THE ALIEN.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 May 1918, Page 2

THE ALIEN.

To the Editor, S' r i To my mind the agitation against the Alien is somewhat shortsighted and illogical. In the first place, the Anglo-Saxon himself is alien to more places than any man living; or who ever has lived and on top of this he has absorbed to his benefit the best bone and blood of every white migratory race 011 earth. The Briton, Phoenician, Trojan, Gaul, Pict, Roman, Slavonian, Dane, Norman, Dutchman, Frenchman, and German have all paid racial tribute to the Anglo-Saxon. Ex-President Roosevelt once expressed alarm lest the United States, owing to thp advent of the alien, would lose lier race identity and cease to be AngloSaxon in thought, sympathy and action, and this despite the fact that during the last twenty years its immigration figures are large enough to absorb the whole of the combined standing armies of Europe. Matthew Arnold said: "Five sevenths of the human character is hereditary. The remaining two-sevenths is the result of environment and education." Does anyone think for a moment that a voyage of a few thousand miles will obliterate the heritage of centuries? The alien Ims his race characteristics and prejudice, the same as wo have, and, like us, he brings them along with his travels. But the (to us) objectionable features of these characteristics are obliterated in a generation or two by marriage or environment, and the State and the race are certainly the better for his having been here. Race antagonism is a natural law, or, at least, a law that must be reckoned with in any comprehensive study of history. Nature prevents loss of speciei among the lower animal by the fecundity of hybrids, and she seems to have protected race types amongst men by race antagonism, though one is temp* ted to ask with Tennyson:

Is God and Nature then at strife, So careless of the stogie life; ■ So careful of the type she seems. One thing is certain—no race can afford to bar the door against the best bone and blood of another race. The Anglo-Saxon owes much of his racial vi* tality to the tributaries of alien bloodL Hia {doors have been open to the foreigners for 1400 years. Not only has he stood the strain, but thriven on it And after absorbing the alien by the million, his race characteristics, type and ideals are as pronounced to-day as they were a 1000 years ago. The present upheaval ia the greatest racial landslide in history, and the Anglo-Saxon will need all his own vitality and as much of the alien's as lie can .vet: if he is going to recover from the ravages of the vampire of war. —1 am, etc., FRANK BELL. Toko, May 15.