“By shibboleths, of course.  My friends, we’re a race of sentimental idiots, and the Japanese know this and capitalize it.  We have promulgated other fool shibboleths which we are too proud or too stupid to repudiate.  ’America, the refuge for all the oppressed of the earth!’ Ever hear that perfectly damnable shibboleth shouted by a Fourth of July orator?  ‘America, the hope of the world!’ What kind of hope?  Hope of freedom, social and political equality, equality of opportunity?  Nonsense!  Hope of more money, shorter hours, and license misnamed liberty; and when that hope has been fulfilled, back they go to the countries that denied them all that we give.  How many of them feel, when they land at Ellis Island, that the ground whereon they tread is holy, sanctified by the blood and tears of a handful of great, brave souls who really had an ideal and died for it.  Mighty few of the cattle realize what that hope is, even in the second generation.”

“I fear,” quoth Parker, “that your army experience has embittered you.”

“On the contrary, it has broadened and developed me.  It has been a liberal education, and it has strengthened my love for my country.”

“Continue with 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.”