the Poles they talk Polish, and maybe a little English.
The Italians, they speak Italian, and some can talk English, only not
much. But Poles they can't talk Italian at all, and Italians can't talk
Polish. So how could they get together?"

"That's just the question, Mr. Dulas," Conover agreed. "I'm telling
these gentlemen that it is harder for the different foreign-born people
to know one another and to be friendly with one another than it is for
them to know and associate with Americans."

"Sure, Mister," Nick said, with great positiveness. "Sure. Before I
speak English I know nobody but Greeks, and when I start learning
English I got no time to learn Polish, or Italian, or whatever it is.
English I got to speak, if I run a candy store, but not those other
languages."

And he went off to serve a customer who had just entered.

"There you have that side," said Conover to the minister and J.W. "The
need of English as an Americanizing force, and the meed of it as a
medium of communication between the different foreign groups. Looks as
though we've got to bear down hard on English, don't you think?"

"As Nick says, 'Sure I do,'" Mr. Drury assented. "It will come out all
right with the children, I hope; they're getting the English. But it
makes things hard just now."

"What can the church do?" J.W. put in. "Should it undertake to teach
English, as that preacher taught Phil Khamis, you remember, Mr. Drury;
or Americanization, or what?"

"I think it should do something else first," said Conover. "Why should
we Americans try to make Europeans understand us, unless we first try to
understand them? Isn't ours the first move?"

"But this is the country they're going to live in," returned J.W. "They
can't expect us to adjust ourselves to European ways. They've got to do
the adjusting, haven't they?"

"Why?" Conover came back. "Because we were here first? But the Indian
was here before us. We told him he needn't do any adjusting at all, and
see what we've made of him. Maybe these Europeans can add enriching
elements to our American culture."

"I guess so, but"--and J.W. was evidently at a loss--"but they've got
to obey our laws, you know, and fit into our civilization. The Indian
was different. We couldn't make Indians of ourselves, and he wouldn't
become civilized."

"Americanized, you mean?" and Conover laughed a little at the irony of
it.

"No, no; not that. But he wouldn't meet us half way, even," J.W. said.