The "hard shell" leaders are urging the Jews in America to cherish their distinctive traditions and to refrain from mingling their blood with Gentiles. But the liberal and radical leaders insist that in this new, ultra-modern environment nothing is gained by holding the Jews within the wall of Orthodox Judaism. As a prominent Hebrew labor leader said to me: "By blending with the American the Jew will gain in physique, and this with its attendant participation in normal labor, sports, athletics, outdoor life, and the like, will lessen the hyper-sensibility and the sensuality of the Jew and make him less vain, unscrupulous and pleasure-loving." It is too soon yet to foretell whether or not this vast and growing body of Jews from eastern Europe is to melt and disappear in the American population just as numbers of Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French Jews in our early days became blent with the rest of the people. In any case the immigrant Jews are being assimilated outwardly. The long coat, side curls, beard and fringes, the "Wandering Jew" figure, the furtive manner, the stoop, the hunted look, and the martyr air disappear as if by magic after a brief taste of American life. It would seem as if the experience of Russia and America in assimilating the Jews is happily illustrated by the old story of the rivalry of the wind and the sun in trying to strip the traveler of his cloak. CHAPTER VIII THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS The immigration question is a live wire and whoever handles it may look for tingling surprises. One is a bit startled on realizing that through the "Bravas" from the Cape Verde Islands we are getting a new dash of black from the Senegambian tar-brush. How few are aware that a third of Sicily, from which so many immigrants come, is chiefly Saracen in stock, so that the heredity of the Bedouin tribes of Mohamet's time is to be blent with the heredity of our pioneering breed! Who reflects that, with Chinese and Japanese, Finns and Magyars, Bulgars and Turks, about a half a million more or less Mongolian in blood have cast in their lot with us and will leave their race stamp upon the American people of the future? THE FINNS Our 130,000 immigrants from Finland should be counted to the Finno-Tartar branch of the Mongolian race, although since the dawn of history the western Finns have intermingled with the Swedes until their blondness and cast of countenance bespeak the North European. Nevertheless, here and there among the Finns one notices that inward and downward slant of the eyes which proclaims the Asiatic.