the shibboleths, Don Mike," Kay pleaded. Her big, brown
eyes were alert with interest now.

"Well, when Israel Zangwill coined that phrase: 'The Melting-Pot,' the
title to his play caught the popular fancy of a shibboleth-crazy
nation, and provided pap for the fanciful, for the theorists, for the
flabby idealists and doctrinaires. If I melt lead and iron and copper
and silver and gold in the same pot, I get a bastard metal, do I not?
It is not, as a fused product, worth a tinker's hoot. Why, even
Zangwill is not an advocate of the melting-pot. He is a Jew, proud of
it, and extremely solicitous for the welfare of the Jewish race. He is
a Zionist--a leader of the movement to crowd the Arabs out of Palestine
and repopulate that country with Jews. He feels that the Jews have an
ancient and indisputable right to Palestine, although, parenthetically
speaking, I do not believe that any smart Jew who ever escaped from
Palestine wants to go back. I wouldn't swap the Rancho Palomar for the
whole country."

Kay and her father laughed at his earnest yet whimsical tirade. Don
Miguel continued:

"Then we have that asinine chatter about 'America, the land of fair
play.' In theory--yes. In actual practice--not always. You didn't
accumulate your present assets, Mr. Parker, without taking an
occasional chance on side-tracking equity when you thought you could
beat the case. But the Jap reminds us of our reputation for fair play,
and smilingly asks us if we are going to prejudice that reputation by
discriminating unjustly against him?"

"It appears," the girl suggested, "that all these ancient national
brags come home, like curses, to roost."

"Indeed they do, Miss Parker! But to get on with our shibboleths. We
hear a great deal of twaddle about the law of the survival of the
fittest. I'm willing to abide by such a natural law, provided the
competition is confined to mine own people--and I'm one of those chaps,
who, to date, has failed to survive. But I cannot see any common sense
in opening the lists to Orientals. We Californians know we cannot win
in competition with them." He paused and glanced at Kay. "Does all
this harangue bore you, Miss Parker?"

"Not at all. Are there any more shibboleths?"

"I haven't begun to enumerate them. Take, for instance, that old
pacifist gag, that Utopian dream that is crystallized in the words:
'The road to universal peace.' All the long years when we were not
bothered by