re, find themselves hustled
back, penniless and heartbroken, to the Old World.

V

Whether any country will ever again be based like those of the Old World
upon a unity of race or religion is a matter of doubt. New England, of
course, like Pennsylvania and Maryland, owes its inception to religion,
but the original impulse has long been submerged by purely economic
pressures. And the same motley immigration from the Old World is
building up the bulk of the coming countries. At most, the dominant
language gives a semblance of unity and serves to attract a considerable
stream of immigrants who speak it, as of Portuguese to Brazil, Spaniards
to the Argentine. But the chief magnet remains economic, for Brazil
draws six times as many Italians as Portuguese, and the Argentine two
and a half times as many Italians as Spanish. It may be urged, of
course, that the Italian gravitation to these countries is still a
matter of race, and that, in the absence of an El Dorado of his own, the
Italian is attracted towards States that are at least Latin. But though
Brazil and the Argentine be predominantly Latin, the minority of
Germans, Austrians, and Swiss is by no means insignificant. The great
modern steamship, in fact--supplemented by its wandering and seductive
agent--is playing the part in the world formerly played by invasions and
crusades, while the "economic" immigrant is more and more replacing the
refugee, just as the purely commercial company working under native law
is replacing the Chartered Company which was a law to itself. How small
a part in the modern movement is played by patriotism proper may be seen
from the avidity with which the farmers of the United States cross the
borders to Canada to obtain the large free holdings which enable them to
sell off their American properties. How little the proudest tradition
counts against the environment is shown in the shame felt by
Argentine-born children for the English spoken by their British parents.

The difference in the method of importing the ingredients makes thus no
difference to the action of the crucible. Though the peoples now in
process of formation in the New World are being recruited by mainly
economic forces, it may be predicted they will ultimately harden into
homogeneity of race, if not even of belief. For internationalism in
religion seems to be again receding in favour of national religions (if,
indeed, these were ever more than superficially superseded),