We, as well as Great Britain and other world powers, must eventually come to the doctrine of selfishness. Great Britain herself, a land not offering the inducements held out by America to the penniless settler, seriously contemplates the restriction of immigration along the severest lines. She fears becoming the great almshouse of Europe. Shall we in her stead become the great almshouse of the world? It is suggested by a foreign-born philanthropist, for instance, that America should forthwith throw open her doors to the five millions of persecuted Russian Jews. English authorities cheerfully believe that America could easily assimilate this great mass of new population. There are many American captains of politics and captains of transportation who would cheerfully agree in throwing this task of assimilation upon this country; but this attitude can not long remain indorsed by fearless men and thoughtful men unsodden in the mire of modern American politics, or unsmirched in the grime of headlong and heedless American commerce. Under all this discussion and all these generalizations there lies, of course, the great, human, individual question. Back of all stands that great, pathetic figure, the man about whose neck fate has hung the destiny of a wife and children. Once there was room in America for that man. Once there was hope and a chance ultimately to be called his own. It is this man, this simple, common, plain American citizen who is to-day most vitally concerned. The man we have with us, the man of America, who has helped win and make America, is the one that ought to be protected by America, rather than the one that still has root in the Old World soil that bore him. This is selfishness; but it is the only plan that offers hope to humanity in either world. The glory, the pride of America, the beauty and the flowering of her growth, have root in her splendid heritage, the heritage of a virile character born of a magnificent environment; but there exists no heritage which may not be dissipated, there lives no blood forever proof against continuous vitiation.