like a tide coming in, the invasion swept farther and stronger every week. New Yorkers hesitated to go down into the district to trade, and merchants lost their business. Real estate values dropped in consequence, the Jews bought valuable properties at low figures.
Today, at noontime, Fifth Avenue is packed from wall to curb with dark, squat figures in masses of thousands. They parade in dense throngs and make the street impassable. They make a strange, un-American atmosphere, Slavonic with some Oriental admixture. Their tongue is alien, their attitude is one of sullenness mingled with a sense of power. You leave the New York of American meaning whenever you approach that alien throng. They have taken over the district as completely as if they had invaded it with the bayonet.
All this would be very hopeful, of course, if we could take and sustain the attitude of the unsophisticated young reader of fiction, and regard these people as “new Americans.” There is a mass of moving stories (mostly written by Jews, by the way) pretending to describe the glowing hearts with which these throngs look out upon America, their intense longing to be American, their love of our people and our institutions. Most unfortunately,