“And I had hoped,” he said regretfully, “that I might win you for a helper in this work. You’re determined to be my rival--” “Not unless you fight--” “Can’t you see,” he persisted, “that what America needs today is not the multiplication of her voting population by two--but the breathing of a conscious national soul into the people and giving that soul expression. What we need is not more millions of voters but a deeper sense of responsibility developed in those who already vote. We must show the world that democracy is a success, that democracy means the best in government, the best in commerce, the best in art and literature. I grant you that many of our new foreign voters are ignorant, but, dear Miss Holland, their wives and mothers are far more ignorant. Why add to this sum total of inefficiency? New York is in reality a foreign city set down here in the heart of America. More than one-half of the men of voting age are foreign-born. Only thirty-eight per cent of them are naturalized. More than half a million of these men are in no way identified with our political life. Twenty thousand a year in our city claim their right of citizenship and become voters. We have before us a gigantic task to teach these men the meaning of true Americanism. This work has not been done. It has been left to chance. We must break up these foreign groups. Eighty per cent of our foreign population live in groups and take no interest in any problem which does not directly affect their group life. They neither know nor are known by American-born citizens. Men like your father should get acquainted with these people. They are yet speaking a foreign tongue, living within the narrow ideals of their European origin. In time of supreme trial if this nation should call on them, what could one expect? What have we a right to expect?” Virginia shook her head in hopeless protest. “Always your nightmare of an imaginary impossible attack by a foreign foe!” “I wish it were imaginary,” he answered thoughtfully. “Do you think for a moment that there is a foot of soil in the old world of Northern and Central Europe on which I could stand and dare to write the sentences and mottoes on that blackboard? Do the rulers of Europe believe that all men are created equal? Remember, dear lady, that Democracy is a babe not yet out of swaddling clothes. The might of kings is as old as the recorded history of man. The kingly conception of government and its divine right to govern is inbred into the human race through thousands of years until it is accepted without question. The idea becomes as fixed and automatic as the beat of the human heart.