July 21:—Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, is talking with the two Japanese and myself in Tom Strong’s Lunch Room, and, with most elaborate and knightly deference to the extremely contrasting race character of our guests, and is giving his theory of what he calls:—“The New Springfield Race.” And his tone of voice is most diplomatically ingratiating, as he touches on matters alien to Japanese thought. “Just as the sea is naturally the world’s buffer state, and in area far greater than the total of all the continents, with the happy circumstance that the World Government is supported by a sea revenue, in this same way and no other way, institutions like the University Fair lie between all great enemies and factions of Springfield, a sea of separation, cooling, and reconciliation. “Springfield, in other ways, affords so good a symbol of desirable world conditions, toward which the World Government should be, perhaps, constructed, that I would like to put the city before you in that light. “What is the ultimate citizen of Springfield? Already the race strains that have mixed, have made an elastic, resilient type, that is one with the city’s suddenest moves. “Of course, one event or festival pleases the Italians most, another seems to be in the Scandinavian mood, though both events represent Springfield. Every new song or event or new idea goes echoing through the various temperaments, and has a resonance that a thought cannot have when it is echoed in only one kind of a corridor. “And Springfieldians, for all their marvelous intermarriages, are not mongrel. They have a special Springfield sense of the sacred mystery of race, that keeps the great pronounced race types like the Japanese and others in honored separation, while within one general type or kindred tradition, there is much intermarriage. “We Michaelites say to each other, and you will forgive a family allusion, that the Springfield soul, which is so elastic, is like the sword evolved by the Iron Gentleman, which can be coiled like a ribbon from the side but, when cutting straightforward, can go through granite without losing edge anywhere. “As for the versatility and elasticity, the Irish grandmother of my pet enemy will keep him in city hall politics, and one Russian great-grandmother keeps him in the music department of the University, as one of the leading composers. Or so we are accustomed to tracing out family lines in this town. “Another man is quite sure that his Portuguese great-grandfather gives him the voice to be one of the city’s principals in local opera, and his Scotch great-grandfather, at least in his own eyes, explains the fact that he is an expert accountant.