause of this unusual strength of group hatreds was the very repression of the war period. Individuals and sub-groups had sacrificed their prejudices for the common purpose, but they had done so without pleasure and as a sacrifice. Now they resumed their group intolerance with redoubled zest due to long repression, whether that had been voluntary or forced. The “white, gentile, Protestant American” may have resented fighting on an equality with the negro, or under the orders of a foreigner—now that resentment had its vent. Never has group feeling run higher in America than in this reaction from the sudden, violent and partially artificial unity during our participation in the World War.