Several forces will continue to operate in the future, as they have in the past, against perpetuating any distinctively Scandinavian influence on the population or institutions of the United States. All three Northern peoples are particularly free from other than traditional ties and sentimental attachments binding them to the mother countries. No one of the three kingdoms is great or powerful in the affairs of Europe; the heroes of the past, like Gustavus Adolphus, are too far away in time to affect powerfully the imaginations of today. Patriotism with them in the Old World is quite as much a sentiment or love for the parish or the homestead as it is a fierce and militant passion for the power and leadership of the nation. No dramatic outbursts of national feeling, or antagonisms to ancient enemies, will rekindle old enthusiasms in the American Scandinavians. Even the prospect of war between Norway and Sweden, when the former dissolved the Dual Monarchy, did not profoundly stir the Swedes or Norwegians in the Northwest; and had war broken out all the recruits from America could probably have been shipped across the Atlantic in one voyage of a small steamship. Furthermore, no great and permanent causes centering in Europe continually demand their active and intense sympathy and financial aid, knitting them closely together, as in the case of the Irish or the Russians. The Scandinavian contributions to European causes have been filial and fraternal, never political, never revolutionary, never such as to raise a national issue in America. Their church organizations, decentralized, centrifugal rather than centripetal, recognizing no unity under a temporal head, cannot be turned into a keen, insinuating political weapon. They have no secret societies ramifying through their settlements, no Mafias, "Molly Maguires," anarchist lodges, or other badges of ancient servitude or foreign hates. The Scandinavians, knowing the price of American citizenship, have paid it ungrudgingly, and are proud of the possession of the high prerogatives and privileges conferred. They fit readily into places among the best and most serviceable of the nation's citizens; without long hammering or costly chiseling they give strength and stability, if not beauty and the delicate refinements of culture, to the social and economic structure of the United States.