What is the connection between these facts and immigration? Look at the South, which sent all its manhood to camp and march and battle; at the South, into which almost no immigration has gone to make good the enormous losses. The trouble with the South to-day is not the destruction or abolition of property, not the failure of natural resources, but the depletion, the decay, the destruction of so large a part of the splendid stock that made the South great in ante-bellum days. Despite its abounding natural resources, despite the valiant efforts it has made and is making, the South advances slowly and with difficulty. And while the North had to make no such complete sacrifice to war, still even there, in the few places to which foreign immigration has not penetrated, the effects of the impairment of the sources of the best manhood are plainly visible. Not infrequently you find a Northern town with all the natural opportunities to progress, yet with retrogression and decay eating it away. What’s the matter? The war; the Civil War. The best young men, the most vigorous, the most enterprising, the most ambitious, went to the war. Many of them came back; but they had left at the war their best--their health, their energy. And the present generation shows it, suffers for it. It is indeed inspiring to see young men eager to die gloriously for their country. We also need young men eager to _live_ gloriously for their country. And war, the arch-enemy of progress, the great trickster of man through his finest instincts, how many of those who would have lived most gloriously for their country has it cost us! Do we not owe to the “hordes” from Europe, to immigration, the good fortune that our nation has pushed on apparently almost unaffected in its manhood by the great calamity of ’61-’64? Is it unwarranted to suggest that but for these inpourings of vigor and vitality, the losses in that frightful catastrophe might have all but cost us our national greatness, would certainly have set us back several generations?