EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION.
An Entirely Different Thing From the Invasion of Orientals.

Among the very numerous correspondents who write to the "Chronicle" in regard to the proposed restriction of Japanese immigration a few take occasion to insist that not only should Orientals be excluded, but that we should also bar out the great mass of those who are now coming in from European countries. The "Chronicle" must decline, at this time, to drift into a discussion of the general immigration problem, but it does not hesitate to say that it sees no reason for restricting immigration of Europeans except such as are individually objectionable. We certainly do not wish to, and do not, admit paupers, criminals, those under contract for labor or those afflicted with chronic disease. The movement of population among countries peopled by the same race should be free. It must never be forgotten that immigration is one thing and naturalization another and very different thing. There is much reason in the objection made to the indiscriminate admission of undigested material to full citizenship, but when that material to full citizenship, but when that material is digestible and capable of assimilation into our body politic the infusion of its blood will almost certainly add to the vitality and power of the Nation.

We are all immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, and a great majority of us are of composite blood. It is a wise child, in America, who knows all his great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and those who have attained such wisdom are pretty sure to know themselves to be, at least in part, descended from Germans, Irish, Dutch, Scandinavian or Latin ancestry. And those who can most surely trace a current of unmixed English blood through many generations of American life must recognize that they belong to that element of American society which manifests the least vigor, the most decay and the strongest tendency to race suicide. By the immigration and assimilation of the adventurous of all European nations we have gradually acquired those race characteristics which have made the American people what they are. We are unlike any other people on earth. The vigor, ingenuity and aggressiveness which we display have not been inherited from any one strain of our ancestry, but is the result of the intermingling and continuous crossing of a multitude of strains. The process, with resulting modification, is still going on, and it is unquestionably best for us that it continue. But we may very properly require immigrants to become Americans before we permit them to become voters.