Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of
the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer
from a few thousand of them among your six millions.
As to the
Englishman's Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal
alive. What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for
Diabolo and Limerick competitions. As to his criticisms, you surely
wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought
to choose your immigrants on the same lines. You admit that the Canadian
is too busy to kick at anything. The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes,
he is all that," they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what
makes for civilisation. So did your Englishman's instinct about the
glass. Every new country needs - vitally needs - one-half of one per cent
of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of
their hands. You are always talking of the second generation of your
Smyrniotes and Bessarabians. Think what the second generation of the
English are!'
They thought - quite visibly - but they did not much seem to relish it.
There was a queer stringhalt in their talk - a conversational shy across
the road - when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a
Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where
the trouble really lay, and who was behind it.
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